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I'm back in Minnesota after an intense final week of Antonio Fava's commedia workshop, and the knowledge that there'll be no make-believing hilarity for the foreseeable future feels a bit like I'm dragging around a deflated red balloon by a string. Studying commedia was refreshing and re-focusing on so many levels, and it allowed me to see musical and theatrical work generally (the use of improvisation as study, the problem-solving skills of actors) and to clarify my vision of music composed at the turn of the 17th century from a completely new vantage point, an opportunity that few singers like me get. I'm so grateful to the McKnight Foundation and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council for their support.

I'll probably keep writing reflections that are rolling around in my head as they relate to my musical work, in bits and pieces, over the next couple of months as I prepare a program in November at The Baroque Room. Among the discoveries that are still on my mind days after leaving Reggio Emilia is how much every act of an ensemble requires its individuals both to listen as potential leaders and as supporting actors, and there are awkward spaces between these two positions, usually at transitional moments, when creativity is crucial. These moments require a fast mind for switching positions and for generating material - inventing - in ways that serve either a launchpad for the next 'bit' or as a component of what's preceded it. If I had had more time, I'd probably think a lot more about the constellation of characters and how to create a repertoire of responses that best electrify the relations between crucial parts of the ensemble. A great example of this from the final show was a moment in which the Signora was carrying on with her desired suitor, the Capitano, whilst being serenaded by Pantalone, an unwanted suitor, and in the midst of it, her servant, Pedrolino, wrapped her scarf around his face and posed as the Signora. This was one tiny moment in a larger arc, but it heightened the comedic tension between all of the characters and contained within it a lot of possible ways both for the serenade to continue and attention to be given to the Signora-Capitano pair OR for new funny interactions to develop between Pedrolino and the suitor. It was beautifully acted and placed perfectly in the arc of the scene.

For someone (like me) who spends a lot of time trying to find just the right thing to say in a grant and the rest of one's time working to get very complicated music 'right', I'm not often in a position to invent material that isn't designed specifically to go from point A to point B. What truly great invention needs, at least in the development stage, is a willingness to explore unlikely, perhaps outlandish, beginnings and consequences, all of which are rooted in the honest humor of every day life for whatever character you're portraying but which nonetheless is funnier if it traces a curvy, dotted, forth and back, full of rhythmic play and energy sort of path. It's my hope to find opportunities to let my mind wander these paths more and to reclaim some of the playful flexibility from the 1000-word-limit, follow-the-directions processes that dominate my life as it is. If I'm lucky, maybe I can still be a zanni for at least 5 minutes per day!

This project was made possible by the generous support the McKnight Foundation through the Next Step Fund grant, awarded by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.

Week 3

OK, so now we're getting some place. Can I be totally honest and admit that I'm feeling both won over and slightly annoyed? For the first two weeks of the course, as I've described, the participants were thrown in the deep end with improvising scenes, and the desperate and rushed process most often ended in a lot of confusion, stressful moments between the Type As in the groups and those who care less about the rules than the result, and lots of not-being-funny. Earlier each day, we were learning basic things and performing small improvisations in front of Antonio in duos and trios, during which he gave us notes about how to be more correct with our physical presentation, how to be clearer with comic reactions, and how to walk the line between the 'logic' of this world and the fantasy of it. These exercises got progressively longer and involved more and more characters, but still the work on the 'canovacci' - literally the 'canvases' where the participants were left alone to take a sketch and fill in the details - felt miles away from the short improv sessions. Granted, groups were working on these scenes outside in the park. A lovely park, but with temperatures in the 90s, swarms of mosquitoes, pine needles and broken glass on the ground, not the kind of place that leads to peaceful problem-solving. And for me, knowing a little bit about the complexity of the full late Renaissance commedia dell'arte plots, it's been difficult to let go of that complexity in the name of just keeping up the rhythm and doing something funny.

At the end of last week finally, we started actually improvising full scenes in front of Antonio, and it was like someone finally turned on the lights. For starters, it was made explicit, for the first time, that a canovaccio was an opportunity to study possibilities, not an attempt at making something that you could put on stage today. I'd been feeling a lot of pressure to invent something that 'worked' as a story from start to finish as the first step, and that perception led me to want to be sure that I understood the whole trajectory before we tried to improvise, so that it (a) made sense, (b) followed the instructions we'd been given, and (c) had a potentially funny plot. Now - in a show, do we want a scene that makes sense and is funny? Yeah, duh. But the process of study isn't about filling in a story with funny things; it's about knowing who the character is, looking for interesting consequences to the actions of other characters and discovering the story that comes out of these consequences.

So - a new way of thinking - and we did our first canovaccio of the week yesterday. The result, still not smooth. I'm looking for the wins, because I've got a week and a half left, and there's no excuse for me not to leave doing something - anything - better than when I got here. Win #1 - I helped someone make a physical comedy bit that was singled out as good. Sort of win # 2 - I tried to listen and be flexible in the performance and respond. And I completely changed a bit during one scene, because it just felt like, based on what I was hearing, it was the right thing to do. The partial loss of this was that I let someone else's dominating presence on the stage back me down, and I could have gone with it and tried to rise to his energy. If I could set my sights on one goal for the next week it's to figure out how to spin out time in ways that are non-functional. By that, I mean that, when I feel like what's going on on stage is not furthering the plot, I want to get the hell off stage or, worse yet, I want to lower the energy around me, because I'm afraid that, if I do something that isn't functional, I won't know how to keep it up or how to end it when it's time. And I can see how being more comfortable with going in a direction that's not strictly functional and discovering incidental opportunities for humor could be a good skill to have, not just on stage. Goal #2 - Have more to say about rhythm by the end of this. During our session with Cecilia, she talked a bit with us about keeping up the rhythm of a scene, specifically that, if a character is about to enter, don't wait until you think the previous vignette is losing steam. Go before it loses steam. Then again close to the end of class yesterday, Antonio said something great about the rhythm of a sketch. He encouraged us to speak up if we felt that the middle of someone else's scene is losing energy, and to be ready to look for another line of inquiry. Also, he said that good rhythm isn't just fast. As a viewer, it seems easier to keep the audience engaged if it is fast, but there's more subtlety in this work than simply making sure everyone moves at top speed. There's joyful energy. There's tragic energy. There's lots of different specific kinds of rhythmic energy we can use. So - lots more to ponder. 

Silence is an enemy in commedia dell'arte. It makes time heavy, and commedia is quick and light. Have you ever tried to make energetic, multi-faceted sound incessantly for 15 minutes without a script? The potential for lameness is very real, especially in improvisation and especially where four different languages are being simultaneously spoken. The number of times I think, "What do I do next?" in the space of five seconds feels like the number of atoms in the universe.

Facing this has been one of the first times since I got here that I yearned for the crutch of music, because I like to think about my next move. Music can cover silences, and *even better* it contains rhythm that propels me forward in a way that's difficult for me to generate on my own. Basic, but I'm way less practiced at using my voice improvisatorially to fill a scene, while being mindful about my movements, than I am with the moving to music, both in the early and contemporary music contexts.

Yeah, I know - don't think too much, Shaw, but the truth is, I don't like to interpret stylistically specific things before I understand what everything means, and I still don't understand a lot. Of course, as I practice, behaviors burrow into my brain and body and construct what, at its fastest speed, becomes a component of intuition. There are some very, very intuitive actors at this course, but the best of them are still wrangling the tension between intuitive impulse and shapes that fit 'the style'. We have to learn the characters' traditional behaviors and create a harmonious overall picture on stage. That's part of why we're here - learning the complete definition of commedia piece by piece, then learning by trial and error how to work together to build a picture.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, lots of people asked me what commedia was, and I had a more-or-less academic, historic definition, but I always ended up saying that I didn't quite know what this was going to be. I privately imagined commedia as a 'Three's Company' of the Renaissance. A set of goofy characters pitted against some loser antagonist, who in the end is bamboozled by the band of protagonists. Of course, there are lots of ways in which this definition fails, but some connections exist.

One example is the critical importance of the 'physical mask' of the characters, the way the body is composed to represent a character, which retains an integrity no matter what they're doing. The 'perfect' lovers can't be dragged too far down into low behaviors, because then they stop being who they are in the universe of commedia. Chrissy from 'Three's Company' always stands sway-backed and with big doe eyes, right? If she's being serious or hurt or upbeat, her fundamental look bleeds through the expression. Those behaviors are her mask, and if she were to drop them, it would disturb the energy of the comedy.

This relates to another of my favorite principles of commedia so far, which is that there is no neutral, because neutral is a state without tension, and without tension, there is no theatre. Even when a zanni is, for example, simply looking for someone, his physical mask is clearly in order to articulate the natural tensions of his circumstances. Setting aside the tension of the plot, a zanni is surrounded by cultured, higher-class characters and that class tension part of our comic opportunity. Rather than walking in a pedestrian manner, a zanni's basic walk is a stylized with bowed back that signifies his servitude. If he suddenly were to walk upright after establishing this mask, the zanni disappears and you see the actor. That, we can agree, is no good. Yes, it's still a human walk, but a walk that admits no opportunity of relief from those conditions that define the character in the commedia world. Consistency and continuity go along way toward suspending the audience's disbelief and making the fantasy more potent.

In other news, today we started learning about Pedrolino (otherwise known as Pierrot). Whoa, did I hear some exciting and interesting new things about this character. Hopefully more on that soon.