"...life; London; this moment of June"

WOW It's been a very busy week so far. I've been going into London every day this week trying to do all of the things on my list. On Monday, I went to the British Museum in the morning. I had been there before, but I didn't get to see everything I wanted. This time, I started with ancient Egypt. Seeing mummies and sarcophagi (is that the plural?) was just as creepy and fascinating as I thought it would be. Sometimes it takes going to a museum like this to remember just how small this world is and, at the same time, how unfathomable time is. I also went to check out the ancient Greek and Roman rooms. Found a display on Greek artifacts displaying images of theatre and spent a good 15 minutes in front that. Other great rooms were ancient North America, Mesoamerica, and a new display called "Cradle to the Grave", which tangibly tracks the lives of two individuals with a net of the medication taken throughout a 'modern' lifetime. Some other favorite artifacts were on the 'History of the World in 100 Objects' list by the BBC.

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Yes. Those are fish mummies.

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Head of Augustus

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Ring of a mask of Dionysus

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Terra cotta actors

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Costumed actors in "The Birds"

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Herakles killing the Hydra

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Statue from Easter Island

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'Cradle to the Grave' display

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Eerie 16th century colonial print


After the British Museum, Jess and I headed to the Wallace Collection to see some paintings. The museum itself is an absolute treasure. You could spend an entire day, first seeing the paintings, and then seeing the beautiful antique furniture pieces, clocks, porcelin, and armory that dress the rooms. I was very intent on seeing Watteau's "Harlequin and Columbine" as well as other represenations of Commedia dell'arte in 18th century art.


http://www.wallaceprints.org/image.php?id=322943

I've recently gained more of an interested in a Dutch painter, Jan Steen, whose work we kept seeing in the Netherlands. There were some of his paintings here as well. I also really liked the Delaroche painting, "Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower", since we were going to the Tower of London the next day. I was also very happy to stumble upon a Vigée Le Brun



And the famous rococo Fragonard "The Swing"

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Really friendly staff

After we left The Wallace Collection, we took a short lived venture to Notting Hill. I made a small attempt to find the bookshop from the movie, but quickly settled and got a couple items on the cheap from a nearby Bookshop Warehouse.

Reading my new copy of Mrs. Dalloway on the bus passing Hyde Park was a lovely way to end the day.

Next stop, Tower of London!

It's Guts.

After our visit to Rome, we scrambled to finish our papers - our final academic assignment. We finished all of our normal classes so we could begin our final 8 days in a workshop with Joe Fenner of the Scuola Teatro Dimitri. He specializes in Physical Theatre, so we were eager to see what he had up his sleeve.

The first few days were rough. We had a bit of a problem communicating with him. It was not clear what his goals were and what our goals were. It became easier when we did a few improvisational exercises as an entire group, and then did small group improvisations. We ended up spending our days with him working on these scenes or skits and cleaning them up to be presented on our last day.

We started many of these skits walking neutrally around the space, and then we began to take on different characters and situations. In total we had about 7 scenes "The Elevator", "The Hospital", "The Pterodactyls", "Siyahamba", "The Bird", "The Vulgars", and "I Will Write This Paper". We serendipitously created a lot of similar themes - the group and the individual, judgments, the primitive, the intellectual - they were all based on physical reactions. It was hard, but we started to learn to have sharp reactions with our bodies. Often times, we had to simplify our scenes because our improvisations would be 'too psychological'.

Joe said "This is not about analyzing texts. It cannot be too psychological. It's guts". He taught us about "feeling our emotions" with small physical movement, sensations, interactions, listening to sounds, feeling objects, paying attention to parts of the body: "Where do I feel fear? Joy?". And using respiration.
It is a different approach to improvisation. When it's rehearsed and cleaned, it becomes very stylized. The heavy attention we paid to physical reactions and our timing made it almost like a modern version of Commedia dell'Arte.

We were afraid our final performance was not going to go over well because all of our scenes were absurd. As it turns out, however, it was very well received. I think this is because we were working together as a complete ensemble for the last time. I felt that right before our performance when we were warming up. Despite the challenges and frustration, we pulled together a show that we worked hard on, and I think it paid off.

We Show Them Who We Are

Today we had our last Commedia dell'Arte class. Very bittersweet. It has been a long and grueling process full of emotion, energy, frustration, but most of all, fun. Someone said today that during the semester we have spent around 80 hours in Commedia class - which I believe could be true. We've been working since the first month and have spent entire 6 to 8 hour days just working on developing these characters and scenes.

It started out a little rough because we had a hard time communicating with one of our teachers, Michaela, but we soon warmed up to her energy and physical demonstrations of the characters. After we spent a few weeks working only on characters, checking in with the audience, and the precise rhythm needed for commedia, we began creating little scenes called "canovaccio".

Marcello joined our class about halfway through the semester and helped us develop these canovaccio. An example of a typical 3 person canovaccio might go like this:

A) Capitano has a monologue
AB) Isabella enters and interacts with Capitano, Capitano exits
B) Isabella has a monologue
BC) Arlecchino enters and interacts with Isabella, Isabella exits
C) Arlecchino has a monologue
CA) Capitano enters and interacts with Arlecchino
ABC) Isabella enters and they all interact, eventually all exit

When you add a fourth person, obviously it gets pretty confusing and molto difficile. But basically we learned that what makes commedia dell'arte and the use of stock characters so entertaining is the obvious status roles they have. The characters provide a foundation for the plot because they have such specific relationships to each other.

The hardest part for me was feeling in the right mood to play certain characters, and then being able to give over myself 100% to that character in the scene. It requires extreme control of your body and voice, and an enormous amount of attention to other characters in the scene and to the audience. In commedia dell'arte, the audience is there to see the mask, so as an actor, you use the mask as a tool to express emotion and reaction through a comedic rhythm. I can still hear Michaela yelling "Pubblico!" when someone would forget to 'check in' with the audience.

We learned that the most successful canovaccio would be very funny as long as this attention was spot on - it can make literally anything funny (or sad, or sweet, or whatever you like). We could not slack off in this class. Every character had to have an immense amount of energy, no matter who you played. If not, the entire group and the audience suffers.

It is a wonderful feeling to begin to have a connection to a particular character (or a few of them). Each of us had a tendency to gravitate towards a couple characters. On the other hand, it was also great to try something new and see how it fits. Personally, I was interested in playing Colombina, Arlecchino, a Lover, or Capitano.

I loved seeing the progress everyone made in this class. It required a lot of teamwork when we had to make each moment in a scene just perfect, so I definitely think we helped each other grow.

Be sure to check out the videos on the side for some clips from class!

Here are some pictures from our last day:

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Jon as Pantalone, Justin as Arlecchino

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Ilanna as Colombina, Elizabeth as Strega

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Anna as Zanni

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Anna (Zanni), Jenny (on the ground as a zombie lover?), Doug (Magnifico - above her), Zach (Strega)

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Isle as Dottore, Tristan as Zanni, Monique as Colombina

Mask Making!

This past week our schedules completely changed to allow for a workshop on mask making. We worked for about 3 hours per day for 5 days to create 2 copies of one mask design. The first day we chose a character to create (I picked Arlecchino) and sculpted our design out of clay. It was frustrating at times, but our teacher, Lino, was very helpful and made sure each design was functional, classic, and original at the same time. The next day we dripped a thick layer of plaster on top of the clay and let it dry. Then, we flipped the plaster over, dug out the clay, and began painting in 3 layers of fiberglass and latex. The final steps included popping the mask out of the plaster, cutting it out, and painting it.

It was a long but very rewarding process. It was scary at times not knowing how it would come out and whether the mask would work, but every did a really good job - they all look so professional!

I didn't take pictures of the process, but here are two pictures of the final steps:

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The latex mask after it's been cut out. I designed my Arlecchino to be 'cat-based' (usually Arlecchino is cat, monkey, or dog based)

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After he's been painted