'Cafe Floriani' is a Commedia del arte school touring production created from the success of 'Mr Affogato'.

'Cafe Floriani'
Commedia del' arte production

DIRECTED BY TONY KISHAWI
Performed by Transient Theatre Company 2000 - 2007

'Cafe Floriani' is a Commedia del arte production that was created especially for High Schools. After the success of 'Mr Affogato' in Canberra depicting a real life scenario of one coffee shop trying to put another out of business, it seemed to be a very good starting point for creating an educational production for schools. With a cast of three, they all play multiple roles. 'Cafe Floriani' is currently on tour this year. Please contact us for touring information.

The name 'Cafe Floriani' came from an Italian who claims it's one of the oldest coffee shops in Florence, Italy. So we're still basing the name of the production on the 'Mr Affogato' theme, which is a coffee shop feud.

A school touring production had to consider a few things, it had to impart the information that the students needed in order to study Commedia, and so therefore we included sections that especially demonstrated the improvisational nature of Commedia, working with the audience, asking them to heckle and even suggested directions from the audience during the performance to show the audience that the actors were able to improvise.

We've found that 'Cafe Floriani' has grown in its success over many years of touring. This due to all the drama teachers that invite this production into their school, they realise that it is a good example of Commedia. It is a series of short scenarios strung together on a basic theme which is "Competition in the market place". We take it to the ridiculous of course, which Commedia allows, and the teachers like it because once they have actually seen it and they become aware how well their students react to the production; how immediately the students realise what Commedia is and how they can actually approach the presenting task themselves. These teachers invite us back again and again. As a result of this we've found that we're constantly being requested to visit schools, with the drama teachers telling their students, with confidence "Get your money in, this is going to be a worthwhile production!", "don't miss out" etc....

'Cafe Floriani' is a good example of Commedia yet again because it allows the three actors to demonstrate their capability of being able to transform their character by playing two roles, in one case three roles, by quick-changing backstage the students then see how the masks change the physical attributes of an actor, so much so that after the show, during question time, some of the students were having trouble picking which actor played which mask!

I have a few video clips on this web site from 'Cafe Floriani's' performances.

"il Doctore's Introduction", this is a short video showing how il Doctore can work the audience, in a very simple way. Every beginning of the show is different, depending upon whether the audience is actually playing along with us or not. il Doctore has an important job, he has to 'break the ice' and allow the students to realise that they can actually call out and join in and the actors will talk back to them. If this doesn't work in the first part of the show, we have a very hard time later on in allowing the students to realise that they can be a part of the show, especially when we're asking for volunteers and sometimes even spontaneous participation which has happened in some particular performances. We find that the show is an event, we go away saying, "Well not much happened in that one! we only performed our normal scenario", or we say, "Yes! Wow! Wasn't that student great when they did this, said that and got up and did this!". This makes the actors stay on their toes, not get stale and attempt to make a 'live', 'interactive performance' every time.

The traditional moves and historical information, that the students read in the history books and the text books for Commedia, are demonstrated clearly. We as actors try to ensure that we present the walks, traditional stances and character traits in such a way, so that when the students look back at their reference books they can see that we were recreating that theatre style.

In the video clips, you will see that we have captured what is called "lazzis", (short comic routines). There's one video called "Have a seat" it's where the actors have developed, over time, an improvisational scenario where they get a volunteer out of the audience, sit them on the seat and treat them as a customer. They're il Doctore's one and only customer so therefore the servants and il Doctore give them all their attention. The actors have to improvise with what ever they order. Later on there's another lazzi where two zannis find instruments, this one's called "Found Instruments" and the two zannis improvise with these very simple instruments to play music. Lazzis in general are developed during the performance, or over many performances, and as each day or improvisations unfold, we add to them and keep them until they became an established lazzi.

We've also added a small amount of music to this production, we do our own version of 'Commedia music'. There is a short example video clip called "Musical Zannis".

Click here to go to Cafe Floriani Photos of the current cast 2007