Double Performing Arts Lesson (11th December 2015)

In today's double lesson we started our unit on 'Commedia Dell'arte' (Art Comedy)! It began in Italy in the 16th century and the roughest translation for it is, "Comedy of Craft." Famous companies across time who performed Commedia Dell'arte include, Soldati, Ganassa, Gelosi. Magistrates were not receptive of the travelling companies and they were referred to as Vagabondi (Vagabond in today's terms). Conventional plot lines were written on themes of sex, jealousy, love and old age. Masks are essential in Commedia Dell'arte.

We started the lesson with a warm up led by me. I had the class run around the room and then perform either push ups, squats or sit ups as we needed to be ready and warmed up for our new unit. We then led a stretch each and performed a focus exercise.

We started by watching a video (click here to go to the video) introducing us to some of the stock characters in Commedia Dell'arte. We learnt that the characters were ordered in a hierarchy of status and power with the Magnifico at the top and Zanni at the bottom. Looking at these characters helps us understand how Commedia Dell'arte is performed. We also learnt from the video that most actors performed with masks and that the characters with long noses are considered dumb and stupid. We learnt that lot of the time, the characters didn't speak English but they spoke a language called, "Gromalot." 

Gromalot, is a style of language used in satirical theatre. It's a gibberish with macaronic and onomatopoeic elements, used in association with mime and mimicry. The fact that it's gibberish makes the actual language non-understandable unless spoken with emotion. When said bluntly, it means nothing but with emotion the language can be as easily understandable as English.

We spent time performing as four of the characters in Commedia Dell'arte: Magnifico, Zanni, Brighella and Harlequin! We spent time learning about their personality and how each one moves. Below is their characteristics and how they move.

• Magnifico: Looks down on everything and everyone, leader, when one dies another automatically appears, the most powerful, very wise, from Magnifico comes the other masters (Pantalone & The Doctor) leads from the chest, high, takes up as much room on the stage as physically possible, doesn't care for anyone
• Zanni: Peseant, everything is extraordinary to him, curious, enthusiastic, servant to Magnifico, from Zanni comes the other servants (Brighella & Harlequin) lead from the nose, low, arms up at shoulder height, feet out in front as they want to come up
• Brighella: cunning, master of servants and servant of master, uniform, proud, welcoming, womaniser, fall in love easily, selfish, leads from head, arms at shoulder height, elbows out, higher than Zanni but still low, direct movement
• Harlequin: thinks he's gorgeous, confident, amoral, lives in the moment, acrobatic, cheeky, always hungry, playful, leads from crotch, very loose but heavy hands, indirect movement

We walked around as each character and started pairing few of them up! We got into pairs of Magnificos and Zannis and performed a short piece and then got into pairs of Brighellas and Harlequins. This helped us analyse how each character works and how we would put them into action.