ABSTRACT
Grammelot is a term used to define comically framed and dramatically purposed verbal gibberish. Its use is not obligatory (Fava, 2007: 178) within Commedia, but can be employed in a wide range of dramatic situations when a Mask needs to pretend to be able to speak a language alien to them. In some contemporary Commedia training regimes Grammelot can be demanded in rehearsal to negate some actors’ tendency towards purely verbal exposition, and to foreground their physical and sonic dramatic expressivity. Grammelot is theorised as a distinctive feature of Neo-Commedia’s aural makeup, 1 but from the responses from many artists, however, it appears more as a discrete characteristic. The practice, or idea, of Grammelot may best be understood within the context of the performance of language within Commedia, historical and contemporary.
