THRT 005A Final
Cassiaa
ItalianRenaissance.pptxItalian Renaissance and Commedia dell’arte
But first, a quiz!!
The Spanish Golden Age and the Italian Renaissance took a dramatic departure (pun intended) from other time periods we discussed. Please discuss what was going on in SOCIETY (think about $$$$, human advances, etc.) that allowed theater to flourish and change during this time and in these two locations?
Renaissance Humanist scholars in Italy, England, Spain and France had been rediscovering and PRINTING (remember the printing press had been invented which was a major development in societal European development) ancient Roman and Greek texts
WAIT! Back up: what is Humanism?
Renaissance artists began recreating these works of art
Italy
In Italy, most artists produced plays on temporary stages for students or court audiences (in other words intellectuals and aristocrats – not a wide public audience)
BUT between 1580 and 1585 a PERMANENT theater was built in Venice. The architect, Andrea Palladio, based much of the design on the Ancient Roman writer Vitruvius
Vitruvius had written De Architectura describing how a theatre is laid out and what appropriate settings looked like for comedy, tragedy and pastoral plays
The theater’s design incorporated old ancient designs with new technological development
scenery
Another huge development at this time was of perspective drawing?
Perspective scenery, in theatre, scenery and the scene design technique that represents three-dimensional space on a flat surface, creating an illusion of reality and an impression of distance. Developed during the Italian Renaissance, perspective scenery applied the newly mastered science of linear perspective and brought the craft of illusion to the Italian stage. An initial motivation may have been to allow theatre to move from outdoors into closed rooms, where perspective painting could make small spaces appear larger.
Influenced by the perspective painting of Renaissance artists and by the 15th-century revival of Vitruvius’ writings on architecture, Baldassarre Peruzzi applied the laws of perspective to scene design. His work provided a basis for his student Sebastiano Serlio’s De architettura (1545), which outlined methods of constructing perspective scenery and the raked stage—whence the terms upstage and downstage derive. In Serlio’s designs, painted scenery receded directly from the viewer toward a single vanishing point at the back of the stage. Angle perspectivewas an 18th-century refinement of perspective scenery. Several vanishing points were set at the centre-back of the stage and off to the sides, so that the scenery, receding in several directions, was pictured at an angle to the viewer.
A move towards realism
What does this mean ? Well from a design perspective, theater is becoming more realistic. The audience is looking at a scene that seems less ”architectural” and more realistic
By the 17th Century this realistic perspective became the standard for stage scenery throughout the Europe and remains so today
In order to create this realistic picture everything painted on the wings, drops and borders were drawn as seen from one fixed eyepoint AND the stage was raked up and down (thus giving us the terms upstage and downstage)
Proscenium
The design of this realistic scenery created a need to block the sides of the stage. This created the PROSCENIUM ARCH
This is basically a frame for the stage and has remained in most major theaters the standard today
To change scenes flats were pulled offstage behind the proscenium frame, revealing new scenery.
Until the 19th Century, scene changes primarily took place in front of the audience (the main curtain – also a new invention) was only raised and lowered once
Intermezzi
Italians loved spectacle – which is partly why they developed elaborate scenery
Intermezzi were little interludes that were performed between the main acts of a play – often suggesting parallels between Ancient Greek Gods and the aristocrats of Italy
They involved music and dance and they were very heavily staged
Intermezzi gave birth to Opera in the 1590s which came out of a desire to return to the relationship between music and speech in Ancient Greek Drama. Opera quickly became very popular in Italy and became a stage (literal and metaphorical) for perspective scenery
Opera houses also divided audiences (box, pit and gallery) in ways that would remain until the 19th Century and reflected European class systems
Commedia
Though most Italian theater was not open to the public Commedia dell Arte
No one knows for sure how or when Commedia came to be but it likely draws its inspiration from Roman Comedies
First mentioned in historical records in the 1560s and by 1600 it was being performed throughouht Italy, Spain and other European countries. Its popularity continued into the 1700s (although it is still performed and taught today).
Actor
The actor was the cuore, the heart, of Commedia since it was performed almost anywhere, had no set, and relied on the actor’s skills and talents when it came to their stock character
The script would merely lay out scenarios and the basic bones of a scene, after that the actors had to improvise
The stock characters of commedia are lovers, masters and servents
Within those categories are the characters of Pantalone: an elderly Venetian merchant often the father of one or more of the young lovers
Dotore: usually Pantalone’s friend or rival and usually a lawyer or doctor who loves showing off his knowledge, speaking Latin but is often quite dumb
The Capitano: pretended to be brave and would brag about his militaristic accomplishments but would actually be afraid of a mouse
The zanni: the servants usually at least two if not more, these were the characters who usually tried to help the young lovers and were actually the smartest characters in the “plays”
Harlequin: one of the servants who became his own character, clever but not smart
Pulcinello : had a large nose and a hump back, sometimes a servant or host of an inn
