Sam blogs about...Commedia
It was with
great anticipation that I turned up to Sapphire Company on Monday. I had the
beginnings of an idea about what Commedia was, my clues being that it was
Rumplestiltzskin-esque and, courtesy of Wikipedia, “The advent of … improvised
performances based on sketches or scenarios.” Which I would consider to be, in
a word, intriguing. For the past
few weeks we had been doing improvisation workshops and I think that by
expanding this to commedia gave us a little insight to another aspect of such
things…
So, what
could be better to start of a session than standing in a circle and walking
across it in the most absurd and ridiculous ways possible. Frankly, there is
nothing better. I myself and a fan of bizarre walks, you could ask any number
of my friends and they could classify my particular favourite, known in popular
culture as The Sam Walk. We explored
the effects of different ways of moving, how the more human ones and those that
had unexpected aspects were often the most humorous. The purpose behind all
this was to demonstrate the idea in Commedia of distinctive movements that are
attached to a particular character and what this tells you about them. I would
like to refer back to the example of my Sam
Walk; this is a movement which
tells you that I am a really cool kind of guy.
Commedia has
a variety of Stock characters; the idea of Commedia is that there is no script,
but each actor knows their character very well and have an arsenal of short
sketches and mimes which can be incorporated into a piece. We learnt a couple
of these, based on the character of Harlequin. Our first was a simple one, the delightfully
named Harlequin’s Bend, followed by Harlequin Surprized, which goes like
this:
1)
Raise the shoulders. Mime: ‘sudden surprize’
(jaw drops).
2)
Sudden drop into full knees bend (‘I don’t
believe it’).
3)
Sharply drop shoulders (mildly aggressive).
4)
Slowly straighten knees, and at the same time
‘wobble’ the head from side to side (look of nonchalance: ‘see if I care!’).
Now, it may,
or may not for that matter, surprize you (Cue your own attempt at Harlequin Surprized) to know that this
is a sequence that has come in handy an awful lot this past week. Baffles them
every time…
Moving on,
we explored other ways of expressing oneself. The old wiping a smile on and off
your face with your hand, a manoeuvre that you have no doubt tried before, was
a favourite of mine but there were new discoveries as well. Ever heard of Happy Hands? An enlightening concept.
The idea is that as you wind your hands outwards in a circle, you become
happier and as you wind them in again you become sad once again with a neutral
dead-pan state midway through. We explored other ways of transitioning from
morose to jocose with a slight change of expression on each of eight counts, a
task more difficult than you might imagine.
Speaking of
counting, another aspect of commedia is one of short rhythmic sequences. We
tried warm-ups involving us all walking in time and doing an action of various
counts, step clap step step step step step turn, being just the beginning.
Rhythms seemed to be quite important in some of the mimes that we practiced
later one also, walking in triplets is apparently what old people with minds
elsewhere get up to in their spare time…
So, as I
must get on with some maths homework before the day is done, I bid you a
sorrowful farewell. I daresay that I have gone on a bit but I feel that is was
justified because rather a lot happened I must say. Thanks for sticking with
me…
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