ROUNDABOUT BLOG

Lorenzo Pisoni

Education dramaturg Ted Sod spoke with comedy stunt coordinator Lorenzo Pisoni on his career and working on Noises Off.

Ted Sod: Where were you born and educated?

Lorenzo Pisoni: I was born in San Francisco, CA. My parents met in The San Francisco Mime Troupe, where my mother was the set designer and my father was teaching circus arts to the Troupe. My father taught my mother to juggle and quickly they started a juggling act and then a circus. My mother says to this day, “It takes a village to raise a kid? It’s takes a circus to raise a kid.” And while I grew up in a very artsy, alternative, progressive community, an education was always important to my parents and all my extended aunts and uncles for that matter. I learned from everyone in my parents’ company or from anyone who would teach me hand-balancing or juggling, trapeze or whatever. To rebel from my vagabond childhood, I went to Vassar College but I never studied theatre or acting.

TS: You started your career as a clown as part of the Pickle Family Circus – correct?

LP: Yes, I started performing the ring when I was 2 years old. My parents couldn’t get me to stop. Bill Irwin, one of my father’s clown partners at the time, had given me maybe a cane, and I had grabbed a busted up top hat from my dad, and one day I went into the ring during intermission and performed my version of the show never cracking a smile - deadpan the entire time. Eventually my parents had to put me into the show because I was taking too much focus. So I began learning acrobatics (at first I was just thrown around - I was little and light!), eventually juggling, aerial acrobatics, clowning and all the rest. When I was 6 years old, my father wrote a clown act for me to do with him and I became his clown partner. Keeping the deadpan.

TS: When and why did you decide to become an actor and physical comedy choreographer?

LP: I was working for Cirque Du Soleil after college and had been a circus performer for 20 years already when Erica Schmidt (a theatre director) called me up and said she was doing a production of Romeo and Juliet in New York and would I like to come be a part of it. She could pay me only a metro-card. I had never done a Shakespeare play professionally, had always loved it though, and I said yes. Just like that I “retired” from circus. I didn’t really think much of it at the time which makes me think I was ready to be done with that part of me life. I told my family I was leaving circus, they were all supportive, though I think they were worried to hear I was leaving it to be an actor. Once I got to New York I fell in love with theatre and acting in general.

The physical comedy stuff fell into my lap, honestly. I was minding my own business when I got a call to help out with a play years ago - someone knew my background and was going to take advantage. But I did enjoy teaching or sculpting a theatrical moment using those falling down skills. I do it very rarely, however. I’ve worked with some amazing people but I feel very protective of it and only say yes when the material is great or the people I will be working with will be inspiring - such as Noises Off.

TS: What will your job entail?

LP: I will be in there to set the big physical comedy moments, keep the actors safe, make the moments redoable - anyone can fall down the stairs once, it’s the getting up after that’s tricky. And also help Jeremy work out all the lesser, smaller moments because there are A LOT of them in this play. Basically, I’m there to help bring those physical moments to life and make them...well, funny.

Company of NOISES OFF

TS: What kind of preparation or research did you have to do in order to do the job you’ll be doing on Noises Off?

LP: I’ve read and re-read the play many times already. I’ve drawn out diagrams - almost like a football coach with X’s and O’s just to keep track of who is where when and what door they’ve gone through. I’ve gone to Lincoln Center Archives to watch previous productions. And I’ve also watched a fair amount of silent movies - looking for inspiration.

TS: How do you collaborate with a director? How do you collaborate with actors?

LP: Well, for the big moments, the stair falls, and other obvious physical comedy moments that need to be staged and rehearsed, I sit down with Jeremy and discuss what he wants out of them - what story they need to tell. Then I sit down with Derek Mclane to discuss his set design and see what’s possible and what fun we can have with his beautiful set. Then I go away and work out what I think the actors can do physically 8 times per week. Safely. Once I have a road map, we get some padding for the actors and work through each stage of the falls or other moments. Slowly. Eventually we bring it up to show speed. Of course through of all this Jeremy will have ideas, the actors will have inspirations and it’s my job, I believe, to incorporate all those influences into the moments of physical comedy.

TS: When I interviewed Michael Frayn, the author of Noises Off, he said he has seen some physical action go wrong during productions of his play – how do you go about insuring that the actors are safe when doing physical comedy?

LP: Well, that’s the trick isn’t it? Buster Keaton said, “think fast, act slow.” For a play like this, which is so reliant on pace, I feel Keaton’s adage is so applicable. Also it’s the actor’s job to be really honest if something is not working in rehearsal - if what is being asked is not doable 8 times per week and it’s partly my job to assess what I think they aren’t telling me because we actors always want to please.

Technically, the actors will go through the physical moments before each performance to remind themselves of the tricky beats and to check in with each other before all the adrenaline is pumping in performance.

But to be totally honest, there is no way to insure one hundred percent that everything will go perfectly each time. That’s where the actors’ skills, and my help to set moments that have some spectrum of safety, come into play.

Noises Off  begins performances on December 17 at the American Airlines Theatre. For tickets and more information, please visit our website.