Last Saturday, at the Broad Stage Theatre in Santa Monica, the ancient popular theatrical genre of Commedia dell’Arte was brought back to life. Not only that, it also got easier to understand and follow, it illustrated and walked through historical and cultural facts and threw in contemporary and funny elements that are cohesive to the improvisation, the overall rhythm, the movement, the sound on stage and most of all, the involvement of the audience.
Active participation of the public was a great component of the show that featured actors John Achorn, Ilana Gustafson, Jon Monastero and Juliette Angeli who played different characters through the play with the help of a mask. The characters played — Pulcinella, Arlecchino, Pantalone, Colombina and others -, even though they date back to more than five hundred years ago, have treats and characteristics that still well represent human personalities in the twenty-first century and that can actually help better understand our society today.
Kids were attentively hypnotized or hardly keeping their laughter throughout the entire show. They were certainly able to capture many Italian words, idioms, geographical, cultural and artistic elements that offer more than just simple education, they provide a diverse learning environment that was also continued at the end of the show, when kids were invited to create their own mask and interact off stage directly and closely with the actors.
To graciously bring the 16th century in the 21st century isn’t an easy task. A five centuries gap signifies so much change and evolvement in what people would find entertaining. Yet Studio Zanni — that takes its name from a poor, ignorant character of the ancient comedy -, does the job really well, entertaining, outreaching, engaging, and involving and let’s not forget, educating.
Studio Zanni has collaborated with universities such as USC, UCLA, Pepperdine, and Cal Arts helping enriching art curricula and programs. Commedia dell’Arte is the birth of entertaining industry, is the discovery of the theatrical professionalism. And it is the essence, the genesis of western performing arts and its fundamental components, of which the most important is definitely the improvisation. Actors don’t simply rely on a written script, they have to be on their toes for the entire length of the play.
Commedia dell’arte shows used to be exceedingly joyful, funny, full of music and dance, feminine and masculine charm and gained an incredible success worldwide. Studio Zanni brings in a city somewhat artistically “polluted” what was a unique phenomenon that multiple attempts in several centuries from its birth failed to repeat, and so it did became unrepeatable, rare and difficult to see. It represents fantasy, freedom, joy, vitality at its purest form, unaltered, uncontaminated, unstaged, and that’s the magic of it.
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