25 Years

Dear Constant Reader, No tip this week. A story instead. Before I discovered burlesque, I performed with a commedia dell’arte troupe. For those unfamiliar, commedia is a form of theatre that developed in Italy in the 16th century. It’s the great-great-grandmother of burlesque, opera, ballet, pantomime, &c. We stuck to commedia’s roots, wearing 16th-century style costumes, most of the male characters wore masks, and rather than using a script we had a scenario, a plot outline from which we improvised the three-act play. (This is not to say we were winging it — it takes a lot of rehearsing to be good at improvising). A commedia troupe in Austin, Texas invited us to perform at the first ever Commedia dell’Austin Festival and nine members headed off from Logan Airport on September 9th, 2001. It was going to be a whirlwind trip. We arrived just in time for our Sunday evening show, we had a Monday night show, and a Tuesday matinee and then we were leaving early Wednesday morning for home.…