The Servant of Two Masters

Butler University Department of Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana, will open its mainstage season with the classic Italian commedia dell’arte play Servant of Two Masters, Oct. 31-Nov. 4.

Show times are 7 p.m. Oct. 31-Nov. 3 and 2 p.m. Nov. 4. Tickets are $8-$19 and available through ButlerArtsCenter.org.

The production is directed by Italian actor, director, and theatre teacher Marco Luly, who comes to Butler as part of the university’s Christel DeHaan Visiting International Theatre Artist program. Butler Theatre established the program in 2010 to give students the opportunity to learn from a theater professional from another country. Past VITAs have come from Russia, India, England, and elsewhere.

Luly says the show, which was written by Carlo Goldoni in 1745 and has been performed steadily in Italy since 1949, is a comedy with some funny and some serious parts. Some parts develop the story, some parts advance the story, and some parts play the lazzi—the jokes, the fun. There’s improvisation, so the actors need to listen to each other. They need to understand how to share the space and pace. To learn action and reaction. To control their body, their body language. To establish contact with other people. To pick up the vibe of the crowd and play with the audience, rather than to the audience.

“Everything can be used,” he says. “Everything. It’s like the pork, where everything gets used.”

Luly said he chose The Servant of Two Masters in part to show Butler Theatre students that even though commedia dell’arte is a 500-year-old comedy art form, it will be instantly recognizable to today’s audiences through its resemblance to Shakespeare’s comedies, silent movies, sketch comedy, and TV sitcoms. Actors wear leather masks that exaggerate facial features and identify them as stock characters. There are mistaken identities, lovers’ triangles, class struggles, and more.

“Commedia dell’arte is at the root of almost every form of comedy that we know today, whether it’s a TV commercial or Saturday Night Live, or Seinfeld and Cheers,” says Diane Timmerman, Chair of Butler Theatre. “All these shows have stock characters, situations, physical comedy that is all derived from comedia. So it’s fun to go to the source and experience what the original comedy was.”

Luly brought with him four masks for the student-actors to portray character types. There’s Brighella, who is a high-status servant like an innkeeper; Arlecchino, a servant character looking for money, power, and position in the world; Il Dottore—the Doctor—who bluffs his way through every situation; and Pantalone, an old merchant who’s often in love with young girls.

The masks, he says, “are the magic of this form of theater. The masks are important for the actors. The mask does not hide. The mask amplifies. The mask is a tool that can help me show the audience my emotions, my sentiments, my lines. And I don’t need to use too many words, too many moves. I can project my emotions just by one movement of my mask.”

Taylor Steigmeyer, a junior Theatre/Psychology double major from South Bend, Indiana, is playing Arlecchino, the servant of two masters—and having a great time squatting and jumping and inhabiting this sprightly, sparkly, physically demanding character.

Arlecchino, she says, is a character with two basic needs. He wants food—he’s always hungry—and affection from Smeraldina, the maid.