Commedia dell'Arte Presentation at Sha Tin College

Aim of Task: To have our first Commedia dell' Arte presentation and film our performance so we have a better idea of what we can improve on for Li Po Chun's performance. To share with Sha Tin college and learn about the Kabuki type of theater they presented us.

Description of Task: After several days of rehearsing our Cannovacci, finally we presented it to an audience. All the Theatre Year 1 group went to Sha Tin where we arrived with our customs and props so we could perform to the Theatre students at the School. When we arrived, they were a little bit concerned about the sexual innuendo that our Cannovacci might contain since on past years the sexual content on Canovacci was too much. Our group and I had kept the sexual innuendo and jokes as low as possible because we were aware of the concern on the topic.

The three groups performed. The audience was not very big, it was only the Year 1 theater group which was not very large. Commedia dell' Arte audience, originally, is very varied, given that it was normally performed informally in the markets of Italy. Sometimes there would be a small amount of people and some other time there would be a large group, standing, sitting, crouching... in whatever position the audience pleases. The fact that we had a small audience, therefore, was not any kind of obstacle for our performance.

After all of us performed our Cannovacci; their group performed a kind of Japannese theatre that is called Kabuki theater. Their costumes where rather simple, although they had a makeup similar to the one some of our Commedia dell' Arte characters had. They told the story about and old, homeless man. The interesting thing about this kind of theater is that there are three different kinds of characters, with different characteristics that remain constant throughout different stories; just like in Commedia where you have a few ammount of characters with specific characteristics and costumes which remain constant throughout different stories. At the end of their play they also explained to us the different sounds and gestures that each character should use in Kabuki theater that they had used.

Reflection: I had done things on stage before, but this is the very first time I did a theatrical performance in front of an audience. I really liked it, Commedia is such a fun genre, not only to perform but also it is a lot of fun to prepare the performance. In general, it seemed like our small audience liked it. I think they were really interested and paid lots of attention, as they were always leaning forward in their chairs to look at us. They also laughed, but in general they seemed very entertained, which is the main focus of this kind of theater.

I found it very curious to see that Kabuki theater has a set of characters with specific characteristics, just as Commedia dell' Arte does. They have different objectives though, in Commedia dell' Arte, characters with specific characteristics make each Cannovacci funnier, as humor arises from the reinforcement of the stereotype of each of the actions performed by the characters. However, in my opinion, Kabuki might do this to keep the story simple and make it more understandable for the audience. Each member of the audience might also be able to identify themselves with one of the kind of characters, each time this character appears on stage.

Conclusion: Theatre is extremely wide. While writing this entry I realized that, although Commedia dell' Arte's main objective is to entertain the audience, there is many other kinds of Theatre whose main objective is not to entertain, for example, Theatre of the oppressed. I had not thought about it, but it is indeed very relevant. The most popular kinds of theater are for entertainment, but there is definitely some other kinds of theater that are used for different purposes.

I really enjoyed finally performing something that we had worked for so much. I really liked being able to show it to another school too.