15.4. Commedia dell'arte 2

   During today's lesson about Commedia dell'Arte, we begun by examining status, more importantly the relationship between a master and a servant. We started with an exercise where, in partners, we had to pretend to either be a dog or its owner. The would then have different mission, either being obedient or difficult to their master. We could also explore what kind of a dog we were and how old. This really connected with Brecht's Gest, since we had to be thinking about certain aesthetics that dogs have, for example waving of their tail or panting. This was an interesting way to explore the master/servant relationship, since dogs can be very obedient, but also not realize necessarily what their owner wants. In Commedia, servants are often seen stupider than their masters and even thought they want to serve as well as they can, they make mistakes purely because they have misunderstood the situation. I think this is something we could play with the bodyguard characters in our play. They do not play a huge part in the play or the scenes, but could possibly add some humour to scenes with a lot of dry dialogue.

   We also learned about Grammelot, which is a style of speaking, a made up language in a away. It is often used in Commedia dell'Arte, but also in satirical theatre and mimicry. It is believed to have given the performers safety from censorship, but also appeal to audiences from different dialects and languages.
   To explore this in partners we had to tell a secret to our partners in Grammelot. It was funny how, even though your partner didn't know exactly what you were saying, often because of your way using gestures it was easy interpret a similar story and know the gist of what was going on. Then, as a group we pretended to have police officer speaking to their team about a crime and what they were going to do to solve it, it was interesting to see how different stories merged from different people. A simple signing of taking a swig off of a bottle told everyone that this policeman had been drinking and had an alcohol problem.
   We could use grammelot in the beginning stages of our devising to explore how we naturally would try to show the emotions of our characters and their Gests. This way, we wouldn't have the books in our hands on our way.

   Commedia is very useful for us to keep in mind during creating characters and devising our scenes. In each scene all of the characters have their purposes and objectives, and we can explore them in different and interesting ways, since we can apply the stock characters from Commedia.