Arts Week: Comedy Workshop review

Mr. Downes’s Comedy Workshop Review 
By Cian Glynn, 2nd Year

On the 7th of November, Mr. Downes hosted a comedy workshop for 2nd years as a part of Arts Week. It was fantastic, and we all really enjoyed it.

For the first hour, Mr. Downes went through five character archetypes – Arlecchino, Pantalone, Il Dottore, Brighella, and Gli Innamorati (or “the lovers”). These all originated from Commedia Dell’arte, which is a form of early professional theatre from Italy. One way of practising getting in-and-out of character was walking around the room, and whenever Mr. Downes called out a character, we would have to completely transform ourselves physically, and act as that character. It was surprisingly tiring, but also exhilarating. 

After a short break, two of Mr. Downes’s colleagues performed a short comedy routine, or “lazzo” as an example.  We then jumped right into creating our own lazzi. We were assigned characters at random, and put into groups based on which characters we got. Each group consisted of an average of four people – an Arlecchino, two Innamorati, and either a Pantalone, Il Dottore or Brighella to serve as the antagonist. 

Once we had practiced our lazzo, we all watched each other perform. This was really entertaining, but we also learned how to improve our own performances from it. 

All in all, it was a great experience. Mr. Downes explained everything really clearly; he was funny and entertaining. From him and his colleagues, we got a really vivid sense of the spirit of theatrical comedy during this workshop.