Commedia Presentation

A Commedia Presentation at the Miller Library

 A “pan-Italian form” that flourished throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, commedia dell’arte is an important part of performance history.   Its rich legacy can be identified in the oeuvre of Moliere and Shakespeare, the films of Chaplin and Keaton, and in sitcoms such as The Honeymooners and Seinfeld.  Commedia is an actor’s medium requiring an approach to performance that is as technically precise as it is imaginative and playful.  A physically and vocally disciplined form that is based on improvisation and stock characters, many of whom are masked, commedia provides a valuable range of training techniques for today’s student actor.   

As the culminating activity of Dr. Peter Zazzali’s course “Commedia Dell’arte as an Approach to Actor Training,” the Department of Theater and Dance will be sponsoring a thirty-minute commedia scenario replete with physical comedy, stock characters, and comic hijinks!!  Please come and share in the experience at the Miller Library’s Robinson room on May 8 (12:00 and 4:30).  A reception will follow the 4:30 performance.