Workshops at The Performers’ Playground
Mondays 7pm – 9.30pm
19th January – 16th February 2009

Five sessions of two hours and a half hours
£40 for all 5 or £12 if booked individually.

All workshops take place in at The Thanet, Herbert Street, NW5 (near Chalk Farm tube). Map.

We’re teaming up with our friends Warhorse Theatreworks and Monique Squeri to run a series of workshops in London that will give performers the opportunity to get back to their roots.

Over five weeks we’ll be rediscovering some of the most important skills and traditions of European popular theatre.

Each week you learn a new skill, challenging yourself and attaining new levels of clarity, subtlety and grace as a performer as we build to a dazzling masked ball in the final week.

Not only will you get something from it: we are searching for the right performers to join a commedia troupe for various site specific theatre projects in development. (One is ‘The Manuscript Found in Saragossa’).

How excited are we to be doing this? This is a dream project for The Beekeepers and the main reason we set the company up. If you’ve ever secretly wanted to be Arlechinno, Columbina, Panatalone, Punch or the Capitano Fracassco-brise-tout, then we hope we find you at these workshops.

However, you don’t need to be interested in joining a troupe in order to attend: it will be a lot of fun, and we’ll pack in plenty of the history of the tradition – and even the odd bit of scholarship – along with practical exercises and some serious workouts for your mind and body.

Commedia dell’Arte is the wellspring of the European imagination from which Harlequin, Mr Punch and the Ballerina leapt, fully formed.

Opera, clowning, the circus, puppetry and stage magic all share common roots in Commedia. It was popular theatre that drew on classical Roman and Greek sources, and ended up influencing Shakespeare, Molière and the Music Hall.

If you’re a performer then these characters, stories and techniques belong to you.

Book early as spaces are limited. Email your C.V. and photo to hayley at warhorsetheatreworks dot com to be considered for a place. Your place will only be confirmed once payment has been received. Details will be given upon your request for a place.

More about Commedia…

The workshops…

The Mystery of the Masks – January 19th

Wearing a mask is an instant way to pretend to be someone else.

“Maschera” is the Italian word that the Commedia dell’Arte performers used to describe both the mask you wear, and the role that goes with it: Punch, Columbina, Pantalone, the Capitano, etc.

The workshop will give performers the chance to exercise their jaws and face muscles, learn about Commedia’s archetypal roles, and improvise some instant characters, comedy and melodrama.

 

The Book of Spells – January 26th

Every Commedia dell’Arte troupe had a book that contained stock skits, speeches, magic routines and musical numbers. They would improvise a show without using a script, just these linking pieces.

The workshop will explore complexity arising out of simplicity in performance: how the magic of words and improvised scenes can unlock both the audience’s and the performers’ imaginations.

 

The Duellists – February 5th

It’s time to get physical. Commedia dell’Arte was physical theatre: we get the term “slap stick” from Arlechinno’s staff.

Knock-about comedy, acrobatics, sword fights and dances were part of every show.

This workshop will explore how you can create character, mood and story through posture, gesture and movement. It will draw on Commedia’s archetypal roles, flexing performer’s muscles and minds to create improvised scenes and situations.

 

Capturing The Spirit – February 9th

In this workshop, led by Monique Squeri, we explore rhythm, energy and spirit.

To get us ready for performance, we will look at the practical elements of staging a Commedia performance – grounding, largeness, precision, rhythm, entrances and exits, serious play and communication – as well as being specific to Commedia: gibberish, mask technique, playing the play.

This workshop will add dynamism and subtlety to your repertoire.

 

Prospero’s Magic – February 16th

For the final workshop we’ll combine all the skills we’ll have explored together to create a unique event: a masked ball where the performers are also the audience and guests, invited by an enigmatic host. (Don’t worry, if you haven’t been to the other workshops you can still join in).

Over two hours you’ll improvise a story, unite some star crossed lovers and solve a mystery or three.

What is the secret of Prospero’s magic? Is it better to be happy or wise? And how do you make a Venetian blind?

Don a mask, follow the clues and all will be revealed.

 

More about Commedia

Commedia dell’Arte is Italian for “the comedy of artists”.

The “Arte” bit meant “the professionals” as well because it referred to the actor’s Guild.

It was the main form of theatre on the Continent for nearly four hundred years, from the Renaissance to the era of Vaudeville.

Unlike the English stage at the time, both male and female performers played comic and tragic roles.

Commedia troupes used stock characters, dialogue and business to create mostly improvised performances.

They didn’t have a script, they used a scenario, with the main plot – or Argument – at the start and then a scene-by-scene description.

The shows were hyperreal narratives, where – through the alchemy of improvisation – the magic space between performers and audiences was filled with amazing feats, fantastic scenarios and epic melodrama.

 

Here are some titles of Commedia scenarios:

‘Rosalba, Enchantress, A Royal Opera’

‘The Mad Princess’

‘Flavio the Fake Magician’

‘The Alexandrian Carpets’

‘The Fortune of the Solitary Prince of Muscovy’

And (a particular favourite of The Beekeepers):
‘The Bear, A Royal Opera’ (in three parts).

(‘The Bear’ features the Temple of the Great God Pan, a Prince of Hungary this time, a nymph, another Prince who’s half human and half bear, and out for revenge, a lion and – most importantly – a bear.

This and the other scenarios are from a 1611 collection of plays compiled by the Commedia actor and impressario Flaminio Scala).

 

Traditional Commedia looks like this:

And this:

But it can even be like this…

Blimey, you wouldn’t want to be a Barbary Coast pirate ashore in Naples with that crime fighting duo on the case.

There’s so much stuff about Commedia online it’s hard to know where to start with links, but we like Brian Foley’s blog. He’s collected loads of images and YouTube clips. As Brian notes, the quality is variable but – to us – that shows the range and popularity of these characters and techniques, from amateur college productions to some very slick Italian companies.

(Brian has also been a true gent and given us a shout on his journal. Ta matey!)