This site is an interactive classroom tool designed for students in year 9 (stage 5) Drama, for the purpose of developing:
An awareness of Commedia Dell’Arte as being a historically significant performance style that utilizes stock characters and masks to create dramatic meaning
Student understanding of the differences between the 3 major types of stock character present in Commedia Dell’Arte
ICT skills, as students navigate through the site and undertake various online and physical activities
This site's activities have been planned to take up three 50 minute classes, with an additional lesson for the 'making masks' activity. See Teacher's Notes for lesson plan and objectives.
" It is a theatre of music and dance; of song, colour and light; of plays on wagon stages; of festivals in street, in courts, in great squares; on rivers; at wedding masks; sometimes in extraordinary costumes."
Kennard, J. S. (1935). Masks and marionettes. New York: Macmillan Co..