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.)

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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!

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