Mark Ravenhill took the country by storm 30 years ago with his play Shopping and Fucking. Now he’s gone back over four hundred years and drawn inspiration from the Zanni, Innamorati and Vecchi of Commedia dell'Arte in a bold and bawdy venture at Wilton’s Music Hall that sees ten new full-length plays performed as rehearsed readings over two days.
He directs a cast of some 80 actors in plays rooted in scenarios from a 1611 publication by the Italian actor and manager Flaminio Scala; pieces he found to have such a "generosity of spirit and comic energy" that he was inspired to create an epic cycle of modern comedies based around them. “They are sexually frank,” he says "with the women given as much agency as the men. They are socially acute, depicting the newly rich mixing with the urban poor and new migrants from the countryside. They are grounded in money, sex and the body." It’s a project about which he feels passionately enthusiastic and one that is clearly in line with his scandalous first play.
He has not aimed for a historical reconstruction of the originals, but rather “to write plays that allow contemporary audiences to laugh and to celebrate our shared humanity”. To this end, written over the past year, roughly at the rate of one a month, the 90-minute storylines depict a world "in which we are all fools and we all need to find a way to get along". How contemporary is that?
Rather than becoming a recluse, locked away until the task was completed, he organised actors’ workshops in a collaborative project with Charlie MacGechan’s production company Run at It Shouting, named after the advice Paul McGann’s character is given when faced with a 'randy' bull in the film Withnail and I. Ravenhill latched onto the title and has collectively named his tales Run at It Laughing.
In the tradition of the genre, Scala’s extant material has no written scenes or dialogues; simply a four-page outline for each of the plays. Ravenhill explains that the plays had been improvised, using the scenarios, in the 1570s and 1580s by an Italian troupe (Compagnia dei Gelosi, Company of Jealous Ones). These were the first fully professional actors in Europe and the first to include women as equal members of the company. One of these female actors, Isabella Andreini, became the most famous performer of her day." She was also a notable poet and playwright. "But, being improvised,” he continues, “the influence of these plays has mostly been forgotten….(but)can be seen in works by Shakespeare, Lope de Vega and Molière."
The marathon event commences at noon on 9th May with successive plays at 2, 4, 6 and 8 pm. That pattern will be repeated the following day. Tickets are available for individual plays, but there are deals for seeing more and a special £40 ‘weekend pass’ for rising to the challenge of seeing all ten. Ravenhill explains, "Each of the plays puts the same characters in different situations. There’s a cumulative pleasure in seeing several … As you get to know the characters, there’s an extra level of comedy and recognition. Much as there is with contemporary sitcom."
Profits from the event will be donated to the Nia Project, which runs services for women and girls who have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence and abuse.
