Accademia Internazionale di Teatro - Roma

2nd Year
Program

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2^nd Year Program

International Theatre School of Rome
Programs for the Actor European Training

INTERPRETATION

From Comedy of Art to Molière

THE COMEDY OF ART

There will be an overview of the history of the Comedy avoiding a nostalgic repetition of it. The characters, plots and situations will then be analyzed, to show the basic philosophy of this style. The beginning of the comedy, which was raw, but full of playful vitality, will also be studied. It’s the “extempore comedy” that was not yet imprisoned into a fixed text or formal codes. Students work in groups to create a plot that contains the recurrent comic mechanisms of this comedy, such as: equivocal situations, disguises, misunderstandings, recurring situations. After the creation of an outline, students try to act out themes and characters of the Comedy, without changing the situations and the timing that the comical language has preserved throughout the centuries.

Analysis of fixed types
Beginning with the study of the attitudes of the animals we will discover the peculiar feature of the Comedy’s characters. These characters will be liberated from any psychological connotation and become fixed types that behave by following defined and musical mechanisms.

Characters and plots
Captain Spaventa (Andreini); the zany Spaniard( Franciosini); Zan Panza de Pegora (anonymous); Doctor Pgnaton (Croce); the Neapolitan (Soldano)

Approach to masks : Postures, walking, stylization.
Arlecchino, Colombina, Pantalone, Captain, Doctor, Pulcinella

THE FARCE

It’s a kind of theatrical expression that has its roots in the mimes, singers and story tellers. It was born inside the profane medieval theatre and it contaminates popular traditions of the “farce theatre” and also the Comedy of Art to become a form of dramatization that we can find in many authors comedies. We can find it in Shakespeare (The comedy of mistakes, Measure by measure, etc.) and, of course in Molière. The farcical work lived trough many époques until today especially in English tradition as demonstrated in the exhilarating farcical comedy of Michael Frayn “Noises Off”.
The farce is a work connected to a comic situation and not to quips; the plot, full of misunderstandings is constantly open to parenthesis of jokes and to recurrent comics mechanism, concluding with the revelation of misunderstanding and the overturning of the starting situation. Scene by scene, characters are constantly searching for balance often cause of the imbalance of next scene. The farcical text is a complex musical score that tiding to the rhythm of walking and stage “entrances” and “exits”, composes a structure of stage pictures finely articulated. Students will work on different farcical text practicing to manage quick scores of text still maintaining the lightness of improvisation inside a fixed text and also they will learn to feed a scene sensibility in order to capture new joke cues at every performance.

Typify characters: unfaithful and impeded couples, the corrupted, the ingenuous, the double-dealer, the cheats
Plot’s intrigue, misunderstandings, disguises
Text as a score that scans musicality of stage picture
Jokes and comic recurrent mechanisms
Funny action, funny situations, the “ torments”
The chasing acceleration of the final situation

MOLIÈRE

Finally, the actors will deal with the theatre of Molière: at first they will practice some brief dialogues between two or more characters, subsequently a whole act will be interpreted, paying attention to the delicate balance between text - plot - situation and joke. Students will finally condense a whole Molière Comedy and they will choose an interpretation and write an original version. The universality of human behavior, the fusion between form and content and the joke archetypes fixed by the text will be highlighted through the analysis of the following plays: "The Hypochondriac" - "The miser" - "The ridiculous precious" - "The Tartuffe" - "Monsieur de Pourceugnac" - "The School for Wives" - "Don Juan" ; all those plays have been staged during years along with an interesting romanticized biography of M. Bulgakov: “Life of Mister De Molière”.

Molière and human “archetypes”
Non conventional acting style
Interpretative realistic naturalness
Popular and refined language
Registers and tones mixing
The joke fixed inside the text

“Shakespeare”: theatre and cinema

A first dramaturgical approach will be made through the analysis of the tragedies and comedies written by Shakespeare. Some passages from these plays will be used to experiment with a particular tragic and metaphoric interpretative layout, without relinquishing the irony or the humor of the situations.

ANALYSIS OF TEXT

The “cause-effect”
The study of acting in first grade, begins from the analysis of different characters’ feelings path. We will try to valorize the motivations and the rousing causes that induce protagonists of often extreme events, to transform intentions and actions, discovering that the dramatic peak of the scene in often situated in the quick passing from a feeling to another.

Scene and by-play
We will then analyze, for example in a dialogue, the action of an active character: “the scene”, that involves the prosodic and timbre choice of text, the pauses and the word rhythm, the physical dynamic, the look, the impulses, the breathe.
The silent reaction (look, moving, impulse, breathe) of passive character: “the by-play”, will give different meanings to the “scene” and will be the deepest indicator of relation between characters.

The interpretative style
We will experiment how dry and shaded reactions of characters, conduce to an interpretative realism while the exasperated once to a more metaphoric and evocative representation of drama. The frontality to the audience brings back characters to universal feelings, while the scenic action towards the other actor, pushes them to a more intimate relation.

TRAGEDY

The Shakespearean tragedy is staged by alternating different styles: the epic, characteristics of which are the tragic monologue and the choral by-play; the caricature, which has a grotesque and ironic style; and the first level which is obtained with a realistic recitation of dialogues and monologues. But, rather than concentrate on the form, our research is aimed at the universal themes of his works: the relationship between man and power; infidelity and deceit; candor and hypocrisy; the relationship with the supernatural; wisdom in madness; the obstacles in the way of passion or loving sincerity. During the revisiting of the Shakespearean tragedies the universality of his themes is also emphasized by the contamination with modern settings.

ROMANTIC AND FARCICAL COMEDY

The evolution of the stereotyped themes of the Comedy of Art, which Shakespeare developed into real human plays, will be highlighted in the course of the studies. Such a varied and multiform text offers the best occasion for the study of the realistic dialogue and a true interpretation. The actor leaves "the fixed-archetype" behind to become a character with a fragile and tormented mind. Through the use of the metaphor, he expresses his thoughts on the search for truth: the truth of emotions, the truth in situations, an interpretative truth. We will discover how, in Shakespeare’s plays, humor is always the result of the overturning of a plausible situation. The wise intrigues alternate the tragic with the comic situations; linear characters with grotesque characters. It’s like a game of double meaning: of drama with the parody. The comical elements, which have an ambivalent function of exalting and of slightly deriding the romantic aspects of the story, generate typical intrigues with Farce.

THE “FOOL”

The analysis of Shakespeare’s Fool, as one of his unique characters, conducts us to the grotesque style. The Fool acts as a counterpoint that suspends the plot and opens up, through a tragic-comic game, towards a more concordant and direct relationship with the spectator, which will lead us to humorist and "Buffoonish" surroundings.
Numerous plays will be analyzed: - "King Lear" - "Macbeth" - "Hamlet" - "Othello"- "Richard III” - “Romeo and Juliet" - "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" - "Twelfth night" - "Much Ado About Nothing" - "The Merchant of Venice" - "The Taming of the Shrew" - "The Tempest" - "Love’s Labour Lost" - "The Merry Wives of Windsor" - "The Comedy of Errors".

Analysis of text
Characters’ feelings path
Motivations and circumstances: cause-effect
Action: scene/reaction: by-play
Monologues and dialogues
Interpretation in verses, realistic, evocative, allegoric, intimate
The “fool”
Works revisiting

SHAKESPEARE AND CINEMA

Shakespeare stages relationship between man and life, creating an elastic and comprehensive structure, able to involve changing feelings. Modern man is attracted and putted in doubt by his evocative strength. This is the reason why cinema is been often inspired by his works and it is demonstrated by the fact that protagonists of his tragedies and comedies have been the inspiration for a lot of cinematographic transpositions. Moreover his symbolic and metaphoric power creates an equilibrium between word and vision, fundamental elements of cinematographic narrative. We will first study the filmography of a chosen work with a careful analysis of the interpretative style related to contest, époque and direction. After, the study will concentrate on the practice of a dry and essential interpretation, full, at the same time, of shades and thickness.

Text analysis
Character’s construction
Practical exercises on identification
Construction of the dramatic action
Time-Rhythm-Dramatic scores
Narrative arch
Reproduction of significant scenes ( trying to avoid imitative mechanism )
Shooting
Direction and editing

Filmography

Grotesque Theatre, Medieval Buffoon, Modern Buffoon

BUFFOONS

Introduction
The tidy consistency of the tragic solemn gait suddenly breaks up on deformed and interlaced bodies of the buffoon’s flock; a whole and unite body, more than the ancient chorus, and here he comes as a counterpoint of the mythical tragic hero, a disquieting and mocking character: the buffoon, powerful and bright dislocator of reality. The buffoon believes in nothing and makes fun of everything, indispensable to the same society that meantime avoids him; he shows how good and evil live together in human nature and they express in small actions of daily life. With a look that goes through époques and cultures, buffoons reflects our intemperance, denouncing absurdity, often spreading of human hypocrisy.

Settings and references
Even historically going back to buffoons of medieval courts, it is in Shakespeare that the “fool” finds his dramatic and metaphoric connotation that allows us to put this character inside the ironic and grotesque dramaturgic landscape.
The figurative art of Bosch, Bruegel and Goya, ("The Original Sin" - "The Great Exodus" - "The Last Judgement" - "The Fall of the Rebellious Angels" - "The Apocalypse" - "The Deluge") with its colors and the anxious, expressive and demoniac charge, gives us an idea of buffoon flock. These are "pictorial images” that dissolve into new theatrical structures. Once again theatre, painting and danced choreographies come together to form a “symbiotic life”. These paintings suggest themes for study and improvisation. It’s a collective interpretation of real “paintings in action”.
The study of the grotesque will continue with the parodistic style of the medieval Buffoon. Life and its parodistic farce are unveiled by wise fools, deceitful monks and mocking traitors. They accuse the society of being governed by the hypocrisy of the king. The art of the Buffoon is cruel and derisive; it is the black but sincere soul of humanity. Buffoons are refused by society, so they turn sacred values into amusing parodies. The grotesque stories by Edgar Allan Poe "The Devil in the Belfry", "A deplorable adventure", and “The man that was consumed" and "The Buffoon school" and "Dance of the Great Grisly" by M. De Ghelderode are the literary references for the buffoon style. In these tales, the Flemish spirit and Celtic fables are mixed with magic and mysticism.

Flock, deformations, characters, costume’s research
Buffoons, who are inhabitants of fenlands, of suburbs, of medieval courts, of Gothic Cathedrals, are deformed; they have huge bellies and enormous humps. Such deformations are used as weapons of sneer and accusation; from them buffoon draws his
strength. Buffoons move and walk all together, tied together in a flock. The flock is a tightly entangled mass - the symbol of the complicity and solidarity among buffoons. Forming this figure requires a long period of collective exercises. The student has to capture the sense of prank in the rhythmic and anxious movement of the flock, in the way it occupies space, in the sudden apparitions and in the mocking escapes.

THE PARODY

Study of the Parodies
In the parodistic game the buffoon chooses the object of his prank. He plays the character or the situation; he makes them come alive for an instant and show their essential characteristics. Then the buffoon will completely destroy the object of the parody giving his comment with a pleased and malicious smile. Buffoons make fun of the fashionable, religious or powerful world. Ambitious and fanatical characters, with their fixations and over-emphasized clichés, become the favorite targets for mocking and prickly parodies. Through this style students learn how to conduct a game with a false naivete and then to transform it into an aggressive accusation. Fast and sudden changes of looks, of attitudes, of ironic immobility, driven by an amazing "syncopated rhythm", will be experimented.

Modern Buffoon
Beginning with the medieval buffoon, students will end with the study of the modern buffoon. His prickly and mocking spirit will remain unchanged, and so will his unrestrained pleasure in the accusation against the vices of man. In this instance he will wear the civil clothes of the modern man and he will transform his physically deformed appearance into the psychological deformation of the character. A finer satirical game will emerge, without changing the irony and the sharp parody which are typical of the medieval buffoon.

The show
The creation of buffonish play is a formative and cultural operation with many aspects: students are stimulated not only on the interpretative side but also in the directive, dramaturgical and social one. The staged works are deep and original, very actual and, at the same time, of a universal reading, able to involve students and surprise the audience.

Comedy and Humour

THE COMIC PHENOMENON

Until this point, students have been observing the world and have let it reflect in them, during this phase the actor will search for his deepest part and will observe the effect that this has on the world, meaning the audience. We are now dealing with a very particular theme of the school: The clown. The clown is not the party entertainer who makes children laugh but is the one who stakes his weaknesses, both physical and psychological, with consciousness and self control. The research of the own clown needs a great personal human experience since clown doesn’t exist outside the actor who performs him; at the base, the discover of the own ridiculous side that in real life we try to hide and the transformation of a personal fragility into freeing theatrical strength.

The Poetic of solitary Clown
The clown has to be authentic, sincere, transparent. He reacts to everything that happens, always lives in a state of hypersensitivity, curiosity, surprise. His intentions are always readable even when he tries to cheat. He is idealist and pragmatic, dreamer and realist, strong and weak at the same time. He is never stereotyped, doesn’t look for common place or laugh because this comes spontaneously from the extreme conflict between his soul and his logic.

The research for the own clown: the costume, the walking, the spoken
The solitary entrances
Relation with the audience
“ The exhibition”
Relation with the object
Falls, accidents, dysfunction
Anomalies, detachment, innocence

The comic couple
This phase includes the definition of the comical couple, whose two functions are August and Monsieur Loyal. Their movements comply to a rigid rhythm which is almost mathematical. This rhythmic has the advantage of forcing the future comic-actors to decompose their actions and reactions and to follow a strict oral accuracy and precision in their gestures.

Monsieur Loyal and August: Power relation “boss-subaltern”
The “pretence” failure-The “accident” failure
The announcement of exercise-execution-unmasking the trick-punishment of the August
M. Loyal’s joke-success-August’s joke-failure- punishment of the August
Fights and duels
Analysis, study and of brake of “gag”

THEATRICAL CLOWNS

From these stereotyped sketches of the circus tradition students will undertake some deeper research into the knowledge of human fragility and its dramatization in order to discover the modern antihero. The antihero hides behind every "bide", which means the inevitable failure of the number introduced. In this way the microcosm of the single man becomes as huge as an epic tragedy. The audience is put in a state of superiority, it is moved and laughs, but unconsciously, with a feeling of freedom, it laughs and is moved of itself. Scholastic improvisations will be later defined and staged in resonance with the audience.
The clown’s work is global: the actor will have to create his entrances, direct them, make the music and costume living in a state of constant creativity: without a great imagination clowns cannot exist!

Characteristics and tricks of the own clown
Learning, thinking, acting like a clown
Simulation of freedom sense
“ The comic trio” and hierarchies
The proof: the number, the sing, the contest, the audition, the exam, the interview
The imitation: the story, the news, the announce
Music: the choir, the band, the orchestra
Dance, choreography, sport
The Metatheatre: theatre company, the technique, the opera, the tragedy, Shakespeare
God, love, sex, death
Dinner, courting, cheating, wedding, funeral
Daily life situations
Surreal, absurd situations
Construction of “clownish sketch”

HISTORY OF THEATRE AND DRAMATURGY (1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

The study of primitives’ theatre, characterizedby rituals, the Greek theatre and the ancient tragedy, the Latin theatre: comedy and tragedy, the Medieval theatre: jester, farce and the religious drama of sacred representations; the renaissance theatre and the rediscovery of ancient classics, the comedy of art, sudden and auteur comedy: Moliére, the ‘700: theoretical development of acting and function of theatrical art for society, the bourgeois theatre and the ‘800 theatre: Romanticism, Symbolism, Naturalism and Verism. The birth of Cinema

Dramaturgy

The Greek and Latin Theatre: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristiphanes and Plautus
The Medieval Theatre: mysteries, sacred representations and jester. Chrétien de Troyes
The Oriental theatre: the No, the Kabuki, the Mahabharata
The Comedy of Art: Flaminio Scala, G.B. Andreini
The ‘600 Theatre: Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Theatre, Molière, Calderon de la Barca Racine
The ‘700 Theatre : De Beaumarchais, Goldoni
The Romanticism: Goethe, Hugo
The Symbolism: Maeterlinck
The nineteenth-century Naturalism: Antoine, Brahm, Giorgio II of Meiningen
The Verism: Verga

ELEMENTS OF DIRECTION AND DRAMATIZATION
(1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

The writing follows step by step the study of interpretation. During the first year students will practice writing and staging of poems, monologues and narrations both original and of auteur. The approach to a real composition work will be during the 2nd year, beginning from the analysis and staging of intrigues and plots of the Comedy of Art, to the elaboration of a dramatization where improvisation disappears and there will be a fixed plot and text. During the 2nd year students will also start from sketch’s writing and free adaptation of “scenes” and “acts” to arrive to the synthesis of an entire work of a studied author.

Revision of a monologue, dialogue and narration
Writing and staging of a story, tale or myth
Monograph and history of a character
Writing and staging of a story with different characters
Writing and staging of a situation of “daily life”
Writing and staging of a melodramatic story
Original plots
Synthesis and abridgment of a scene, act or auteur work
Parodistic and grotesque sketches
Comic and farcical sketches
Writing of brief cinematographic dramatization, shooting and editing

VOCAL EDUCATION: SPOKEN LANGUAGE (1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

Tone – Volume
Syllabication, Phrasing, Articulation
Pronounce and prosodic elements
Tonal pitch, accent, pause, rhythm, intonation
Phonation related to movement and space
Free voice from body
Poetic diction and diction dynamic
Meaning of a text in reading
Text comprehension and communication
Interpretation: intention and under text
Poetical and dramatic reading
Verses and prose reading
Narration – Monologue – Dialogue
Rhetoric
Choral text, text in movement and in elements: fire, water, earth, air.
The soliloquy
Laughing – Crying – Whispering
Deformations: voices in falsetto, guttural, and broken
Dramatic and sonar score
Onomatopoeic

MUSICAL EDUCATION AND SINGING (1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

Elements of rhythmic and sung reading.
Rhythmic and melodic exercises
Sensitization to musical forms and structures
Keynote concept: dominant and subdominant
Singing practice of different pitches and intervals
Recognizing vibration, accents and metre
Vocal – rhythmic - melodic improvisations
Rhythm, singing and stage movement
Canons and second voice
Consciousness of harmonic aspect – music’s vertical
Creation of four choral sections: soprano, contralto, tenor and bass
Percussion section

TECHNIQUES OF MOVEMENT (1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

Bioenergetics
Relaxing techniques
Yoga elements
Thai Chi Chuan elements

MOVEMENT ANALYSIS

Analysis and decomposition
Feldenkrais method
Economic movement
Development in space
Rhythm, balance and impulse
Movement origin

NEUTRAL MASK

Search for neutrality
Big spaces, horizon, sea and heights
The elements: water, earth, fire and air
Materials, animals
Lights, colors and seasons
Big and small spaces

ELEMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY DANCE (1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

THE GRAHAM TECNIQUE

Diaphragm respiration
Solar Plexus
Contraction/Release
Study of spiral, jumps and falls
Torsions, bursts and spatial reversals

AFRO-DANCE

The element “Earth”
Rhythm and basic movement
Dance as commemorative action
Rituals: propitiatory, fight, funeral
Yoruba technique: Elleguà – Yemaya – Changò

MIME (1st and 2nd YEAR)

Basic technique, manipulation and fixed point, mime sequence
Illusion of objects and daily actions
The abstract mime gesture (Decroux’s symbolism)
Segmentation and reconstruction of mime sequences (Marceau’s technique)
The essential dynamics of the human body: throwing, pushing (Lecoq’s techniques)

THE EXPRESSION OF THE BODY AND CHOREOGRAPHIES
(1^st and 2^nd YEAR)

TRAGIC CHOREOGRAPHIES

Danced formation of a Greek chorus
Tribal Ritual; epic themes
Sequence on four elements
Symbolic choreographies

DAILY LIFE

Metropolitan backgrounds
Animal choreographs
Study of room dances and stylisation

MELO’ CHOREOGRAPHIES

Tango Stylization
Waltz Stylization
Comics and ragtime

EXAGGERATION

Acrobatic pyramids and
Circensian virtuosity
Human scenographies
Relation with the object

CLOWN

The object, the obstacle, the “gag”
The acrobatic falls, dance
The sports action, the dressing
“Beating up” simulation
Poetic choreographies

GROTESQUE CHOREOGRAPHIES

The study of body deformation
Allegorical parades
Settings on Biblical themes
Settings on grotesque themes
Flemish pictures: Bosch, Bruegel

COMEDY OF ART

Characters’ stylization
Coreographies with demi-masks
Folk and court dances

PANTOMIME

Accelerated pantomime, cinematographic
White pantomime
Comic strip pantomime

The lecture notes concerning programs of the International Theatre School of Rome is written by the theatrical didactic responsible of the school, approved by Program for Actor’s European Training (Syllabi for the Actor European Training): Art. 7 of 3/4/08.

1^st year Program

3^rd year Program

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