Commedia dell'arte Task 2: "THE MASKS WE WEAR" (IDENTITY Short Film)

IDENTITY (Short Film)

1. I think this film was very inspirational and the thing I like about this film is that it was a very diverse concept and it got me thinking about my own life. I think I liked the idea of setting it in a school environment and that it "unmasked" the truth about the "masks we wear" in life and in different circumstances and how it makes us who we are. I observed how they brought up Plato's theory and the roles of the pieces in chess and how the actions in the film connected with the high school environment, there was also a part where they show the sign which says "This is what beautiful is" with the mask and multiple other girls with the same mask on and also how one person changes masks when she talks to another group of her friends. I think the themes that I mentioned about the high school environment and also the stereotypical views of society and the concept of Plato's theory and rules of chess they showed to emphasize their point in the movie about finding your identity was applicable to life because society is very demanding in standards today.
2. There a lot of masks that we wear in life, every day, without realizing sometimes and do it on purpose to fit in with different groups of people in society. After thinking long and hard, I've come to a conclusion that I tend to wear masks everywhere, even at home and mostly at school since I spend the most time there. When I hang out with my best friends in school I tend to wear my "social/enlightenment" and mask of power because I take a stand on my own because my best friends are one of my closest relationships. When I'm in class, my mask represents smart and quiet/observing  and when I talk to my friends that are boys, my mask represents strength, independence and toughness.

3. THE DESIGN PROJECT ON THE THREE MASKS I WEAR

We were asked to find contemporary stock characters from our modern school environment. As mentioned before, all stock characters have very distinguishable personas from each other and I've picked out similar stereotypical contemporary stock characters from a modern school environment. Instead of focusing entirely on the mask, I've chosen to draw the whole frame of my characters so I can explain what they're postures represent about them. I've named my stock characters "The Extraordinary One", "The Outsider" and "The Hot-shot". (I've drawn them myself!) 

1. "The Extraordinary One"
   This character is a girl and judging from her appearance she looks like the typical nerd, but her appearance, as in looks-wise she is much more prettier than a stereotypical nerd. From her posture, you could tell she's timid and she doesn't realize that she's very pretty, this all could be told from the way she clutches her book. The book she's holding is meant to be a fantasy story book, which also tells us that she has a great imagination and the stereotypical meaning behind the glasses means she's good at studies and  she's a hard worker. All these qualities that we see on the character makes her "extraordinary". 
   The mask is divided in half and the beige color represents simplicity which is in her style and the yellow represents imagination and intelligence and the pink star symbolizes her calmness. 
   
2. "The Outsider"
   This character is obviously not from the same place as the other children at school and this can be told from the way she's dressed up and her distinguishable features. She's possibly from another country. She's also very watchful, her sight isn't set straight and she's looking at something else. From her ram-rod straight shoulders, that look quite uncomfortable she could be defined as nervous and fidgety. I think she wants to fit in but is failing in doing so with her different appearance, style and persona which defines her as "the outsider" from among the other people at school
   As for her mask, green represents inexperience and the outlines of her different shaped eyes and mouth represent purity because she's new the yellow represents her cowardice to mix with other people.
   
   
   
3. "The Hot-shot"
   This character is the most confident character at school. He can get away with anything and you could see from his thick arms that he works out a lot so he's also pretty tough and from his smile you could tell he's very confident and smug about himself. He's laid-back posture and broad and straight shoulders tell us he's very powerful and his perfect hair also gives you the impression of his leadership. Judging from his appearance he can get any girl he wants as well and his expensive v-neck t-shirt, skinny jeans and high-top boots, all scream "hot-shot".
   As for his mask, red represents power and pride and black represent sexuality and wealth. He even has a smirk with a splash of blue on it, blue represents confidence and his eyes aren't wicked but confident, which means he doesn't harm anyone with his strength.
   

   

Commedia dell'arte: Tas 4 (Homework) Stock Character Performance

MY PERFORMANCE OF A STOCK CHARACTER:

• I chose to experiment with and perform Brighella because I thought she had a very interesting character because she is sort of like Lady Grantham's personal maid, Miss O'Brien, from the TV series Downtown Abbey, I was told that Brighella could be a difficult one because of the little information about her actions that I got from National Theatre but I chose to do some more research and interpretation of my own. From my Like Miss O'Brien, Brighella is the type to swap things with each other for her own personal benefit, listen in and spread gossip, resentful toward certain people but still feels for others, like when Cora Crawley loses a baby for Lady Grantham, Miss O'Brien feels genuinely bad, I feel that Brighella is a representation of that. 

• As  I said before, Brighella is a sneaky, mischievous, resentful yet obedient and sympathetic. She has closed-hips and tip-toe-esque movements. I interpret her to be watchful and swift, so I made her to listen and crouch and absorb information and turn to the audience quiet it down, watch them and go steal a water bottle and tip-toe back casually.

• I chose to interact with the audience by showing my reaction to the gossip I pretended to listen to and I watched them carefully an tip-toed out to steal a water bottle and quiet the audience down and casually walk away to show my sneakiness to invite the audience in to my scene and character.
  
• I chose to pretend to steal water bottle a Brighella and be sneaky about it, so I watched the audience and told them to keep quiet with gestures and quickly tip-toed and glided across the room to casually walk away with the bottle behind my back. I also pretended to listen in to conversations around, not meant for me to hear and made use of the environment and the prop that way.
  
• Feedback I got:

My teacher gave me some feedback:

- Even lower crouching with movement could be good. 

- Listening to gossip good—let us always see the mischief on your face….

- Let us see “plans” for new mischief on face….

- Perhaps “switch” something with water bottle? 

- Exaggerate more with all movement and expression (think clown)

- Explore looking at audience more so that facial expressions are more visible

And my peers told me:

- To show more expressions
- Act appalled at the news and put some more drama into it.

• For the next performance, I plan to swap objects instead of stealing that water bottle, show more expressions of mischief and show the impression of my plans and exaggerate my crouches and swift jumps and shuffles to listen in and show more facial expressions to give the audience a more clearer picture of Brighella's persona. Maybe I could also show her sympathetic side, so as not to make her look entirely wicked.

ANOTHER (PEER) PERFORMANCE OF A STOCK CHARACTER

• I chose to evaluate a contemporary performance. I chose to evaluate Minnie's performance of the "The Uncool One" because I thought it was a very unique one to do because you usually have the same kind of typical contemporary character when asked to base it off of school, so the concept of "The Uncool One" was appealing and interesting.
  
• "The Uncool One" thinks that him/herself is very cool and awesome but everyone else thinks that he/she is lame and stupid and from what I observed from Minnie's performance, The Uncool One has relaxed shoulders, a confident posture and waves their hands a lot.
  
• I think Minnie attempted to center her energy on her shoulders because they were very laid back and made add some swag to her posture, because she wanted to seem confident. And she also used her hands a lot to wave.
  
• She interacted with the audience with her confident facial expression and waves with her hands, I think her facial expression and posture showed off over-confidence that made her seem stupid on purpose.
  
• I think her hand gestures were great, facial expressions were laid back, and she had a sort of over-the-top swag thing going on which made her seem very stupid to me and her posture for the character as great too.
  
• I think she needed to add some more actions to it, like getting turned down by people and getting a bit insecure to show off how people thought she was lame and stupid but overall, I think she performed really well. The performance also needed to be a bit longer and she could have exaggerated her actions a bit more.

Commedia dell'arte: Task 4 (NOTES ON STOCK CHARACTERS)

NOTES ON COMMEDIA CHARACTERS:

Today in class, we watched a video on the world of commedia, the video was basically on the different characters that make up commedia and their roles in it. (Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_0TAXWt8hY). Some of the things that I observed and learned from the ideo about the different stock characters is that they have a sort of hierarchy depending on the character's persona; here is a diagram of the character's hierarchy in commedia:

(They're missing the witch in the top-center) Each character has a special place on the commedia hierarchy and they are given the places based on the role they play and their body language. The more powerful characters are placed at the top and the characters that scale to average or controlled by the top characters are at the bottom. From my observations, I think that the more proud and more attitude and head and shoulder based characters are on the top and as the characters movements are distinguishable and exaggerated physically (like Zanni and Harlequino, clown-like) is on the bottom of the diagram. Here are the main distinguishable qualities of each character, with some body language:

• Magnifico (the king): Proud, Powerful, Shoulders straight, Chin Up, Stand tall
• First Actor (the aristocrat): Proud, Graceful, Show-off, Chin-up, Shoulders back, flow-y movements
• First Actress (the aristocrat): Proud, Graceful, Show-off, Chin-up, Shoulders back, flow-y movements
• The Witch: Figure: Figure 8 movements, feet spread out, crouches/actions exaggerated, wicked, evil,villain
• Pantalone (the merchant): Crooked back, sneaky, greedy and crouched
• The Doctor: Big belly, steps spread out, cheery,too full off knowledge for understanding
• Columbina (the servant): Beautiful, good, nice, head down but graceful, romantic, dreamy, wide-hips
• Brighella (the servant): Sneaky, closed-hips, tip-toe-y steps, cunning, self-centered but not wicked, head down
• Harlequino (the servant): Playful, Clown, open-hips, jumpy, head down, stunts
• The Captain: Proud, Big-mouthed, Chin-up in the air, cowardly, afraid, straight back
• Zanni (the follower): Stupid, follower of Magnifico, crouched, clown-like, afraid, cowardly

Commedia dell'arte Research Investigation

 ("Theatre Room Asia." Theatre Room Asia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

WHAT IS "COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE"?

• This colorful and extremely theatrical art form is based on the interaction of traditional stock characters in improvised scenarios that facilitate a comic plot to arrive at a humorous climax. Commedia dell'arte (comedy of artists) originated in streets and market places of the early Italian Renaissance, although it's roots can be traced as far back as far as Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre. These Italian street performers, donning masks with exaggerated comic features to draw additional attention to themselves and complement their physical and acrobatic skills, eventually teamed up in troupes of actors often with a traveling stages to firmly establish commedia as a genre in it's own right by the mid-1500's.                                                                                                 ("Brief History on Commedia Dell'arte." The Commedia Dell'arte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

• The common characters were Arlechino, Capitano, Columbina, Comico, Dottore, Flavio, The Innamorati (The Lovers), Isabella, Lelio, Pantalone, Pedrolino, Pulcenella, Vittoria and Zani.      ("Brief History on Commedia Dell'arte." The Commedia Dell'arte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

• The commedia dell'arte shows were mainly started on the streets of Italy during the Renaissance and later caught the attention of crowds and were performed in theatres. ("Brief History on Commedia Dell'arte." The Commedia Dell'arte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

• The commedia dell'arte is improvised and has very edgy plots and also uses vulgar language or gestures on stage sometimes. The unexpected improvised plot twists and great humor is what keeps the audience on edge. They also wear several different masks that represent different characters. The characters all spoke in different languages and some even spoke utter gibberish! But the whole point of commedia was based on the physicality, they also danced sometimes to music. ("Brief History on Commedia Dell'arte." The Commedia Dell'arte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

• Masks are worn for commedia and the characters also have colorful rennaissance type costumes that show off their personality. ("Theatre Room Asia." Theatre Room Asia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

• Commedia is also used today in movies and plays all around the world. It has infuenced pantomime widely and the concept of improvisation and the english harlinquade. ("Brief History on Commedia Dell'arte." The Commedia Dell'arte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

• Commedia still lives on in television and some theatre companies still take it to countries far and wide! ("Brief History on Commedia Dell'arte." The Commedia Dell'arte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)
•                             ("Theatre Room Asia." Theatre Room Asia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.)

Welcome to Anira's Theatre Blog!

Before going onto reading my blog, let me introduce myself! My name is Anira, I like reading and I'm also quite fond of drama! I like writing scripts and performing in musicals in drama, and I like watching old school live theatre performance!

Drama is a diverse subject and its also very fun to do! So, within my blog I'll put up things I've learnt in Drama class; I'll be posting pictures, videos and all the other fun stuff related to theatre! 

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--Anira :)