Visiting drama artist works with Italian students

From Rose, Italian Teacher

North Melbourne Primary School has been very fortunate to receive a grant for a Creative worker, Rosa Campagnaro, to come and work in our school for a semester. Regional Arts Victoria has made it possible for Year 6 to benefit from the expertise of a professional Drama educator who specialises in Commedia dell’Arte. 

Rosa and Mason kicked off the unit of study by performing a Commedia dell’Arte show called Venice in Love. Since then, Rosa has been running Drama workshops whilst incorporating the Italian language and has provided the students with the opportunity to make their own mask and learn circus skills. The students have been having a lot of fun and are busy preparing for their end of semester performance. Watch this space!

Commedia dell’Arte

By Robbie 6B

Commedia dell’Arte is a form of Italian theatre. It consists of seven main characters: Arlecchino, Pulcinella, Pantalone, Il Capitano, Il Dottore, La Strega/Lo Stregone and I Zanni. 

They all have particular traits that are stereotypes. Arlecchino is like Bugs Bunny, Pantalone is a rich, old, greedy man, and Pulcinella is a street-smart sneaky guy. La Strega/Lo Stregone is a witch, Il Dottore is an obese man who drinks a lot of wine and pretends to be an intellectual. Il Capitano is a ‘war hero’ who is scared of everything! Oh, and don’t forget the Zanni, they are poor, sneaky, silly and grotesque characters. 

Making Commedia dell’Arte Masks

By Rishika 6B

Year 6 are working on Commedia dell’Arte in Italian and Drama classes. In preparation for a performance later this year we all made a mask for the show during Art classes. On the first day Rosa, Nerinda and Mel showed us how to start the masks by beginning with the nose and eyebrows, and perhaps even eyelashes. We used cardboard masks as a base and put clay on top. We made sure we finished in the first week so we could move on to painting the masks the next week. If your character was La Strega or Lo Stregone the base colour was white. If you were making Pantalone it was red, and if you were making the zanni or Arlecchino you’d use brown. We put highlights on with with paint, waited for them to dry and after that, they are ready to put on.

Commedia dell’Arte Circus Tricks

By Aanya 6B

So far, this year we have been practicing to put on a play in Italian and Drama. We have been learning tricks for our performance. We had two professional circus performers, Shona and Sarah, from a professional circus (Dummies Corp) visit us and taught us really cool stunts. In order to warm up, we played fun games and learned slapstick tricks like how to slap one another and fall safely. 

The cool stunts we learned included Human Juggling where one person is rolling and a second person jumps over them. We also did a Half on High where two people stand with their knees out and a third person stands on them. 

Lastly, we learnt how to do a Cat Stack where half the people in our class made a cat pose on knees and palms, and another person in the cat pose was on top.