Playing Commedia offers a practical guide to the skills, characters and history of Commedia dell'Arte through graded games and illustrated exercises. It provides a useful tool in any actor's training and a discipline for all forms of physical theatre.
Commedia dell'Arte sprang up in Italy in the mid-16th century, consisting of improvised comedies played out by "stock" characters, distinguished by their masks, costumes and physical attitudes. Typical figures were the clown-servant (Harlequin), the maidservant (Colombine), the young lovers, the suspicious father and the pedantic doctor. Interest in Commedia has never died, and its techniques and plots have survived into modern times in the work of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Theatre de Complicité.
The book consists principally of graded games and exercises introducing us step by step to Commedia techniques. First comes the acquisition of various training skills, then comes the mask work. Sample dialogue and specific blocking are introduced into the later games and scenarios. The second half of the book looks at the individual "Masks" or characters of the traditional Commedia dell'Arte.
Chapters include:
- Warm-Up Games
- Mime & Movement Games
- Word Games
- Using Face Masks
- The Legacy of Commedia dell'Arte
Illustrations drawn from 16th and 17th-century sources are used alongside the author's own diagrams to enrich our understanding of particular points regarding posture, gesture, costume and mask.
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