good afternoon and welcome to the italian renaissance so this is a similar time period to what we were just talking about with england we're basically talking about the 15th and 16th centuries a little bit into the 17th as well um but we are going to go down to the continent down to the italian peninsula and something i should stress is though i use terms like italy or italian remember that at this time in history there was no country italy there were a bunch of different powerful city-states based in the different cities florence siena rome venice et cetera um that all culturally shared uh an italian um background but it wasn't until 1848 that the actual unification of italy happened so i just wanted to make that quick historical note but we are going to be looking at the italian renaissance and this is for theater the birth of commedia dellarte and the proscenium stage so these are very important for us for the development of theater obviously the italian renaissance is very well known for art on the visual arts as well as architecture you're looking at perhaps the most famous painting in the world the mona lisa by leonardo da vinci and we're going to discuss a little bit about what made this a famous portrait why is this so famous it's certainly not the most beautiful or stunning piece of work in the world but it clearly is very recognizable and famous so obviously in the italian renaissance we talked about this rebirth and this re-interest reforming of interest in classical art ancient greek and roman art sculpture architecture all of the techniques that had been mastered back then and then lost during the middle ages and suddenly now we're rethinking all of these um artistic innovations so um there were scientific breakthroughs in engineering and physics that led to new understanding of drawing techniques and optics the study of vision and how we process things and this is very important because this led to the understanding of perspective of drawing with perspective and those of you who are visual artists you know full well that perspective is one of the hardest things to master when you are learning how to draw this notion of 3d of that this person in the back here is further away than this person up front and how do we det how do we make that clear on a two-dimensional flat surface um and using angles as well as making things smaller the further away that they are that was discovered during the renaissance and specifically during the italian renaissance okay so this perspective drawing that they've learned the masters have mastered can now be used for creating set pieces as well in theater and i'm going to show you some examples of that in just a second but that's that's very important because it adds a little bit to the transporting uh an audience to a new location or to a different place in a way that before remember even with um english renaissance and and the globe theater with shakespeare that tearing house that tiring house that was behind the stage that didn't change very much that was a structure and just like the scheme in amphitheaters or the skinny frogs in rome you you don't get to change much of that so whatever that looks like is gonna be the kind of set you're dealing with and now using this artwork and perspective drawing we can create new places and locations based on our set so that helps us reconfigure the stage in italian renaissance this is an indoor theater you'll see that now we can use what's called wings on the sides of the stage and wings we're familiar with anyone who's who works in theater as the things that are the waiting areas off stage right this is where you can store actors before they enter scenery props costumes etc um also we have overhead borders now that can mask things like um the the top of this of the theater um or we can use them and uh use them like they did here where they're actually decorated architecturally and artistically um we also can make painted backdrops and this is one of those backdrops that i'm talking about here we're looking at a picture of the teatro limpico in vicenza italy but this is actually not an open doorway this is a real this is a painted backdrop using perspective drawing and in fact that technique is called trumploy which is a french term meaning fool the eye so this perspective drawing is used to make us think we're looking down a boulevard or a road that goes wet miles away and that was that was new that was completely innovative to be able to do that we also have you don't see it here but we have a raked stage which is a a tilted stage or a stage that's on an angle or an incline and there's a very important reason for that think about our theaters today the stage is flat and what has the rake the house the audience and that's to help us see right well during the italian renaissance they started building theaters where the actual floor of the stage was raked a to help with that perspective drawing remember if you make the angle going up it can make things in the back look further away than they are but also that way your your house your audience could be flat which made sen was a lot easier to build you can see the seats uh right here in this audience are very flat and then if the stage is raked the audience can see someone who's all the way at the back of the stage even if they're behind someone who's in the front because they're higher up they're in a higher level and this is where the terms upstage and downstage come from for those of you who are familiar with actors uh with acting upstage and downstage upstage is the back of the stage and downstage is the front of the stage and that came from when the stage was raked and literally the front of the stage was lower or down compared to the back of the stage which was up or higher and most importantly we develop the proscenium arch which literally means in front of the scene and this is that frame through which we view from one side the action of the play and again you can see if the audience is here there's no action happening out here around them it is not a three-quarter thrust it is a one-sided picture frame stage and all of our action is focused there and this becomes the single most important innovation in theater because now today most theaters that we know about are proscenium stages up to it including our proscenium stage here at irsc this is the mcalpin theater and you can see our proscenium it is this square frame or rectangle frame around the stage and all the audience sits on one side all right and actually you can see here pictures of the wings are on either side of the stage and we have curtains that block them and you can just barely make out up there some stage lighting the reason you can't see more there's actually whole rows of that is because of overhead borders just like i described that are blocking and masking the stage lighting all right so this proscenium stage becomes the most popular and standard type of theater configuration stage configuration for the next 500 years now there's a very specific type of theater that developed during the italian renaissance and it was called commedia del ar del arte and that should be a lowercase a excuse me and while you might think that means comedy of art it actually means professional comedy these were professional actors troops of professional actors and their goal was to entertain the public so this was definitely not considered high art which would have been opera we're familiar with opera but this would have been low entertainment very comedic very silly for anyone whether they were educated or not to appreciate as i said performed by professional troops who traveled around europe and italy and the rest of europe performing these they could be performed outdoors in town squares or indoors in those nice new proscenium theaters and the focus was on the actors the costumes and the masks not necessarily the scenery notwithstanding what we just described about the painted backdrops and trumploy which were used extensively in opera which is the higher art form with with music uh that would be inside those theaters but these actors could do their pieces anywhere they were very flexible and here's the big thing they were improvised this was made up um they were not scripted based on their character types and maybe a scripted scenario so it might be the the silly servant walks into the bar where his where his pompous master is um in trouble and then the actors would make it up as they go from there some of us are familiar with improv from tv shows like whose line is it anyway or um comedian stand-up comics etc these were professional comedians who played very standard types of characters and you're looking at the pictures of the characters and wherever they went we could identify those characters based on their very typical outfit or costume and their mask each character had a very specific mask that he or she wore and then again they're they're the types of things they did were very standard even though they might have made them up as they that the specifics might be made up each time they performed um it's also the first time women were allowed to be performers the female characters were played by women in comedia dellarte so big big hurrah for women for female performers here okay um you're looking at for example i'll just name these very briefly you've got il uh the doctor looks like il capitano who was the sort of brave and yet cowardly uh soldier you've got arliquino or harlequin we're very familiar with harlequin with his slapstick which we'll talk about pantalone the stingy father uh brig here's brigella the the pompous servant um we also have looks like a la ruffiana over here pedrolino or pierrot the crying clown um there's also punchinella over here or scaramouche that might even be the scaramouche so again they were very um distinctive big character types based on their masks and or costumes so here were some features oftentimes the stories featured clever servants versus pompous masters um de torte being a great example of the doctor who's been to university and knows every book ever written and yet can't weasel can't figure out his way out of his own door to to make to get out of the building or something like that and the servant has to come and help him so um streetwise servants who save the day versus pompous masters slapstick humor and physical comedy the term slapstick humor which refers to physical comedy often invite involving pain america's funniest on videos etc etc actually comes from comedian del arte you are looking at a picture of a slapstick and this is a tool that um the character harlequin or arlaquino would carry around and frequently hit people with when he was upset with them and that little um added piece of wood would make a sound when it clapped against its own uh claps to get clapped against the backing wood and make a slap and this is where the term slapstick came from so clowning three stooges etc all comes from um uh comedy del arte lazy speaking of clowning and slapstick humor the latsi were these um we can think of them as gags physical or comedic gags that were very standard that may or may not have had anything to do with the actual scene that was being played or maybe were interludes in between the scenes um and they were recognizable so much so that the audience as soon as the gag gets starting to set up the audience immediately knows what's about to happen um for our we might think of you know walking walking and there's a rake lying on the ground or a shovel lying on the ground and the person's walking and doesn't see it and we know that the person is going to step on the rake and the pole is going to come up and hit him in the face slipping on a banana peel etc so there are some very um standard lotsy that were performed all the time and and different characters different actors became famous for how well they performed these lotsies um a very famous one was the lotsy of the fly so you know the our latino or the harlequin character suddenly sees a fly right and he's trying to swat it and it's not working and then he we see that the fly lands on another character and harlequin tiptoes over to the character and he's just concentrating on trying to get that fly and of course hits the other character with the slapstick misses the fly and the character goes crazy and they chase him off the stage so these were very recognizable comic bits or gags again first time that female performers are allowed to perform in public um and get paid for it so it was a big liberation moment for women actors in the italian renaissance and because they're female characters this allows them to play a little bit more um sex humor right they they say hey we've got these females on the stage for and let's let them use their bodies to to make physical humor and sex jokes so oftentimes for example the character of um punchinello who's this sort of ogrish hunchbacky uh gardener character would often chase after the women and think that they all loved him even though they didn't want to have anything to do with him and columbina the female servant would often use her um sexiness to get her ways in order to save the day right she would she would flirt with someone or um get the bad guy to go a different way so that the hero and the heroine could could do the right thing so these were all features of commedia and these are comedic features that have lasted to today right we still see a lot of this in our contemporary comedies in sitcoms um things like the three stooges circus etc even like disney movies have a lot disney movies have a lot of commedia influences um you look at characters in beauty and the beast in mulan in um in uh tangled all these all those sidekicks they're often frozen even they're often based off of commedia um characters all right so that is the italian renaissance and uh we will do we will be moving into french neoclassical next and then some review for your midterm okay you