August 23–30, 2001

cover story|fringe 2001

Make ’em Laugh

by Deni Kasrel

Welcome to Hotel Obligado, where postmodern vaudevillians aim to shake things up.

Talk to the Hand: Aaron Cromie hams it up with his partner in crime, Officer Puncharelli. photo: Christina M. Felice

Aaron Cromie, co-director of Hotel Obligado, likes to boast about how this performing company "works its pants off to entertain." You may take him at his word. Cromie says that there could well be an exposed butt or two during their show for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, "and we have a banjo player who likes to play naked."

"One of our missions is to be outrageous," adds fellow director Dawn Falato. "We like to shake things up."

The pair formed Hotel Obligado to create a postmodern vaudevillian variety show. Their group, which has a cast of nine, expects to add a fresh perspective to the Fringe Festival, where Falato observes, a good many acts fall into the "high art" category. "We’re definitely more interested in being exciting and magical than having people wrack their brains and walk out saying, ‘Oh that was really thought-provoking and intellectual,’" Falato explains. "The styles we’re dealing with have much more to do with bringing people out and being accessible."

Hotel Obligado fuses puppetry, clown, dance, music, corporeal mime and commedia dell’arte, a type of theater that dates back to the European Renaissance. Full of jesters and acrobats and created upon improvisational comedy built around recurring scenarios, such as bawdy love scenes and boisterous quarrels, the form features masked performers drawn from stock characters dressed in telltale attire to represent all manner of social classes, from the snooty sophisticate to the clueless fool. The names of some of the stock characters have worked their way into common parlance — the word "zany" for instance, originates from the Zanni character, while Harlequin is derived from a clown called Arlecchino. The term "slapstick" stems from a dell’arte prop; two sticks strung together that were clapped to make loud noises.

Hotel Obligado pays homage to the tradition, but they’re not about authentic re-creation of an antique art form. Deborah Block, program director for the Fringe, notes that the troupe "steps outside the boundaries and brings in more diversified concepts. Quite often there’s a perception when you’re dealing with dell’arte work that it’s very light and fluffy, and they really do take on some very interesting issues and explore them with this older physical form, while also mixing it with modern physical theater."

Previous pieces performed by this cast have taken on the subjects of homelessness and same-sex marriage. Their contemporary mindset developed from studies learned at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA. The school trains actors in various styles of physical theater, including commedia, clown, melodrama and the work of Etienne Decroux, an innovator of corporeal mime.

One of the school’s directors, Daniel Stein, has occasionally collaborated with Robert Smythe for Mum Puppettheatre, where both Falato and Cromie have performed. And while the two have also worked for several other of the same companies, including Walnut Street Theatre and Arden Theatre, Cromie notes that until attending Stein’s school they’d "only worked on the same show once, for a couple of nights." The pair became better acquainted as two Philadelphia folks at Dell’Arte International, where they often performed together and even became roommates. Based on that shared experience they decided to form a company back in Philadelphia.

Although all of the members of Hotel Obligado are fellow students from the school in Blue Lake, several of them are now scattered around the U.S. That’s one reason behind the name, which is also the title of a movement exercise for one of their classes. "We think of the company as a way that people with our training can meet, even if they come from different parts of the country," explains Falato. "They can pass through this place where we can explore together. So it’s kind of like a hotel."

Company members have been rehearsing over the summer in different places. Five of them worked with Falato in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. Cromie rehearsed with a few others in Maine. Another splinter group hashed out some skits in California. According to Cromie, their brand of physical theater lends itself to a modular process. "We do a lot of improv, so it’s more in the moment. A lot of the rehearsals are to craft ideas and concepts. Also, we’re very topical with issues of the day. And then we have eight or nine days to rehearse as a group."

Like traditional commedia dell’arte, Hotel Obligado incorporates stock characters, though theirs are drawn from contemporary archetypes such as a cop, a corrupt city official or a snarky teenager. They’ll toss in some dance tableaux — one member, Elisa Lane, is trained in ballet, jazz, tap and hip-hop. They will engage in red-nose clowning, puppetry and live music. There will be an abundance of vulgarity, as this is part and parcel to commedia dell’arte. Everyone will wear papier-mâché masks, which Hotel Obligado participants have handmade from molds of their own faces, "to make sure the eyes and nose line up. You have to be able to see and breathe," says Falato. The masks are shaped to suggest different archetypes. So a playful character has a mask with a smaller nose to imply a spry look, while the "stupido" character sports a big bulbous snout, because, Falato states, "it reads as slow and dumb."

Aside from its scheduled Fringe Festival performances at Christ Church, Hotel Obligado intends to stage "happenings" on the street, in restaurants and even in a supermarket. "We may walk into the Bourse or the Bellevue, with nine people dressed up like Punch," Cromie says. "We’ll be a bunch of grotesque deformed creatures going out to have lunch. People will look at us and wonder what we’re all about. And of course I’ll have a stack of cards for the show to hand out, in my back pocket."

Like that banjoist who enjoys baring it all, the idea is to "shake things up," via exaggerated absurd characters. "There are no heroes in commedia," Falato asserts. "There’s nobody to make you think, ‘Oh, I’d like to be like them.’"

Hotel Obligado, Wed.-Thu., Sept. 5-6, 10 p.m.; Sat., Sept. 8, 7 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 9, 10 p.m., Christ Church, Second Street North of Market.