Theater students set spoof

• By DEBRA LEMOINE
• Livingston-Tangipahoa writer
• Published: Nov 5, 2009

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WALKER — When Jonie Bankston walks on stage at North Live Oak Elementary School later this month, she will reach a milestone in her four-year acting career.

She will get to play a female role.

“This is a big step for me to be one of the main characters and be a girl character,” said Bankston, a ninth-grader at Walker Freshman High School.

“I’m usually playing the guy roles,” she added. “There aren’t a lot of guys in the talented program.”

What they are rehearsing is “Commedia! The Comedy of Love and War,” a spoof of theatrical comedy created in Italy during late 14th century called “commedia dell’arte,” said Shane Stewart, talented theater drama teacher and director of the play.

Commedia dell’arte is the improvised comedy performances where the slapstick genre and its stock characters originated, Stewart said.

“Commedia! The Comedy of Love and War” is a scripted play written by Richard Nathan based on this tradition, he said.

At the end of the school day, Bankston and a dozen other fourth- through 12th-graders, who are enrolled in the Livingston Parish school system’s Talented Theater Program, rehearsed on a makeshift stage — a brightly-colored rectangle of carpet in the breezeway at North Corbin Elementary School in Walker.

They will later perform the play at North Live Oak Elementary in Watson.

Even though the original Italian plays were unscripted, there were certain characters and subplots audiences expected to see during the performances, such as the star-crossed lovers, Stewart said.

For example, the clown Harlequin came from these plays, he said. When Italian audiences saw Harlequin, or Arlecchino in Italian, they knew to expect a clown who represented the lower classes and who carried a fop sock, also called a slap stick, to hit people with, Stewart said.

Another telltale characteristic of these Italian comedies is the Venetian masks worn by the actors, Stewart said. The Italian masks were exaggerated features made of leather to represent certain characters, such as a long nose for a boorish, rich, old man, Stewart said.

In the play the student will perform, the actors will be wearing masks similar to Mardi Gras masks but with some of the exaggerated features, Stewart said.