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