Chaffee bought several more to use in her SFA student productions. The vaudevillian slapstick of comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and many of the great clowns has roots in the Italian physical-comic tradition, Chaffee notes. Since her first workshop with Fava in 1997, Chaffee has employed his masks at SFA, usually as an exercise tool. In rehearsals for Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Love's Labour Lost, which both have several commedia-influenced stock characters, mask work proved beneficial to the actors. The actor must free himself of his own personal habits so the character can come alive through him.
Facial expressions come from inner emotions.
If the actor pastes it on, then the whole thing is disconnected. So I teach my students to work from the inside out. The challenge is to have them be aware of the power of physical communication, but not actually think about their bodies while they are performing. Chaffee now teaches aspects of commedia dell'arte to juniors at SFA as part of their movement training, but next year she hopes to expand the program to sophomores and eventually bring back the comprehensive course once taught there. That's why we're having the performance this summer.