The Masks Part Four: Pantalone

The Old Miser
The hook nosed mask of Pantalone is the most recognizable mask to modern audiences. The characters, his miserliness has inspired have changed little from his original stereotype, even after centuries. He is a real Scrooge, or better yet Scrooge is a real Pantalone.

The Masks Part Three: Inammorati

The Eternal Lovers
The Female and Male lovers are the two simplest characters, yet they are intrinsic to a scenario. Over time they have gone by many names, in Lightning Theatre's production we have decided to call the woman Isabella and the man Fabrizio. The lovers and the themes of love versus lust are at the centre of a traditional commedia dell'arte scenario. They play middle status roles, although sometimes they can whine, or cause jealousy to those with higher

The Masks Part Two: Il Capitano

The Braggart
He is an outsider, Il Capitano may have come fresh from battle, Spain, or loving thirty seven and a half imagined woman whatever the case may be, at the start of the scenario the captain begins mostly as a stranger. He can be described as a braggart who boasts about imaginary happenings in order to gain status over the other masks. 

The Masks Part One: Il Dottore

The Bumbling Oaf
Il Dottore or the doctor, is a joke about the upperclass who, however much education they receive, still can't understand anything. His rhetoric is saturated by a tremendous lexicon that incorporates profuse latin jargon ad nauseam, which although sounds impressive is mostly word vomit these rant tend to not
carry any real meaning. He can rant for so long that other characters would have to pull him, or ridicule him off stage. He is an obese old man dressed in a scholarly fashion, already his image is a great r

Character Descriptions Coming Soon

No blogs last week, because starting today we will be updating the blog twice a week with descriptions on the stock character in our performance up until our production at Intrepid Theatre Club. We will keep our facebook updated to let you know about the new blogs.

Masks

Themes Behind The Masks
Masks refer to both the article the actor wears over their face, and the character an actor portrays. It's important to note this when reading about commedia dell'arte to not get confused what is the subject the author is discussing. The fact that the terms, mask and character, are interchangable can be seen as a metaphor that helps tie aspects of commedia dell'arte together. This blog will be used to introduce the theme of masks in commedia dell'arte.

Improvised And Non Improvised Elements Of Commedia Dell'Arte Part One:

Characters, Lazzi And Plot
Traditionally performed, commedia dell'arte may not seem improvised to a modern improviser due to the fact that there was a fair amount of preparation that went into characters, jokes and the plot, however I will argue that it is not so black and white. 

Character's were stock, they were either carefully crafted or evolved to be essentially perfect