Good Teachers

I know that this is generally been what dad has been writing, but I'd like to put my two cents into the “Good Teachers” pages. For the last four weeks on Saturdays, Ellie and I have been taking art and acting lessons in Florence, in both of which we had an awesome time. I think the amazing leaders of both of these classes deserve their own section in our “Great Teachers” list.

First, in the morning was art with Marco. This was really a personal class, because Marco had lots of kids coming at all different times for different periods of time, so Ellie and I made up one entire “class” of our own, if you will. Marco was a wonderful teacher. He introduced us to a form of art called bas-relief. It may have been a lot of work (we made a clay model, a plaster cast and then we finally created the final product out of concrete, which of course needed to be painted), but we learned so much about all different mediums and had a great time doing so.

The clay was fun, just as clay usually is, but this was much different than regular sculpture. First, we took a lump of clay and made it into a sort of tablet. Once we had the tablet, we picked a picture from one of the nature books Marco had (I picked a tiger shark and Ellie chose a flamingo), and drew the outline on our tablet. From that, we actually built upwards, placing on tiny bits of clay on top of the outline. That was the most time consuming part, for me at least. I'm sure it could have something to do with me being a perfectionist and never having been able to get anything done in a short amount of time, anyway.

Then we applied plaster over the clay. The first layer of plaster we dyed pink, so when we dug out the clay, we would know when to stop. The rest of the layers were white and all of the plaster went on rather quickly and dried faster than I expected it would. Once the plaster was dry, we dug out the clay model and carefully washed our plaster casts in Marco's freezing cold sink. After I had brushed my shark's teeth, it was time for cement. Ellie, Marco and I mixed a couple buckets-full and ever so carefully poured it into our plaster molds. We shook the molds to get the air out of the cement then covered. We were then forced to wait until the next class to do any further work.

Once the cement was dry a week later, we took a hammer and chisel and chipped away the plaster shells to reveal the final forms. We, again, scrubbed down our new creations and then went off to paint. Ellie finished painting her flamingo that day, but I, being quite a bit more meticulous (to put it in a nice way), didn't finish until the following and, sadly, final week. I am proud to say that all of our efforts paid off and we now have some wonderful cement bas-relief panels to take back to the US.

After we left Marco's studio each weekend, we made our way across the Arno River and town to the acting class in that was held in the cafeteria of a private school in Florence. It was taught by Suzanne, Elia, and two other English speaking moms, who were obviously seasoned professionals. It was definitely more of an actual “class” than Marco's operation. It was a six week course in improvisation and the Commedia Del'Arte, although, sadly, we were only able to attend four of the weeks. The class was composed of about sixteen kids, most of whom spoke English, two or three didn't, but it wasn't a problem.

Each week we would warm up with vocal and body exercises. Some days we would do some improv activities, others we would learn about our Commedia characters, who we would be acting out. Some weeks we also made real Commedia masks based on the ones our characters wore. I was actually to be playing two female roles, so I had no restrictions on my mask (actresses didn't wear masks in the Commedia Dell'Arte), so I definitely took advantage of that. One week, we even brought in random house-hold items and, on the spot, had to integrate them into our little sketches.

We had a wonderful time meeting all the other kids, but it truly was the teachers who made the class so novel. Their teaching, coaching and advice in the Commedia, improvisation, and just acting overall was nothing short of wonderful. We learned so much and I think it really helped us to discover ourselves as actors, even if it means Ellie's voice is two octaves lower than mine, and I have boobs the size of bowling balls (see video).

Here's me making my mask on my face for a custom fit.

Here's Ellie and I wearing our masks after the improvements made in acting class....i may still have even a couple more ideas.

Our whole acting class wearing our finished masks.

Marco and I with my shark.

My shark

From left to right: Marco, Ellie, Me

Here's a quick run-down of all the characters in the skit (we all chose Comedia Dell'Arte stock characters and studied and adopted their personalities)

• Ellie is an inamorato ("o"=male), or lover, named Izabello (see the "o" again). I am an inamorata ("a"=female) named Izabella. Both lovers are extremely self-consumed and vain. They care about their appearance more than anything else. They do not truly love each other, only themselves, and they enjoy one another simply because they think the other person looks like them.

• Mia (the short girl) is Arlechino (otherwise known as the Harlequin). He is mischievous, energetic and always pulling pranks on other people. He is extremely acrobatic and dances around rather than walks.

• Vivian (the taller girl in all black) in Stintarello, a slightly less common Comedia character, but still extremely funny. He is fat, slow and stupid, 'nuff said.

( We had to cut the video into two parts to get it to load.)