A True History of the Johnstown Flood Study - Goodman Theatre

center stage. Audiences reveled in recognizable cultural
stereotypes such as the “Jonathan” character—a rural
rube with a laconic drawl and an ample amount of horse
sense who never failed to get the best of his city betters;
or Mose the Bowery B’hoy—an urban street tough with
a heart of gold. But along with these benign types came
more distinctly oppressive forms including the Noble
Savage—a subtly patronizing view of the vanquished by
the victors that justified American aggression against
native peoples by offering a character that willingly
sacrifices himself (and his culture) for the good of the
inevitability of westward expansion—or the Jumpin’ Jim
Crow caricature that would dominate racial stereotypes
well into the 20th century.
American acting was transformed along with the
characters. By the 1830s, American stars, naturally
attracted to “native” types and perhaps naturally more
adept at performing them as well, were now competing
head to head with major British stars. Perhaps the most
famous of these homegrown stars was Edwin Forrest, a
self-taught master of the popular stage who dominated
American theater for nearly three decades. His long
rivalry with the classically trained English tragedian
William Macready led to the infamous Astor Place Riot in
1849, in which Forrest supporters stormed a Macready
performance at New York’s Astor Place Opera House,
resulting in the state militia killing nearly two dozen
protestors. Almost none of the popular performers of
the time were particularly successful in England, where
tastes were not inclined toward American standards.
During the second half of the 19th century, the popular
plays were American moralistic melodramas that
reflected the values of the ever-increasing middle-class
audience. Among the best-known plays of the era, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin became the most produced play on the
American stage and remained a standard well into the
20th century.
In the 1860s, American acting shifted to suit the new
forms of dramas when performers began to study the
new French form of acting created by François Delsarte.
The “Delsarte Method” was a studied, meticulously
detailed approach to applying the new “scientific
thinking” to acting. Through careful observation of
everyday behavior, Delsarte devised a system that
attempted to teach acting through detailed re-creations
of the mechanics of human movement and emotion.
As taught and executed on the French stage, Delsarte’s
system worked as a means to illustrate the more
naturalistic/realistic dramas that were becoming the
rage. But the system, as brought over to New York
by American students in the late 1860s, lost much
in translation. The American version emphasized
the superficial over substance; what began as mere
guidelines for motivated movement in Paris became
strict rules of exaggerated gesture and hammy intentions
in New York. While some actors were adept at blending
the French version with the American, most were not,
and American acting suffered from its poor imitation of a
non-American style.
What prompted the American Delsarte method to flourish
at the end of the 19th century was the steady increase in
audiences. As theater continued to expand in popularity,
playhouses expanded as well. Bigger structures were
needed to handle both the larger audiences and the
new technological innovations necessary to produce
the popular spectacular melodramas. Curiously, the
exaggerated American version of Delsarte was well
suited to the giant stages and auditoriums that emerged
by the end of the century. In the biggest commercial
houses on Broadway, a larger-than-life acting style
worked. And more curiously still, it was an acting style
that was even better suited to the latest entertainment
technology of silent film. Most Hollywood stars of the
early 20th century could trace their theatrical heritage
directly back to the Delsarte system.
A True History of the Johnstown Flood illuminates
the contrasts between our modern form of realistic
acting and the traditional conventions of Delsarte.
By juxtaposing the “real” with the “staged,” Gilman
and Falls bridge the disparity between realism and
melodrama, between what is real and what is theater,
between the melodrama of life and the melodrama of
the stage. And in doing so, they manage to show that
what worked for the audiences of the 19th century really
isn’t so different from what works for us today.
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