Need a laugh? Save the date for ‘Italian Comedy of Masks’ Nov. 21

Are you a fan of silent film comedians like Charlie Chaplin and improvisational club comedy?  Ever wonder why television sitcoms love to recycle all those stock characters, from the lovable but dumb husband to the wisecracking best friend?

Then save the date Thursday, Nov. 21, when the Italian Studies Program hosts Mace Perlman, a master of the centuries-old Italian tradition of
commedia dell’Arte
in a performance and talk titled The Italian Comedy of Masks from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Fish Interfaith Center, Wallace All Faiths Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Commedia dell’arte
was an improvisational style of theater that developed in 16
^th
century Italy and featured traveling troupes of comic actors playing stock characters who wore caricature masks and costumes that quickly established the character’s personality.

The cultural legacy of
commedia dell’Arte
artists is alive and well, says Federico Pacchioni, Ph.D.,
the Sebastian Paul and Marybelle Musco Professor of Italian Studies in Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Their imprint can be found “on plays, operas, paintings, and popular entertainment of yesterday as well as today.”

Perlman is an actor, teacher, director, and translator whose theatrical training began with two years under Marcel Marceau at his International School of Mimodrama in Paris. Following studies at Stanford University (BA in Humanities Special Programs: Baroque Studies, MA in Humanities), he trained and worked for six years at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan under the master director, Giorgio Strehler. Since returning to his native Greenwich, CT he has taught acting in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at SUNY-Purchase and at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York.