JUN
16

Our Commedia Inheritance

By Lane Riosley 

Lane Riosley is a writer living and working in Houston, Texas.  She has over 20 plays in publication, including 12 with Pioneer Drama Service. 

Commedia tradition in modern plays

Most modern plays are meant to be performed as written.  But plays made in the commedia tradition intentionally leave room for the actors to add their own enhancements to the script and performance.

Early in my career, an elder playwright/scholar taught me how to make my commedia plays thrive on improvisation and embellishment.  I once attended a production of one of my commedia plays and, after the show, the actors and director came to me with worried looks, asking me if their “additions” offended me.  I laughed and said, “Ah, c’mon!  This is commedia.  The script is a blueprint.  You’re supposed to build on it.  Everything you did was perfect.”  They first looked astonished, then laughed and applauded.  Their company went on to use my plays to create their own successful modern commedia tradition, season after season.

All of this began in Italy more than 500 years ago.  The performance enhancements that Renaissance Italian commedia players made are called lazzi.  These were physical comedy routines and running gags, a standard practice in both improvised and scripted plays.  Even with his elegant speeches and poetry, William Shakespeare left room for physical comedy and improvisation in his scripts.  I once watched a London Globe Theatre production of a Shakespeare play where the entire first five minutes was silent physical comedy.  There were many more lazzi in the rest of the performance.

Once upon a time in the Renaissance

In 16th century Italy, there were companies of actors and playwrights who performed with acting, singing, music, and dance.  They created new formulas, plots, and characters from theatrical traditions and ancient Greek and Roman texts.  These theatre companies were called “commedia.”  Today they are most often called “commedia dell’arte,” a later term that translates as “professional acting company.”  With their improvisations and creative lazzi, they worked to fulfill the partnership between actors, scripted plays, and scenarios.

Hundreds of commedia scenarios still exist today, in translation.  They read like summaries of plays, often with descriptions of comic lazzi which, in their time, were as admired as the players who invented them.

How commedia spread

The 16th century commedia players created formulas, characters, and storylines that spread around the world.  They sometimes toured other countries such as France, England, and Bavaria.  In the mid-1570s, some Italian players traveled to England and even performed for Queen Elizabeth I.

Translations of performance texts from Italian to English were once popular and even influenced the Bard himself.  The Italian player Flaminio Scala performed with a commedia troupe and published their commedia scenarios.  In two of his scenarios, the character Isabella disguises herself as a man and becomes a servant in a nobleman’s household.  And — oops! — a woman in the house falls for him/her.  You might recognize this same comic device from William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, Twelfth Night.

Early actresses

In early and mid-16th century Italy, the professional actress was a new and exciting feature that drew audiences and created loyal, devoted fans.  As the female love interest, she was called the innamorata.  Performances with real women created a new and exciting onstage chemistry.  These actresses became the first international female superstars and helped launch the romantic comedy formula.

Our inheritance:  500 years of romantic comedy

Romantic comedy is just one commedia inheritance of many.  The formula began in ancient Greek and Roman comedy, and was rediscovered in the Renaissance by the players who made it popular.

The basic commedia romantic comedy formula is simple:  with the assistance of comic helpers, two young lovers seek happiness together as they overcome family and cultural obstacles.  These comic helper/allies were called zannis, most often clever, trickster servants like Arlecchino (Harlequin).  The commedia term zanni is where we get the English word, “zany.”

Many Elizabethan English playwrights, most notably Shakespeare, frequently used the romantic comedy formula.  Romantic comedy was part of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre right up until 1642, when the English Parliament closed all the theatres.  Romantic comedy survived in other countries only to return in 1660 with Restoration theatre and the very first English actresses.  The Restoration put a different classic spin on the formula with its “comedy of manners.”

The late 18th and 19th centuries gave us the romantic melodrama in Britain and the USA.  Melodrama was often performed with music under the dialogue, a device later used in silent film and in “talkies.”

The 20th century produced film actors who performed romantic comedies with comic lazzi and slapstick, playing the same characters in every film.  Most notably, the trickster W.C.  Fields and the witty innamorata, Mae West.  These were the brilliant, popular, and successful motion picture film heirs to commedia.  In 1962, Gelbart and Sondheim used the classic commedia romantic comedy formula (with lazzi and zannis) in the Tony Award-winning, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Every generation adapts the romantic comedy formula to fit its customs and culture.  As the culture changes, romantic comedy is a mirror of the times, like an entertaining history lesson.  Our 21st century is even now putting its own spin on the formula in plays, books, role-playing games, video, and films.

We are the heirs of commedia

Romantic comedy is only one commedia formula of many.  Today, we are all the heirs of the commedia traditions launched more than 500 years ago and sustained by generations of performers and playwrights.  And, as heirs always do, we will make them our own.

Next week, I’ll share exercises in commedia dell’arte that I use when I conduct school workshops.