i Sebastiani - Short History
 
A Short History

i Sebastiani was founded on June 4th, 1990 at about 7:45 PM. Jeff Hatalsky, our founder, announced at a general SCA meeting in Cambridge MA that he intended to form such a troupe, and any interested should see him after the meeting. His informally stated goal was to find a group pursuit for which the drive towards greater authenticity would be fun, as would the product [a paraphrasal]. At that time, we knew little more about Commedia than was taught and demonstrated to a few of us by a group active at Cornell University a few years earlier. A week or two later, the initial members filled out a sign-up sheet to select characters and practice nights [originally Thursday]

In October 1996, Jeff Hatalsky left the troupe, and we began a period of attempted democracy as a means of keeping things moving. This was possible because at this time we were a purely academic pursuit with no real group income or property.

From 1991 through September 2001, the Troupe performed Commedia dell'Arte Scenarios continuing to do one performance of each scenario. In September 2001, we attended the Austin Commedia dell'Arte Festival in Austin Texas, where we received quite a bit of encouragement to present our work to a broader audience.

In reforming to achieve this goal, Alex Newman stepped beyond his role as manager to become our Capicomico. In October 2002, we began our experiments in promoting for and playing to the general public.

In making this trasition, some possibly interesting bits of our old website have been relegated to this scrapbook area.

Was i Sebastiani named after Saint Sebastian. Does it suggest that we nobly bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? As with any troupe of actors, sometimes it seems that way. Sometimes a name is given and you grow into it. In our case, the name came first. Jeff Hatalsky's name in the SCA was Sebastian. He was far too modest to have named the troupe after himself, but an early troupe member, who departed before our first show, was his loyal protege, and the only member of the troupe who spoke Italian [at the time]. Shannon Larkin was her name, and she named the troupe. The rest of us agreed, and Jeff was stuck with it. In the days since that distant past, we have grown into the name.

As a side note, Shannon knew absolutely nothing about Niccola Sebastiani [the SCA name of a brilliant and sharp-witted woman who played Brighella in the troupe at Cornell in the mid 1980's who taught basic Commedia at SCA university events].