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HARLEQUINO: ON TO FREEDOM
Commedia dell'Arte developed as an artistic form in the early 16th century, a period marked from great religious and cultural ferment.
Heretics are expelled from the Church in the early years of the Reformation. Slave trade from Africa begins in Portugal. Religious conflicts result in a series of wars between Spain Italy and France. In this temperament, someone begins to telling the story of the relations between rich and poor, the rich Pantalone and his servant Zanni (who later takes the name Harlequin). Parallel to this is the story of the Unbridled and Passionate Lovers, opposed in their pure love by the affairs of Pantalone, the pompous Doctor and the infingardo valiant soldier.
Hypocrisy was targeted in city squares from companies of wandering actors and musicians. Historically, we have no documents reporting the contents of those performances. The earliest written text dates back to the early 17th century, and refers to the official companies that performed for the king. What do we know about the first hundred years of Commedia dell'Arte? Who are those unknown performers? What mattered to the poor and very poor in 1530 in Italy? Why do we find mention in one document that the Duke of Mantua felt offended from a company to the point from of hanging three of its actors? Who were these brave and acrobatic actors who dared to challenge power to tell the truth?
Harlequino: on to Freedom answers to these questions. Set between 1530 and 2016, the show tells the story of a troupe of giravaghi actors who break into a Commedia dell'Arte conference. The show questions how the story is written, what is funny, when a servant becomes a slave, and why is it still worth talking about today?
Tim Robbins
written and directed from Tim Robbins
with
Pierre Adeli
Cyrille Autin
Olivia Courtin
Brian Finney
Colin Golden
Simon Hanna
Lee Hanson
Adam J. Jefferis
Dora Kiss
Joshua R. Lamont
Will McFadden
Mary Eileen O'Donnell
Molly O'Neill
Stephanie Pinnock
Pedro Shanahan
Bob Turton
Sabra Williams
Jillian Yim
Paulette Zubata
sound and music Ken Palmer and David Robbins
music director David Robbins
Erhard Steifel masks
lights** Bosco Flanagan**
stage director Cihan Sahin
assistant stage managers Dora Kiss, Stephanie Pinnock, Mary Eileen O'Donnell
a production of The Actors' Gang
artistic director Tim Robbins
associate artistic director Cynthia Ettinger
chief operating officer** Simon Hanna**
in collaboration with CRT Milan and Change Performing Arts
tor, director, screenwriter, and producer of films and plays, Robbins has won numerous awards, including an Oscar for best supporting actor for Mystic River, and the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for Robert Altman's The Player--The Play ers._ Dead Man Walking_, for which he was director, screenwriter, and producer, has won numerous awards including an Oscar for best actress for Susan Sarandon. Robbins is also artistic director of Actors' Gang, the theater company he founded in 1982 that has staged more than 80 productions, earning hundreds of awards. His show Embedded ran for more than four months at New York's Public Theater, always selling out, and then embarked on a tour that touched London and much of the United States. With the Actors Gang, he staged a much-discussed and highly successful adaptation of George Orwell's 1984, which was presented on four different continents. Robbins and his company promote educational programs in Los Angeles-area schools, and for the past five years they have begun to offering theater workshops involving inmates of California city correctional institutions.
During its 35 years, The Actors' Gang has earned international recognition for staging more than 150 new and unconventional plays and dynamic re-interpretations of classics, staged to Los Angeles, in 39 of the United States and on 5 continents. Led by artistic director Tim Robbins, the company was founded in 1981 from a group of like-minded artists driven by a desire to produce plays that make sense for the society in which we live and restore the stage to its original function as a sacred place. Through an advanced educational program, the company's actors introduce theatrical techniques to students to risk encouraging them to discover their creativity. The dedicated prison project-recently recognized by the White House and the Department of Justice-currently involves eight correctional institutions in California, giving male and female prisoners the opportunity to have access to rehabilitation programs, which have significantly lowered recidivism rates. The Actors' Gang's first international tour was in 1989, when it presented at the Edinburgh Festival, Carnage, to Comedy, later presented at the Public Theater in New York. from Then the company toured Europe, Asia, Australia, and the entire American continent, with several productions, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, George Orwell's 1984, The Trial of the Catonsville 9, The Guys, The Exonerated, Moliere's Tartuffe, and Embedded, a satire against the Iraq War.