NEUTRALITY AND STAGE PRESENCE

The study period opens with the search for the “neutral state,” a condition of total openness, preparatory to any subsequent stylistic application, preceding every action and placing us in a state of discovery in relation to the surrounding space and to others, fostering listening and receptiveness. The actor must first become aware of their posture, everyday gestures and the signals they convey, to detach from them and search for a stage presence that is clearer and more versatile.

THE NEUTRAL MASK

In the search for the “neutral state,” the neutral or inexpressive mask is essential. It is a preparatory mask that erases facial mimicry. In this way, attention is focused on the body and, more precisely, on the torso—center of breathing, engine of every feeling and thus of every movement. The first step is observing the elements: water, fire, earth and air, with the aim of grasping their intrinsic dynamics and transforming them into breath and abstract movement. From the line of force born of the breath, only later are the limbs and head involved. The next step is removing the mask and introducing sound, word and text to create a theatrical transposition. This research aims to achieve less stereotyped acting because it springs from experience of the many shades within the spectrum of human feelings and from a more conscious expressive potential.

MYTHS AND RITUALS

Approaching the search for natural, essential acting, the actor confronts the origins of theatre: a symbolic and evocative representation of signs. From here, the research follows two parallel paths: the verbal one through myths and the gestural one through rites.

Propitiatory Ritual
At the dawn of time, primitive peoples believed in the mystical union of all living beings and in the creative force that ensued: from the effort to identify with nature comes the spirit of imitating animals and the cathartic abstraction of the forces that move the world—at the root of ritual dances and thus of theatre itself as an evocative and propitiatory representation. The ritual culminates in the creation and exaltation of the Totem, representing the mystical union between animal and human and evoking its power.
Propitiatory texts are drawn from African, Amerindian, Asian and Indo-European myths.

Funerary Ritual
Funerary dances, present in all animist religions, were meant to protect both the deceased and the entire tribe from evil spirits. In an ecstatic bond, the living helped the dead reach the spirits of their ancestors. No rite has such a “vitalistic” essence as the funerary one: its dance has a strong rhythmic basis and all movements are performed with maximum vigor to create a circularity that evokes the infinite.
Funerary texts are drawn from African, Amerindian, Asian and Indo-European myths.

Combat Ritual
It represents the game-preparation for war. Tribes confront each other in choreographies that train the body for rapid attacks and defenses, representing the clash with the enemy in its various phases, up to the auspicious epilogue of victory and triumph. Two opposing choruses face off, exorcizing the violent aspects of war through the abstraction of danced combat.
War texts are drawn from African, Amerindian, Asian and Indo-European myths.

TRAGEDY

Greek tragedy—the first truly theatrical style addressed in Year 1—is the starting point for tracing the essential dynamics that shape human conflicts: the drama of humankind’s relationship with the gods, destiny, transcendence.
The experience of tragedy is recognizing humanity’s belonging to a shared past; discovering what it means to “be a chorus” within a stage space.

The tragic stage space
The starting point is researching and recognizing the spatial levels towards which to direct and push the text:
– upward, as an appeal to divinity, expressing the drama of humankind between Heaven and Earth
– opening frontally towards the city: the stance of the courageous human, leader, hero
– towards the ground, to manifest pity for the human condition and appeal to the gods of the Underworld.

The Greek chorus
The ancient chorus, an essential element of Greek tragedy, serves multiple functions: it interprets and judges the human condition, narrates the epic story and, above all, amplifies the dramatic tensions of the coryphaeus. Thus every action of the coryphaeus is followed by the chorus’s response, representing consensus or conflict. Work on forming the chorus refines listening, fosters a sense of a single organic whole capable of modifying the balance of the stage space, and allows experimentation with choral structures and images of strong symbolic and representative impact.

The hero, the coryphaeus, the poet, the orator, the priest
The hero’s action represents humankind’s journey into the unknown; this path unfolds in phases: departure, the decisive trial, and the return to share knowledge. Work on interpretation starts with studying the orator’s rhetoric, continues with the coryphaeus’s narrative account, the study of “verse” entrusted to the poet and, finally, the priest who experiences an evocative or premonitory text with symbolic references to animist rituals.

Study of tragic texts
Monologues and dialogues from the major tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are tackled by merging text with the architecture of the stage space. The tragic monologue is a cathartic moment in which the tensions and conflicts of the epic unfold. Work on the elements (water, earth, fire, air) is now applied to text performance.

Final production
The first Academy production is built around Greek Tragedy. The myth is represented by actors who stage the text, becoming at once heroes, chorus, human scenography and danced ritual that amplifies the action and words of the other actors. The plot proceeds through a sequence of juxtaposed scenes dissolving one into another. The result is individual work on the epic text that fuses with a powerful choral dimension.

NARRATION

Renaissance Theatre unites dramaturgical genres and diverse forms of theatrical representation. It was performed in courts, squares and universities in multiple forms—from sacred plays to learned fifteenth-century comedies staged by court intellectuals. The actor’s professionalism was not acknowledged, although the profession had existed since the time of street jugglers and court jesters; it developed from the mid-sixteenth century through the following century with Commedia dell’Arte. While the birth of Renaissance comedy fostered an autonomous form of theatrical prose, the tradition of jesters and mummers was not lost, continuing thanks to court jesters and mimes. Their work did not draw on the Latin tradition and featured models that would partly flow into Commedia dell’Arte. The second study period tackles different narrative forms, from chivalric tales to Eastern stories, from the narrator/mime to the fables of the Western tradition.

The literary tale: courtly, sacred and secular
– Courtly chivalric
– Lyric poetry of the troubadours
– Mystery and Sacred plays

Characteristics of the chivalric romance:
– Love plays a predominant role and takes the form of courtly love
– Devoid of any historical reference, it deals with purely legendary matters
– A fantastic and fairy-tale imaginary prevails, based on ancient Celtic legends.

Structure:
– Stories follow one another endlessly with dynamic development rich in twists
– Use of agile, flowing rhyme
– The chansons de geste

THE THEATRE OF THE FAIR

The Theatre of the Fair was born from the oral and popular tradition of the great fairs which, in the 12th and 13th centuries, animated Paris and major European towns: in the Middle Ages the theatre building disappears; due to the lack of a dedicated structure, performances take place in public spaces—churches, squares, streets—or in private aristocratic halls. The revival of economic activity after the fall of the Roman Empire, merchants and exotic goods brought by now more frequent journeys, the resurgence of games and tournaments, and the celebration of sacred and secular festivals made the squares a meeting place for the population and for a variety of spectacles. Actors, poets, acrobats, street jesters, musicians, ballad singers, dance masters and quacks turned festival time into theatrical time. The “Forains,” itinerant actors, transformed the square into an open-air stage for their timeless tales. This narrative style would evolve into the “grand-guignolesque” tale, which turns traditional children’s stories into gory, grotesque gags.
Students engage with this style by tackling its different modes of storytelling.

• The narrator
  Introduces legendary themes, aiming—through a taste for exaggeration—at a comedy that is both naive and delirious, linked to improvised comedy.
• The mime
  Relates text to image, so the tale becomes a rhythmic score that marks dissolves between narration, dialogue and pantomimic setting.
• The charlatan
  Doctors, actors, illusionists stage the persuasive charm of “sellers” of every era, enchanting audiences with stories poised between fiction and reality.

Work with the neutral mask is infused with martial arts, Tai Chi Chuan and Zen practice, bringing the actor back to breath, sensing and being—addressed at this stage through the study of Eastern philosophies, sacred Indian texts, Taoism and Tibetan tradition. In parallel with the Theatre of the Fair, we will therefore work on a narrative style opposed to the Western tradition: through Zen fables—with essential, symbolic language—Tibetan fables, where gesture blossoms baroque, and the bold humor of Mongolian and Chinese stories, we approach the mythical tale of the Eastern tradition.

THE BASEL MASKS

Study and construction of characters is preceded by preliminary research on the “zones of silence,” where breath carries feeling and makes the body speak. Tools for this research are the Basel Carnival masks, called larval masks: masks whose facial features are not fully defined and whose expression is molded by the movement and breathing of the actor, with an overall effect of dilated reaction times that highlights the essential nature of human feelings. Basel artisans divide them into four categories: animals, village fools, extroverts in expansion, introverts in contraction.
At the preparatory level, these masks push the actor to seek the “speaking silence” and above all to decompose the character’s “action-reaction” timings.

ANTHROPOLOGY OF GESTURE

The study of the characters of the human comedy begins with analyzing everyday life and observing behavior: gestures, postures, uncontrolled reactions of humans, particularly when interacting with their peers. Thanks to theoretical-practical work on Desmond Morris’s socio-behavioral analysis, we discover that unconscious actions and reactions often speak a language far more revealing than words. Through improvisations set in places and situations of daily life (the station, the bus stop, the elevator, a lunch, a meeting, a wait, etc.), the actor trains to strip away conventional reactions and to seek, in themselves and in relation to others, interpretive authenticity.

CHARACTERS AND COUNTER-CHARACTERS

At this point, all the preparatory work observing everyday characters and experimenting with masks—postures and breathing qualities that characterize various types— is applied to creating a character. First, the character is defined by external signs: gait, musicality of speech, ways of reacting and relating. A precise context is then reconstructed (e.g., a communication conference or a meeting organized by a matchmaking agency, etc.) in which each actor will inhabit the chosen character. This type of improvisation compares characters and brings out their psychological and physical nuances (quirks, tics, habits). Students must build a well-defined identity for their character and, to test its credibility and definition, must “wear” the character from home and make it live in everyday situations—on public transport, at a café. Later, the interaction between characters is subjected to strong emotional stress by simulating emergencies (blackouts, fires, various accidents, etc.) or surreal scenarios: panic and awakened survival instinct will fuel uncontrolled reactions that reveal each character’s hidden nature or the latent desire to be other than oneself: the “counter-character.” A coward may show courage; a shy person, boldness—transforming the situation from everyday to surreal. Based on what emerges in improvisations, short, more articulated and organic scripts can be created.

• Psychology, posture and gait of the character; rhythm and musicality
• Realism and allegory of the character
• Search for the counter-character

This working method for character construction allows us to analyze, through the same lens, dialogues and situations from theatrical literature drawn from early twentieth-century authors such as Chekhov, Lorca and Pirandello; now, motivations and given circumstances in which the character acts are provided by the author. The character’s evolution is tied to the plot, and their psychological and behavioral lines should be inferred partly from text analysis and partly from a personal interpretive path.

• Credibility and interpretive authenticity
• Interpretive study of action and relationship with the other

STANISLAVSKI’S SYSTEM

From the actor’s work to work on oneself, Konstantin Stanislavski’s “system” begins with two fundamental processes for character construction: the “Process of Personification” and the “Process of Revivification.”
The “if” and the “given circumstances” place the actor in the creative condition of asking how they would behave in that situation, just as a child does in early play. In the constant search for “truth,” as opposed to emphatic acting clichés, the actor must call upon their “emotional memory” to relive past feelings and keep them alive up to performance, and upon their “physical training” through which, over the years, they mold their body into a flexible instrument.

STRASBERG’S METHOD

Another approach to character construction comes from studying Lee Strasberg’s method, which developed in America from elements of Stanislavski’s pedagogy, focusing primarily on emotional memory. The actor frees themselves from pretense not by imitation, but by becoming the character to be represented—an identification. Training here is emotional and, starting from a psychological and behavioral analysis of the character, the student is led to assume their most intimate identity. The goal is to discover the character’s motivations, personality and feelings based on one’s own, to know their body, emotions and deep reactions. Improvisations are based on interpreting situations emotionally analogous to those in the text, but without the support of lines. Exercises in affective memory consist in reliving experiences from one’s past to recall the feelings involved at that time, then using them to create a true and believable character.

• The actor’s training
• Concentration, observation, attention
• Psychological and behavioral analysis
• The “ifs” and the “given circumstances”
• Exploring the character: motivations, feelings, personality
• Emotional memory – Affective memory – Sensory memory
• Public persona – Private persona
• Dramatic action and narrative arc
• Imitation of people through observing reality
• Imitation of animals
• Evolution of the character with unusual traits

If Stanislavski’s System is used within primarily theatrical research, Strasberg’s approach is preparatory to a more cinematic application. Indeed, at the end of work on Strasberg’s Method, students will face the camera. Through relaxation exercises, control and expressive modulation, they will learn to favor the lens’s close eye, depending on the shot (tight shot, close-up, medium close-up). They will train to enter the character within a take, to interpret a story segment non-sequentially, and to repeat the action multiple times without losing freshness and credibility.

• On-camera shooting of the constructed character
• Organicity and naturalness
• Immediacy of action
• Non-sequential interpretation relative to the story
• Repetition of action
• The dynamics of close-up, medium shot, long shot
• Film and TV audition techniques

MODERN DRAMA

The historical period from the 1800s to today—with its revolutions, conflicts and major migrations—is extremely fertile ground for exercising interpretation of the wide range of human feelings.

Melodramatic acting
Compared to ancient tragedy, modern drama breathes differently—softer and more suspended— which changes acting into a more lyrical, intimate vocal timbre and movement born of the play of attraction and repulsion.

Interpretive sincerity
The actor undertakes a study in interpretive sincerity by working on feeling—from reading in verse to genuine theatrical and poetic research on emotion: love, hatred, hope, pride, strength, weakness and nostalgia; shared passions that the actor explores within, set in dramatic environments. Specific improvisations arise: meeting, abandonment, betrayal, separation, nostalgia, social conflict, war, exodus.

Characters
Characters are extraordinary and ordinary men and women—sometimes unknown—ranging from the early “industrial age” to the present: abandoned orphans, ruthless usurers, slave traders, sailors, prostitutes, soldiers and fighters, tormented lovers, migrants seeking fortune.
This phase brings together various research paths addressed during the year: from character work to narrative skill, from stylization and abstraction of feelings and passions to creating a script able to use film techniques (flashback, dissolves, long takes, shot/reverse shot) to structure a story that necessarily includes fragmentary testimonies and temporal leaps.

ACTING IN VERSE

Narrative, short stories and author’s poetry
The study of romantic literature from the nineteenth century to today—the poetry and prose of great authors from these centuries, from Maupassant to Rimbaud, from Neruda to Éluard, from Apollinaire to Hikmet, from Rilke to A’isha Arna’ut—will become the starting point for text development and short poetic writings to transpose on stage. The purpose is to develop an interpretive capacity that evokes the thoughts, images, sounds and deeper meanings that each poem contains.

COMIC “MELÓ”

Exasperation of Feeling
When the tragic nature of human destinies becomes exasperated, drama transforms into laughter: the same stories, the same characters, seen through another lens, take on grotesque traits. Thus, students discover the tragicomic potential of melodrama and confront the creation of short scripts with farcical mechanisms: the “narrator/mime,” the narrator’s “voice-off” in relation to silent dialogue, the malfunctioning of the narrative mechanism, role reversal, etc.

From White Pantomime to "Ragtime"
Starting from the acting of silent cinema, full of mimetic emphasis and exaggerated facial expressiveness combined with stage movement, we arrive at the study of accelerated pantomime and its evolution in the world of imagery. Pantomime is the art of silent storytelling; it uses mimetic language, composing a vocabulary of gestural meanings that describe characters, environments, and feelings. The nineteenth-century white pantomime of the lunar Pierrot introduces the study of poetic melodrama.
Its historical evolution, aided also by the birth of photography and silent cinema, pushes toward a caricatural form, transforming fluid characters into fixed types with accelerated mime. Scenic writings at this stage therefore take as their stylistic reference the “silent cinema of the 1920s”: pratfalls, misunderstandings, cream pies in the face to the tempo of “ragtime” (Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy).

COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE

The masks of Commedia dell’Arte are defined as “fixed types” because they represent “the human archetype.” In play, in fact, are the most basic instincts of human nature: survival, food, love; as well as swindles: making people believe, flattering, taking advantage, double-dealing.
From the birth of improvised comedy, to Commedia dell’Arte, and then to scripted comedy, we will study the arc of this irreverent and vital genre, which, from the freedom of scenarios, transforms its derisive power under the reins of a fixed text.

Analysis of fixed types
The starting point is always observation: this time of animals, their peculiar characteristics and movements. Such observation frees the interpretive approach from psychological weight and leads us to analyze the characters of comedy for what they are—fixed types of social and character typologies. The scenarios, the only literary form at the foundation of the great tradition of improvised comedy, see their plots unspool from basic human passions: hunger, amorous intrigue, trickery, war, alternating with a counterpoint of recurring comic mechanisms such as misunderstanding, disguise, role reversal, the “qui-pro-quo,” the running gag, the “avalanche,” the instinctive lazzi characteristic of this genre also known as “commedia all’improvviso.”
Exercises will start precisely from the historical scenarios of the tradition to experiment, through these improvisations, just how arduous it is to make instinctive and natural what is instead the result of complex, sensitive, and long-practiced actor’s work.

Characters and scenarios
Capitan Spaventa (F. Andreini); Rodomontadas and the Spanish Zanni (L. Franciosini); Zan Panza de Pegora (alias Simon Comico Geloso); Doctor Graziano and Pgnaton (G. C. Croce); Neapolitan Doctor (A. Soldano); the Innamorata (I. Andreini), the Innamorato (D. Bruni); and moreover, from Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative by Flaminio Scala: Li duo vecchigemelli; La fortuna di Flavio; La fortunata Isabella; Le burle d’Isabella;Flavio tradito; Li tragici successi; La gelosa Isabella; Isabella astrologa; Gli avvenimenti comici, pastorali e tragici.

Approach to the masks: postures, walks, stylizations
Arlecchino, Colombina, Pantalone, Capitano, Dottore, Pulcinella, Infarinato, Pedrolino, etc.

Satire in Molière's Works

MOLIÈRE

Molière takes up themes from Commedia dell’Arte scenarios, but fixes them in a written text and adapts them to his own contemporaneity, thereby transforming lazzi into social satire. His immense ability lies in insinuating laughter and mockery not only in the bustling action of comic mechanisms, but also in the subtler folds of humanity—its smallness, its quirks. While at first he uses for his characters the psychological naïveté of masks borrowed from traditional Commedia dell’Arte, from “Les Précieuses ridicules” onward he increasingly delineates comic characters, determined by an internal contradiction, by a pretense of vanity, by an initial mistake, and with a lucid, detached gaze he shows the audience the internal contradictions of both the bourgeois class and the ecclesiastical and medical classes. Once again, students will practice monologues, dialogues, and soliloquies drawn from selected works.
Over the years, many works have been staged: “The Imaginary Invalid,” “The Miser,” “Les Précieuses ridicules,” “Tartuffe,” “Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,” “The School for Wives,” “Don Juan”; as well as a staging of an intriguing fictionalized biography by M. Bulgakov: “The Life of Monsieur de Molière.”

• Molière and human “archetypes”
• Non-conventional acting style
• Realistic naturalness in performance
• Refined yet popular language
• Mixture of tones and registers
• The lazzo fixed by the text

THE FARCE

Farce is a cross-cutting genre that arises within medieval secular theatre, contaminates the popular tradition of “fairground theatre” and Commedia dell’Arte, and becomes a recognizable form of scriptwriting in many authorial comedies. We find it in Shakespeare (“The Comedy of Errors,” “Measure for Measure,” etc.) and, of course, in Molière. It’s a genre that has remained active and vital up to the present day, particularly in the English tradition, as evidenced by Michael Frayn’s hilarious farcical comedy “Noises Off.”
A farce is a complete work anchored in situational comedy rather than punchlines; the plot, rich in misunderstandings, continually opens to lazzistic asides and recurring comic mechanisms, concluding with the revelation of the misunderstanding and the consequent overturning of the initial situation. Across the succession of scenes, the characters are always seeking a balance, often the indirect cause of the imbalance of the subsequent scene. The farcical text is a complex musical score which, tied to the rhythm of “entrances” and “exits,” composes a finely articulated structure of stage tableaux. Students will work on various farcical passages, practicing the management of tight textual scores, maintaining the lightness of improvisation within a fixed text, and nurturing a sensitivity to the stage, able to seize new lazzistic sparks that arise with each performance.

• Typified characters: unfaithful or thwarted couples, the corrupt, the naïve, double-dealers, tricksters
• Plot intrigue, misunderstandings, disguises
• The text as a score that marks the musicality of the stage design
• Recurring lazzi and comic mechanisms
• Action comedy, situational comedy, running gags
• Relentless acceleration of “entrances” and “exits”
• Hilarious reversal of the final situation

Shakespeare: Theatre and Cinema

Through Shakespeare’s works we begin an in-depth exploration of text performance: from studying elements of spoken theatre to interpretations in an allegorical key, or in pared-down cinematic readings. Monologues, dialogues and “scenes” will be used as needed to experiment with different interpretive and metaphorical pathways that never forgo irony or humor in the situations.

TEXT ANALYSIS

“Cause–Effect”
The starting point for “first-degree” acting—i.e., naturalistic performance—begins with text analysis aimed at tracing the emotional trajectory of the different characters. The protagonists’ actions are always moved by a mechanism of cause and effect and by the abrupt transition from one feeling to another, which usually coincides with the dramatic peak of the scene.

Scene and counter-scene
We will then analyze, on the one hand, the action of the active character: “the scene,” which implies the prosodic and timbral choices of the text, the pauses and rhythm of speech, physical dynamics, eye focus, impulses, and breath. And on the other hand, the silent reaction (gaze, shift, impulse, breath) of the passive character: “the counter-scene,” which confers different meanings upon the “scene” and is the deepest indicator of the relationship between characters.

The interpretive style
We will experiment with how dry, nuanced reactions of the characters lead to interpretive realism, while heightened reactions lead to a more metaphorical and evocative representation of drama. Direct address to the audience reconnects the characters to universal feelings, while staging the action toward the other actor pushes them toward a more intimate relationship.

• Text analysis
• Emotional trajectory of characters
• Motivations and circumstances: cause–effect
• Action: scene / Reaction: counter-scene
• Monologues and dialogues
• Verse, realist, evocative, allegorical, intimate performance
• Performance in English
• The “fool”
• Revisiting the works

• Text analysis
• Character construction
• Practical identification exercises
• Construction of dramatic action
• Tempo – Rhythm – Dramatic score
• Narrative arc
• Reproduction of significant scenes (avoiding imitative mechanisms where possible)
• Camera recording
• Direction and editing of the footage

Acting and New Media

Interpretive techniques are expanded through a specific application of acting within new media, modulated to adapt to radio language, and to film–television, dubbing, and voice-over work; as well as to the possibilities offered by online formats.

• Film acting
• Television acting
• Radio acting
• Film–TV audition techniques
• Dubbing techniques
• Voice-over techniques
• Acting in web series

Acting in Verse

In theatre, to express a character’s intentions as naturally as possible it is necessary to produce musicality. Even in life, when we speak, we produce a musicality. To deliver a line means to recount credibly the musicality of thought, how it works, its timing, and its stumbles. Verse, which presents a rigid grid of rules, is a different opportunity to refine technique. The same truthfulness of feeling is carried with analogous techniques in prose and in verse. The more archaic and out-of-use the language of the verse, the more stimulating it is to grasp its essence through rhythm and melody. We work on texts by Dante, Cecco Angiolieri, Petrarch, William Shakespeare, Torquato Tasso, Vittorio Alfieri, Ludovico Ariosto, up to Petrolini and the “gnosis of the fanfole” by Fosco Maraini.

• Techniques for acting in verse
• Metric forms of lyric poetry: the sonnet, the hendecasyllable
• Metric forms of narrative poetry: canto, stanzas
• The origin of the sonnet in Europe
• Metasemantic poetry

Improvisation Techniques

The second-year study path deepens the dynamic laws of theatre by turning mainly to writing, in the sense of staging the structure of the game. Three sets of questions guide our geodramatic exploration. The first concerns “challenges.”
What is at stake in human nature when different theatrical styles meet? The second refers to “languages.” Which languages are most appropriate to express these challenges? And the third refers to “texts.” Which dramatic texts can enrich the discovery of each territory? In short, the assignment for students is: “Tell us a story.”

• Storytelling techniques
• Affabulation

Grotesque Theatre, the Medieval and Modern Buffoon

THE BUFFOONS

The composed linearity of tragic progression suddenly shatters on the deformed and intertwined bodies of the buffoon pack, itself a single body, even more so than the ancient chorus; and behold, in place of the mythical tragic hero there appears a mocking and unsettling character: the buffoon, a powerful and lucid dislocator of reality. The buffoon believes in nothing and laughs at everything, yet is indispensable to the very society that shuns him; he shows how evil and good coexist in our nature, in the gestures of daily life. With a gaze that transcends eras and cultures, the buffoon becomes the mirror of our intemperance, denouncing the often rampant absurdity of human hypocrisy.

Settings and references
Although historically the court jester dates to the Middle Ages, it is in Shakespeare that the“fool” finds a dramatic and metaphorical connotation allowing us to place this character within the ironic and grotesque dramaturgical landscape. A precise analysis of the visual art of Bosch, Bruegel, and Goya(The Original Sin – The Great Exodus – The Last Judgment – The Fall of the Rebel Angels – The Apocalypse – The Flood) will allow students to grasp the “imaginary” of reference, while Dante’s Inferno and ancient biblical settings will be among the epic and narrative referents.
From biblical and Dantean settings we move to medieval and Celtic ones. Life and its parodic farce will now be danced by learned jesters, devious monks, and smiling traitors. A harsh indictment emerges of a society governed by buffoon-kings, and an art of cruelty and mockery—the black yet sincere soul of humanity. The new literary referent is M. de Ghelderode with “The School of Buffoons” and “The Ballad of the Great Macabre,” in which Flemish spirit and Celtic tales mingle with magic and mysticism. Students will move within the different dramatic settings developed in class, seeking, day by day, quality of presence and interpretive depth.

Pack, deformations, characters, costume research
Buffoons, deformed beings with enormous bellies, large buttocks, and tortuous humps, move in a pack—a tangle of bodies and a symbol of visceral complicity. Their formation requires a long period of collective exercises to capture the group’s unsettling rhythmic gait, its spatial grasp, its sudden appearances, and amused flights. Choosing one’s deformation—which influences gait and psychology—is the first step students take toward building their character. Next comes creating the stage costume by researching fabrics and old cloth treated to appear ancient and worn. Once assembled, these costumes—highly evocative on stage—broaden and transform the actors’ bodies, plunging them into a temporal dimension reminiscent of the dark allure of the Gothic and its decadent luxury.

PARODY

Study of parodies
Exercising acute observation and subtle wit provides the groundwork for building individual parodies: the actor first credibly imitates people and situations, then goes beyond benign caricature to reveal hidden thoughts and desires, clichés and frustrations of the “parodied” characters. Hypocrites, the ambitious and fanatical, the self-righteous and moralists become the targets of biting parodic humor, in which apparent buffoonish innocence suddenly flips into explicit denunciation. On the interpretive level, we experiment with rapid and sudden shifts of glances and attitudes, with stillness and flights, driven by a surprising “syncopated rhythm.”

The modern Buffoon
Starting from the medieval buffoon, we then study the modern buffoon. His derisive spirit remains unchanged—as does his boundless appetite for denouncing humanity’s vices. The buffoon now wears the civilian clothes of the modern man, transforming his physical deformation into psychological deformation. This yields contemporary parodies that, starting from everyday life, soon take on the sharp cut of buffoonish satire.

The show
Creating buffoonish performances is a formative and cultural endeavor with multiple facets: students are stimulated not only from a performance standpoint, but also in directing, dramaturgy, and social perspective. The resulting works are profound and original, very current yet of universal legibility, capable of engaging students and surprising audiences.