The Italian Commedia and Please be Gentle

David Griffiths

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135304867
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Focusing on Commedia Dell'Arte, this work provides a historical and critical commentary of the Commedia. It highlights common factors between this genre and that of the Japanese Noh theatre. The author proposes six similarities: characters familiar to their audience and masked, minimal properties and scenery with the focus on the actor, the "families" of performers, a sharp mind as well as an agile body, a professional living on these skills and patronage, and a knowledgeable audience. Complementing this book is the play "Please Be Gentle" which explores the various tricks and devices of Commedia Dell'Arte acting.

PLEASE BE GENTLE

A masked Commedia

CHARACTERS

PUNCH	An unemployed idiot
HIMSELF	A landowner having a large house and garden
HERSELF	His wife
JUDY	Her Cook, Nanny and general do-for

THE SET

Large playing blocks and planks.

The characters change the set scene by scene, creating the ‘Playing Environments’ intimated in the directions.

The permanent feature is a larger-than-life Punch and Judy booth, which offers an upper level.

The characters emerge at the beginning, and stand or sit in the shadows, heads inclined away from the square, so that they are out of mask. They remain as a physical, choral presence in the shadows and only assist vocally when not included in a scene. Once the characters move, they animate their mask. All properties are established and located by suggestive dialogue, and unless indicated otherwise, are mimed.

SCENE ONE—A Grey Room with a Fireless Hearth

Cheerless. Slumped astride a chair back-to-front, head resting on overlapped hands and arms spanning the backrest, is PUNCH. Attached to, and dangling from a wrist like the tail of an angry cat, is a long, well-used slapstick—all he has to play with. He is bored.

PUNCH: (Growling, quietly) Dooty dooty doo. Dooty dooty doo. What to do?
Whata whata whata whatado?

(Pause)
Dooty dooty doo. (Still quiet threatening. Suddenly daft. Mock tears.) Sad. Very sad. Nobody. Nobody in the whole entire world. Every day, every night, every

18. Please Be Gentle set

week, every month, every year, all day long all by myself no one talk to no one to sing to no one to dance to no one to eat to no one to set fire with…no one to light the fire in. Worst of, worst of all no one to shout at. If I had someone to shout at… if I had someone to shout at I could… (Stands up slowly, with menace, gripping the slapstick in both hands). If they, if they like it, and especially if they didn’ I could… (Aims a savage cracking blow at the back of the chair. Is about to aim another, but changes his mind in mid-aim and slowly sinks to his former position, trembling, depressed, bored as before). Dooty dotty doo… He stands slightly, the chair lifts with him as he shuffles with it suspended between his straddled legs, to one of the corners and settles. His bent back becomes the table on which JUDY mixes the pastry

SCENE TWO—The Kitchen of the Great House of HIMSELF and HERSELF

JUDY enters and dives into a dozen jobs at once and only just managing to satisfy the needs of all of them: a bit like a scuttling balancing act with spinning plates. She mixes pastry, checks the vegetables cooking on the stove, mops the floor, washes the pots etc., the central focus of all of this mayhem is the baby, who is squawling; the squawls come from one of the chorus.

JUDY: (To self) Dear oh dear oh dear. Punch Punch Punch. Little bit of this, little bit of that. In with the water. Mix… Punch Punch Punch. Feed the baby.

Grabs a bottle, dashes to the cot and thrusts the bottle into the baby’s squawling mouth

a.Herself

b.Judy

c.Himself

d.Punch

19. Mask designs for Please Be Gentle

20. Slapstick design

21. Judy

Ugh!
Holds her nose as she rushes to the linen basket and begins tossing unironed washing everywhere
Change his nappy.

Fin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Please Be Gentle: AN Introduction
• Please Be Gentle: A Masked Commedia
• Appendix