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:

From Pick Sure and Place

Jon as Pantalone, Justin as Arlecchino

From Pick Sure and Place

Ilanna as Colombina, Elizabeth as Strega

From Pick Sure and Place

Anna as Zanni

From Pick Sure and Place

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

From Pick Sure and Place

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:

From Pick Sure and Place

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)

From Pick Sure and Place

After he's been painted