COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE

Commedia dell'arte refers to improvised theatre that flourished in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and heralded professional acting in Europe. Commedia dell'arte developed stock characters, routines and gestures, masks, intrigues and subjects. Actors developed their skills as a recognisable discipline, creatively upsetting the expected, in a dialogue with audiences familiar with dramatic forms and techniques. Common material included scandalous love intrigues, particularly involving servants, and impersonation, helpless victims and long-lost children. Shakespeare and Moliere drew from this tradition.

The director, Brenda Addie, is making use of resonances of commedia dell'arte in the characters and subject matter of Servant of the Revolution, with some humorous interventions to give colour to otherwise serious material.