Aldridge, Kean, and the Acting Style Divide
Ira Aldridge’s unconventional, natural acting vs. the highly stylized British traditions in Red Velvet.
When Ira Aldridge took the stage as Othello, as dramatized in Red Velvet, it wasn’t only his skin tone that departed from tradition. Aldridge also pioneered a more passionate, less rigid style of acting. This separated him from many elite British actors working in the early 19th century, for whom acting was closer to an oratorical exercise than the emotional realism we are accustomed to today. Actors had to hold 3,000 member audiences in thrall, lit only by gaslight. That same light illuminated the audience as well, and crowds could often be rowdy and restless. The acting style that prevailed was designed to reach those all the way in the back and to cut through the chatter, relying primarily on grand movement and oratory projection.
While his acting certainly wouldn’t resemble the extreme psychological realism we expect today, Aldridge was less interested in his forerunners’ precise and demonstrative acting than he was in projecting the inner life of the characters behind the words and trusting what those discoveries would compel his voice and body to do. Remarking on Aldridge’s departure from typical Western acting of the time, a Russian critic wrote:
“Aldridge had nothing in common with those theatrical personalities from the West who visited us in recent times…he concentrates all your attention only on the inner meaning of is speech…moves about completely naturally, not like a tragedian but like a human being…an ability to feel the subtlest spiritual movements indicated by Shakespeare and to bring them to life before the public — that is what constitutes the essence of his acting.”
The most obvious foil for Aldridge is Edmund Kean (1789–1833), the actor Aldridge replaced as Othello after Kean’s onstage collapse. Kean was nearly twenty years Aldridge’s senior and a major force on British stages. In fact, early in his career, Aldridge billed himself as “Mr. Keen” in homage.
As an actor, Kean was well-known for his Shakespearean villains and his death scenes. He excelled in moments of rapid emotional transition; Samuel Taylor Coleridge remarked that “To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” These flashes of feeling were at the core of what audiences loved about Kean; on his Othello, the writer Gabriel Harrison wrote “He amazed his hearers by its loudness and his wonderful rapidity of enunciation of syllables and words. In his rage of jealousy, fire streamed from his eyes, and the emotions of his body were so great that he shook the spangles from off his silk tunic.” None of this passion and fire were improvised or chosen in the moment, however. Each role was carefully and methodically planned and plotted so that each word and gesture were delivered exactly the same every night to achieve the exact same effect. Kean’s performances were compared to musical scores, with their precise deployment of tones, rests, and crescendos. Spontaneity was not a factor.
Kean was hardly the first actor to make his name based on his vocal dexterity, however. Before Kean replaced him as the darling of the English stage, John Kemble (1757–1823) was famous for playing many Shakespearean roles, most notably Coriolanus. Kemble was heavily influenced by the statuesque style, which places the emphasis of the performance entirely on the vocal delivery, leaving the body stiff and static. This physical detachment also meant that strong emotion was not his forte; he was known for grandeur and sweeping lines. His precise, rhythmic vocal delivery was the toast of London and the dominant style for thirty years, before Kean arrived with his emotional innovations and audiences began clamoring for that intense and physical style.
Once Kean replaced Kemble as the major actor of the London stage, he faced another competitor for the title: William Macready (1793–1873). Macready was an intellectual actor, more suited to philosophical roles like Hamlet than Kean’s villains and high-emotion tragic heroes. He also innovated acting styles, even if he would not reach for the same truth and spontaneity as Aldridge. Macready was the first of the major British actors to insist on rehearsal and artistic coherence between all members of the company. Before Macready, the main actor rarely rehearsed with their casts. In fact, Edmund Kean’s advice to his company was simply “stand upstage of me and do your worst.” Macready, though, instituted regular rehearsals and a focus on the playwright’s intentions rather than the leading actor’s whims.
Actors from Aldridge’s American homeland tended to act with more flexibility; indeed, it is possible that Aldridge would not have been out of place on American stages were it possible for a black actor to achieve theatrical success in the United States. While Kean and Macready were delivering their carefully calibrated performances, Philadelphia’s own Edwin Forrest (1806–1872) was becoming famous on both sides of the Atlantic for his vigorous, instinctual takes on Shakespearean heroes and villains. This contemporary of Aldridge was divisive; his style thrilled some, while others derided him as undisciplined. But his performance as Iago opposite Kean’s Othello in New York City drew thrilled gasps from the audience and shock from Kean thanks to its unpredictability. When Kean questioned where Forrest could have come up with his surprising delivery, Forrest’s response was simply “It was instinct.” And his vigor and unpredictability extended beyond the more controlled British stages and into the audience: his bitter rivalry with Macready once devolved into a riot that killed twenty people when fans of Forrest stormed a New York theater at which Macready was appearing.
The relative freedom deployed by both Aldridge and Forrest would continue to develop in America, where actors could focus more on a character’s inner life than on elocution or gestures. Edwin Booth (1833–1893), onetime owner of Walnut Street Theatre here in Philadelphia, was known for his naturalistic delivery in contrast to his more traditionally bombastic father. And William Gillette (1853–1937), most famous for his Sherlock Holmes, was praised by Holmes expert S.A. Dahlinger for his “ability to say nothing at all on the stage, relying instead on an involved, inner contemplation of an emotional or comic crisis to hold the audience silent.”
Ira Aldridge was ahead of his time, an actor at an artistic crossroads; his Othello arrived before Booth or Gillette were born, and at the moment that Kean’s death released his hold on the British stage. America may have been ready for his approach in ways that Britain was not, but Britain and Europe allowed him a career that his home country would not permit.
Join us for Red Velvet at Lantern Theater Company, Sept. 7 — Oct. 15, 2017. Visit our website for tickets and information.
