On Friday, October 13th, students from Irvington’s drama classes performed their pantomimes and improvised Commedia Dell Arte skits for an audience in Valhalla Theater after weeks of planning and refinement at the drama department’s annual Mime and Commedia Show.
The show started off with pantomime performances from the Drama 1 students, who wrote six to ten-minute scenes and coordinated sound cues. Without any props or set outside of sound effects, the audience was clued into where the scene was set by the movement of the actors and their reactions to their environment.
Drama 1 students performed pantomimes centered around a range of topics including swimming lessons, manslaughter on the way home from a baseball game, a mutiny in space, and a dinosaur gone loose in Jurassic World.
The Jurassic World skit was the longest one due to that group having the largest amount of people. The pantomime skit paralleled the plot of Jurassic World, with a T-Rex breaking loose in the park and murdering tourists. The audience erupted in laughter at the dinosaur’s menacing run as it murdered its victims at a comically slow pace.
“I was in the Jurassic World pantomime, and I played the dinosaur,” shared Sidharth Thodupunoori (11). “My favorite part of our pantomime was doing the run while chasing the people and the roar at the end when it’s revealed that the dinosaur isn’t really dead”.
“Actors are always so concerned about the text,” shares Drama Teacher Mr.Ballin, “but they need to plan out and memorize their movement if not as much, then more so than the text because it’s acting. It’s all about action.”
“The biggest thing I learned about acting through pantomime is that you kind of have to change things up each time and keep it sort of fresh,” shared Xavier Mutarelli. “But you also need to keep it real so that every time it’s a unique emotion.”
The second half of the show consisted of skits by Drama 2 and Drama 3 students built around their assigned characters from the Renaissance Italian dramatic art of Commedia Dell Arte. Commedia Dell Arte created characters that have become stock characters in modern media such as the naive jokester Arlecchino, the trickster Brighella, naively in-love male and female lovers (the stock characters Romeo and Juliet were modeled after), and more.
“I played the young female lover,” shared Drama 2 student Anvi Chaubal (12). “Both the male and female lovers are kind of dumb. All they care about is being in love, not the love itself, and so they feel like that’s all that’s in their life. They’re both kind of delusional, and I played the character delusionally because I’m delusional,”
In the second Commedia Dell Arte Scene, the young female lover Daisy is the daughter of a mafia boss looking to inherit his business. When she is sent to rob the son of his mortal enemy, who happens to be the male lover character, she robs him, gives him her number, falls in love with him, and then knocks him out with her frying pan.
“Commedia Dell Arte ate is craziness,” Drama teacher Mr. Ballin adds. “Even though it’s old, even though it’s historical, and even though these characters have been around for two to three thousand years, it’s a lot of fun for both the audience and the actors.”
“My biggest takeaway after doing this is that improv is hard,” reflects Chaubal. “It is really hard to be funny on the spot with improv, but doing it right and making people laugh is a really good feeling.”
