Considering the age of Commedia dell'Arte, several hundred extant texts may seem plentiful. But the meat of the form -- how the performers fleshed out a simple lazzi into 5 minutes of stage time -- is largely unknown. The scant documentation may be because troupes wanted to guard their better gags from plagiarism by the competition. Or, the shorthand plays may have been an economical way of learning the act. But try to transcribe the rapid-fire movement of a gymnast like Jackie Chan; a paragraph may describe only seconds of action. The body can produce a performance text much faster than an actor can recite a few pretty lines. And the essence of lazzi was authored by the acrobat-comedian. If detailed descriptions of lazzi are missing, it's because the quill could never move as a fast as a skilled Arlecchino. Even if a Commedia troupe had gone to the work of transcribing a lazzi textbook, would it provide any more evidence? Gravity-defying acrobatics are learned through a different curriculum -- like the 10 years of 18-hour days Jackie Chan endured during his Peking-opera style training. Years of half-hour handstands (punishment for most infractions in Jackie's school) underwrite his elaborate fight sequences atop moving trains. The training regimen for Commedia troupes, performing daily for their livelihood, would have been no less demanding.

Unlike Commedia, Chan's fight sequences aren't improvised -- but they must look it. A hit can't be blocked too early, and walls are scaled without apparent premeditation. Perhaps Commedia troupes, performing season after season, weren't so improvisational themselves. A performance that seems unpredictable and improvised is the discipline of any great comic actor. This veneer of improvisation polishes Chan's fight sequences and from across the centuries, Commedia has the same glow.

The discipline of the body that Chan shares with Commedia dell'Arte extends to similarities in lazzi; film gags seem to arise straight from the shtick archives.Mel Gordon's Lazzi: Comic Routines of The Commedia dell'Arte collects the records of several hundred gags, organizes them into twelve categories and translates them as simple scenarios, such as: "Trickery Lazzi #15 [Naples 1700] Lazzo of the Flour: As the guards come to take Pulcinella away, he sticks his hands in a bowl of flour and throws it in their faces" [*(53)*]. Chan has used this lazzi of misdirection to recover a guns or spears pointed at him. In Operation Condor; Jackie whips a towel off a bathing blonde and binds the thugs' hands in terry cloth while they stare at the naked woman. Certain types of lazzi outlined by Gordon -- social class rebellion, word play and sadistic gags -- aren't as common to Chan's work, but there are countless parallels in other stunts. Not surprisingly, "Acrobatic and Mimic lazzi" are the most similar. Gordon defines the lazzi of the Ladder as:

"A series of comic routines, generally beginning with Arlecchino carrying a ladder. Then any one of the following actions can occur: (a) Arlecchino walks the ladder as if it were a pair of stilts... (g) Arlecchino and Trivelino each bring in a ladder and place it against the other, creating a roman ladder; they form several acrobatic positions.." [*(9)*].

In First Strike, a ladder becomes Chan's weapon against a gang of attackers who believe he has killed a family patriarch. Jackie swings, flips, collapses and vaults through small openings in the ladder in one of the core fight sequences of the film. When the ladder finally comes to rest on the back of his hip, a character enters to announce that Chan is innocent of the murder charge. No extensive dialogue is necessary; the fight is over and the story moves forward. Who needs chatter when the conflict has already been played out in a rhythmic dialogue of blows and kicks? Unfortunately, the genius of Chan and Commedia clowns are relegated to the fringes of formal academic study because physical texts are devalued against the more enduring printed word .

Bias for the written text (and puritanical degrading of the body) places a premium on script-manufactured drama. Great action sequences aren't credited with being "written." In film, laurels are given to the designer and programmer for technical achievement. Oscars in this category are meted out in a segregated ceremony; authors that pander to those nose-dripping, knuckle-dragging fans of action aren't invited to share the stage with period-romances du jour. Like Commedia troupes working the streets, Jackie Chan appeals to the populous not the academy. While it might seem fair that the masses, voting with their bodies in seats, are the jurors of physical comedies and action, the academic dismissal of body-central plays and films perpetuates a tired paradigm which pits mobs of unthinking bodies against the rarified intellectual.