Word: commedia
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...fall of 1981 she had been acting almost without a break since 1977. At 24 she had made nine movies, had played commedia dell'arte and Polish romantic stage literature for the Drama Theater, and had just finished taking the part of Desdemona in a TV production of Othello. She was at the top of her profession in a country where theater is taken seriously...
SERBAN, who first created the Sganarelle collection at Yale four years ago, has almost as much fun with the plays as do the actors. In Moliere's time, the farces that revolve around the stock character, Sganarelle, were part of the commedia dell'arte repertory of his company. The original master could rely on the improvisational technique of a fixed crew of actors to excite and entertain. Serban continues this tradition by having his actors trade roles in each of the four farces. The constant rotation fosters an appreciation for the different inflections of the characterizations, but it also builds...
...monstrously difficult to pull off, and hardly worth the trouble for all but the most natural clowns. No one in The Three Cuckolds betrays any flair for knockabout comedy, so it's hard to understand why the director. Michael S. E. Kaplan, chose to haul out this tedious commedia del l'arte piece and stage it, of all places, on the Loeb Mainstage, which swallows up all but the most stylistically assured productions...
...Commedia del l'arte is renowned for its blend of spontaneity and old hat--stock characters, stock situations, stock slapstick bits continually reshaped according to the whims of its experienced performers and the peculiarities of the audience and the space. At the beginning of this production, when the actors lug in part of the set, throwing out lines like. "Anybody I know out there?" and "Small house tonight," they establish a quick and funny rapport with the audience. Then the "ad-libs" cease and the show sobers up. Great--sober commedia del l'arte by inexperienced actors on the Loeb...
Tonight at the Loeb Mainstage, two mimes will escape the abstractions of their art--plain costumes and stark white faces--to combine international and dramatic traditions in Mudhead Masks. Exploring the concept of the clown, the skits will draw from the traditions of classical mime, commedia dell'arte, and masked theater. Masks, carved by village craftsmen in Bali, are astonishing, capturing the essense of frog or the vitality of laughter. The Mudheads, Pueblo Indian clowns in the American southwest, contribute a name and a philosophy, that clowning can be both a communal and a moral experience. The performers, both graduates...