Actors
The performance of a commedia actor relies on the acting itself. A scenario should be playable in different ways and seem different each time the audience sees it. The actors who play Zanni must be clever and equally talented, because an actor's success relies primarily on his dialogue partner. If the partner does not reply to him at the right moment or interrupts him in the wrong place, the actor’s “discourse falters and the liveliness of his wit is extinguished”.
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Famous quotes containing the word actors:
“It was modesty that invented the word “philosopher” in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneself wise to the actors of the spirit—the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“... actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“It has no share in the leadership of thought: it does not even reflect its current. It does not create beauty: it apes fashion. It does not produce personal skill: our actors and actresses, with the exception of a few persons with natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated or half-cultivated, are simply the middle-class section of the residuum.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)