Tristan “Spaghetti” Jacobs, the star of four shows at the National Arts Festival this year – Shaggy, Stilted, Hats and Dedicado – is a strange looking fellow. That’s to his advantage though.
Tristan “Spaghetti” Jacobs, the star of four shows at the National Arts Festival this year – Shaggy, Stilted, Hats and Dedicado – is a strange looking fellow. That’s to his advantage though.
To make something interesting it’s got to be off balance. So whenever you’re on-stage you never want to stand on a completely plain, simple level,” he says weaving around in his seat.
“You want to always offset. So when in doubt – lean.”
And lean he does; his language is always entwined with movement, one of the reasons why he has one of the funniest bodies, literally, audiences have ever encountered at this year’s Festival. So how does he make people whoop and giggle without saying anything at all?
“[It’s about] knowing that I can use the lankiness,” he laughs of his tall frame, “so I know I have more room to play with the spaghettiness.”
His arms wobble and wave like spaghetti so seamlessly it’s almost like they are performing his words is unconscious for him.
“Understanding your own body is what helps in using your body as an expressive tool,” he says more seriously.
Jim Carrey-sque
For example, “When you’re working with a mask, the face becomes your eye. The body becomes the face, to express your facial expressions, and the space around you then becomes the body, to move through that space.”
Jacobs classifies himself as a “hybrid" actor unsettled on a specific style, but very physically orientated, because for him, the character first has to be embodied before being able to speak.
“With Hats and Stilted there’s no script, there’s no words per se. Your body remembers the lines,” he says.
"The way I analyse a character is first physically. I’ll be walking around a space and I’ll find a neutral, my neutral ‘just Tristan’ essence. Walk around, and then change it, change the centre of gravity. It won’t be in your stomach it’ll be in your head, your chest, or your knees, it’ll be down here in your hips.”
If the room wasn’t so small you can be certain Jacobs would be translating the constricted (but somehow still extravagant) posture changes his chair permits him
into a goofy walk.“And suddenly your walk changes, and as your walk changes you start finding a voice for the character, and that’s how I’ve always found characters coming from a part of me, even if they were one of the most obscure, murderous, adulterous people, you can find them in yourself,” he grinned.
Jacobs wasn’t born with more funny bones than the rest of us: it requires hard training, “I had a few injuries. There was always
blood. I was wearing knee guards and wrist guards daily.”It’s by blood, sweat and lankiness that he communicates: “What do you do when there’s 11 official languages? How do you speak to everyone? Everyone’s going this non-language route, so I’d like to explore that,” he says, staring ahead of himself.
Video of Tristan’s performance of Dedicado courtesy of Cue TV
