December 2004

Harlequin and Columbine are probably two of the most familiar characters of the Commedia Dell’Arte. Certainly to those raised in the classical ballet and all holiday theater-goers, they are characters of Drosselmeyer’s toys that magically come to life at the Christmas Eve party at Grandma’s house. The characters are in I Pagliacci, the opera, and numerous novels and plays.

Italian name for Harlequin was Arlecchino, and he was the sidekick servant of Pantalone, the merchant. However, as the role of the sidekick is often more playful than the “straight man”, just like in TV sitcoms, the range of possiblilites for Arlecchino/Harlequin was nearly endless. He is the trickster. He is always agile, and moves through scenes as gymnastically as possible. I think of Seinfeld’s Kramer as the Harlequin of that ensemble. His costume was always motley, and over time evolved to the signature diamond multicolor patterns of red, blue,and green surrounded by gold braid trim. Often in his tradiational cosutme, he wears the jester’s hat with the many horns and bells.

Columbine is the servant of the Inamorata, sometimes called Isabella. She is in love with Arlecchino. She is the only female zanni, or clown, in the traditional Commedia Dell’Arte. She sings and dances, and generally tries to keep him from getting into trouble by following his misheivious nature. In the English Pantomime, all of the male characters are enamoured of her, as she is the epitome of feminine grace and beauty.

During the time of King James I the Commedia Dell’Arte came to the England, although some sources place the first performance at court in the time of Charles I. However, unlike the Italian troupes with there plethora of characters, the English variation developed into the grand tradition of pantomime, with Harlequin (Arlechinno) being the clown “prince” of the troupe. In the English incarnation, he is more than the clowning servant, he is imbued with magical qualities, being able to change shape as well as perform sleight-of-hand. His traditional black mask became a signal - when up he is able to be seen, when down he is invisible. The scenes of comic sketches in the English pantomime tradition bear his name: “Harlequinades”

Antique French Jumping Jacks
Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486237125
http://store.yahoo.com/doverpublications/0486237125.html

Harlequin and Columbine by Booth Tarkington
A short novel about the production of a play where the lives of the actors mirror the script and sometimes insisting that the script mirror life, and the vanities of actors in the dramatic process. Read it online at the Gutenburg project: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6401

Painting
Harlequin and Columbine (Voulez-vous triompher des Belles?)
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Circa 1717 Oak Panel
http://www.wallacecollection.org/c/w_a/p_w_d/f/p/p387.htm

Harlequin Valentine - a comic Book
Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: John Bolton
Publisher: Titan Books (ISBN 1-84023-411-3)

From Poetry Daily.com:
Five Points
“Since the publication of its inaugural issue in 1996, Five Points has become one of this country’s best literary magazines. Published three times a year by Georgia State University’s Department of English and Creative Writing Program, each issue features poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews with the most compelling writers working today. Five Points is named after an area of downtown Atlanta where cattle paths once converged at the site of an artesian well. As editors, the name offers us a metaphor for our goal of presenting a convergence of ideas and genres, photograph and text, north and south, east and west, young and old.”

http://www.poems.com/featured.htm

http://webdelsol.com/Five_Points/

Poem Hunter
http://www.poemhunter.com/

Poem Online - Bringing Poets Together
http://www.poem.org/index.shtml

“When you have seen the radiance of eternity . . . when you follow your bliss, and by bliss I mean that deep sense of being in it and doing what the push is out of your own existence . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were going to be doors.”—Joseph Campbell

and heretofore how so very very far from this I had been living for so long.

I am finally in a condition to write about what is going on. I came back from Montana, seeking:

Seeking my artistic compatriots, seeking expressive opportunities, seeking a field project, seeking myself. I wrote in my third (of at least five) re-draft of my field project proposal I am:

Desperately Seeking the Unbearable Rightness of Being

What I have been unable to do - and perhaps never again (damn it) - is to just activate the “project machine” and design, plan, procure, execute a project plan UNLESS …. I can identify a meaningful reason for doing so. I have discovered that my father raised me to be a very good soldier - one who when necessity requires, will up and get the job done. My profession has trained me to be a very good designer, but by its nature I have been designing for other people’s lives. I could think of many significant, meaningful, creative, challenging, and truly valuable activities for a field project but I couldn’t answer the question: Why should I do this project? Why should I do it now?

When I returned, I had no idea of where the opportunities in my life exist. I was just going to knock on every door until something developed. I discovered that the local art museum was re-inventing their community education program, so with Tana Steiner’s help I developed overnight proposal for doing a prototype project for what eventually I want someone to pay me to do with K-5 children. The education director was interested, but the timing was a little off for getting the project off the ground by February. A small detail, but I can’t submit a field project report in June if it doesn’t begin until September. I have been studying myths and myth making in earnest, as these were crucial elements in my original proposal. However, I was finding difficulty in connecting any if it back to myself, and unless I could do so, I couldn’t move forward. I have been going out and hanging out in all kinds of artistic venues, and mystically enough the one that has evolved to be the most meaninful is that I joined a drum circle. How odd it is that immediately upon my return from my apprenticeship in African drumming, a drum circle formed at the local cafe. Over the first month things have been a little unpredictable, but there bonds are forming between a group of “regulars”. Not one of us considers ourselves a musician, in fact most of us are primarily involved in the visual arts. October’s project musings started to think I might want to use my drum circle as some sort of focus for my field project. Then the Polly, the cafe’s owner, a staunch supporter of the arts, but a businesswoman nonetheless, had to tell us she wasn’t going to stay open late on Monday anymore as our drum circle had failed to generate the business that her other efforts on other nights had. As of this writing we are homeless, and in hiatus. Poof.

What I have discovered about myself that in truth, I am an underground artistic outsider who looks askance at the “art establishment” and cannot be motivated to work just to have “a show”. In fact, I much prefer creating accidental art without permission. I have more in common with the buskers of the world than those who are longstanding Equity members. Egad. What I realized is that I am probably one of those truly odd performance artists. I was watching the film “I Shot Andy Warhol”, the biopic of Valerie Solanas, and realized how normal to me the scene at The Factory seemed. Oops. I am one good soldier who has really NEEDED to go AWOL for a long time, and just didn’t know it. Sorry Dad.

Then along came a semi-commission for a piece of sculpture. It isn’t the best kind of commission where I actually would end up with income I would have to declare to the IRS. However, it is the nearly next best kind -an opportunity to work big, and have someone else pick up the tab for materials. Our college scholarship fundraiser this year is changing from the ubiquitous but sparsely attended golf tournament, to a Mardi Gras evening. They want some kind of eyecandy visual element when folks walk into our entry pavilion and they are willing to give me access to the building during the holidays to make it. So I started musing on how to possibly incorporate this unexpected event into my Desperate Search for the Unbearable Rightness of Being and my field project requirement for the creative pulse.

PINK PAGES!!!!! PINK PAGES!!!!

How do I know that this time is the right time? Because even though I cannot properly verbalise it, I feel that I am finally synchronous with my rightness of being - that working on this project at this time is what I SHOULD be doing. What seemed to coalesce out of many disparate strands is a theme related to improvisational art - whether physical or performance. I want to focus my exploration process on the Commedia Dell’Arte - the first improv theater - and use its characters as themes in my sculpture for the Mardi Gras. And then I am thinking to continue this into working on performance - to develop my truly own performance art eventually - but to begin at the beginning with the Commedia Dell’Arte tradition as a base. ( Yes - you can see I was a classically trained performer at one time - even when I want to step off the edge, I want to return to the historical roots for my “training”) What could be more perfect - movement, song, percussion, costume, history, humor, irreverence, improvisational?

It is ME.

I have ordered (yesterday) The Love of Three Oranges and several pounds of other books on the Commedia Dell’Arte and amazingly enough, instead of writing a monologue performance, as discussed way so long ago in front of the Montana Theatre, I really want to develop a premise for the traditional Commedia characters but set in somewhat contemporary times - specifically around my favorite era for pop music, performance and costume: ca 1964 - and draft all of the Creative Pulse faculty to perform it first with me, in true Commedia style - knowing your character, knowing the premise, but doing it improv. I, of course, will play the Inamorata, but with quite a twist on the usual vapid Barbie-esque vessel of beauty . She is living on the cusp of feminine revolution, after all. I will be sure to pack my silicone boobs this time.

And will there be PINK? Perhaps.