Commedia De'll Arte

Commedia De'll Arte meaing the comedy of the art, and this theatre genre began in the 16th century where it first began in Italy. This type of style required a strong sense of ensemble acting and to improvise around any given scenario. The actors wore masks and always had to respond to the other actors and to the audience, the actors represented stock characters meaning they were fixed social types. The point of the performances was to reach a humorous climax, the actors first started as street performers and then moved towards acting troupes, each actor was skilled in a specific stock character. This was Colins work shop to inform us what Comedia D'ell Arte was all about, which I think he did a very good job at, although he was a bit nervous but that's normal and later became more comfortable. Colin made us do an activity where one person exits the room and we all choose to play a stereo typical character, I played a 'flirt' and my fellow classmates played as a french tourist and an undercover spy etc. When the person entered the room again, he/she had to predict what characters we were playing by how well we acted it out, the point is to try not to make it too obvious straight away what you are, otherwise that spoils the fun. I went in as a flirt and started flirting with Morcom I could see he was getting uncomfortable and thought my character would be so easy to know what I was, however throughout the whole game I was trying my hardest to flirt with him and the french tourist trying to make it a bit obvious in the end yet he still couldn't get it, only after the game finished I told him my character. I don't know whether I wasn't playing my character well enough or he just had a hard time guessing since I wasn't a specific enough character like a cheerleader etc. I found this game to be a lot of fun and also a good warm up to become a stereo type. I liked this part of theatre a lot since Comedia is about exagoration, improvisation, speech and movements are what is important, as long as you know your character's characteristics etc it should be easy to do. However since we never played stereo typical characters I felt uncomfortable at first with all these big movements and expressions I had to do, but once you get into it, you just go with the flow and start to know your character well and become part of it. I always thought that in theatre seeing facial expressions on an actors face was the most important, but in Comedia they wore masks, which I now know helps the audience recognize the stereo types that occured during the 16th century. Every person had to stick to one character and become very fimiliar with it and play it as a professional. I think improvisation is an important role in Comedia since the actors had to work as an ensemle to reach the humorous climax. Sometimes using what is known as a lazzi which were stage tricks designed to evoke laughter from the audience by using the slapstick which one of the characters named Arlechinno used to slap on the side of his leg for more emphasis on a slapping sound. Wearing the masks I think makes it even harder for the character to portray to the audience how they feel, this is why they have to use big gestures that are exagerated and also the use of their speech and tone can show a lot. We were then assigned to play stereo types, I played Columbine who was a servant maid and very pretty, she was in love with Arlechinno, she flirts a lot and know that the men admire her but once she gets to close and finds herself in an uncomfortable position she slowly steps to the side getting further away from the person. Her speech is very gossipy and high and energetic. In this scenario Pierrot wrote me a letter in which he wanted to read to me but Scaramouche starts to critisize his writings and say it's no good, when he tells Pierrot to start again Scaramouche grabs the paper and reads it to me, this was the humuour climax. As Scaramouche read it to me, I would be swinging my arms and blushing with my face, since we did this without the masks and when I found myself too close I'd slowly move away, my speech would say one thing and my physical attributes another thing. I think I did a good job in doing what I had to, however Mrs Morris gave me constructive feedback on that I should make my movements more bigger since behind the mask they can't see my facial expressions, that I have to practice since I am so used to showing facial expressions.