The Italian Experience - Masks

Since Marco Polo's father and uncle stayed in Venice for four years after their first trip to the East before they set off again, we thought we would spend a little bit longer in Italy to learn more about the country, as well as to better prepare ourselves to embark on the epic journey.

 

We learned about a specific type of theatre in Italy called commedia dell'arte.

It is very similar to the English Punch and Judy puppet show where there is a standard set of characters.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, Punch and Judy evolved from commedia dell'arte.

After watching National Theatre's introduction above, we decided to watch an actual Italian version that introduces each character and the relevant theatrical masks each wears:

I bought two pre-made masks from a craft shop and asked Tiger to choose one mask to be decorated as a theatrical mask, the other was to be a Venetian carnival mask.  For ideas and inspirations on how to decorate the carnival mask, Tiger googled "Venetian carnival mask" and looked through the search results.

Once he was happy with his research, he started to paint each mask with an undercoat:

The undercoat took a day to fully dry.  Next, I laid out all the materials I could find for Tiger to start decorating his masks: sequins, ribbons, craft precious stones, feathers, yarn, crepe paper, craft aluminium foil....etc.

Then off he went.

Theatrical Mask

Carnival Mask

This post is linked up to:
1) History and Geography Meme #70
2) Virtual Refrigerator
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 19, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Delight Directed Learning and a Super Morning Routine
5) Homeschool Review
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 19
7) April Culture Swapper
8) Look What We Did!
9) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One After the 2:1 Conference
10) Creative Kids Culture Hop #3
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/23/13

It is also featured in Homeschool Review and

Dress them up!

The second workshop that we attended at the National Theatre was a costume making workshop led by the main costume designer there.  The workshop started out with a brief introduction of how costume designers and makers at the National Theatre work, where they get their ideas from, and how they go from having an idea to making the actual costume.

We were then put into groups of four or five to brainstorme ideas on what we have understood so far about costume designing:

Each group was given a well-known fictional character to create the costume for, using scissors, markers, cellotape, and brown papers.   There was much discussing, drawing, cutting, measuring, and sticking together pieces of paper.  One thing I really appreciate about workshops like this is the exposure to group dynamics -- e.g. collaborating, sharing ideas, adapting to others' working styles -- for Tiger.
 

The character we were assigned to was The Cat in the Hat.

Here is a sample of the various costumes created within the 45 minutes we were given:

Once again, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  Now, I am on the lookout for suitable theatre/drama classes for Tiger.