Commedia dell'arte (7)

We began this lesson with a physical warm up and a focus exercise to ensure we were ready (both mentally and physically) to get on with the lesson. We ran the first scene but none of us were happy with it. The reason for this was that it was lacking in energy and was very flat - no one was in character so I suggested we did a couple of character exercises. The first exercise we did was sit in pairs and tell each other about our stock characters (their characteristics, their relationships with other characters and how they move).

The second exercise we did explored Lazzi (comedic movement sections). James and I went as a pair and created a scene where Brighella bosses Zanni around but Zanni falls asleep. Our scene was as follows:

• Zanni asleep centre stage (as James found through his research that Zanni has a tendency to fall asleep whenever, wherever and often standing up). 
• Brighella walks in and attempts to wake him up: clicking at him once at first, then clicking twice, then clicking repeatedly, and finally resorting to kicking him over. 
• Zanni is frightened at seeing the frustrated Brighella, who then gives him a list of jobs to do. 
• Zanni repeats Brighella's instructions (unintentionally mimicking and therefore frustrating her) and then is sent a way to get to work. 
• Zanni soon falls asleep again and Brighella realises as she hears him snoring. 
• Brighella enters and looks at Zanni, leans on him, looks at her watch and then pushes him over again. 
• Zanni is apologetic. 

We then all performed our scenes to each other and gave each other feedback on what we thought was clever and what we thought they could do to improve. My feedback personally was to face and interact with the audience more and to not rush. We then performed our scenes again with our feedback in mind. To improve myself, I looked at the audience and made bigger gestures to show I was getting annoyed. I also exaggerated all of my existing movements. We then all sat down and told each other three things we wanted to do to improve ourselves in Commedia dell'arte; my three ambitions are to remember I'll be wearing a mask (so put more energy into movements instead of facial expression), to face the audience more and to work on my stance. I have recently been struggling with my stance as Brighella as I don't bend my knees enough and tend to stand to tall. 

After this exercise, we ran the first scene again and it was much better. We are now happier with this scene as it had a lot more energy and we were in character throughout. We have decided that we shall keep this scene how it is and shall now break off into small groups to develop the mini scenes that frame every character for the murder of Harlequin. As soon as we have completed our masks, we shall run this scene with our masks as working with masks is a lot different to performing without them. When performing with masks, we have to use our bodies so much more as the audience cannot see our facial expressions.