Status

Aim of Task: To learn about the status handled on stage to further apply it to Comedia performances.

Description of Task: Our teacher, Steve, asked us to group ourselves in couples. Each one of us had a pair, mine was Jason. He told us that one of us would be the master and one would be the servant. The master would first tell his servant what he had to do and all the servant had to do was follow orders. I tried to make the exercise interesting and tell Jason to do funny things, like flirt with other people in the classroom. Then Steve told us that the servant should reply "yes master" to everything the master said. So for every command that I gave to Jason, Jason would have to reply "yes master." It was nice to feel that your orders were received in such a pleasant way, and obeyed without complaints. After that, the servants not only had to reply "yes master" to everything but also had to give a suggestion to the order that the master gave to them. For example, if I asked Jason to draw a dog in the board he would say "yes master, but, wouldn't it be better if I drew a cat instead?" As a master, this started to become a little bit annoying because it didn't feel like my orders were always followed unconditionally. Then I had to become the servant to Jason. Jason started asking me to do lots of stuff, and after a while, I also started replying yes master and then yes master and offer a suggestion as he had done with me. I felt that perhaps I wasn't saying "yes master" as eagerly as I should have said it considering that he was my master. Then, I tried to suggest things but it didn't feel good when he would deny my suggestions and I always had to do what he said. I felt inferior to him, he was in charge of my actions, I wasn't. After the master and servant exercise, we did something similar to what we had done in a previous workshop. In pairs, and in different exercises, each one of us had to:

• Raise our status and lower the other person's status.
• Raise the other person's status.

We did this in conversations. To raise the other person's status the most effective thing was to give them compliments and show amazement for everything they said about themselves. However, to raise your own status, and lower the other person status, you had to say why everything you did was better than what the other person did. It was a fun exercise, in my opinion.

The last exercise that we had to do was a script that was given to us. We had to try it with different combinations between low and high status between the two characters. I noticed that when both people hold low status, the acting turns less interesting and boring. When both people had high status, it wasn't too boring but it also wasn't as entertaining as seeing somebody with high status and somebody with low status.

I really liked the way Prodhi and Adam presented the extract. Prodhi showed high status while Adam showed low status. To show high status, Prodhi put one of her legs on the chair and started talking to Adam, who was seated. Prodhi's voice was a lot more eloquent and loud than Adam's voice. Also, Adam almost fled from stage at the end of the extract.

Reflection: Status is show by the tone of voice, body expressions, posture, attitude towards other characters in stage... I think status is how concerned is the character of what other actors do. A high status character will not care about other characters on stage while a low status character will be so worried about his actions that he will always be aware of how his actions can affect other people on stage.

Conclusion: Status will be very useful for comedia: some combinations of status can turn out to be really funny like both characters with low status or both characters with high status. Since I first heard about status, I have been interested on its applications to our daily social life. Status is something that can be seen everyday in social situations, which is why I find it so interesting. I hope to learn more about it through the theatre course although I've already been reading something about it. It is probably one of the theatre techniques I'm mostly interested in.

Commedia dell' Arte: Presentation and Wax Museum

Aim of Task: To share our knowledge about Commedia dell' Arte characters with our partners and with the whole class.

Description of Task: Following the previous research we did on our partner's Commedia dell' arte chosen character, we did a presentation for them where we told them personally all the facts that we found about their character. I told my partner, Shari, all I found out about Isabella: the gestures she normally uses, the custome, her relationship with other characters and with the audience... I tried to put more detail and emphasis more the things I thought she would be more interested in and could have got her attention when talking to her.

After this, she made her presentation about Flavio to me: she also talked to me mostly about his characteristics and his performance on stage.

After we were done with presenting our characters to each other, our teacher, Steve, asked us what were some of the good techniques in presenting. One of my classmates said that when her partner did her presentation, she compared La Ruffiana to Snowhite's old lady. I thought that was a pretty good way of giving an example people can relate to and are familiar with. It is definitely something I can include in my next research.

After we were done with feedback, we started doing what we called the "wax museum." Half of the class left the classroom and the other half stayed with their pairs. The half that stayed in the room, one person in each couple molded the other person into a position that was characterstical of their character. Then, that person had to stay still in that position while the other half of the classroom came in and the partner who was not standing still from the couple would give an oral presentation of who this character was and what was his personality/characteristics. After that, each couple would switch partners, give the presentation in the same manner, and after that the second half of the class would do the same thing.

It was quite an interesting exercise to imagine being in a museum where there was several people greeting you and telling you random information about that person who was standing still. I liked it a lot!

Reflection: What we did today in class was a very effective way of sharing information. It was an excellent class teamwork to research different things and the present that to our other classmates. This is how we can learn by sharing with other people. This is actually related to TOK and one of the forms of knowing: by other people.

Conclusion: I am very convinced Pantalone is the character I want to play now. Flavio was not really the character for me, I don't think I will really enjoy playing him. However, Pantalone seems to fit a lot of characteristics that I find funny and interesting to include while acting. Pantalone will be the primary choice for my Commedia dell' Arte performance.

Commedia dell' Arte: Isabella Investigation

Name of character (and its origins): Isabella. This character is immediately associated with Isabella Andreini (1562-1604). She was admired through France and Italy by all classes. She was a very well educated poet and a songwriter too.

Status (class of character): Prima donna, innamorata (lover). Daughter of Pantalone. Flirtatious and stubborn, men often fall in love with her.

Physicality:

• Stance: she is rarely standing in both feet: normally making ballet positions. Chest full of breath.

• Animal characteristics: pink flaming, love bird.

• Walk: swishing and swinging around, wobbling.

• Gestures: often holding flowers or handkerchiefs.

• Other: exaggerated movements of the hands.

Voice (vocal characteristics): refined and unpretentious.

Costume: uses a long dress, often holding a handkerchief, a fan or a book (see attached images).

Mask: no physical mask but often uses a lot of makeup.

Props: handkerchief, fan or book.

Relationships (to other characters and audience): lovers are more in love with the idea of being in love than with themselves. She is extremely aware of being watched by the audience and often flirts with spectators.

Plot/stage function: a lover, although she initiates solutions to her own account most of the time.

Characteristics/persona/other: A little bit proud, extremely dramatic. Has independent will and she is highly cultivated. As the other lovers, she is self-obsessed and selfish. They are more interested in what they are saying and how it sounds than what their beloved is saying.

Think of(anything that will help the actor to access the character): As a lover, Isabella should be very playful, flirtatious. She should be the woman desired by plenty of man: playful but at the same time confident.

Source Page

"Commedia Stock Characters Isabella." Shane Arts Home Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2011. .

Delpiano, Roberto. "Isabella." Roberto Delpiano's website . N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2011. .

Rudlin, John. Commedia dell'arte an actor's handbook. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Commedia dell' Arte: Characters

Commedia dell' Arte Characters

When reading the information sheet, there are some characters that immediately capture my attention:

• Pantalone:

He is a short character. He is a character whose orders have to be obeyed because he has money. Uses tight trousers, sleepers and a tight fitting jacket. I don't think I would meet the physical appearance of Pantalone. And I wouldn't enjoy to play a high status character as comical.

• IL Capitano:

This character often pretends high status. A coward. Stops everywhere to show the audience that he should be admired. I don't think I will be able to relate very well to this character and it doens't seem as comical to me to perform it.

• Arlecchino:

He is usually a servant to Pantalone. He is a character that can be, by his costume, considered funny by ridiculization. He is normally physically quick but mentally slow. He constantly speaks. I think that would be something I would enjoy to do considering that I have seen myself in that situation!

I think Arlecchino is the character that appeals to me the most and I would like to play it on our Commedia dell' Arte performance next term.

Facial Masks

Aim of Task:

Learning about facial expressions and representing emotions with the body. Combining different emotions in the body and in the face.

Description of Task:

We all arranged into a circle. Steve started making a facial expression and maintained it. He called it a mask. Then he mimicked to have taken it off and throw it to another person. The next person had to imitate the same facial expression the previous person had made and then create a new facial expression for the next person to imitate. The proper mimicking to put the mask, take the mask off and throw it to another person had to be done always.

Our teacher showed us the characteristics of an angry, sad and happy facial expression. He showed us the main characteristics at four levels of each of these emotions:

• When being angry, it is important to curve the lips and frown the eyebrows.
• When being sad, it is important to frown the eyebrows and show a curved down mouth.
• When happy, mouth and eyes should be widely open.

He told us to make each one of this faces in increasing or decreasing degree of intensity: he would say either angry 1, 2 or 3 which would mean angry face at intensity 1, 2 or 3 or he would say happy 1, 2 or three which would mean happy face at intensity 1, 2 or 3.

It was weird to change from completely different emotions from one to another second: we would change from angry 3 to happy 1 in one instant.

Our teacher then asked us to break the circle and start moving around. He told us to make specific faces but combine these faces with their respective body expressions: for example, he would tell us to do a happy 3 face with a happy 3 body. I could notice that the corporal expressions almost came by themselves as I made the facial expression our teacher told us.

We kept on doing this exercise until our teacher asked us to do something rather radical: to combine different emotion faces with different emotion bodies. In that manner, we would have angry faces with happy bodies, sad faces with angry bodies and happy faces with sad bodies, etc. Before, as I did the facial expression that our teacher asked us to do, my body started to move in the corresponding emotion. However, now that I had to combine different emotions in faces and bodies, it became more and more difficult since my body was not "synchronised." I would try to make a sad face and a happy body but the movements of my body would not be as cheerful as before. It was quite a strange experience.

Reflection:

Our body is used to act according to different emotions. When we are happy, we are more likely to smile and move ourselves around than when we are sad, where we tend to have a very relaxed face and a slow body movement. This is part of ourselves. however, as actors, we need to be able to fake this emotions and be able to make different emotions with different parts of the body. Is part of being a good actor. Sometimes combining different emotions can be used in a very comical way, for example, seeing somebody oscillating between crying of sadness or shouting of anger when a catastrophical event happens can be funny.

Conclusion:

As an actor, we have to be able to fake emotions. As actors, we have to be able to make unrealistic as well as realistic expressions. An angry face with a happy body is very uncommon on a daily situation, but since this can be comical on theatre it is something that an actor should be able to do.

First Commedy Exercise - Skit

Aim of Task: To work in a group and make our first comedy performance in class. To start applying the comic techniques that we learned in class.

Description of Task: The whole class was separated into groups with different comic scenes. My group was Vincent, Undine, Daniel and I. However, since Vincent did not attend class the day of the performance, Jason participated with us. Our scene was in a hospital. It was about a doctor and his nurse who had been operating two people at once but had performed the wrong operation to both patients. We started brainstorming to think about what operation had been performed wrong. We decided that we would make it sexual, since from previous experience we know that it can be comical. We decided that the operation the doctor had done wrong was that he had changed a man's genitalia for the nose of a woman and the woman's genitalia for the mouth of a man. The doctor and his nurse would make the scene funny by using unusual objects when operating the patients like cones, drums and sticks. All of the comedy would be without any dialogue, so we could make body expressions even funnier: something Jason, who performed as doctor, is good at. I performed as one of the patients and Undine played as the female patient. We had to figure out a way to show which parts of us had been changed. We found out that we could do the shape with our hands, like we did in the previous mimicking exercises. When the doctor ended with the operation, we would stand up and start touching all of our body, and showing that we noticed something wrong in our faces and legs. Then, we would suddenly turn towards each other and notice that what was wrong in our bodies is now on each other bodies; showing sounds and expressions of surprise. We had to exaggerate each of this expressions as much as possible so we could making very comical.

Reflection: For some reason, when jokes are sexual they become funnier. We used it in our scene, but other groups also played with sexual jokes and all the class laughed a lot. Perhaps the fact that the topic can be taboo, and it is mentioned publicly, is one of the reasons why it is funnier. It is something that we discussed on the brainstorming, that it gets out of the seriousness and routine. Sexual jokes can also be something unexpected, which is another thing that makes people laugh. Showing these parts without dialogue was kind of difficult, but it made it even funnier in the end. I think that mute scenes make people more focused and curious about what is going to stage. It grabs their attention, therefore, they are more prone to expect something funny and laugh even more when they get it.

Conclusion: Sexual jokes can appeal to a wide audience because it is something unexpected and not serious. Comedy scenes without dialogue are also funny because it leaves the audience wondering about what is going to be funny. Comedy is a lot about what the audience expects and what the audience gets. It is difficult to have an specific pattern for comedy though.