Tut' WHA?!: A post about Tut’Zanni’s (in)famous name

Tut’Zanni has gotten various questions about our name over the years. Anything from how do you pronounce that to Tut’ Wha?! Who is this Zanni character anyway.

Well, let’s start at the beginning. There was light... just kidding. There were peasants in a very small mountain town called Bergamo that is located right above Milano. Bergamo actually became recently famous as they were one of the first small towns to be hit with COVID-19. There were 300 people a week dying in a town of no more than 100,000 people, it was devastating.

To be honest, in Zanni’s time, things were not much better for the Italian population. People were dying in the streets of starvation and suffering from disease. What better time to create comedy? Zanni was born out of the Venetian dialect for the name Giovanni or Gianni or as we know in English, John as in John Doe. Zanni was said to have come to Venice from Bergamo or as an immigrant and is seen as the “other” in this context. He doesn’t speak with Venetian dialect and is rarely understood nor does he understand much. One of the best stories I ever heard about the origin of Zanni was that when someone would steal some bread or something to eat (because they were starving, remember) the authorities would be called. When they arrived the people would yell, “Zanni did it! Zanni did it!”, meaning “John Doe did it”, therefore protecting each other and saving another person from starvation.

Zanni was the first character of the Commedia dell’Arte. From him the servant class was formed. One thing to notice about Zanni is that it is very close to a word we have in English - can you guess it?.... If you said ‘zany’ you would be right and in fact that word comes from this archetype. That should give you a clue about the characteristics of Zanni. He is eager, joyful, confused, curious, genius yet misunderstood and ALWAYS hungry. He does not relate to the world in a way that society would deem “normal” (whatever that is!) or rationally. He has the ability to do amazing things and tends to be nimble and acrobatic. But he just wants to connect with others and be a part of the society in which he lives. You could compare him to the August clown or in pop culture the Minions from Dispicable Me for example.

Now back to the name Tut’Zanni. Why Tut? You STILL haven’t told us how you pronounce it?! Ok, so something to understand about the Italian language is that they love to combine words. The ‘Tut’ in our name is actually short for the Italian word ‘tutti’ which means ‘everyone’ and is pronounced ‘tootee’ [tutːti]. Zanni is pronounced ‘zahnee’ [t͡sänːni]. So our name means ‘every zanni’ or ‘we’re all Zannis’.

We are honored to celebrate the name of such an important and influential character in political theatre and to continue developing this tradition in the contemporary American context.

- Dory