Tag: Commedia dell’Arte
One aspect of the whole One Man, Two Guvnors phenomenon that several of us physical comedy mavens have commented on is that today’s theatre-going audience, no matter how sophisticated, has seen little if any really well-done physical comedy, and certainly not the heavy dose they get served by this production. So far I’ve seen the show once on film (National Theatre Live series), once in previews here in New York, and then again on opening night. The response of the live audience was great, with both performances earning hearty, non-stop laughter and a standing ovation at the end.
Just two hours before yesterday’s Broadway premiere of the London smash hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, Cal McCrystal sat down with Jim Moore (vaudevisuals.com) and myself for this interview about his work on the show. Significantly, Cal is listed not as an assistant or as a choreographer, but as its “Physical Comedy Director,” his name immediately following that of overall director Nicholas Hytner in the program. Jim and I had already caught the show in previews and absolutely loved it, so when Hilary Chaplain offered to set up this interview, we jumped at the chance to talk shop.
I wasn’t in London at the right time to see the smash hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, but that didn’t stop me from writing about it in this post, and I did subsequently catch a broadcast of it here in NYC as part of the National Theatre Live program. The title of that post was “Commedia Conquers London — Is Broadway Next?” and the answer is yes! — it begins its Broadway run on April 6th. Finally I’ll get to see it live on stage, and I’m hoping many of you will too. Highly recommended!!
I’m always on the lookout for news about Carlo Gozzi for reasons that will soon become obvious. When I saw John’s post where he lamented the fact that there was no public domain English version of The Love of Three Oranges for him to post and share with you, I had to jump in. I have one of the more popular modern English versions of Three Oranges and, while it’s not public domain, my publisher actually has 90% of the play online for you to read at your leisure. It’s really only missing the last scene or so.
Whether or not you’ve been following all my posts on commedia dell’arte and the various Carlos (Goldoni, Gozzi, Mazzone-Clementi), whether or not you think commedia is the holy grail of ultimate theatricality or merely a corny, hoary, outdated performance style, you will probably be surprised to learn that a modern adaptation of Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters is the hottest ticket in London.
Carlo Mazzone-Clementi (1920-2000) single-handedly brought commedia to the United States starting in 1958, teaching widely and founding the Dell’Arte School of Mime & Comedy in 1974, which is still thriving today as the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre. A month or two ago, Jim Moore asked me to write a few words about Carlo for a piece he was preparing for his VaudeVisuals blog. This is what I came up with:
La commedia dell’arte è nata in Italia nel XVI secolo e rimasta popolare sino al XVIII secolo. Non si trattava di un genere di rappresentazione teatrale, bensì di una diversa modalità di produzione degli spettacoli. Le rappresentazioni non erano basate su testi scritti ma dei canovacci detti anche scenari, i primi tempi erano tenute all’aperto con una scenografia fatta di pochi oggetti. Le compagnie erano composte da dieci persone: otto uomini e due donne. All’estero era conosciuta come “Commedia italiana.”
We finally finish our saga of public domain books in English about the commedia dell’arte with these two offerings.
As is often the case, since writing my post on Carlo Goldoni last week — read that post first! — I have stumbled upon a bunch of new stuff that I would have included had I been as wise and knowledgeable then as I am now. The new (to me) material is on Giorgio’s Strehler’s famous production of Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters. My first stumble was via an Adam Gertsacov post about Strehler on his clownlink.com blog, which led me along a virtual path to two NY Times articles and five more videos.
Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) was the Molière of Italy, the comic playwright who drew upon the traditions of the commedia dell’arte while creating tightly scripted plays. The best known of these is A Servant of Two Masters, a popular choice of modern theatre companies wanting to do a commedia-style show without actually working in improvisational mode.
When I was writing Clowns, these were the books I consulted the most for my section on commedia dell’arte:
• Masks, Mimes & Miracles by Alardyce Nicoll
• The World of Harlequin by Alardyce Nicoll
• The Italian Comedy by Pierre Duchartre
• The History of the Harlequinade by Maurice Sand
• Scenarios of the Commedia Dell’Arte by Flaminio Scala
• The Commedia Dell’Arte by Giacomo Oreglia
Because the essence of commedia dell arte was improvisation, recreating it for the modern reader has always been a tough task for scholars, and because it never pretended to be great dramatic literature, it didn’t get much interest from theatre historians or practitioners until the early 20th century. This started to change with directors like Copeau and Meyerhold, who took commedia as inspiration for a new approach to actor training, and modern art movements such as dada, futurism, and surrealism, that were less interested in literature than in the spontaneous theatrical event. Winifred Smith, one of the first commedia scholars from this period, was also a translator of futurist plays, and apparently quite a pioneer in her day. Here’s her bio from the web site of her alma mater, Vassar College, a prestigious women’s college that didn’t go co-educational until 1969:
Chapter two (previous post) covered a lot of ground — about twenty centuries and at least four continents — so there’s a ton of potential supplementary material. I’ll just throw a few at you here, and then follow up in my next posts with some free books.
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin