The “Importance” of Language in Commedia
from Dory
DEFINING LANGUAGE
“Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.” - Encyclopedia Britanica
Language began as a way to communicate and connect us to others, however language is also quite a divisive element in the world.
A SHORT AND NOT-SO-BORING HISTORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITALY
Italy was a group of city-states until 1861 when it was unified under one kingdom.
The Italian “Language” is a created standard, based on the dialect nearest to Siena.
This is the language that is taught in all schools as the Italian Language standard, even here in Italy.
Many places have retained their dialect as well as speaking standard Italian (and some dialects are pretty far from each other, so they are difficult to understand).
It was important for a performance to be able to translate from city-to-city and therefore, the form of language became mainly physical — and they played a lot with onomatopoeia, gestures and rhythms.
Since spoken language could not be the main form of communication, the relationships and plot needed to be easily recognizable and relatable. With all that, improvisation became one of the keys to success within the cultural confines of comedy.
GRAMMELOT
“Grammelot is a term of French origin, coined by Commedia players, and the word itself is devoid of meaning. It refers to a babel of sounds which, nonetheless, manages to convey the sense of speech. Grammelot indicates the onomatopoeic flow of a speech, articulated without rhyme or reason, but capable of transmitting, with the aid of particular gestures, rhythms and sounds, an entire, rounded speech.”
AN EXAMPLE: THE HUNGER OF ZANNI & DARIO FO
Things you need to know to understand the piece:
Zanni is usually from Bergamo, a mountain town above Milan
The character of Zanni is not made up, but instead refers to a specific socio-economic class of farmers from the mountains of Lombardia, Piemonte and Veneto
Zanni decides to leave his small mountain town because they could longer sell what they were producing. Instead people were buying from larger operations arriving from the East for a third of the price. All of the farmers had to abandon their land to find work doing whatever was needed in the valley below. They became servants and prostitutes because they were dying of hunger.
Therefore, Zanni became the name characteristic of all who were dying of hunger. So many people were dying everyday, they had to have fishermen pull them out of the canals with fishing nets.
Zanni’s character developed out of this hunger. In the piece, he imagines eating himself, then eating the people listening, eating the mountains, God … he is so desperate that he falls asleep and dreams. In his dream he imagines a huge banquet of food and eats it all with incredible speed. He wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
2:39 Grammelot begins: The Grammelot is indicative of not only the sounds and rhythms of the dialect from those regions, but also of the actions happening on stage in his imagination (for example the cauldron boiling - bloup bloup - but they are found throughout).
In the end he finds solace in eating a fly.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Sid Caesar: Grammelot in Four Languages - French, German, Italian and Japanese