The fifth season of the Ennotville Summer Theatre continues its salute to the greatest moments in theatre history with Commedia, a tribute to the hilarious antics and spontaneous action of the Commedia Dell’Arte.
It is an Italian form of live comedic theatrical entertainment. Rather than relying a small group of actors to memorize a vast number of plays, the small groups of travelling players who formed the original Commedia companies would memorize the outlines of a large number of plays, so they could play to a wider variety of audiences.
In performance, they simply kept the story in their minds and improvised the actual dialogue on the spot.
By abandoning the written text, Commedia actors gave themselves plenty of room for indulging their particular comedic talents, and each member of the company was a specialist in a certain kind of character: the young lover, the dirty old man, the hero, the villain, the doctor, etc.
Commedia opens July 23 and runs to Aug. 8 at the Ennotville library. Call 519-780-7593 for tickets, or visit www.grinderproductions.org.
