Commedia Del 'Arte
Posted: 10/02/2017
On Wednesday, the drama department welcomed Didi Hopkins, the country’s foremost practitioner of Commedia, to Bromsgrove School.
Over fifty Drama students across four sessions from Year 9 to the Upper Sixth took part in the workshops in order to train them in the use of masks, the creation of character and improvisation.
Didi is regularly in demand as a Commedia adviser to the RSC and the National Theatre and worked closely with Richard Bean on the international award-winning “One Man Two Governors”. With her was Elliott Ross, an actor who appeared with the RSC last year and a specialist in clowning and physical theatre. Elliott assisted in creating short improvised performances with the students in small groups.
Commedia Del ‘Arte or ‘the comedy of the artisan’ emerged ‘fully formed’ in the middle of the 16th Century – some say in Venice or Bologna – but it was just as likely to have developed in any Italian town which had a square or market place. It was the first truly professional theatre and combined the physical skills of the street performer – tumbling, acrobatics, juggling – with the plots and characters of Classical Roman comedy and the prose writings of the Renaissance.
Training in Commedia is not only of enormous benefit to an actor, developing highly complex physical skills and the ability to connect quickly and effectively with an audience, but it is now increasingly being used as a business tool in companies across Europe to train executives to think quickly and creatively ‘on their feet’.