THE DELL’ARTE COMPANY
The Dell’Arte Company has been at the forefront of the ensemble theatre movement for nearly 40 years. Employing and revitalizing traditional physical theatre forms to explore contemporary concerns, Dell’Arte has created more than 45 award-winning original works and has toured regionally and internationally, performing from rural communities like Forks of Salmon to international festivals in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, Hungary and France. Always exploring the work of the actor-creator, Dell’Arte has devised highly experimental touring pieces such as “Paradise Lost,” adapted and directed by Giulio Cesare Perrone, as well as imaginative original family theatre such as “The Fish In My Head,” and large-scale ‘theatre of place’ spectacles at its annual summer Mad River Festival. The 2012 summer hit, “Mary Jane: The Musical,” explored through song the light and dark sides of California’s marijuana ‘green rush.’
Many of the Company’s original works, such as “Three Trees” and the annual original holiday show, are ensemble-devised. But DAC has also worked with playwrights such as Lauren Wilson and M. Graham Smith, and adapted classics such as “Peer Gynt,” directed by Michael Fields, in collaboration with the Jomfru-Ane Theatre of Denmark. This production played Minneapolis and New York prior to opening the Jomfru Ane ’06 season in Aalborg, Denmark. In 2009 the Company premiered “Inverted Alba: A Fable & Roundelay After Images of Garcia Lorca,” directed by Ronlin Foreman. Joan Schirle’s “Elisabeth’s Book” premiered in 2014, and along with “Mary Jane: The Musical” and “Three Trees”, is available for booking.
The Dell’Arte Company is known internationally for its dazzling level of performing artistry and unique sense of theatricality. DAC is also acclaimed for its teaching residencies in physical performance styles, having developed a dynamic contemporary acting approach in which body, voice, and point of view celebrate the work of the actor/creator.
