25/02/2026
🎭 Happy World Commedia dell’Arte Day 🎭
Today we honour those who have gone before and those who keep Commedia alive and vibrant for generations to come.
🥂Cheers and heartfelt thanks to the original acting troupes of the 16th century who laid the foundations for ensemble-based, actor-centred devising developing a treasure chest of transferable techniques and skills that we use endlessly today.
Viva la Commedia!
Commedia endures because it reflects real life (despite it being exaggerated, often comically absurd and grotesque); it embodies humanity's eternal battle for survival. It's a dysfunctional family of characters who bicker, quarrel, compete, crave, desire, need, love and struggle against each other and the external odds of society; we are compelled to watch as an antidote to the woes of the world around us, feeling compassion and empathy with these somehow familiar oddballs.
I've been thinking a lot about devising lately and how much commedia gives us a blueprint, so I wrote a little blog about it. if you fancy a read, here it is:
Commedia dell’Arte is one of the earliest forms of devised theatre and remains a powerful methodology for contemporary performance-making. This article explores how we use Commedia techniques – improvisation, physical theatre, stock characters, lazzi, canovaccio – to collaboratively devise ori...
