i Sebastiani - Old Content
 

Buongiorno! You lucky soul!

You are blessed among the living, for into your dull gray life has come this tawdry web projection of i Sebastiani, the greatest Commedia dell Arte troupe in the entire world.


Before this moment you have enjoyed only the shallowest and most fragile felicity stirred into your turbid puddle of an existence with all the sorrow and monotony that anyone can bear. Now you stand at the threshold. Step out of your dark dank cell and see and smell life in all its color. Feel the warm salty-sweet sea breeze of laughter, the glorious sunshine of mirth, the rhythmic roar and foam of the surf of love, pluck the blossoming sweet-peas growing on the dunes of desire, hear the rustle of the fresh winds in the waving tall grasses of your psyche, and see all of your human foibles as silly parts of the grand fun plan.


The choice is yours. Click the images on the left and learn more, or ignore this opportunity and suffer having your grandchildren scorn you as a witless fool for having no good story to tell.
 

Commedia dell' Arte today is performed by troupes fitting one or more of these catagories:

  • Troupes promoting and researching Italian culture.
  • Modern theatre companies adapting some aspects of Commedia in modern satire
  • Professional theatre troupes doing it as a brief exploration
  • Semi-professional troupes performing at Rennaisance Faires and Children's theatre
  • College groups in theatre or history departments learning the topic
  • Improv troupes doing Commedia to explore their roots
  • Amateur troupes with other interests in the 16th & 17th centuries.

So far, we fit in that last category. To our knowledge no troupe [including us] is doing Commedia as part of a 'medicine show', where the troupe depends on the generousity of the crowd to get enough food to keep their souls in their bodies (The Renn-Faire troupes come closest to this). Few if any current troupes have the skills, drives, and constraints of a sixteenth century troupe. Conclusion: you will never see Commedia completely as it was. The best you can see is a good effort to simulate it.

Note [29 Dec 2002]: Actually Kompani Komedi did a hand-to-mouth Commedia tour a few years ago. Seeing players with similar motivations to 16th century troupes is rare, but not impossible. !6th Century troupes did not play/sing 'Twist & Shout' in the middle of an argument, but they might have sung contemporary tunes...

 
 
This image is taken from a document created by Catherine Crow to acknowledge Mike Bergman's work in understanding and creating leather Commedia masks.
 
  Another related point is that there are no videos of real commedia being performed. There are some surviving letters and commentary describing it from an audience perspective, and a few scant writings from the practitioners, but little is really known. This gap in our knowledge has been filled by the New Commedia. Shortly after World War Two, a group tried to recreate Commedia as best they could. They might have nailed it. No one can ever be sure. Everything you learn today about commedia movement and style comes from this effort. If you attend a workshop, and someone shows you how to move, it is from this school that you are being taught. Don't reject it. It is as close as anybody can guess, but keep an open mind.  
  See Jeff Suzuki's old introduction to what Commedia is.  

See the iconography of Saint Sebastian. Images from this site are sprinkled throughout this site, unattributed.