I’ve started working on next summer’s play and the twelve characters have all now entered the world relatively unscathed. I’ve opted to go back to a traditional commedia dell’arte storyline set in Florence in the 15th C and one problem for me was avoiding what are known as the ‘stock characters’ who already exist. For me the naming of characters is the essence of their birth; it's what makes them unique, gives them a history and defines what they do. The story is what these particular individuals do.
So although I have a rough storyline I can't really develop it in any way until the characters have names, which they now have. Neither do I like taking characters off the shelf; they have to be unique to my story. Because commedia dell'arte uses archetypes (that is a character embodies the essence of a broad type of human being - like in a cartoon such as Bart Simpson, an archetypal American kid but at the same time a unique individual), I have to have the archetypes I need for my story - so coming up with appropriate names was really significant this time.
Because Harlequin is so well know I wanted to use that name, but he will be my Harlequin and embody the things I need from him. Likewise with Colombina. She has always been my favourite Commedia character, so I feel she is mine anyway. One of the lovers is called Silvio, which has been used in the tradition, but he will nevertheless be my innamorato (or young male lover)! All the rest are uniquely named and already making their presences felt on the stage in my head! So look out for Il Magnifico Fondo, the miserable and mean old Florentine banker and the poverty stricken astronomer, Il Dottore Pazzo, the love struck Catalina, the moon gazing stable boy Peppe and the rampant Il Capitano Grandecazzo! Watch out, also, for Pazzo’s moon ship that Harlequin steals in order to fly away with Peppe and set up his own government on the moon! And, of course, while I call them ‘my characters’ now, they will eventually declare their independence too and begin a life of their own.
We go into rehearsal on Monday 13th May and perform it for the first time on Dial Post village green in West Sussex on Thursday 13th June. The full itinerary will be on our website soon.
The tour of ‘The Dressing Book’ is now over, so if you missed it you will have to wait until we tour it again to see it, which we will, probably in the Autumn of 2013, and next time we hope to include Dorset, Somerset and Devon. But we’ll keep you in touch. 2,338 people came to see it at 25 venues with an average of 93.52 per venue, which is way above what we expected, so we are delighted.
Most of the feedback we have had has been really good. Some people would have liked more live music like the summer, but it’s much easier to do that in our outdoor tour when we have six actors and for this one we only had three, of course – and they were very busy doing multiple costume changes when they weren’t on stage. Also, we wanted to try out a more subtle kind of play, more poetic and delicate in its storytelling and physical movement and a lot of people have said how much they enjoyed that. But of course people like different things and I know many of you love the sheer ‘silliness’ of our summer shows. And there will be more of that!
Please come back to us with what you liked and what you didn’t. You are our audience and, while we want to take you to new places, it’s important too that we stay in touch with what you like.
Thank you also to everybody who did front of house for us – and we got to know several new people, which was lovely. Thank you also to all our local organisers who did a brilliant job as usual.
