Thursday 20/02

Thursday began with learning our final Commedia character: The Doctor.

The Doctor: The Doctor is very similar to Pantalone in ways, but is more intelligent. The Doctor has a tendency to ramble on about things and will often get distracted, most likely by food. The posture of the Doctor is neck extended with the belly pushed out. His walk his slow as he is an old man and so he can barely pick his feet up off the ground and is unable to bend down. The mask of the Doctor varies from the other masks as is only covers his forehead and nose and is decorated with facial hair, such as eyebrows and a moustache. He often blows his lips together which will result in the moustache moving.  

 

Now that we had learnt all the characters we began the audition process for the casting of our Commedia piece. This was done in a workshop style and so we would move around in the space as the character that Graham called out.

The next stage involved Graham calling specific people up onto the floor to be a specific character, for example I was called up for the roles of both Columbina and the female lover. I felt that these were my two strongest characters and so I felt really comfortable performing in the scenarios we were given for these characters.

The scenario given for the lovers was to move around the space doing “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not” and to make grand gestures and so over-the-top that you begin to feel ridiculous, because of the melodramatic  characteristics of the Lovers.

We were then told which Commedia role and Hamlet character people had been cast. This was a very different way of being cast as we were technically being cast as two characters due to the nature of Commedia dell’ Arte. Once most of the group had been cast they were sent off to start creating scenes based on the scenes in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, however myself and Chris, Michael and Jack were asked to act as lovers again and the guys had to deliver a beautiful speech to me professing their love while I stood and reacted to their words. I then had to return with a response saying that we could not be together.

I found this exercise slightly challenging as I had to interact with the three guys from a distance where I could not see them. However I felt this helped with the melodramatic aspect of the Lovers because everything they do is very large and so it meant that I had to ensure all my movement was noticeable.

After watching performances from those who had gone away to devise scenes I was cast as a female lover, however because of the limited characters in Hamlet I was to play a character created specifically for our production: Angelica, the lover of Laertes.

Chris, Tom and I then went away and devised a scene when Laertes and Angelica profess their love for one another via Laertes’ Zanni Zan Polo. We decided to incorporate a Zanni into the scene because it gave us the opportunity to experiment with physical comedy, such as a stage slap. The feedback I received once we had performed the scene was that I needed to face the audience more rather than look at Zan Polo, as in Commedia it is important to act out to the audience and just refer to the characters on stage with you.

Having established our scene it meant we were able to go back and work out any kinks and look at the delivery of jokes which were lost, such as referencing “Marco Polo”.