The Rhythmic Mask: Laban and Commedia dell'Arte training for performers

The Rhythmic Mask: Exploring Laban Movement Analysis and Commedia dell'Arte for Performers

All stage actors aim to enhance their stage presence through rigorous training. Developing a strong presence often depends on the quality and variety of stage experiences embraced throughout a professional actor's career. It's easy, however, to fall into the trap of repeating the same expressive elements that have worked before, conveying a lack of originality and relevance in one’s performance.

This 5-day intensive workshop, taking place from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., May 22nd to May 27th at Pushkin Hall, presents an overview of the rich opportunities that theater traditions like Commedia dell'Arte and Laban Movement Technique provide to performers by expanding their expressive vocabulary on stage. Under the guidance of Andrea Coppone and Riccardo Ripani, participants will engage in physical training for actors, ensemble work, staging techniques, movement enrichment through the Laban concepts of Body, Space, Effort and Shape, and hands-on exploration with original leather Commedia dell'Arte masks crafted by the renowned Italian mask-maker Sartori.

This workshop is specifically designed for professional actors, students of theater and acting programs in conservatories or colleges, as well as directors. To participate, applicants must submit a self-tape presentation explaining their interest in this work.

With limited availability of 14 participant spots and 5 auditor spots, the workshop costs $365 for 5 days and $200 for auditors (for 5 afternoon sessions only).

For submissions and information, please contact: [email protected]

Introducing the Instructors

Riccardo Ripani

Born and raised in Rome, he has lived in Milan and Paris and is currently based in New York.

After studying law in Rome, in 2005 he followed his true passion and began training under the direction of Luca Ronconi at the Piccolo Teatro conservatory in Milan, where he obtained his professional diploma. Thereafter, he began working with a variety of theater productions in Italy and internationally, from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Mozart’s The Clemency of Titus under the direction of Luca Ronconi to Dostoyevsky's The Possessed under the direction of Peter Stein, with an international tour that kicked off in Milan and continued through Athens, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam and New York, among other cities.

He has always been drawn to multicultural productions. In 2011 and 2012 he was part of the artistic group led by Tunisian director Fadhel Jaïbi in the international project Frontières liquides (Liquid Borders), produced by the Piccolo Teatro in Milan and the the Théàtre de Chaillot in Paris. In 2015, he was a cast member in Alla ricerca di Romeo e Giulietta (Seeking Romeo and Juliet), a collaboration between the Teatro Piemonte Europa in Turin and the Teatr Ślaski in Katowice, Poland, directed by Robert Talarczyk.

From 2013 to 2017 he worked extensively with Turin’s Teatro Piemonte Europa in a variety of shows, including Beppe Navello’s production of Il Divorzio by Vittorio Alfieri and The Three Musketeers, a musical play in eight episodes, with eight directors, in which he played the irreverent Duke of Buckingham. In 2017 he was cast as Baron Tuzenbach in Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Piccolo Teatro, directed by Emiliano Bronzino.

In 2018, he began working with director Aleksey Burago and the off-Broadway Theater86 ensemble in New York, appearing in a stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Subsequently he appeared in The Rise and Fall of Macondo, an adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and Lambs for Slaughter, a theatrical adaptation of four Roald Dahl short stories. In 2023, he was cast as Antonio Salieri in Alexander Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri.

Outside of acting, Riccardo contributed to the translation of Carlo Goldoni’s The Venetian Twins for Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and served as dramaturg for the Theater86 production of Dante’s Inferno. He was selected to become a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab in 2018. He is a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) after completing the Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies program in Brooklyn and continues to incorporate the Laban approach in his theater work.

He’s a proud dad of two.

Andrea Coppone

Andrea Coppone is an international actor, director, teacher born in Lecce (Italy) in 1983. He began his theatrical career at the age of 15 with the company L'Arlecchino Errante, directed by Claudia Contin, who introduced him to the world of Commedia dell'Arte and street theatre. After his studies at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice, in 2005 he was accepted by the prestigious Piccolo Teatro conservatory in Milan, directed by Luca Ronconi. There, he appeared in various productions of the directed by Luca Ronconi, Luis Pasqual and Pascal Rambert. He played Arlecchino in Servant of Two Masters in 2011 and The Island of Arlecchino in 2020, both directed by Stefano de Luca.

He returned to the role of Arlecchino in the production Station Illusion, for the Kungliga Operan of Stockholm, directed by Karin Modigh. From 2011 to 2013, he worked in the Balletto Civile dance theatre collective directed by Michela Lucenti. His versatility allowed him to work both in prose and as a dancer, and his dancing led him to collaborate with respected choreographers such as Malou Airaudo, Lindsay Kemp and Wim Vandekeybus. In 2014, he began working with the shadow theatre company Teatro Gioco Vita, which led to his appearance at the New Victoria Theater on Broadway and La Maison Théâtre in Montreal, Quebec. He received an award for Best Performer at the 52nd International Puppet Theater Festival in Zagreb in 2018 for the show Il cielo degli orsi and the Eyes Wide Open Rome 2018/2019 award for the show Il più furbo, directed by Fabrizio Montecchi. In 2016, together with the London director Jaq Bessell, he founded the Noma Physical Theatre Project, a performing arts training course, which led him to make his directorial debut in 2018 in the show Medea: a work in progress. Since 2019 he has taught physical movement for actors at the Animateria School, the first school in Italy for puppetry. In addition, he has collaborated extensively with the University of Verona, the University of Belgrade and the Guildford School of Acting at the University of Surrey.

Since 2023 he has served as assistant director and Commedia dell'Arte instructor at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.

TESTIMONIALS

"Andrea's unique skills and approach brings out the best in all his students, from beginners to seasoned professionals, in an atmosphere that is playful, free, and fun..." - Jaq Bessell, Associate Professor of Acting/Programme Leader, BA(Hons) Acting, Guildford School of Acting

"With master Coppone I was able to improve awareness of my body by learning to control it in its smallest details and not to be controlled by it, training myself to clean up my movements so that each of them could be the bearer of a precise and universally understandable meaning. Like a master sculptor, he taught me to make the body the raw material to be modeled to give life to any character." - Alma di Bello, workshop participant in Ahlhorn, Germany (2022)

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Pushkin Hall, 165 West 86th Street, New York, United States