Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to drama.

This is lesson two out of six for Commedia dell'arte: An Introduction.

Today's lesson is about using mime in Commedia.

My name is Mr. Wood, and I'm going to be your teacher for this topic.

Can you make sure that this lesson is taking place inside? Make sure that there's plenty of space for you to work safely.

Please make sure that your shoes and socks are off.

The floor is not slippy, and you're wearing comfortable clothing, ready to work.

Pause the video if you need to to get those things done and we will get started.

For this lesson, you are going to need plenty of space.

Well done to those of you that have completed your introductory quiz.

If you haven't had chance, now is the time.

We'll start by recapping the previous lesson.

We'll move on to understanding mime.

We'll continue with applying the mime in Commedia before we finish with our exit quiz today.

So last lesson, we discovered where Commedia dell'arte came from and a handful of the core values that make it a distinguishable style.

The first being stock characters, the same in every performance.

Largely improvised work with the exception being the lazzi, which you can remember is a rehearsed section of comedic scene, can be any duration.

Audience involvement, trying to get everybody included.

Mask work, which we'll come to in more detail next lesson.

Exaggerated play, which was the focus of our last lesson.

And all of these extra elements combine to make it non-naturalistic, okay.

The stock characters are largely the same in each performance.

It is the storyline that changes.

Is that true or is it false? What do you think? Three seconds, true or false? The answer is, of course, true.

The characters stay the same throughout.

We may not see all of them in the same performance, but we do see the same recurring characters throughout.

Your first key word for today is emotion.

And that is a strong feeling derived from your circumstance or mood.

Your next one is exaggeration.

And that is the way of making something seem larger, more important, better or worse than it really is.

You might recognise that from last lesson.

An improvisation is a performance that is not practised or planned.

The Commedia dell'arte performers had to compete with the range of dialects and languages as they toured through Europe.

And you may be wondering how they did this.

How do you go into a different country and communicate with the locals and expect them to know what's going on? They had to try and engage the masses and make it clear to them.

The way they did this was through mime.

Something that works alongside language, but isn't constrained or limited by a lack of understanding through words.

We're going to start by understanding mime next.

And to do this, we need to warm up.

So gather the space that I asked for previously at the start of the lesson, and let's get ready to work.

We're going to start today's warm up with some light jogging on the spot.

So if we're all ready and we've got that space, on the spot.

Just hands by your side, quite loose.

And in a couple of seconds, what we're going to do is we're going to do a short burst of sprinting on the spot.

When you're ready, we're going to do it for five seconds.

So, three, two, one.

One, two, three, four, five.

And back to jogging.

We're going to do that again.

Second time, just five seconds in three, two, one.

One, two, three, four, five.

And back to the jog.

Okay, starting to feel a little bit warm? I'm starting to get a little bit out of breath.

That's good, it's not a bad thing.

Okay, let's start with our rolling our shoulders back, just what we did last lesson, for eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Take them forwards, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

This time we're going to make those circles wider going backwards with our arms. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

This time you're going to connect your hands to your shoulders and we'll go around for eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

This time we're going to go forwards.

In reverse, all hands up to the top.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Hands on your shoulders.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Okay, shake your hands a bit.

How do you knees feel? I think we need to warm up our knees a little bit.

So I'm going to turn to the side.

Hopefully you can see me a little bit better, but I'm going to go down into a lunge and then back up.

See how far down you can go.

Don't push yourself too far to the point where you hurt yourself, okay.

You definitely shouldn't be landing on the floor harshly.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

Okay, you should start to feel quite warm now at this point.

If you don't feel like your legs are as warm as your shoulders, if you're hands aren't as warm as your legs, please go back over this video again to make sure that you're safe and ready to do the work ahead.

If you're ready, let's move on.

Mime involves the use of the body.

Do you think that that's true or false? Three seconds to have a think about that.

Think about what we've just done.

Three, two, one.

The answer is of course true.

It uses 100% of the body to communicate its intentions.

Mime is a series of clear, exaggerated and obvious movements, including gestures, which communicate meaning and emotions.

Emotions being quite an important word here.

Mime must have the following: energy, the whole body, and precision.

You can mime almost anything.

Have a little look at this.

I wonder if you can identify any of the skills for mime in the clips you've just seen.

For now, you get to have a go yourself.

So your activity now is to mime opening a present.

It sounds simple, but that's exactly what it needs to be.

Practise this without talking and try to notice how you go about making this clear for your audience.

If you've got a mirror accessible, use that now.

If not, a reflection in a window, anything like that will be incredibly useful.

You need to pause the video and come back to us once you've had to go for the next task.

All right, what did you notice? Facial expressions? Were they clear? Gestures? Did they have precision? What about your space? Did you incorporate a full use of space or did you stay static? How could you have used your whole body? And would people in a crowd be able to clearly understand what you're trying to do? I wonder if there's anything we can do in facial expressions, gestures, and space to make it even clearer.

So your next task is to now develop how you open the present.

And you can do this by considering the moment before opening the present, the moment of opening it, and the moment after opening it.

Break it down into those three clear chunks, And that should make a lot more sense as to what you're trying to communicate to an audience.

To do this, you need to pause the video and then please come back to resume when you're ready.

All right, what did you notice? Did this help to add clarity? By breaking the meaning of the scene down into sections, it can often help us make a clearer message.

So hopefully you found some nice, clear instruction in that in delivering your message to an audience.

This time, I need you to develop how you open your present, but in a different way.

I would like you to ask the following items. Exaggerate your gestures, a bit like what we did in our first lesson.

Make them have a start and a finish to make them precise.

So similar to what we've just done in a previous activity.

And give it some energy.

This will look entirely flat and not as effective if it doesn't have your full energy.

So yet again, please pause the video, complete your task, and then come back for the next instruction.

Did you notice anything different in this time round? Did you exaggerate your gestures as much as we practised last lesson? Did you look forward or up at any points as if there was an audience there? Hopefully even if your audience are teddies on a bed or cushions on a sofa, pens in a pen holder or books on a shelf, that works fine.

There are more core elements to consider when moving.

To start with I'd like you to experiment with resistance, and by resistance, I mean the thing that stops us doing what we would like.

So for example, if I'm trying to push a door open, there could be something stopping me from doing that.

And that's what we're going to do with this task.

Step one is to go find a real door inside your house.

Don't forget to have the before, the during, and the after moments that we've looked at so far.

Step two, little bit different.

I need you to find some books and put them on the other side of the door.

Maybe three or four books, nothing too much.

This should, when you try to open the door again, give you a little bit more resistance.

And step three, practise the last step, but minus the door and the books.

So in theory, when you do mime, the last step, you will be able to see how you incorporate resistance as part of your mime.

You need to pause the video, complete the task, and then press resume when you're ready for the next step.

Now, is there something different you noticed about this? Does resistance give us something more? Did step three look the same as step two, in your opinion? Because if it did, then that's your job well done.

And how exaggerated was it? Could you have pushed it just that little bit further? This time, I'd like you to experiment with weight.

So we've looked at resistance and now we look at weight.

Step one is to carry an imaginary pile of books in your arms. Think about the moment before, think about the moment of, and think about the moment after.

Step two is to then try it again, but with books in your arms. Hopefully this gives you the sense of weight and resistance.

And then step three is to scrap the books and try it a final time, and see if you can copy that element of weight and resistance.

This shouldn't take you too long, so please pause the video, complete the task, and then rejoin for the next step.

And what did you notice about this? Did the books help you make it look more effective this time? Similar to how we did it with the door? Did you over-exaggerate how heavy those books were? For example, were your arms all the way down on the floor? "Oh, I'm really struggling to carry those books." Or did it look just right? For this task, I'd like you to imagine you're crossing a road, but you need to incorporate hesitation.

And that is the thing that makes us consider, Should I do it? Should I not? It's thinking time, all right.

You need to exaggerate being cautious by trying to cross a road multiple times before you succeed.

And here's a tip.

The longer it goes on, the better it will get.

Your exaggeration will help you show emotion here.

So the more you push yourself, you'll find the more emotion comes out from your scene.

So you need to pause this video, give it your best go, don't forget your energy, and then resume when you are ready.

Now, was there something different about this time? The key word tension here.

Did that come from anything? Was it perhaps the longer the scene went on, the more tension grew? Hopefully.

Did you engage with your audience? Did you look to someone on the other side of the road as if to say, "I'm coming, I will get there." Did you look over your shoulder as if to say, "Please don't make me cross." Did you find that you escalated your exaggeration a bit too soon? Could it have been slower and more thought out? Did you rush it? Now we're going to explore how we apply some of these skills to our Commedia work.

When using mime in Commedia dell'arte, actors would use these following steps to communicate their intentions.

Firstly, they'd always have larger than life emotions, similar to our exaggeration that we worked on last lesson.

And they would always overreact to situations.

Next, they would always draw the audience's attention to finer details.

For example, the cherry pips or cherry seeds being spat out of a balcony or a fly landing on someone a bit like our lazzi.

And then keeping it simple with a start, a middle and an end, just like what we've done in our latest activities.

Are you starting to see the connections? And how what we've done so far leads nicely in to what we're about to do.

Now it's time for you to have a go at experimenting with comedy in dropping your food on the floor.

I want you to exaggerate how upset you can look after dropping some form of food on the floor.

Of course I chose ice cream.

So it could be whatever is closest to your heart because that will give you the most genuine and authentic look possible.

It will be the easiest step to exaggerate.

Combine as many of your prior skills as you possibly can.

You need to pause the video, give it your best go, use all the energy you have because this is the last task you have for this lesson.

Click resume when you're ready to wrap things up.

All right, how was that? Did you look at your audience? Did you involve them in the story? I could have picked up the ice cream and thrust in front of their faces to say, "Look, look, it's gone, it's gone, it's ruined." Did you highlight a key moment, a bit like what I just said from the first lesson, perhaps.

Where was the most comedic moment? Wonder what the most comedic moment in mine was in your opinion? I think it's safe to say that there's been a lot of work today.

There's been a lot asked of you, a lot of expectations, and you've done brilliantly.

If with the work that you've created today, you'd like to share it with Oak National, please ask your parent or carer for permission first.

And they can tag us on Twitter with @OakNational, and #LearnwithOak.

Thank you very much for working so hard yet again.

It was a pleasure.

I look forward to our next lesson where we're going to explore some more concepts of the Commedia style in a very practical way.

Until then take care.

And I will see you next lesson.