Commedia dell arte By Zach Alcantar Eli Steger

Commedia dell’ arte By: Zach Alcantar, Eli Steger, and Connor Wilson

What is Commedia Dell’ Art? - a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16 th century. - The name Commedia was a designation given to professional comedy troupes to separate their work from that of amateur performances given at the courts & academies. - Commedia dell’arte was the standard comedy, commedia all’improviso improvised comedy, and commedia a soggetto developed from a plot, theme, or subject

Master Characters In Commedia dell’arte - Each actor always played the same character, which had specific physical and personality attributes as well as a recognizable costume. There were basic plot outlines the actors agreed to before the performance began and then they would improvise their dialogue and action rather than have a written script

Capitano a braggart and a coward who gets discredited at some point. Pantalone an elderly merchant who was fond of proverbs and tried to act like a young man. In Pantalone’s mask, his nose was always exaggerated in size. Dottore the last “master” character.

Harlequin was the most popular and recognizable servant character. He was both cunning and stupid, an accomplished acrobat who was often in the middle of any physical comedy in the show. Truffaldino closely related to Harlequin. Brighella Pulcinello a frequent companion of Harlequin. had a varied function.

Troupes ● ● ● Troupes also created their own characters generally 10 -12 members, with 7 or 8 men and 3 or 4 women, this included the 2 sets of lovers, a female servant, 2 male servants, Capitano, Pantalone and Dottore. Mostly traveled throughout Europe to keep a large enough audience They performed with or without scenery The tradition reached its height by 1650 and began to decline after that