Today’s actor must play characters in fantasy, mythic, cartoon and classical environments. The ability to play roles of greater scope than ordinary realism presents a challenge to the modern actor. In Playful Tragedy Michael Devine takes the actor through games, exercises and études designed to give the actor the ability to find truth, rather than realism, in every moment on stage, no matter how unfamiliar the setting, character, or situation may be. The actor must always be ready to play, even in the most serious of circumstances!
Andrea Lattari is the co-Founder and co-Director of award winning company Teatro Maner Manush (Italia), and the IMAGO MUNDI Cultural Association. A recognized expert in the Commedia dell’ arte, he has worked for more than 15 years with his partner Cinzia Grande in international theatre as an actor, author, director and instructor, creating shows and performances which have been awarded with prizes in International Theater Festivals as in London (UK), Slovakia, Greece, India and USA. Since 2013 Andrea has been an Associate Instructor with the Centre for Alternative Theatre Training (CATT). Andrea’s creative work fuses artistic disciplines from painting and music to theatre, as in the recent Maner Manush productions Michelangelo da Caravaggio and Artemisia. His teaching and performances bring theatrical tradition and history into an immediate and resonant present, reaching across and between cultures.
Cinzia Grande is the co-Founder and co-Director of Teatro Maner Manush and the Imago Mundi Cultural Association. An actress, director, costume designer/builder and teacher, Cinzia’s expertise includes many aspects of Oriental Theatre. During many travels in India, she studied Indian classical chanting, folk and religious music, and performed with the mystic itinerant musicians Baul of Bengal, before exploring further research in the ethnomusicological use of voice in theatre. With Maner Manush and Imago Mundi Cultural Association she has co-created several shows which have been awarded with prizes in International Theater Festivals in many countries: England, United States, Greece, Slovakia, India. In 2014 she wrote and created The Inn of Crossed Destinies, produced in USA, presented at Theatre World Festival. Her researches in theatre and painting helped to create Michelangelo da Caravaggio and Artemisia. Since 2013 she has been an Associate Instructor at CATT—Centre for Alternative Theatre Training. Cinzia’s work studies the actor’s body languages, through traditional and new forms of performing arts in different countries and cultures.
Michael Devine has directed nearly 50 professional productions in nine languages, including national theatres in Canada, Serbia, Kosovo, Romania, and Hungary. Michael has appeared as a featured guest artist at eight international theatre festivals: MESS Festival (Sarajevo, BiH), FITS (Sibiu, ROM), FIST (Belgrade, SRB), Ideo/Ideis Festival (Alexandria, ROM), IUGTE Festival (Malpils, LVA); InFoMaT (Athens, GR); A.N.F.I. Festival (Kraljevo, SRB); OITF (Odessa, UKR). BoxWhatBox, Michael’s internationally recognised performance creation and actor-training system, has featured in more than 20 countries on five continents, including work in Jyväskylä (FIN), Kampala (UG), Accra (GH), and Beirut (LB). Michael is the Founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Alternative Theatre Training (CATT), an international, intercultural actor training intensive which takes place annually. Classically trained as an actor in London (UK) at LAMDA and New York City at the HB Studio. In 2018 Michael led a three instructor team at CATT Amsterdam. He is also at work on a book about the BoxWhatBox technique entitled BoxWhatBox: Holistic Acting for the 21st Century.
Theatre is a discipline that is thousands of years old. The modern actor is often told that history does not matter. But every comic character has an ancestor in theatre, and finding the link between the past and present is the key to creating a character in three dimensions. Tradition can be revolution! In Serious Comedy Andrea Lattari and Cinzia Grande ground the actor in the foundational characters of comedy. The actor eliminates his modern inhibitions in service of creating true comedy.
A visual record of laboratory work, rehearsal processes, and international collaborations.