The formula for a Commedia character...
Commedia is like baking. There are ingredients that make it work. (I might be watching too much Great British Baking Show)
I want to talk about one Commedia ingredient - the characters. I might say that those characters are the most important part, but... it's more complicated than that. I don't want to argue about the most important part of the recipe, so, I'll get to the point - those characters are also almost recipe-like.
A Commedia character start with two ingredients:
A mask.
An archetype.
From those two things we can build the whole character. An archetype gives us a place to begin the exploration of the personality of the character. The mask gives us a starting point for some more practical things, the voice and the body.
This is where we (the Tut'Z) start. We start with the mask, use that to inform the physical form of the body and how that character sounds vocally. Once we have those two elements we can step into that characters shoes and play (with the archetype in the back of our mind). That step - the play - is really important. It's where we find out all the fun little weird details that make a character whole.
- A few thoughts from Patrick