ipl-logo

Commedia Dell Costumes And Masks Essay

1191 Words5 Pages

Costumes and masks are pivotal in commedia dell’arte. It allows the audience to become fully immersed into improvisation and embody the characters. The costuming symbolises the attempt to show how the character may have looked within the production. When it comes to commedia dell’arte, the clothing and masks the actors wear portray a factor of the production, in which allows the audience to become fully devoted into the production. The costumes and the masks work together in order to produce a fictional story that makes the audience become a part of the world of the production of a commedia dell’arte. The costumes and masks are seen as extensions of the character’s story and creates that escapism in which the audience looks for when going …show more content…

When entering a production, the performance is meant to take an audience away from reality. With the use of costumes and masks, it brings escapism to the forefront. An aspect of an event(Carnival) called carnivalesque brings to its audience costumes that are not ordinary. The carnivalesque becomes “an elemental force, nurtured by 1000-year old tradition of folk humour” (Mcconachie, “Theatre Histories: An Introduction”, 104). The costumes of commedia dell’arte use carnivalesque to interpret the societal structure of the performance. The carnivalesque portrays high culture clothing as extravagant, and out of the ordinary, which was used as a tool to make the audience escape into a realm of fiction. With the costume of the Pantalone, his one piece is bright red and unlike the Harlequin’s costume, which has patterns, the brightness of the color depicts that carnival look. The expressions on the masks also resemble the possibility of escapism, with the long noses and different expressions. When looking at the costumes of commedia dell’arte, carnival celebration could be seen as a major influence of escapism. Natalie Schmitt, author of “The Style of Commedia Dell’Arte Acting: Observations Drawn from the Scenarios of Flaminio Scala.”, presents the idea of escapism through commedia dell’arte, stating

Show More
Related

Summary Of She Kills Monsters By Qui Nguyen

471 Words | 2 Pages

Costumes help to understand the play better Evil Tina and Evil Gabi are enemies that can identify from their costumes. In my opinion, when they were playing Dungeons and Dragons games their props and fighting scenes were not convincing. But throwing dialogues with 90’s music and references were giving the memory of the past. The cast did not look like exactly 90’s students but they tried their best. The play explores the theme of grief, loss, and

Read More

Stereotypes In Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Myth Of The Latin Woman

902 Words | 4 Pages

When explaining the discrimination she’s received for her culture’s fashion while at school, she describes “on that day at school, we were simply made the negative models by the nuns who were themselves not credible fashion experts to any of us. But it was painfully obvious to me that to the others, in their tailored skirts and silk blouses, we must have seemed ‘hopeless’ and ‘vulgar.’” (372). By including her own personal experiences of public embarrassment for the expression of her culture, Cofer hopes the audience will pity the burden that comes with being Latina. She also incorporates words with negative connotations, such as “negative” and “hopeless” in order to appeal to audience’s emotions even more extensively.

Read More

Taming Of The Shrew Essays: How Characters Mask Their Character

438 Words | 2 Pages

It is the invisible masks that the three lead identities [Kate, Petruchio, and Bianca] use in the play to please and showcase the appropriate character in the current situation. Cross-dressing [disguising] is another way to support this statement of manipulating characters by appearance. Lucentio and his servants [Tranio and Biondello] need to be known to be a part of the rich community to join the high-class and have a good relationship with the people there. Due to the disguise, Tranio almost tricks Baptista into marrying his precious daughter, Bianca. While on the other side, the three leads show the concept of controlling role play by often changing the ways in which people view them.

Read More

Costume In Blood Brothers

1989 Words | 8 Pages

A particularly effective element of the production was the use of costume. The costumes exposed the time period, transporting the audience back to 1981, immediately involving me in the story. Costume represented the social class the characters belonged to. Mr and Mrs Lyons were rich and had a high social status, their costume established their character; Mr. Lyons was wearing a suit and Mrs. Lyons wore tights and uniform.

Read More

Film Techniques In Cabaret, Directed By Bob Fosse

1000 Words | 4 Pages

Costuming as a film technique allows the audience to condemn and admire certain characteristics such as Sally Bowles’s naive attitude towards the natural world. Throughout the movie, Bowles is seen to boost her personal corruption by wearing extravagant and revealing clothing. Flaunting her promiscuity, the audience is able to gather the condemned idea that Sally Bowles uses her sexuality to move up in the social ladder. The use of Sally Bowles wearing bold makeup, fur coats, green nails and an unusual fringe allows the audience to see how Sally wishes to be seen as “shocking”. When Sally Bowles is in the real world, the audience can see just how flamboyant her attire really is with the contrastingly plain costumes of the Berlin women and men.

Read More

Bella An American Tall Tale Analysis

583 Words | 3 Pages

The costumes provide additional humor to an already hilarious play. Bella’s costumes help show the development of her character throughout the show. They all have a large padding on the behind to show her large backside. The most interesting costumes, however, are worn by the freaks in the circus.

Read More

Cradle Will Rock Analysis

605 Words | 3 Pages

They walked slowly and languished about while the rhythm in the theatre came alive through all of the micro movements of the audience in the theatre. True art is for humanity as a whole and not for the select few. When power tries to use art, it either only manages to imitate it, through the use of costumes at the masquerade, or the art it manages to get becomes corrupted, as Diego’s painting became corrupted and destroyed down to a syphilis

Read More

How Did Afro-Cuban Culture Change

1220 Words | 5 Pages

The long skirt receives most of the attention, which is in fact used as a prop in the dance, one-hundred percent of the time, the dancers grip remains on their skirts as they physically interact with them while dancing. These skirts are long, flowy and offered in various colors and styles. The females would hold onto both sides of the skirts, swaying them side to side as they jump, rise and twirl around, and as they move their skirts with the rhythm it ripples. Men also have their own costume; they would wear either a shirt, sleeveless vests, hat, dress shirt, and pants. Costumes distinctly relate to the certain style of dance that is chosen to be performed.

Read More

How Did Commedia Dell Arte Influence American Theatre

710 Words | 3 Pages

Theatre has been used to centuries around the world. A specific kind, Commedia Dell'Arte, has helped to shape and lead a pathway into the future with European theatre. During the 16th to 18th century in Italy, Commedia Dell'Arte (in English is called the 'Comedy of the Profession', or 'Comedy of the Art') started to become visible and very popular. This form of theatre was unwritten, but instead a spur-of-the-moment, practice of drama.

Read More

Calderon De La Barca's Life Is A Dream

1821 Words | 8 Pages

The very act of cross-dressing itself was subversive, especially in Spain where costume was hugely important, not just on stage but in real life. Literary critic William Egginton notes in An Epistemology of the Stage, that when it came to costume the "Spanish public was extremely sensitive to such signifiers of class and could not, for example, tolerate or comprehend a scene in which the signs of social status presented by costume and speech would conflict". (402) With the audience so sensitive to costume details, what must they have thought about Rosaura 's male attire? Women dressing as men was a common device used by playwrights in the Golden Age (mujer vestida de hombre ) and one wonders was it merely because it was practical?

Read More

Fuenteovjuna Play Analysis

1252 Words | 6 Pages

To begin with, the wardrobe choice was a key factor as it represents many things in a play such as age, genre. When I first walked in the Quientero Theatre at University of Houston, I didn’t expect the theatre to be pitch black in the beginning with minimal lights. The separate lighting helped emphasize the mood and plot of the play. This address the fleeing of the soldier, the king and queen, and the town’s people who used the commanders head a s a trophy in act 3.This also emphasize what was going on at the same time the king and queen seen as high and mighty above all others and someone to be adored. Another noticeable factor was the lighting, which endlessly focused on the main artist in question, providing a clear set up and enhancing the plot as well as the theme of sadness.

Read More

Dance Show Satire

950 Words | 4 Pages

Circuses are more than just an extravagant evening rendezvous. The exhilaration gained from entire families’ valiant works a hair’s breadth away from injury, with not a net or harness to cradle their shortcomings, is hardly matched. One could not imagine a greater feat of merriment if left to their own devices and for good reason. That is to say the waves of eyes darting towards the centerpiece incite no lesser feeling of chagrin. The tides of townspeople, dressed to the nines with only a scaffold to support their boisterous japery bind the crowd, their purposes ultimately served in total.

Read More

Commedia Dell Arte Character Analysis

990 Words | 4 Pages

Commedia Dell’arte is a form of theatre identified by improvisation and a cast of set stock characters. This theatre type was created in the 16th century in Northern Italy which later was found to be performed all over Europe. Comedia Dell’arte is an Italian word which directly translates to ‘comedy of skills’. The theatrical performances were usually performed in open air venues and based on a set scenario and plan which the characters then improvised their dialogues on. It focused on improvisation, physicality, and refined comedy that an audience could easily understand, using masks, stock characters, nonsense language called ‘ grammalot’ , comic business known as ‘ lazzi’ and over the top acrobatics to tell their stories and entertain their audiences.

Read More

The Concept Of Burlesque Theater

1766 Words | 8 Pages

Introduction The mere concept of Burlesque Theater is a problematic one. This is primarily because the term Burlesque itself cannot be defined singularly for at different times in history, it has been portrayed by the world to define different concepts. Although the term itself has been derived from the Italian word burla which means “a joke”, it did not enter the English lexicon until the mid-seventeenth century.

Read More

Modern Theatre And Emile Zola, Naturalism In The Theatre

1132 Words | 5 Pages

“Imagination no longer has a function”, says Emile Zola in his essay, ‘Naturalism in the Theatre’. Many of the ideas which Zola has discussed in this essay have been taken up by modern theatre, both in theory and practice. Modern theatre, for instance, is aware of the fact that analysis and not synthesis should be the basis for theatrical production. It is with this theory at the back of his mind that Bertolt Brecht has discussed theatre’s role as an educator only if the elements associated with spectacle are removed from theatre.

Read More

More about Commedia Dell Costumes And Masks Essay

Related Topics

Open Document