Masks On

So I've been teaching. The idea of me teaching the youth of America might seem like a gross miscalculation on the part of educators - but since they are international students, America's education system is not to be faulted - for that.

I teach Commedia dell Arte, the old Italian style. I had the good fortune to be taught the style in college - not by faculty, but our company manager brought in teachers from Hartford. I performed Arrlechino and random zanni's for 2 1/2 years both on campus and the streets of DC - literally the streets.

So I had 7 kids for a three session master class. Normally I just go in a teach them as much as I can in one session, culminating in some basic lassi at the end. But their teacher asked for more - and I obliged.

I'll skip the day by day and just say that we were able to put together a full scenario, about 20 minutes that had their teacher and myself falling out of our chairs. It was mostly about impotence - a great subject for commedia - and the the word "pre-dick-ament" played a large role. Also the female pantalone was wearing very short shorts under her cape that made it seem as though pantalone had forgotten to wear pants - really hysterical.

My own company took several months to put together our first scenario - granted it was about an hour long, and was very complex, but I still marveled at what these kids were able to accomplish with just a few sessions. Of course they are not ready for a real performance, we could have spent months on the precision of the movement, but the way they gave into the ideas, the spirit, and the commitment it takes to pull this kind of theatre off really made me feel good about myself from an artistic stand point for the first time in a while.