ZanniTAVANI

Theatre Café & Bookshop

featuring

improvisational & interactive theater

with

someMimics friends & players

CONCEPT:

Acting Studio / Bookshop / Café

A. Acting Studio

Acting Studio events will be the focus of ZanniTAVANI Theatre Café & Bookshop.

§ PLAYING AREA: There will be 3 playing areas:

1. Place enough for staging Theatre in Community

- auditorium seating 250 people;

- stage area capable of being utilized as classroom backstage.

2. Black Box studio

- seating capacity of 100.

3. Movement studio

- mirrored walls and dance floor.

§ PLAYERS: Resident troupe of someMimics friends & players

Ø 6-9 actors, male and female.

Ø All actors accomplished in improvisational, interactive, and physical theatre skills.

Ø Theatre events will focus on themes that support building up community.

Ø Resident actors facilitate workshops and participate in Symmimetic Symposiums.

Ø Interns try their skills in Café functions and events.

§ PLAN: Proposed curriculum for each playing area to be developed.

1. Theatre in Community

q ROLES:

on stage (player)

back stage (persona)

off stage (person)

home (privacy)

head (secrecy)

heart (spirituality)

q RELATIONSHIPS

I/me

me / not-me / not-not-me

me/you

us/them

I am / we are

self/other

him/her

him, her / it

same / different

q REWRITING SCRIPTS:

effect of affect

conscious / subconscious / unconscious

2. Black Box

q Arranging space in which relationships are put in context of place

q Presentation of self / Representation of another

q Face-to-face confrontation

(persuasion, exhortation, admonition)

q Solo / Ensemble

q Maskwork

q Acting exercises (improv/physical)

q Clowning

q Concepts:

ignorant / indifferent

silence / listen / speak

Stillness / action

Will / Won’t, Do / Don’t

Feel / Think / Choose / Act

Friend / Lover

Stranger / Acquaintance / Friend / Lover / Enemy

Sensual / Mental / Emotional / Spiritual

Have / Want / Need / Receive / Give

3. Movement

Breathing

(air [still] / wind [moving])

Body awareness

(intention / space / time / place / position / direction)

Making music

(silence / Sound / Noise / Music)

Dance

spontaneity / discipline freedom / bondage

copy (typos) / imitate (mimesis) / create (poesis)

B. Bookshop

Bookshop sells books/items relating to Symposiums in Café or activities in Acting Studio.

§ Inventory reflects the interests of ZanniTAVANI and/or someMimics.

§ Computerized inventory to be managed to have minimal back-room stock!

§ Seating in comfortable couches/chairs to be available for browsing.

§ Books may be taken to Café.

C. Café

Café will serve simple beverage/food menu for Symmimetic Symposiums and other activities.

§ Capacity will be 250.

§ Seating includes movable hexagonal tables and folding chairs.

§ There will be a stage area for readings, live music (acoustic guitars, piano, jazz ensemble), and improv.

§ Patrons will be welcome to participate in occasional interactive theater events.

ZanniTAVANI is affiliated with Tavani Consultants in Human Services.

BECOMING FOLLOWERS:

A TRAGICOMEDY IN SEVERAL ACTS

Dramatis Personae:

God

Everyone else

PRELUDE

Playing alongside Wisdom

ACT I

In the beginning …

ACT II

Beyond the Garden

ACT III

Crucial events, critical people

ACT IV

Gathering together and going out

ACT V

Coming back at last

EPILOGUE

Word to the wise

The zany theme of the fool

There is, in modern theatre, a resurgence of the zany theme of the fool, much of which is inspired by commedia dell’arte. The clever servants of the Zanni have led to the worldwide tradition of the inverted status relationship in which the usually lower-status servant character has the upper hand in terms of wit, truth, and intelligence while the supposedly upper-status master character must content himself with only the trappings of superiority.

This topsy-turvy situation arose from the historical circumstances in which the Commedia developed. This Venetian nickname of Zanni was a dialect version of Giovanni, a name common in the 15^th century among peasants from Bergamo, in Lombardy, who emigrated to Venice and Genoa from the economically destitute regions of Po valley. When the Venetian economy became developed through profit-sharing (maona) among the citizenry, international trade increased, decreasing the price of locally-produced foodstuffs, with the result that the peasants, the zanni, were brought to the point of bankruptcy. Being unable to sell their product, they had no option but to abandon their lands and emigrate in large numbers to Venice and Genoa. This influx was met with resentment and contempt. Zanni were treated as objects of derision, and their presence provided convenient scapegoats for every mishap. They had no command of the local language, they committed gaffes, and they were continuously hungry and in poor health.

The Zanni characters of the Commedia were based on these economic outcasts. Zanni were valet buffoons, clowns, and knavish jacks-of-all-trades; zanni possessed common sense, intelligence, pride, a love of practical jokes, although they often were also quarrelsome, cowardly, envious, spiteful, vindictive, treacherous. Frequently two zanni played contrasting roles, the first clever and adept at confounding, the second a dull-witted foil.

The forbears of the Commedia may have been the comic mime actors of ancient Greece and Rome. The term “mime” indicates that mimes imitated life (recall our theory of mimetic community); rather than being silent, these ancient mimes were masters of the tongue. One name for the mimic actor was autokabdalos, which can be translated “improvised.” As Beatrice Otto explains in Fools are Everywhere:

“These actors were decidedly ready and eager to take advantage of anything which, because of its baseness, its meaness, or its triviality, provided that laughter-provoking contrast between man’s mind and the fettering restrictions of his body, and they were ever ready to stand forward as the secular exponents of popular feeling. Improvisation gave the mimes a jester’s freedom to mock, and throughout history irreverence toward anything blindly revered was the cornerstone of their entertainment. Mimes had sung and spoken parts and could include acrobatic skills in their repertoire. Their acrobatic agility guaranteed that they should never be dull, never be fettered by religious prejudice or ceremonial. They stood, above all, for secularism and the right to laugh.”

However, ZanniTAVANI, stands, above all for TRUTH and the right to laugh in the face of failure. What is true can be well presented as parable; so must theatre go about imitating LIFE.

Zanni?

The troupe’s name, ZanniTAVANI, ^{(remember, Zah-nee, not Zay-nee)} comes first from the founding director, Craig Tavani, who has been developing his theory of symmimesis over the past three decades. The name “Zanni,” on the other hand, applies to those comic characters who played the part of servants in the Italian improvisational theatre known as Commedia dell’arte.

Historically, one finds a variety of forms of the word zanni: zane, zanne, zani, especially, zany. Dei Zanni became a generic term for the commedia dell’arte itself (hence “zany”). The Zanni characters were valet buffoons, clowns, and knavish jacks-of-all-trades; zanni possessed common sense, intelligence, pride, and a love of practical jokes, although they often were also quarrelsome, cowardly, envious, spiteful, vindictive, and treacherous. The zanni’s costumes consisted of a wood or leather half mask with hair and beard glued to it, a loose blouse, wide trousers, and a wide-brimmed or conical hat with long feathers. Frequently one of the zanni carried a wooden sword.

Zanni initiated the action of the play, producing comic impact based on repeated comic actions; this stage business, called lazzi consisted of situations, dialogues, gags, rhymes and rigmaroles which actors could call up at a moment’s notice to give the impression of on-stage improvisation. The lazzi, along with topical and practical jokes (burle), was often directed against the smug, the proud, and the pretentious (sounds like the name of a TV soap opera!). Zanni were also noted for their feats of acrobatics and tumbling. (In the case of ZanniTAVANI, however, this is known as tripping and falling.)

In some commedia performances there was only one zanni; in others there might be two to four. The principal character among them was often called simply Zanni, while his companion(s) had various names – Harlequin, Brighella, Scapino, Scaramouche, Pedrolino, Pulcinella, and others.

Frequently two zanni played contrasting roles, the first clever and adept at confounding, the second a dull-witted foil.

ZanniTAVANI - the acting troupe

The acting troupe of ZanniTAVANI
(pronounced Zah-nee-Tah-vah-nee, not Zay-nee-Tah-vay-nee. Thank you.)
enacts the theory of mimetic community or symmimesis
by engaging in an improvisational way of theatre performance

called, in general, Theatre in Community.

In this particular act it is called sociopathetic clowning,

a physical form of theatre that draws from commedia dell’arte

and a variety of theorists/practitioners of physical theatre

in order to enact symmimetic theory.

Symmimetic theory asserts that

one’s humanity is being formed continuously

through mutual engagement with others.

This involvement is mimetic

whatever one’s level of engagement or disengagement.