ERNIE GONZÁLEZ, JR.
  • Acting
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    • Class-ies (Class Selfies)
  • Comedy
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Check out this article on Clowning written by one of my amazing students!
​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. It can be seen and utilized anywhere from Classical Comedy; Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Moliere, to Clowning; Cirque du Soleil, Ringling Brothers, Hermanos Vasquez, to Stand Up, to Contemporary Comedy on Stage and Screen.

I teach Comedy by first exploring Commedia Lazzo (laughing lazzi, fly lazzi, hungry lazzi, tight-rope lazzi), then applying those principles mentioned above (timing, improvisation, precision, etc.) to scenes from classical comedy, to Clowning routines, to Stand-up, to contemporary scripts.
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  • Acting
  • Teaching
    • Class-ies (Class Selfies)
  • Comedy
  • D.E.I.A.
  • Directing
  • Community