The Spirit Of The Mask
Clint Bolster
Booking Details
Event details
THE SPIRIT OF THE MASK
Bringing Commedia dell’Arte to Life in Schools!
Duration: 50 min performance + 10 min Q&A
Suitability: Grades 4 – 12
Availability: Terms 1 – 4
Step into the rich tradition of Commedia dell’Arte with The Spirit of the Mask, a dynamic secondary school performance and workshop created by renowned practitioner Tony Kishawi.
This interactive experience is a perfect blend of performance and education, designed to:
- Demonstrate the essential conventions of Commedia and mask performance
- Showcase characters like Zanni, the Lovers, Il Capitano, Il Dottore, and Pantalone
- Engage students through improvisation, audience interaction, and physical comedy
What Students Will Learn:
- Drama: Develop an understanding of practices, respond to and interpret artworks
- History: Explore the role of Renaissance Italy
- Languages: Connect language, culture, and meaning
- English: Strengthen language for interaction
General Capabilities Focused On:
- Critical and Creative Thinking
- Ethical Understanding
- Personal and Social Capability
Key learning outcomes
Years 7-8 Drama (ACARA)
- Identify and analyse how drama influences contemporary theatre from different times, places, and cultures.
- Explore performance styles such as Commedia dell’Arte and their use of masks, improvisation, and physical theatre.
- Investigate characterisation, status, and relationships through performance.
Years 9-12 Drama (ACARA)
- Analyse how different performance styles, including Commedia, use movement, voice and staging to create dramatic meaning.
- Develop and refine expressive skills to communicate dramatic meaning through heightened physicality.
- Investigate the role of audience interaction and improvisation in live performance.
General Capabilities
- Ethical Understanding: Engaging with themes of social status and power dynamics in Commedia dell’Arte.
- Literacy: Understanding traditional Commedia canovacci (story structures) and their influence on modern theatre.
Critical and Creative Thinking: Analysing comedic techniques and applying them to new performance contexts.
Commedia
Learning Areas: The Arts (Drama) Strands: Developing an understanding of practices Responding to and interpreting artworks Humanities and Social Science (History) Renaissance Italy. Languages (Italian)Role of language and culture. English Language for interaction. General Capabilities Critical and Creative Thinking Express ideas, concepts, thoughts and feelings creatively. Consider and evaluate motivations, intentions, influences and biases. Offer and receive effective feedback. Ethical Understanding Apply skills in reasoning, empathy and imagination. Make judgements about actions and motives. Personal and Social Capability Initiative. Confidence. Resilience. Adaptability. Empathy. Style/Form: Commedia dell’Arte. Mask. Physical Theatre and Comedy. Improvisation. T hemes and Contexts: Creativity and Imagination. Transformation. Roles and Relationships. Audience Engagement and Interaction.
Additional Information
Staging Requirements:
Indoor venues ensure a more intimate experience
Outdoor venues require a minimum 5x5m space with one wall
General Venue & Setup Requirements for Workshops
- Requires an open space such as a classroom, double teaching classroom, drama room, studio, or theatre space.
- There are no technical requirements – chairs for participants are optional.
Workshops are designed to be engaging, interactive, and accessible, catering to students with different learning styles.
Contact Clint Bolster for The Spirit Of The Mask
About the Artist
CLINT BOLSTER is a Clown, Physical Actor, Producer and Teaching Artist based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. With over 22 years of professional experience, Clint has dedicated his career to creating original theatrical works and training artists across multiple disciplines. His original creations —HIGH TEA with BOOFF, BOLSTER & LEE: The Knock Em Downs, The Lost Balloon, and The Bubble Canteen—alongside ensemble projects such as The Mask Family, Manoeuvre, and Homunculus Theatre, are programmed widely across Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. These works feature prominently at major arts festivals and in community, cultural, and educational settings, having reached a live global audience in the millions.
Clint has performed extensively throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan—including over 900 solo shows in Japanese at Universal Studios Japan, Osaka. He has toured over 500 primary and secondary schools across Australia. Most recently, he performed in the 2022/2023 Australian tour of Slava’s Snow Show and was accepted into the Cirque du Soleil database of Clowns.
As a dedicated Teaching Artist, Clint has delivered training and masterclasses for actor training institutions and universities worldwide, including the Queensland University of Technology (QLD), Griffith University (QLD), Drama Australia (AUS), Pontio University Wales (UK), and Shakespeare4All (Hong Kong), to name a few.
A proud Queensland member and mentor for the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Clint also serves as a Board Member for Indel-Ability Arts. His extensive touring and producing credits include collaborations with Queensland Theatre, Brisbane Festival, Cairns Festival, Cluster Arts Global, and Live Nation, among many others.
For a complete list of credits, visit – https://www.clintbolster.com/performance-credits
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