The Weird and Wonderful

On the 29th of May at the unearthly hour of 9 o clock I attended the second day of preparation for the New Vic Borderlines’ visit to Poland. This was only my second day exposed to the weird and wonderful ways of Comedia dell’arte and the first workshop that I had participated in that challenged my abilities as both an actor and performer. Being part of this project is my first experience working with the New Vic Borderlines and although writing this after having partaking in only two days of workshops I have been made to feel both comfortable and welcome by the leaders and participants.

We began the day with a yoga session which allowed us to warm up our bodies and adapt to the physical mind-set that Comedia dell’arte demands. We then started developing the techniques by using our entire bodies to portray a particular emotion. Using the masks was at first a challenge as it is important to never shield the mask and always have the mask facing the audience. We soon adjusted to this way of thinking and began to portray a range of emotions using the mask whilst keeping the audience in mind.

By the end of the day we had fully developed our character using the masks. We took part in exercises whereby we began to think about how our character would wake up in the morning, eat, get ready, and interact with other characters. This then helped when we began to block the play. We decided to perform the whole play using only mime and not text as it allowed us to think more freely and really commit to each action to display to the audience what was happening in each scene. After a hard day’s work I felt that not only I but everyone had fully adapted into working with the mask and becoming their character.


Katherine