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List of contents
List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Improvisation: why, what, how 2. Acting styles: dialects, voice, gesture; 3. The uses of masks; 4. Coda: commedia dell’arte today; Index
About the author
Natalie Crohn Schmitt is Professor Emerita of Theatre and English at the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA. Her wide-ranging scholarship includes Befriending the Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala: The Comic Scenarios (2014) and essays on commedia dell’arte in New Theatre Quarterly, Viator, Renaissance Drama, and Text and Performance Quarterly. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and of Humanities Center fellowships at Stanford University and at the University of Illinois.
Summary
Performing Commedia dell’Arte, 1570-1630 explores the performance techniques employed in commedia dell’arte and the ways in which they served to rapidly spread throughout Europe the ideas that were to form the basis of modern theatre.
Additional text
''Performing Commedia dell’Arte, 1570–1630 takes this method as its subject, exploring the practicalities of arte performance, and the social, cultural, and political contexts of Italian professional theatrical production, during its sixty-year ‘golden age’..... It is a masterclass in synthesising often disparate sources, and speaks to the innovative nature of what is no doubt an important book that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of this elusive theatre.'' Tom Roberts Exeter College, Oxford; Early Modern Literary Studies
