On Comedy
“Tell it in action”
– Buster Keaton
Comedy is serious business. How serious? Well, it's a matter of life or death. If you fail, you've "bombed" and "died out there," but if you succeed, you've "killed!"
To master the art of comedy, physical comedy, and clowning is to master the art of the Lazzi. Simply put, Lazzi is a physical or verbal bit derived from Commedia dell’arte. More complex though, are its requirements. Lazzi insists on precision, timing, improvisation, physicality, non-verbal communication, awareness, and imagination (to name a few). At a minimum, a Lazzi has two parts; a set-up and a punchline, a premise and a point of view, or an expectation and then a surprise. At maximum, a Lazzi can go on for hours. Lazzi, therefore, can be seen and utilized anywhere from Classical Comedy; Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Moliere, to Clowning; Cirque, Ringling, Hermanos Vasquez, to Stand Up, to modern-day TV Sitcom; Blackish, The Connors, and Schitt's Creek.
I teach comedy by first exploring and mastering Commedia Lazzo (laughing lazzi, fly lazzi, hungry lazzi, tight-rope lazzi), which are in themselves Clowning Routines. We then apply those principles mentioned above (precision, timing, improvisation, etc., etc., etc.,) to scenes from the Classical Comedy repertoire, to Clowning Routines and Personas, to Stand Up, to contemporary scripts.
“Tell it in action”
– Buster Keaton
Comedy is serious business. How serious? Well, it's a matter of life or death. If you fail, you've "bombed" and "died out there," but if you succeed, you've "killed!"
To master the art of comedy, physical comedy, and clowning is to master the art of the Lazzi. Simply put, Lazzi is a physical or verbal bit derived from Commedia dell’arte. More complex though, are its requirements. Lazzi insists on precision, timing, improvisation, physicality, non-verbal communication, awareness, and imagination (to name a few). At a minimum, a Lazzi has two parts; a set-up and a punchline, a premise and a point of view, or an expectation and then a surprise. At maximum, a Lazzi can go on for hours. Lazzi, therefore, can be seen and utilized anywhere from Classical Comedy; Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Moliere, to Clowning; Cirque, Ringling, Hermanos Vasquez, to Stand Up, to modern-day TV Sitcom; Blackish, The Connors, and Schitt's Creek.
I teach comedy by first exploring and mastering Commedia Lazzo (laughing lazzi, fly lazzi, hungry lazzi, tight-rope lazzi), which are in themselves Clowning Routines. We then apply those principles mentioned above (precision, timing, improvisation, etc., etc., etc.,) to scenes from the Classical Comedy repertoire, to Clowning Routines and Personas, to Stand Up, to contemporary scripts.
