Carlo Mazzone-Clementi

Carlo Alessandro Luigi Mazzone-Clementi (12 December 1920 – 5 November 2000) was an Italian-born actor, director, teacher and theatre founder whose work helped revive and spread commedia dell'arte in the United States. He worked with Marcel Marceau, Jacques Lecoq, Dario Fo and Franca Rame in postwar European theatre before beginning to present mime and commedia workshops in the United States in 1958. He co-founded Dell'Arte with Jane Hill in 1971 and later co-founded the Commedia School in Copenhagen with Ole Brekke.

Biography Mazzone-Clementi first gained attention in Italy in 1947, when he worked alongside Marcel Marceau on the mime's first tour outside Paris. From 1948 to 1951, he assisted Jacques Lecoq while Lecoq taught and directed the Players of Padua University. He joined the Teatro Nazionale d'Arte Italiano in 1953, and in 1954 worked at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano with Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Mazzone-Clementi later recalled that while warming up for the production he fell through ironwork at Carnegie Hall and injured cartilage in both knees. He finished the production but, after being told that surgery might either improve or worsen the injuries, chose to concentrate more heavily on teaching commedia. He was known as Carlo Mazzone until 1965 and thereafter used the name 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, known as "Ruzzante".

Mazzone-Clementi and his wife Jane Hill founded Dell'Arte in Berkeley in 1971 as a training organization based in European physical-theatre traditions. In the early 1970s they moved to Northern California, where Hill joined the faculty at College of the Redwoods. Together they created the Grand Comedy Festival at Qual-a-wa-loo, and Mazzone-Clementi served as its artistic director for six years.

In 1974, the couple purchased the Odd Fellows Hall in Blue Lake, California. Dell'Arte's school opened there in 1975 as the Dell'Arte School of Mime and Comedy, later renamed the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre. In 1976, Mazzone-Clementi, Joan Schirle and Jon'Paul Cook founded the Dell'Arte Company; its first tour followed in 1977.

In 1978, Mazzone-Clementi and Ole Brekke co-founded the Commedia School in Copenhagen, a two-year physical-theatre program that has admitted a new class each September since that year. Mazzone-Clementi remained active on its teaching staff for fifteen years, and the school's training drew on his pedagogical methods. Around 1980, a governance dispute at Dell'Arte resulted in a restructuring that separated its school and performing company, and Mazzone-Clementi was among those who left. Mazzone-Clementi died from complications following heart surgery on 5 November 2000 in San Francisco.

In 1957, he created the solo show Six Characters in Search of Commedia, in which he performed multiple masked characters, and subsequently toured it in the United States. While working in New York, Mazzone-Clementi was represented by agent Toby Cole. In 1984, he performed at a Mime & Clown Festival.