In this ADA blog post, physical theatre students KG, Liliana and Michael reflect on their time at the villa so far as they approach the halfway point of the semester. Read on to hear more!

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KG Rucker, Muhlenberg College

Semester Physical Theatre Program

Movement is my key

that, among other things,

sets my voice free.

But I’ve learned it really brings

everything into grasp,

from my periphery 

to my anterior, and I clasp

what’s in front of me.

It’s always an exploration,

no matter what I do;

I’ve lost my hesitation

and can follow through

with my curiosity.

My body is a tool,

from what I can see.

And if I am no fool,

I can hone it, verily.

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Liliana Mastroanni, Skidmore College

Semester Physical Theatre Program

Hey friends! It’s Liliana coming at you with some highlights from last week.

We were very fortunate to have worked with the incredible Alessio on Dada performance. We learned what Dadaism was, where it came from, and how it influenced future art movements in our Avant Garde class with Giangiacomo, and then we had the chance to experience it ourselves in the Teatrino with Alessio. The sculpture you see above was created when Alessio told us to make something out of objects, and let those objects be transformed in some way. That was all the direction we were given, and we ended up with a structure that has no inherent meaning, but would make a pretty cool set for a dystopian future play. 

Our three Dada performance workshops culminated into a 14-minute performance piece. Most of it was directed by Alessio, and the last bit of it was improvised by us. We were given a script of Dada text that the actual Dadaists used for their performances, and created a vignette of moments where we connected our bodies to the sounds of the text in small groups. We learned that the point of Dada is to be nonsensical because that was their response to seeing Europe, the pinnacle of Western prosperity, fall apart during WWI and how that doesn’t make any sense. Thus, we achieved what the Dadaists aimed for, which was to create art that inherently doesn’t make sense. 

Another highlight of last week was Karaoke Night! On Thursday night we all got together in the Sala Danza with blankets and pillows and projected karaoke tracks on the wall while each of us sang our hearts out. Some of us went up as soloists and some of us went in duos. We sang everything from bar ballads to musical theatre, and many of us went two or three times. This week was also our first week doing voice and movement with the one and only Kevin, who tends to leave some of our voices quite tired by the end of class, which made karaoke night difficult for some. But! We pushed through anyway for the sake of fun. Overall, it was a very fun week, and I look forward to more voice work with Kevin and fall break starting next week! 

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Michael Reddy, Coastal Carolina University

One Year Physical Theatre Program

During the second week of classes, the students were offered the opportunity to perform in the Arezzo Crowd Festival. We created a small juggling piece and performed in the streets flash-mob style. The performance itself was not the highlight of the day. After the performance a group of maybe 10 of us walked to a more Avant-Garde performance consisting of two performers moving with a prop rose and a performer in a steam punk costume with stilts placed on both their feet and hands so they could walk like a horse. During the walk there, I juggled clubs the entire way. Heads were turning as we walked so my circus partner Jonah and I decided to put out a plate and street perform for a while. We juggled, diablo-ed, hand balanced, plate spun, and performed some partner acrobatics. After a little longer than an hour, we made enough money to buy dinner for ourselves.

Jonah was hungry for fried rice so we walked around the city scanning menus for fried rice. Finally, we found a place that unfortunately I cannot remember the name of. We order the dish that we thought translated to fried rice. To our surprise we got the translation right! Unfortunately, fried rice in Arezzo and the US is very different. It is a fried ball of rice not rice with egg, peas, carrots, among a litany of other delicious morsels. The “fried rice” was wonderful. Mine was filled with cheese and mushroom while Jonah’s was filled with eggplant and cheese.