Commedia dell’Arte-performances at the Theatrestudio

The reason that I started working fulltime at the Theatrestudio at first was that I would direct and teach Commedia dell’Arte. I was just coming back from USA where I had finished the last year at Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre where I had studied a full year of Commedia dell’Arte.
Through the years I have made quite a lot of Commedia dell’Arte performances at the Theatrestudio. Most of the shows I have made I made with the second year students (mostly in their final performances), since Commedia dell´Arte is such a technically advanced form of theatre.

When teaching Commedia dell’Arte at the Theatrestudio it is not just motivated in itself. To learn the genre also helps the actor in many other ways such as stage, focus and body control, understanding different levels of rhythm on stage, mask, acrobatics and other disciplines, playing the audience and so on.

A great deal of The Commedia dell’Arte that I work with is from its earliest tradition, but always with modern references and in a modern context. It is a vulgar, crude and more direct in its form. It is not literary, to the extent that the plot can be seen as ”a bad excuse to act on stage”. Instead it is the theatre of the actors where the impact is not on what is done but on how it is done.
The humor lies much more in the physical expression and in the plot than in the text. In my Commedia dell’Arte there is also always a lot of acrobatics and much singing, music and other disciplines.

It is I who has written or adapted all scenarios together with the students. I always wrote the scenarios, then the students filled it with their improvisations and scene sketches, finally I wrote a script based on what they came up with.
I instructed the students how to make their masks as well.

Here is a little list of the Commedia dell’Arte performances I have written and directed at the Theatrestudio:

• 2007 – Bombafu
  Bombafu was the last Commedia dell’Arte performance at the Theatrestudio, anyway for now and under Kulturama. This show was played in grammelot and it may have been made in more of the spirit of the carnival than usual. Our opening was at the main stage in Piazza San Marco at the Carnival of Venice. The performance then played in Rome.
  Home again we played four shows in Stockholm before we went out on a Sweden tour, playing 10 shows on everything from the Castel of Ulriksdals to Gamleby folk high school.
  Click here to see a TRAILER from the show.

• 2005 – KlinePine
  This performance had a great focus on the mask acting itself and also on music and singing. The performance toured up to the arctic regions of Norway, through Finland and Västerbotten.

• 2004 – Boioioing!!!
  This show was played without any language, in “grammelot”, since the performance went on tour in Eastern Europe (Poland and Latvia) after we had played in Stockholm and southern Sweden. A lot of the performance focused on disciplines such as acrobatics, improvisation and fencing.
  Click here to see a TRAILER from the show.

• 2001 – Raga dagga dang
  This was a “autumn show” for the second year students that year, so it never went on tour. I wrote the scenario in order to really challenge each student in the class and it became a very varying show. It was also here my cooperation with Teater Teatropen started since most of its members went to the Theatrestudio that year.

• 2001 – Mirakeldoktorn (The Miracle Doctor)
  The scenario is a further adaptation of Adriani di Luccas scenario (as in 1994) and also this time it was only girls in the ensemble. The two performances were very different. This one had more music acrobatics and skills in it. After playing in Stockholm we toured the north of Sweden and Norway. It was also with this show we started our collaboration with Joakim Dominique, who became responsible for the music in the Theatrestudio’s final performances for a long time.
  Click here to see a TRAILER from the show.

• 1999 – Slavinnan (The Slave Girl)
  This is the first of the international tours we, since then, continuously have been out with, this time we went to the south of Sweden and Denmark. The performance was an adaptation from a scenario – ”La Schiava” – from the 16:th century.

• 1998 – La Famiglia – eller Hjälp mej upp (La Famiglia or Help me up)
  This was a show played in the fall (consequently it was not a big final show), but it was played for a rather great audience in our premises of that time. The scenario was made out of our own improvisations and exercises.
• 1995 – Äntligen (At Last)
  This too was a performance with a very large ensemble, built on two different plots. But in this production we worked with two action lines that never really interfered with each other. It was played on two different stages on different levels.
• 1995 – De Sanslösa Komedianterna (The Senseless Comedians)
  This is the first Commedia dell’Arte performance that was played as a street theatre show at the Theatrestudio. It was built on two different plots that where interlaced into one.

• 1994 – Tartaglias halsduk (The Neckerchief of Tartaglia)
  A performance in collage form with a lot of threads joined together to a performance. It was played by a big class of 16 persons in a small basement.
• 1994 – Pulcinella blir Doktor (Pulcinella becomes Doctor)
  That was a performance built upon a scenario adapted from Adriani di Lucca from 1734. The performance was played by a class with only girls.
• 1993 – Commedia dell’Arte
  This was the first performance that I directed at the Theatrestudio. It never got a real name. It was a long zealous performance made by in ”The Forced Marriage” by Molière, one carnival show and lots of our own scenes.