Went to Sloane-Kettering to see a friend today and was there during a visit from the Big Apple Clown Care Unit. Getting to see Joel Jeske and Audrey Crabtree in action–priceless!
Archive for October 2009
I am analyzing the way I get dinner on the table, the mistakes I make, the timing that is off, I’m looking at it as a performance which can be improved (or not) with notes. THAT can’t be healthy!
Axioms/Principals
Outside logic and mathematics, the term “axiom” is used loosely for any established principle of some field. Hmmm. Clown Axioms–Clown principles
Avener the Eccentric has a list of clown principals on his own website:
©2005 Avner Eisenberg
- Clown’s job is to make the audience feel things, and to get the audience to breathe.
- Everyone inhales, but many of us need to be reminded to exhale.
- The imagination and the brain are connected to and affect the body. Any change in the mind has a corresponding change in the body. Any change in the body (i.e. in the breath first) has a corresponding change in the mind.
- Don’t tell or show the audience what to think, do, or feel.
- Don’t tell or show your partners what to think, do, or feel. Don’t point.
- Weight belongs on the underside. Keep a single point in you lower abdomen. Keep your energy flowing.
- Tension is your enemy. It produces emotional, mental and physical numbness.
- How you feel about your performance is what counts, not whether it is in reality good or bad.
- The clown discovers an audience who are sitting in rows and looking at an empty space and waiting for a show. This must be dealt with first, by establishing complicity with the audience.
- The clown creates a world in the empty space, rather than entering into a world that already exists (sketch).
- Use mime to create fantasy, not to re-create reality.
- The clown searches to create a game and to define the rules, which then must be obeyed.
- Don’t ask or tell the audience how they feel or think. Have an emotional experience and invite the audience to join in your reaction.
- Be interested, not interesting.
- Everyone must to breathe all one’s life, even when on stage.
- The clown enters the stage to do a job, not to get laughs. If there are laughs, it is an interruption that must be dealt with.
Did we do this with our production of Clown Axioms ? I wonder.
not even dressed and already compromising
Perfection is elusive, both in performance and in the care and feeding of a family.
I’m not even dressed and already I’ve made compromises and mistakes. I packed My Kid’s lunch in the pink “baby phat” lunch box with a sandwich and a healthy assortment of fruit and vegetable options (although as I write this I realize I forgot to put in a juice box–oh well she has her freshly filled very cool Keith Haring Sigg water bottle with her today) and had it hanging on the doorknob in time to be seen and grabbed as The Husband and My Kid went out the door–on time. But, my plan to make the good rolled oats that need to cook for half an hour didn’t happen. Instead the oatmeal this morning was instant. But, there was oatmeal.
My Kid is wearing a brand new outfit today, the fleece pants and soft long-sleeved shirt we bought at Target yesterday, in part because she’s growing fast and needed new school clothes, but also, since I didn’t get to the laundromat this past week, her old favorite clothing items were not available on this Monday morning.
So now I will shower and dress, something I don’t do until they are gone. We have one small bathroom in our apartment. I can get up and dressed and out of the house with them when I have to. But the mornings go much smoother when my priority is getting them out the door first.
After the final performance of Clown Axioms
My Kid watched the last Clown Axioms show from the booth. She loved it. She was allowed to bring up the lights on a couple of cues and that was a thrill for her. The woman who ran the light and sound board is so nice to have let My Kid sit up there with her. My Kid has no interest at all in going on the stage, but technical theater may be another story.
The strike began while we were still in the house taking to people who had seen the last performance. Back at Annex, we would have all be up on stage with wrenches taking apart the set, but at La MaMa, the performers didn’t do that. A moment for missing strike parties… OK I’m done. We were younger then and could stay up until… how long did those work parties last? It usually took until after 2 am to clear the set off the stage, and then there would be a party with beer and dancing at Annex. Mom-types would bring substantial amounts of food to the Missoula Community Theatre strikes after the big musicals of my childhood.
I gathered up my bags of costume pieces. I hope I got everything. I won’t know till I go through them and sort out the laundry from the paper today while My Kid is at school. Yet, I felt a little guilty for saying I couldn’t take the big cape (that was made for the show and which I carried back and forth from studio to home to various rehearsal studios and finally to the theatre) after Kendall asked me to because she will have so much stuff in her apartment after the show. In my apartment as well, this week is going to be all about clearing piles of stuff that have accumulated while my attention has been elsewhere and I did have a genuine fear that if I brought the big cape I wore in the show in order to be nice and accomodating and to lighten Kendall’s load, because I realize she sometimes feels alone and put-upon in her leadership coordination role in this company and it would be a nice gesture. But, I also fear the gesture would go un-noticed because the cape, in my apartment, would be at risk of being shoved quickly into some out of the way place (so that it won’t become a toy during a play date because it’s not a toy and it’s not mine but it’s a dramatic cape and so enticing…) and then I won’t be able to find it quickly when the call comes that from Kendall that she needs it back for another production. Yet I feel guilty for saying no. What’s that about?
The Husband and My Kid went across the street to the Italian restaurant where we enjoyed grilled fish and red wine. We stopped at Sunrise Mart on the way home. It was a late night for My Kid who has school in the morning. So, much as I would like to continue to dwell on this production that has come to an end (and with it my identity outside of the home) it’s not all about me anymore. The Husband and My Kid are glad to have my full attention again (and I have to jam my writing and exercise and whatever else into those hours like this one when they are both asleep and I am awake, in the dark with my laptop.
The alarm will go off in a few moments. I have promised to make oatmeal.
It was a busy day of staying on track so that I could be at the theatre by 5:30 pm for the pick-up rehearsal. I ran some errands after morning school drop-off. Then I went home and did the dishes and some other things. I took a shower and got ready for the show. Then I went to the school and picked up My Kid and stood on the playground while she played, before I walked her over to Girl Scouts with her friends. I picked her up after school instead of calling on another mother to do it. Even though it’s a waste of time because there is only half an hour between school and Girl Scouts and we routinely take each others kids–I wanted to see My Kid. The performance tonight is at 10 pm so once again I will not be there to tuck her in. Last week was hard with tech week rehearsals and then the performances and then this week I spent three evenings at Jef Johnson’s Clownlab. My Kid has been feeling my absence.
After performing at Free Night of Theatre 2009 in Union Square
After we performed, I went with some of the other clowns and I went to Le Pain Quotidien which was pleasant in the rain. We shared a basket of bread as we drank our tea and coffee. One of the women talked about her vision of a little blonde girl in a strawberry field, the child of her future that she expects to have with a man she has not yet met. There was talk of communal living on organic farms and international travel and making art for arts sake.
They are younger than I and their lives are still full of possibilities.
One of them asked me if I liked being a mom because it seems like I don’t.
I left them talking there and went to pick up My Kid from her after school program. We dumped our stuff at the apartment and went right out again to check out the Middle School Fair at MS 113 on Adelphi. My Kid saw some friends who are in 5th grade. My kid is in 4th but I have heard the advice is to begin my research now so we can hit the ground running signing up for school tours and putting together application packages as soon as school starts for my 5th grader next fall. I have been advised to check out the schools by touring them this year and only take my child out of school to tour the ones I am willing to let her attend. I got to chat with fretful parents bemoaning the lack of good middle schools in District 13. One said that last year, one of the city-wide selective middle schools that everyone wants to send their kids to had nearly 700 applications for 60 slots. Another spoke of getting a new address in a different district. Another spoke of putting down a tuition deposit at a Catholic school. The school My Kid thinks she wants to go to was a no-show at this event.
It’s not that I don’t like being a mom. I don’t like confronting things like fake school choice and negotiating the limited options with a child who would dismiss a school out of hand because the uniform requires black shoes. These are things that make me frown.
“Black Tie, Red Noses… A Classy Clown Affair”
Tonight was the Black Tie, Red Noses fundraising event for Clowns Without Boarders at the Brooklyn Lyceum. I would have liked to attend. Oh well, it had to be a mommy evening, not a clown evening.
Still Struggling With the Production Process
I am still struggling with the production process and how it all went down, how Kendall was disappointed with my work and I was so upset that I shook.
Because Kendall told me that I was drifty and unfocused in rehearsal and because of all the talk about stepping up and taking on production tasks, I didn’t feel as though I had a right to say something like, “This is not what I expected, I cannot do this work by myself, I did not plan to spend my week this way. Instead I didn’t say anything to Kendall, begged my busy stressed-out husband to spend his home time helping me to do volunteer clerical tasks–which was stressful. I let other things slide in the process of focusing on the marketing letter that seemed to be an audience building whim. I mistakenly put off important things like getting my bio and blog up on the NYCMOMSBLOG website and talking to family members about the developing plans for a 50th wedding anniversary family vacation to make a priority out of something which ended up costing me money and making me feel bad.
I hesitated to “step up” and commit in a meeting in a conference room in July, to essentially clerical tasks that would need to be accomplished during and after the beginning of school. From the very first rehearsal I was thrown off center when we had our first talk back and I said “I don’t feel entirely here in the studio.” And I expected other people to say things like “Yeah me too.” and “I can’t believe summer is over already.” Instead, Kendall said “What do you need to do about that? More sleep? Better nutrition?” I was the week between flying back to New York from Montana and the start of school. My time and priorities belonged to The Husband and My Kid and I was not expecting to schedule any “me time” with Pilates classes and lap swims at the Y until after My Kid started school.
As it turned out those planned workouts also slipped off the agenda as I tried to get the marketing letter done.
Because I don’t work I think I can do anything and whatever I have in mind to do gets pushed to the back burner because I live with the flexibility to do that (in the event of My Kid coming down with a cold and staying home from school or being available to chaperone a class field trip. During this production I also was deflecting daily requests to volunteer to be a class parent. It’s easy to give my time away. It takes so much effort to keep it for myself.
White Box
Tonight I went to Jef Johnson’s Clownlab at Theatrelab. It was refreshing to work in another approach to clowning. I enjoyed playing with relationships without text and watching others in the space.
Several of the participants had been to see Clown Axioms this weekend and gave me some lovely comments.
