Legacies of Commedia dell’Arte: “Others” and the Production of Theatre from Early-Modern Italy through Modern-Day California

Erith Jaffe-Berg
Theatre, Film and Digital Production
UC Riverside

Commedia dell’arte, the improvisational theatre form based on stock characters like Arlecchino (Harlequin), has remained an influential and enduring performance form since it originated in sixteenth-century Northern Italy. Recent scholarship has also emphasized the intercultural aspects of commedia dell’arte as a multilingual performance form. This free, interdisciplinary conference gathers scholars from various UC and other campuses to consider commedia dell’arte’s “other” side, where the “other” is understood in temporal, historical, political, cultural and geographic ways. The conference brings scholars and practitioners in conversation, including: El Teatro Campesino, Culture Clash, the Actors’ Gang and Dell’Arte International. In this way, the conference explores how commedia dell’arte’s political and social impetus lives on in the theatre of protest that our students and current scholarship engage.