traditions reflect

At the beginning of the week, we were asked to research world theater traditions in order to do a IB project. In the long list of available theater traditions, I picked 3 of them as my favorite: commedia dell’arte, karagoz puppetry and Punch and Judy puppetry. 

Commedia dell’arte means comedy of the profession and it was a kind of early professional comedy theater originated from Italy with stock characters and masks. It makes fun on social stereotypes so stock characters have their own ways of doing things. In the most interesting thing in Commedia dell’Arte is the specific movements of stock characters. When I looked up the characters movement in Commedia dell’Arte, what surprised me was the movements of the stock characters are almost exact the same as the movements of characters in modern theater and film. For example, the old man in Commedia dell’Arte always bend his back, stretch his neck and walk with small steps with old man’s stoop while looking around. This specific type of old men are everywhere in our modern videos. This made me really curious about the origin or the history of the modern theater and the relationship between Commedia dell’Arte and western performing arts.

Karagoz and Hacivat puppetry was originated in Turkey and was popular in Greece and Anatolia, also known as Turkish shadow play. Karagoz and Hacivat are 2 types of the characters in the play. Karagoz represents lower class people with straight heart and they want to get rich quickly; Hacivat represents upper class people with higher education level and they always want to teach the lower class people something which Karagoz consider silly. As a result, the story of Turkish shadow play always ends up with two characters complaining each other. I like this theater tradition for it established a sense of conflict between different class and the irony of society. Through this theater tradition, I can explore the society of Ottoman Empire in a deeper level. 

Punch and Judy was a violent puppet show originated in England and rooted in Commedia dell’Arte. It is mostly the puppet talk show of Mr.Punch and his wife Judy. The punchline of the show comes from mostly the violence—Judy clubbing Punch and the traditional English culture. We watched an IB student doing Punch and Judy project in class together which made me realized that Punch and Judy was not a simple puppet talk show with babbittry humor but a professional theater system with sophisticated acting skills such like talking in a different voice and the control of the puppet and the staging choice.

What I feel familiar with in these theater tradition was the their humor and many elements of them are still in use in modern cartoon, film and theater. My mind come up with Jerry clubbing Tom’s face every time I see Mr.Punch being clubbing by Judy. What I feel different are their language and punchlines. Hundreds of years passed, so many punchlines are forgotten and cannot be understand anymore. The 3 favorite theater traditions of my are all comedy theater. Why? Because there are always deeper spiritual introspection under the surface happiness in comedies. And they all have kind of stock characters in their tradition which is really worth to explore why.