Carlo Mazzone-Clementi (12 December 1920 – 5 November 2000) was a performer and founder of two schools of commedia, mime and physical theater as well as a contemporary and colleague of leaders of modern European theater. From his arrival in the USA in 1957, he was largely responsible for the spreading of commedia dell'arte in North America. He first gained attention in Italy in 1947 alongside

Marcel Marceau Marcel Marceau (; born Marcel Mangel; 22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was a French actor and mime artist most famous for his stage persona, "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence", and he performed professionally worldw ...

in the mime’s first tour outside of Paris.Giants of Commedia: Carlo Mazzone-Clementi
4 February 2011, retrieved 8 February 2013. From 1948 to 1951, he assisted

Jacques Lecoq Jacques Lecoq (15 December 1921 – 19 January 1999) was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime which he taught at the school he founded in Paris known as ...

, while Lecoq taught and directed the Players of Padua University. In 1954, Mazzone-Clementi was at

Piccolo Teatro di Milano The Piccolo Teatro di Milano (translation: "Little Theatre of the City of Milan") is a theatre in Milan, Italy. Founded in 1947, it is Italy's first permanent theatre, and a national "teatro stabile", or permanent repertory company, and is conside ...

with

Dario Fo Dario Luigi Angelo Fo (; 24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. I ...

and

Franca Rame Franca Rame (18 July 1929 – 29 May 2013) was an Italian theatre actress, playwright and political activist. She was married to Nobel laureate playwright Dario Fo and is the mother of writer Jacopo Fo. Fo dedicated his Nobel Prize to her ...

. While he was performing with Piccolo Teatro as well as teaching in Rome, the American theatre scholar and director

Eric Bentley Eric Russell Bentley (September 14, 1916 – August 5, 2020) was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator. In 1998, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the New ...

came to Italy to direct the Padua Players company in the first Italian production of

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

. Then, with Bentley’s patronage, Mazzone-Clementi toured the United States in 1958, conducting workshops in mime and commedia, and introducing the leather masks of

Amleto Sartori Amleto Sartori (3 November 1915 – 18 February 1962) was an Italian sculptor and poet from Padua most famous for his theater masks. First a sculptor, after the Second World War, Sartori began to fervently study the masks of Commedia dell'Arte ...

to this country. That led to a teaching assignment at the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, followed by

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...

, the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

, the

American Conservatory Theater The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school. History The Ameri ...

and others.Steven Winn
Carlo Mazzone-Clementi
14 November 2000 He was known as Carlo Mazzone until 1965 when he worked with the new acting ensemble at the Theatre of Lincoln Center. From then on he was known as Carlo Mazzone-Clementi. Clementi was the name of his mother and his grandfather, Girolamo Clementi, who was versed in the work of Paduan playwright and forerunner of commedia dell'arte,

Angelo Beolco Angelo Beolco (c. 1496 – March 17, 1542), better known by the nickname Ruzzante or Ruzante, was an Italian (Venetian) actor and playwright. He is famous for his rustic comedies, written mostly in the Paduan dialect of the Venetian language,And ...

, known as "Ruzzante." In 1972, Mazzone-Clementi and his wife Jane Hill, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon, went to

Humboldt County, California Humboldt County () is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 136,463. The county seat is Eureka. Humboldt County comprises the Eureka–Arcata–Fortuna, California Micropolitan Statistica ...

to conduct summer workshops at their rural property. From this experience came the decision to re-locate permanently in Humboldt and to establish a full-time actor training program. In 1974, the couple purchased the Oddfellows Hall in

Blue Lake, California Blue Lake (formerly, Scottsville) is a city in Humboldt County, California, United States. Blue Lake is located on the Mad River in a deep valley, northeast of Eureka, at an elevation of 131 feet (40 m). Its population is 1,208 as of the 2020 ...

and co-founded the Dell’Arte School of Mime and Comedy, now known as the

Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre The Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre is a private school in Blue Lake, California. It offers a NAST-accredited three-year MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre, a one-year professional training program, summer workshops, and a ...

. Hill also joined the faculty at

College of the Redwoods College of the Redwoods (CR) is a public community college with its main campus in Eureka, California. It is part of the California Community Colleges System and serves three counties and has two branch campuses, as well as three additional sit ...

, where the pair created the ''Grand Comedy Festival at Qual-a-wa-loo'', a summer repertory festival that produced plays of Shakespeare in rotation with musical adaptations of those plays; Mazzone-Clementi served as the festival’s artistic director for six years.Doran, Bob
Behind the Mask: Carlo Mazzone-Clementi: 1920-2000
''North Coast Journal'', 16 November 2000. In 1974 their article, "Commedia and the Actor" was published in The Drama Review TDR (journal)

Mazzone-Clementi moved to

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...

in 1984 and founded a second sister theater school there, named the Commedia School. In 1994 returned to California and continued teaching until shortly before his death on 5 November 2000 in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Performing History

In addition to his work with the Padua Players, touring with Marceau, and the Piccolo, he worked with

Vittorio Gassman Vittorio Gassman (; born Gassmann; 1 September 1922 – 29 June 2000), popularly known as , was an Italian actor, director and screenwriter. He is considered one of the greatest Italian actors, whose career includes both important productions ...

's National Theatre in Rome in 1953. Carlo appeared in over a dozen films, including ''Ulysses'' with Kirk Douglas. Often cast for his talents as a mime, he appeared as "The Cock" in the world premiere of Sean O'Casey's ''Cock-A-Doodle Dandy'' in New York in 1958. Represented by the agent Toby Cole, in 1958 and '59 he toured his solo show, ''Six Characters In Search of Commedia''. He performed at a number of International Mime Festivals held in the 1970s and 1980s, and played in ''Birds of a Feather'' with the Dell'Arte Company at the 1980 Venice Biennale.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mazzone-Clementi, Carlo 1920 births Carnegie Mellon University Italian emigrants to the United States College of the Redwoods faculty 2000 deaths 20th-century Italian male actors Place of birth missing