Monday, 17 March 2014

Unit 2: (BLOG) Commedia dell'Arte--Emotion & Language

In class we watched National Theatre videos (links below) and explored the concepts of exaggerated emotion & the language of Commedia dell'Arte (Gromalot). We experimented with these through different applied theatre activities. In this blog entry, discuss the activities we completed in class and your own expanded understanding of Commedia dell'Arte performance in relation to these two elements.
- In class we did a activity that we had to get in a circle for and think of different actions and put emotions in it and the person next to you would mimic your actions and then that person will make one of theirs after mimicking your actions and it goes on till we reach the first person again. We also did another emotion activity which involved us brainstorming the primary, secondary and tertiary emotions/feelings in theatre and then having a scale from 1-10 of how much we can exaggerate the emotion. Like for example if my emotion was laughter, on 1 on he scale it would be a snicker or giggle and by the time you get to 10 you'd be on the floor laughing with tears streaming down your face. 

- Basically I've learned that since we can't really communicate in Commedia we have to use exaggerated emotions and expression in order for the audience understand and it also adds humor and meaning into the piece that w might be portraying. Commedia characters are all about their emotions and their actions and each of the different character's 


- In class, we did a activity where two of us had to randomly get up and improvise a scene and use Gromlalot to put out point across but with Gromalot there was a lot of exaggerated gestures so the audience could understand. When speaking Gromalot, a lot of us tend to combine English words with Bengali to make words and some of us also just slip up and speak in English but change our tones in voice. I think speaking in Gromalot in Commedia is like adding more drama to it and it also helps to fill in he quite silence that would follow with exaggerated movements if Gromalot were not used.

- I think that we could use Gromalot to communicate better with the audience and improvise in our final performance and it would also add more humor and drama and all those other communicable elements. I think the speaking of Gromalot fills in the quiet space because if we weren't allowed to use Gromalot then it would just involve us miming with exaggerated movements which would be boring in Commedia without Gromalot because it gives the characters more background. Like each character might have differnt tone of voice, like Pantalone could be bitter-toned and have a nasal/kinda jealous tone of voice with heavy Gromalot words.

No comments:

Post a Comment