Tony's Commedia Talk with Pecha Kucha demonstration

Tony's Commedia Talk with demonstration at the Drama NSW conference 2016

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Transcription:
okay thank you very much for your time here, I would like to extend the Pecha Kucha presentation by actually having our actors jump off the page and come up on stage so I got some students here from Kings and Nagle college to do a demonstration, but stay there, don't don't jump up just yet.

I've got some notes hopefully I can get through the Pecha Kucha in time with my demonstrations of my workshops that we've been running here, just as a note to the slides are you will be seeing slowly turning over here are actually from QUT students about four years ago we did a Commedia project so you'll see shots from that production. I'd like to start by saying there is a misconception the commedia is a Masked improvised theatre and it's dated back to the 16th century, well it is dated back to the 16th century that's for sure but I think that it's improvised theatre is mistaken it is highly rehearsed well practiced ..... scenarios comic routines that have been tried-and-true and then only then once these skits and scenarios played do the actors improvise like handling a heckler

I'd like to make that my presentation here because I think that we've been teaching it wrong especially with sort of you know, assessment tasks, saying okay quick go and pull a scenario out of a hat and go and improvise it I would find it hard with my actors that have been working on on it years that it would be a difficult task to pull off.

What I'd like to do is talk about how you can build a structure and then improvise from it and today you've been witnessing the performance of the Punchinella x three so we made them, three Zannis, performing a wondering Lassi. So what we did was, we built a movement palette which we rehearsed and I'd like to take you very quickly through because of the time limit of the Pecha Kucha through the class that I went with our students here the last Sunday at the college here, so when I like them up on stage now ladies come on up Maybe you could move the chairs
Did you like their performance, by the way, at lunch time. Yes, another round of applause!

Yes, you guys can push the chairs back a little bit, give yourself some move space on stage. John put them out there, very nice.... But we've just moved them all.

The first thing is that Commedia is; very, Light, Balanced and in Control.

This is what I was trying to have this idea by teaching them some of the movement strategies that we had planned for the improvisation.

We used an exercise, called 'Schooling'. to create an ensemble of, even only with, three members, an ensemble of three. So, you guys want to drop the masks up on the chairs there. and can you get into your groups of three. That you're so familiar with now. Yes, their finding their spots.

Now you might be familiar with this activity in drama class. 'Schooling', so they are going to find their way around the room, using 'Schooling' movement technique. Can you demonstrate that please for everybody So what they are doing here, is that they are copying who ever is in front, so the improvisation can go anywhere, so if they turn around, it's not just the one person leading, its actually just following who ever happens to be in front. This allows, the students to be able to go with what ever is happening or in front of their eyes at the time. Ok, thank you, I think they got that,

Can you demonstrate 'Swarming'. 'Swarming' is a little bit different, it undoes the rigid idea of having a triangle all the time. So, swarming around the space. You'll see that they're actually using some of the techniques of the Commedia traditional moves. Which is, the Zanni walk, the Zanni creeping maybe even running, OK, then the next step we did We added, the traditional movements, yes, ah, no, ah, We also did 'Auto Contact' So I was looking for, cues from your the wandering audience, so they need things to feed off when they are improvising in front of a crowd, like wondering here at lunch time. So can we have Isaac Can you, everyone follow Isaac please. we call, this is just mimicking one person, so that they are looking for idiosyncrasies that the person being chosen at the moment, their just copying. Aswitha Aswitha remember, try and get rid of them. Why are you following me? Why are you following me? Go away! Go away! Ok, thank you, that's a good demonstration. and now we added the traditional moves, so that they were grounded in the Commedia.

To see the full transcription go to: commediaunmasked.com