Pizza della Piazza

Is it Commedia? Who cares! It's cool!

Don't try too hard!

The ease and flow of a good CDA performance is magical. I don't want to see any Arlecchinos out of breath. Watch the videos I'm posting. Watch Fava's DVD. Nothing is pushed, it all falls into balance. Strong physicality joined with breath and joy. Breath and joy. Magic words.
I saw a CDA-inspired performance at a renaissance faire this weekend. It left me wanting. I liked the performers, but they were not given the tools they needed to succeed. If you're reading this, chances are you are the choir to which I am proeaching. So get out there, do good work, and let audiences know what they are missing!
-Brian (in China for the next two weeks)

Maskless Commedia

This looks like a lot of fun. I have more video of theirs to post as well.

Masques from Librairie Theatrale in Paris

Masques from Librairie Theatrale
Librairie Théâtrale
3, rue de Marivaux
75002 PARIS

Brian in Italy

That's me with Arlecchino on the street in Venice.



Cinema Arlecchino, XXX Movies. Firenze, Italy. I think that fits the spirit quite nicely. No, I didn't catch a film there.

Atelier Pirate Masks--Guylaine Bisaillon

Pirate Workshop (Atelier Pirate) is a Montreal, Canada based company of craftspeople who manufacture latex masks. Each new model is created by Guylaine Bisaillon. Our collection is divided into eight categories: Animal masks, Eye masks, Carnival masks, Theatrical masks, Commedia dell'Arte masks, Historical Italian masks, Medieval-influenced masks and Asian masks. Each mask is carefully hand-made.

I have a number of Guylaine's masks, and I assisted in the English translation on the Atelier Pirate site.

Atelier Pirate Website and Catalog

Commedia Gillet in Stockholm, Sweden

Some Commedia Gillet video on google video.

The link to the Commedia Gillet video

Check them out at www.commediagillet.com

M. Sand

Dottore, Pantalone, Arlecchino

Just for fun.

Commedia in Nice, France

Eric Maiolino's blog with a video of his CDA performance in Nice, France.

Click here for Eric's page

Tension in Commedia and Clown Theater

Just a quick thought this morning; let's begin with a weak generalization. The clown's function in circus or in most of theater is to explore and break the tension built up by acrobats performing feats of tremendous danger or actors digging their teeth into dramatic life and death moments of human drama. The clown's ability to respond to the tension in the room, play with it, belittle it, or what have you, is a major tool in the clown's arsenal for the creation of comedy.

In Clown Theater, or the Commedia, when the preponderance of characters on stage or even all of them are clown characters, who or what is building tension? I suppose there can be inherent tension in a plot, and there is absolutely a useful and wonderful tension created with an audience when the clown simply stops and exists in the space with an audience without a fourth wall of protection. But are these sustainable in the same way a high-wire act or the courtroom scene in Merchant of Venice are?

It would seem to me that in clown theater, clowns create the tension to break the tension to get the laugh, then they need to start all over again. Watching two circus acts has built up 16 minutes of tension in an audience. A clown can come out and play for 5 minutes riding that wave, if an act is well constructed. If what has come before is set-up, punch, set-up, punch, set-up, punch, how does the next clown to arrive on stage in a clown show change the energy in the room in order to provoke surprise at a gut-level?

If anyone out there has any thoughts, I'd be very interested in hearing. I'm going to continue to consider it.

Commedia Workshop in NYC with Laughing Gravy

Laughing Gravy Theatre Company is a company based in the UK that has recently moved to Brooklyn, NY. They aim to utilize the principles of Commedia dell' Arte to create both masked and unmasked theatre that is accessible to modern audiences. (and if you don't know, their company is named after a great Laurel and Hardy Short. You can see a scene from the movie on Youtube

The founders of the company are Laura Rikard & Paul Attmere. Paul most recently performed in the UK and Europe in the Commedia play Mozart's Music to a Carnival Pantamine with Antonio Fava and in Ur-Hamlet with Eugieno Barba's Odin Teatret in Denmark. He studied at the Desmond Jones School of Mime and Physical Theatre and with Antonio Fava in Italy. He was recently seen in Spacedog's Production of Sinster and The Haunt (nominated Best in Fringe at the 2006 Brighton Festival) and performed in and helped produced Scavenger with Wildstep Theatre for New Zealand Fringe in 2004, which won Best in Fringe.

Laura just returned from touring with the Chamber Theatre Company and was in NYC's first ever Sonnet Walk. She is currently rehearsing the role of Lady Macbeth for New Perspectives Theatre Company. She graduated from the graduate program at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts where Paul and she have taught Commedia workshops for the past two years. She trained in Commedia with Antonio Fava. She has also taught acting and Commedia for theatres and schools in NYC, South Carolina and Florida. She can be seen in Magnolia Pictures upcoming film The Great World of Sound.

They are offering their first Commedia workshop in NY on September 30 and October 1, 2007. The class is a one day intensive for beginners designed to guide students through the physicality and motivations of all the basic stock characters from Commedia dell' Arte. Students will also work with authentic leather commedia masks. Attendance in the class may possibly lead to future performance opportunities.

The workshop will be from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a one hour lunch break. The cost of the workshop is $50, and will be held at Playwrights Horizons,
416 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th avenues,
North rehearsal room, 5th floor.

For more information, please contact Laura at commediaworkshop@gmail.com
or call 347-689-4907.

Commedia in Australia

A company based in Fremantle Western Australia specialising in Commedia dell'Arte. For over 25 years Giovanni Margio and Antonio Mazzella have been delighting Australian and international audiences performing under their stage names of Sanjiva and Giri.

GIOVANNI (SANJIVA) MARGIO: Giovanni's love of street theatre has taken him to many countries in search of perfecting the various art forms. Starting in Sicily with training in the fine arts, he migrated to Australia where he studied graphic design in Perth, and circus skills, story telling and mime, Commedia dell' Arte. As a sculptor and designer he has created many large carnival floats and theatre props, inspired by his apprenticeship in float making with Professore Giuseppe Domenici of the famous Viarreggio Carnevale. He performs regularly with Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, directs theatre productions and makes masks.

ANTONIO ( GIRI ) MAZZELLA: With numerous credits in national radio, TV and stage, Antonio is a multi talented performer with a career spanning over 25 years. After initial training in classical voice, his exploration of physical theatre led him through puppetry, street circus, improvisation, clown, mime, theatre sports, cabaret, mask, community arts and carnival parades. Antonio has directed theatre productions and created masked musical plays for schools Italian programs. He recently finished a tour of the Northern Territory where he performed solo shows, ran mask, puppetry and. drama games programs for teachers, students and people with disabilities.

Commedia in Tuxedo, New York

I like the knocking lazzo.

Commedia in Avignon, France

Commedia in Munich, Germany

Antonio Fava on Capitano

I'm running out of the house for a show tonight, but I just found this posted. It's an excerpt of Antonio Fava's CDA DVD, courtesy of Australia's Contemporary Arts Media. Here he discusses Capitano. I cannot put the video here, but I can link to it.

Antonio Fava teaching Capitano

I recently got Fava's DVD and look forward to discussing it here.

In the meantime, visit Contemporary Arts Media.

The Illusion of Commedia

'A Party of Charlatans in an Italian Landscape' by Karel Dujardin, 1657


'Traditional' Commedia exists more as an illusion in the mind and imagination of the public theatrical consciousness than as any reality in 21st century North America. The intelligent theatrical artist will capitalize on that fact, mixing myth, fantasy, reality, gravity into a melange that will read perhaps truer to a contemporary audience than the most historically accurate performance piece we can deliver.

Arlecchino is now primarily a figure of visual art, not performance art. More people have seen engravings, paintings, ceramic figurines depicting him than will ever see a worthy performance of the character in any reader's lifetime. The visual representations have created a new mythology in the mind of our potential audience, and the theater practitioner is wise to be conscious of the new mythology and make choices that both confirm and deny the preconceptions. Confirming them gives your audience a sense of familiarity and recognition that a Renaissance audience would have had with the characters. Finding useful times to deny them is useful for surprise, alienation, and frankly, instruction. Not to encourage preachiness, but the audience should learn something about the art-form, dammit.

So we have choices to make about our visual representations based on preconceptions gleaned from figurines and diner placemats. But what of the sound of the commedia? Callot's engravings don't speak. How best to create the sound of these characters?

What about venue? Should today's representations of 'traditional' CDA be performed outdoors under the sun, or indoors in a well-equipped theater with lots of blue light and surround sound?

Pierrot is another consideration. I think Barry Grantham says it best in his book Playing Commedia: "Pierrot is a very important part of the communal psyche and there is no reason why he should not be embraced in the new Commedia. There are, however, dangers; the spirit with which he has been imbued since his inception is so powerful, so all-pervasive, that there is a chance that he can infect the other masks with a virus of melancholia quite alien to their bright natures."

As we all continue to study, practice and form our own ideas about Commedia, the Illusion of Commedia will be a consideration to any artist looking to bring his or her work to the public at large. However, it must be used intelligently to enhance our work, not to dilute our own theatrical power. Ask all of the questions, and find for your own aesthetic, your audience's aesthetic, the most interesting answers. Have fun.

Jacques Callot

Jacques Callot (c.1592-1635) was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine (an independent state on the North-Eastern border with France). He is an important figure in the development of the old master print. He made over 1,400 brilliantly detailed etchings that chronicled the life of his period, featuring soldiers, clowns, drunkards, Gypsies, beggars, as well as court life.

Learn a bit more about his Balli di Sfessania series here.

I was first given a copy of these engravings about 11 years ago during a production of a play whose name I can no longer remember. I can remember, however, the feelings of inspiration and wonder upon examining the images. Barry Grantham uses one of the engravings (the topmost image above; of Scaramucia and Fricasso) as the inspiration for an exercise in his book Playing Commedia; A Training Guide to Commedia Techniques, a book that I look forward to discussing in a future post.

I think these postures are beautiful, grotesque, theatrical and great fuel for the imagination of the physical performer. But it must be remembered that these are an artist's rendition of a single moment captured in time. I have seen talented performers, new to Commedia, try and sustain some of the more athletic poses from the Callot for the entirety of a play. The more I study, teach and perform, the better I understand that the same dialectical line between tension and release must be reached for the performance to land clearly for the audience...this deserves its own post.

Christina Gelsone & Seth Bloom

Seth Bloom is the creator and main instigator of Full Bloom Theatre; co-founder, co-director, and a performer for Split Knuckle Theatre; and the International Artistic Director for the Mobile Mini Circus for Children, headquartered in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Seth brings to his expertise his education at the London International School of Performing Arts (MFA); the Dell Arte School of Physical Theatre (Certificate); Wesleyan University (BA); the Ringling Brothers Clown College (BFA--bachelor of fun arts).

Christina Gelsone As a non-verbal clown and street performer, Christina has performed in festivals in Singapore, Albania, Scotland, Japan, Holland, France, Venezuela, Portugal, and Greece. A former member of Bond Street Theater, she has performed extensively in areas of post-conflict, including Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, and Afghanistan.

The pictures above were taken in May, 2007 in Liuzhou, China. I first met Christina on a corporate gig here in NYC; we did interactive entertainment together, and a few weeks later we met again on a cruise ship where we were both performing. I had heard many great things about Seth, but I didn't meet him until about a year ago before getting to know him better during the China trip.

Learn about Seth and Christina by visiting their websites:

www.fullbloomtheatre.org www.foolsacademy.com

www.bondst.org (not their website, but you'll see them there)

Stanley Allan Sherman

Stanley Allan Sherman, mask-maker, performer, teacher and playwright.

I first met Stanley at a conference in 2000 just a day or two before the passing of Carlo Mazzone-Clementi. At first glance, I was honestly unimpressed with some of Stanley's masks; they seemed very rough and Grotowski-like, not at all like the beautiful showpieces in which I had been trained. (Yes, I had much to learn...)

I changed my mind once I saw Stanley's masks in action. Just about a year ago, I asked him about his mask-making work. He told me he found his experience as an actor tremendously influential on his sculpting. He approaches each mask with various emotional states in mind, and in his heart, to infuse them into the leather, and into the final product.

Stanley is perhaps best known as the creator of the Mankind mask for the WWF (now WWE). He has a series of leather and neoprene Commedia masks for sale on his website, www.maskarts.com. Stanley also teaches Commedia and clown performance, mask making, leather clown nose making, and has been known to come to my house for a New Year's party.

Pantalone and Pulcinella Cabinet Knobs!

This is fantastic! I'm such a geek!

Pantalone, Pulcinella, Casanova (Bauta) mask cabinet knobs! I have a keychain in the Pantalone style that I picked up for a Euro in Venice about two years back. But cabinet knobs...that's a whole new ballgame.

Here's the link: CabinetWare.com Direct Link to the Mask Knobs

Piccolo Teatro Sperimentale a MERCANTIA 2007

Piccolo Teatro Versilia featuring Federico Barsanti, Serena Guardone and Luca Barsottelli.

www.piccoloteatroversilia.it