Compare Picasso's painting of a traditional "patches" Harlequin (The Seated Harlequin, 1923) with this Cezanne painting of a later "diamond" Harlequin (Harlequin, 1890). Examine the differences between the costumes, and consider what those differences might imply about the character's social class, behavior, etc.
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In One Man, Two Guvnors, Francis plays the Arlecchino/Harlequin/Truffaldino archetypal character. His loud, plaid suit is clearly a direct reference and homage to the archetype's past. As can be seen here, however, the decision whether to go with a relatively clean, well-planned out plaid scheme vs. a shabby and mismatched version has both aesthetic AND historically significant implications.
DRAMATURGICAL RESOURCES
Commedia dell'Arte
Performance Styles: Commedia dell'Arte
Commedia. You've probably heard of it.
Maybe you took a workshop. Maybe you read about it in a Theatre History Course. Maybe you've heard that many of Shakespeare's comedies were heavily based on it. Maybe you're aware that many aspects of modern sitcoms betray a direct lineage to the artform. Heck, maybe you're a professional Commedia performer yourself!
Or maybe you have no clue what I'm talking about, and you're terrified.
No matter what your background, don't worry -- "Commedia" is such a huge umbrella term that it's possible for someone to be an expert in one area of it and be utterly clueless in another -- so, no matter what experience you bring, I encourage you to dive in with an open mind and enjoy this admittedly abridged and super-over-simplified look at this cornerstone of the Western theatrical tradition.
AN EXTREMELY BRIEF SUMMARY FOR THOSE IN A RUSH OR SIMPLY YE OF LITTLE ATTENTION SPAN
The following three paragraphs offer a basic introduction to Commedia. While they'll give you a general sense (the "wiki version, if you will), I would nevertheless strongly recommend finding the time to sit down and read the longer history of Commedia exploration further below!
From http://www.commedia-dell-arte.com/commediainfo.htm
What is Commedia dell'Arte?
Commedia dell'Arte is a type of comedy developed in 16th and 17th century Italy, characterized by improvised text based on plot outlines (scenarios). Commedia dell'Arte featured stock characters, some of whom wore distinctive masks. Literally, it means comedy (Commedia) of the professional guilds or artists (dell'Arte). Its popularity in Renaissance Europe can be attributed to the talents and special skills of the actors who were acrobats, dancers, musicians, orators, quick wits, and improvisers possessing thorough insights into politics and human nature. The populace loved the stock characters and their antics, much the way contemporary audiences love the Marx Brothers' movies or TV sit-coms with stock characters like "Gilligan's Island" and "Friends".
Where was it performed?
Most Commedia troupes performed outdoors in city and town piazzas on stages they brought with them in horse-drawn carts, along with their equipment, props, costumes, curtains, and ladders. The stages were usually built high (up to 2 meters), allowing spectators an unobstructed view of the action, and giving actors a storage area and change room underneath. Some of the better Commedia troupes performed in Renaissance theatres such as Palladio's theatre in Vicenza or the Petit Bourbon in France.
Why is Commedia dell'Arte important?
In all periods of Western culture since the Renaissance, Commedia dell'Arte has been a conscious or subconscious presence. Using sexually challenging language and physical comedy, Commedia pokes fun at elements of society's respectable values by means of exaggerated styles and insightful character traits. The stock characters of Arlecchino (Harlequin), Colombina, il Dottore, il Capitano, il Magnifico (Pantalone), and Pulchinella can be found in music, visual arts, dance, and theatre as themselves or as inspiration for specific characters.
Got it? Great! Below, you'll find John Michael's long-form introduction to the art!
ETYMOLOGY
"The Comedy of the Artists?" "Artisan Comedy?" "Professional Comedy?" "The Art of Comedy?" "Skilled Comedians?" Whatever wonky translation you go with, Commedia dell'Arte refers to two things: a troupe of ARTISANS, and the comedy that they create. The "artisan" point is vital --it's not merely a fancy way to "artist"; rather, an artisan, according to our friend dictionary.com, is "a person skilled in an applied art; a craftsperson." In other words, what happens when you combine a professional cabinet maker and an artist? You get a beautiful, artisan cabinet! In Commedia, this is referring to the fact that--unlike the amateur performers of Greek/Roman festivals, of Mystery Cycles, and of Liturgical Dramas, who performed primarily for religious reasons, for bragging rights, or both--Commedia performers treated their talents and creative energies as a source of income; their plays were primarily designed as entertainment, and a "pass the hat" payment was expected of their audience. Over time, these actors formed guilds, not unlike the guilds and trade unions formed by carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. -- thus, in western society at least, Commedia dell'Arte represents the first truly "professional" actors and acting troupes!
THE EARLY YEARS
This "entertainment = paying audiences" is at the very heart of Commedia's origin story. Although exact dates have been impossible to determine, many Commedia scholars (John Rudlin, incidentally, being my favorite and the source of much of this information) tend to peg its humble beginnings in the early 1500s in the market towns and ports of Italy.
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In those crowded marketplaces, "salesmen" of questionable integrity emerged as a regular fixture. The performer-salesmen-sometimes-con artists archetype I'm referring to has popped up throughout the centuries and are generally remembered by names like "Snake Oil Salesmen," "Mountebanks," etc., but in case you're still struggling to picture them, here are three delightful videos from somewhat contemporary pop culture that might help.
The British
Panto!
So now that you've learned all about Commedia ... why are we talking about this "Panto" stuff?
Here's where things could get a LITTLE confusing if you don't pay attention ...
Ok, One Man, Two Guvnors is based on a Commedia play, right?
Except, the style of the adaptation, while similar, doesn't exactly match up with Commedia. Instead, it seems to draw a ton of inspiration from a style of British humor, particularly some classic forms of British stage humor including the Punch & Judy puppet shows and, especially, a broad comedy-style known as "Panto" (short for pantomime), which ITSELF is a direct descendent of Commedia.
In other words, over the centuries, Commedia (through the influences of time and British culture) morphed into Panto ... and so, this exquisitely British adaptation of the most famous Commedia play utilizes those same influences to end up with a piece of theatre that feels perfectly at home in the Panto genre.
Still with me? Wonderful! Then be sure to visit this entry on Seaside Entertainments, Punch & Judy, and Panto to really dive into the personality and tropes that most British audiences would take for granted, but which our mostly-American company might do well to investigate a bit further.
Dramaturgical Questions?
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The fact that both of these modern representations of the archetypal mountebank have foolish "sidekicks" is no accident. It was a very common practice to have a servant who assisted in the sales while entertaining the crowd as a "fool," utilizing clowning, music, tumbling, or whatever form of busking entertainment they could. These "fool" performers came to be known as "Zanni," a pet name for "Giovanni," an extremely common working class name in early 16th century Italy (much like "Joe" became shorthand for a regular, working-class American of the mid-20th century, as in "hey Joe, whaddya know?" "just your average joe," "G.I. Joe," etc.). Thus, "Giovanni," or "Zanni" (ZAH-nee, in an imperfect rhyme with "Johnny"), became the name of these foolish "bumpkin" style performers. Incidentally, "Zanni" is believed to be the etymological ancestor to our modern word "zany," meaning comically foolish.
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One of the chief duties of the Zanni (as seen in Sweeney when Tobias sings) was to attract crowds and potential customers through songs, juggling, tumbling, and other forms of street entertainment. Once an attentive crowd was gathered, the "master" could step in and make his sales pitch. Over time, however, as Zanni performances became better and more popular, crowds also appear to have become harder and harder to sucker in with the various sales pitches. The result (suggests Rudlin) is that the Zanni performance became the main attraction, with the "master" now acting as announcer and passing the hat around, encouraging people to keep dropping in their cash for the performance to continue. Soon, as audiences continued to want more, these performances began adding additional performers -- first, other Zanni involved with basic tumbling routines, but over time, "boss clown" zanni and even, at times, the "master" participating themselves in rehearsed skits, creating basic scenarios that they could improvise from crowd to crowd.
THIS CHANGE -- from Zanni as tumbling warm-up act to basic skits involving multiple servants and a master--is essentially Commedia's "Thespis" moment, and the foundation of all that was to come.
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Soon, more and more actors were added, skits were expanded into multi-scene scenarios, collectives were formed, and "Commedia" was born.
COMMEDIA FINDS ITSELF
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The following is a simple but useful little Zanni "lazzo" sketch (more on lazzi later). The beginning (0:00-1:36) is a Capo Comico (basically, a barker and troupe leader, which grew out of the "master" described above) calling together the audience. His intro is followed by a little musical scene featuring three zanni, music, and women.
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Two useful things to watch for in this video:
* Gender roles, sexual humor, "war of the sexes," etc, are all very common tropes among many Commedia performances.
* Zanni's are primarily known for (A.) Not being very intelligent (anything from simply "foolish" to cognitively challenged) (B.) Enjoying food and drink (to excess) and (C.) Being easily swayed by attractive ladies.
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STOCK CHARACTERS
The above video featured three Zanni, a Capo Comico at the beginning, and three females who don't appear to be named, though could easily fit several Commedia female archetypes (we'll get into those soon!). Although there were innumerable troupes spread through multiple countries over the centuries, and hundreds of named Commedia characters undoubtedly appeared at some point, they generally all fell into a handful of stock character archetypes.
To explain -- imagine you've just turned on an episode of a sitcom that you've never seen before, and it's already 1/2 way through the episode. With most stories/movies/etc., you'd be lost ... but with most sitcoms, in less than a minute you'll probably be able to point at the screen and say, "Ok, that's the brainy one, that's the "silly but lovable neighbor/best friend," that's the "cool" one, that's the "dumb" one that always makes some big mistake that causes the episode's plot, etc. etc. etc.
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Well, just as audiences love it in contemporary comedy, it was the same thing in Commedia! No matter what village square you wandered into, or what troupe was on the stage, there was a very, very good chance that you'd very quickly recognize the different "types" of characters, even if you'd never seen the show before -- and due to their type, would instantly have a sense of what was going on.
Those characters mostly fall into one of three categories: Zanni (the servants), Vecchi (the masters/"old men"), and Innamorati (the lovers). While there were hundreds of named characters over the centuries, with scarcely few exceptions they were all modeled after only a handful of stock, archetypal characters, and those archetypes all fit in one the above three categories!
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TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE COMMEDIA CHARACTERS REPRESENTED IN ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS, be sure to visit the Goldoni and Characters pages of this website, and take this quiz to find out which Commedia character matches your personality!
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SCENARIO AND IMPROVISATION
While the musical Zanni video above would be considered a "Lazzo" (again, more on that soon!), many Commedia performances were built around "Scenario." To understand scenario, let's consider sitcoms again!
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The word "sitcom" comes from "Situational Comedy" -- basically, unlike stories that focus on character arcs, situational comedies focus on how unchaging character types deal with different situations. For example -- consider this compilation of the opening moments from several episodes of the television sitcom "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," in which each clip sets up that week's "situation" that these familiar and unchanging characters must face.
(WARNING - NSFW and all kinds of offensive, including mysogyny, vulgar language, ableism, etc. ... included anyway since, let's face it, that description sums up Commedia's brand of comedy pretty well!)
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In a situational comedy, we can pretty much guess that the characters won't really grow, learn, or change throughout the process -- rather, we're just in it to see how they get themselves through the situation they've gotten themselves into this week. Anything from Seinfeld to SpongeBob works. In Commedia, the scenario generally revolves around a servant (often Arlecchino--more on him later) attempting to get some food, drink, or love ... but somehow blocked by a master. Often, there's also a pair of lovers, ALSO kept apart by the master. The servant finds some way to work with the lovers, tricking the master into letting them be together, and in the process ends up getting his own reward, all at the social embarrassment of the master. Thus--as with all carnival--the mighty are humbled, the humbled are exaulted, youth defeats age, and a general topsy-turviness leads to a wedding, a feast, a celebration, or all of the above. Importantly, however, no one actually LEARNS from the process, and magically, next week a whole new Commedia show is in its place, with no one married, the master in charge, acting as if the previous week's events never happened ... and so the cycle repeats.
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Unlike in most contemporary sitcoms, however, Commedia scenario are designed to act as the skeleton to long-form improv! Actors would post the scenario on the back of their meager scenery (etymological clue!), and use it as a cheat sheet to the afternoon's performance.
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EXAMPLE:
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* Scene 1: Arlecchino enters, complains to audience about how hungry he is. (eating shoes Lazzo). He announces he will starve if he can't find a steak dinner to eat.
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* Scene 2: Enter Pantalone, complaining to audience, looking for his servant Arlecchino to scold him. (mocking statue Lazzo). Finds Arlecchino, and directs him to take a single coin into the market and convince the butcher, Pulcinella, to sell him his best steak for the meager price; Arlecchino is to then bring the steak back and prepare it for Pantalone's supper. If he fails, he will be fired. Exit Pantalone.
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* Scene 3: Arlecchino frets to the audience about what to do -- begins busking audience for more money so he can buy himself a steak as well (busking lazzo) -- before he earns any money, though, he accidentally loses the coin Pantalone gave him. (Panic Lazzo).
(etc.)
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As you can see, the characters have a basic plot outline to follow, but have a great amount of freedom to improvise their dialogue, within the well-known personality parameters of their characters (see Characters page for some examples). Something like Scene 1 above might take 45 seconds, or could go on for several minutes, depending on the particular genius of the actor and the responsiveness of the crowd. The actor playing Pantalone will simply continue to wait backstage until he hears the agreed-upon cue regarding the steak dinner. By following this improvised model, troupes could perform a never-ending variety of crowd-pleasing productions without being hampered by the need to memorize--furthermore, just like modern improv, the quick wit of master actors became part of the draw, and allowed for deeply individualized performances (i.e., making jokes about someone's hat in the front row, about some local scandal, the weather, etc. etc. etc.)
LAZZI
So what are these Lazzi things?! According to Commedia scholar John Rudlin, the word "lazzi" (singular="lazzo") is derived from the Italian for "ribbons," referring to the attractive and pleasant but not structurally needed decorations on women's dresses. In short, a Lazzo (those doubled z's are pronounced like "ts," as in "pizza") is a rehearsed comic "bit," often showing off talents (musical, gymnastic, etc.) of particular actors.
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There are two basic types of Lazzi -- the first is like the musical Zanni lazzo scene included above--a self-contained little "skit." Obviously, that scene couldn't have just been improvised on the spot--the musicians needed to rehearse, the women needed to choreograph, etc. As such, a short, stand-alone, single-joke bit like that (often used as a curtain raiser or a bit of fun between larger scenarios) is one type of Lazzo.
The second type is the Lazzi which occurs within a larger, improvised script. This is some agreed-upon event that actors build toward throughout a scene, and represents some bit of comic timing (often very physical) which required previous rehearsal. These physical comedy "gags" would become classics, often being used over and over in different shows, by different troupes, and many even still being used to this day. Consider, for example, this classic "freeze" lazzo, as featured in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Dr. Terminus & his assistant Hoagy from Disney's Pete's Dragon
Two-part recording of Pirelli and his assistant, Tobias, performing "Pirelli's Miracle Elixer" (Tobias) and "The Contest" (Pirelli) from the 1st National tour of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.
Pay no attention to this dramaturg guy! We are all completely original and never-before-scene character-types!
An excerpt from the Shakespeare Theatre Company's interview with Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp on Commedia (full interview available here.)
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Drew Lichtenberg (STC): I think one of the things that’s so fascinating about this kind of comedy is that it’s tapping into something that’s really deep and mysterious and almost primeval.
Steven Epp: It’s very visceral for all the characters. Everybody wears their emotions on their sleeves. There’s no intellectualizing, no psychology.
Christopher Bayes: And that’s the beautiful thing—in commedia you can swing from one emotion to the other the way a toddler does. The characters will burst into tears at the slightest provocation and then they can completely forget that because they suddenly see someone they love or something they want. There’s no transition from one emotion to another, they just go there. Whatever the emotion is, they inhabit it fully.
SE: It has to feel true. Not true on a Death of a Salesman level or something. It’s true in a different way.
CB: It doesn’t really exist in a 21st-century realistic way. The mask demands such physicality and expressiveness that it gains this kind of elastic fluidity. It can be super violent one moment and then idiotically silly the next. And within a second. It’s a little bit like being in the room with a bunch of toddlers, that they have that kind of filter-less ability to play.
If you've ever watched Looney Tunes, the Three Stooges, the films of Charlie Chaplin, or even many contemporary "silly" comedies, you've no doubt seen many classic Lazzo, from the above "freeze/statue" to the "pull the chair out" to various examples of "slapstick" violence. Consider this college production's attempts at balancing a tumbling lazzo with a somewhat-prepared-somewhat-improvised "legs" lazzo. While the production is not without its amateur acting and flaws, I think the video does a decent job of showing the relationship between the "rehearsed" and the "improvised."
One Man, Two Guvnors relies on BOTH of these -- the self-contained, stand-alone entertainment (the band), AND the sudden burst of rehearsed physical comedy in the middle of the other action (Francis and the trunk, for example).
IT IS VITAL TO UNDERSTAND that Lazzi are, at heart, extremely THEATRICAL. Don't take these moments lightly - -you can't just rehearse them like you would rehearse crossing the stage. Think of them like stage combat or choreography--you've got to rehearse them with such professionalism that they become second-nature, allowing you to continue your "free"/"natural" performance while perfectly executing them. Lazzi truly are the "ribbons" on the play--and will capture the audience's attention the same as their cloth namesakes. They can truly make or break a show!
COMMEDIA GETS GENTRIFIED
Times change, and so do the arts. As the street art form of Commedia dell'Arte spread throughout Italy and then beyond, becoming a staple of entertainment among a growing range of audiences and social classes, changes began to emerge. The first change toward a higher class audience was arguably the addition of the lovers, making the stories more about generational squabbles than the class warfare of the master/zanni scenarios. Rudlin points out that one of the biggest indicators of Commedia's changing audience is that it had gone from performing alongside vegetable vendors to being "sponsored" by high-end fashion companies who would dress the lovers in all the latest fashions, on the condition that the troupe would announce where those dresses came from (perhaps the world's first product placement!).
As time went on, some Commedia moved from the streets to inside the theatres, effectively cutting the plays off from the original peasant class it was designed for. Many productions (sometimes named Harlequinades after their titular character) focused on the Arlecchino character as a foolish but poetic lover, now named Harlequin, his "patched" outfit now traded in for a diamond-patterned one.
It is into this world of Commedia--a more romance-focused, kinder to the upper class, and entirely "indoor" enterprise, that Carlo Goldoni operated within, and it was this definition of Commedia that many of his audience brought with them when they attended opening night of The Servant of Two Masters.
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To find about more about Goldoni's adaptation, click here.
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