Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 6 - 18/01/16

Today we continued to look at possible storylines for our Commedia Dell'arte piece. We first split into two groups (Rhiannon/Rob/James, Charlie/Ollie/Lorna/Lewis) and we started looking at devising. Splitting into two groups allows us to multi-task and allows no room for people not doing anything as there are multiple tasks being done at once.

In my group, we discussed how our story would be ordered if we were to go with our original idea of having a murder mystery. Having a scene list would help us if we weren't sure what to do in the future.  Last lesson we discussed that we wanted Harlequin's corpse to be found first and then have the story explained through flashbacks. This would bring a very abstract Brecht atmosphere to the performance. We constructed a scene order and this is how it went:

• Brighella finds Harlequin's Corpse/Panic
• Captain's explanation (Flashback)
• Pantalone/Doctor's explanation (Flashback)
• Columbina's explanation (Flashback)
• Brighella's explanation (Flashback)
• The Lover's explanation (Flashback)
• Zanni's confession (Flashback)
• Zanni's promotion

After completing this, we conferred with the other group to see what they had done. They had come up with a different way to approach the death of Harlequin instead of a panic when Brighella finds him; a court case! As explained in the photo (right), we would have Pantalone as the Judge due to him being at the top of the power tree and a former Magnifico, Doctor as the Jury as he is meant to be intelligent and of high status and Captain and Columbina as Lawyers as Columbina has her cunning side and Captain loves the attention. Brighella would be one suspect as she is known for using those with power over her and is sometimes known to kill. Our other suspect would be Zanni as he has spent many years at the bottom of the status ladder and we feel he'd want to have a taste of what power is.

When I heard this idea, I was very questionable about how Harlequin would come into the story much as he would only be available in a maximum of two scenes involving flashbacks. Collectively, we thought that Magnifico should be murdered instead and that Harlequin was a "witness" to the murder. With this arrangement we began to devise a scene which involved Captain trying to grasp everyone's attention, Zanni being too scared to speak and Harlequin not taking anything seriously as usual.

Partway through this scene we decided that after devising nobody really liked this idea and preferred our original plan as it got everyone involved a lot more and had lot more variety of scenes to offer. We split off into groups whose characters often interact and devise a short piece involving the plot of our original story.

Ollie and I (Doctor and Pantalone) decided to devise a short scene which involved us showing our displeasure for Harlequin as he took Pantalone's money and Doctor's money, our cunning plan to kill him with a potion, and the making of said potion.

James and Rhiannon (The Lovers) devised a short scene where they interact lovingly like the stereotypical Lovers and Lorna, Rob and Charlie (Brighella, Captain and Harlequin) devised a short scene where they took an alternative approach to how Harlequin died; this involved him killing by accident during a sword fight between Captain and Brighella.

For next lesson, we will present these ideas to each other and discuss how they may alter our original storyline.