Month: March 2010

searching for a little zen

At the health food store instead of purchasing my usual Brain Child or Hip Mama magazines I bought Shambhala Sun.

What’s up with that?

Well… there was this article that looked interesting; about mindful housework…  “Karen Maezen Miler on how the domestic practice of ancient Zen masters can lead us to intimate encounters with our own lives.”

Well here’s hoping.

for twitter

I just friended the boy who spit on me in 6th grade because he thought I was cute! (I thought he hated me!) Perhaps as the father of teenagers he will be able to explain to me what middle school looks from a parent’s perspective right before my own little girl takes the plunge.  OMG!

for twitter: OMG I just friended the boy who spit on me in 6th grade.  I thought he hated me.  Apparently he did it because he thought I was cute.  I hope My Kid won’t be as bewildered by adolescence as we were.

shopping for makeup in character

I was in Times Square this afternoon and since I had some time before I had to make my way back to Brooklyn to pick up My Kid after school, I decided to go to the drugstore to buy the eyeshadow and press on fingernails that I will wear Monday night in the New York Downtown Clown Revue.

Guggenheim Installation; Conceptual Art is Theatre and Clown.

The famous circular rotunda of the Guggenheim art museum was completely empty.  That’s not something I would normally pay to see, but I went to the Tino Sehgal exhibit with my mom hat on because one of the neighbor kids is in it.  After I got there and walked through the experience I realized how many similarities there were between the artist selected set of people interacting with the museum-goers and the work I have done as a clown working meet-and-greet gigs.

I read the program: “a visitor is no longer only a passive spectator, but one who bears a responsibility in shaping and even contributing to the actual realization of the piece”.  Yeah, and that can be also true of riding the subway or going to the park, basically of living in the city.

Off-hand I can think of half a dozen writers and directors I know from the under-publicized theater scene of the Seattle in the 1990’s who could have put together a far more powerful encounter between visitors and the space.  I hesitate to sound like the old “my kid could paint that” dismissal.

As I spoke one by one with with representatives of the artist’s concept as we walked together up the spiral rotunda;  first a child, then a teen, then a  20-something and finally an older adult of retirement age I thought about some of the work I have done interacting with audience members as part of site specific theatrical productions.   Annex Theatre’s The Yellow Kid by Brian Faker and Bliss Kolb which began with audience members walking through a back alley and up dark stairs unable to avoid interacting with the kids who were there and Nikki Appino’s ambitious Djinn in an abandoned naval base warehouse come to mind.  I wish I could see what they would have made if they had been given permission to play with their ideas and a bunch of performers the Guggenheim rotunda space.

I suppose everybody can say something like that.

Watching the Oscars

My favorite Oscar moment was watching Kathryn Bigelow on stage when The Hurt Locker won Best Picture.  She held her two Oscar statuettes in her hands like a pair free weights and kept wandering away from the microphone and out of camera range to the point that screenwriter Mark Boal grabbed her arm and held her there.  After Barbra Streisand announced the name of the winner in the Best Director category, Kathryn Bigelow climbed the stairs, made a gracious speech and walked off stage.  In the dark wing, people who heard the announcement she hadn’t, turned her around and sent her back out into the spotlight.  She was a woman in shock.  I really enjoyed the opportunity watch the physical manifestations of a person in shock, when the woman in question was in shock for a happy reason.

Alternate Reality

This month as my mind wanders while I do laundry, and dishes and go to the gym and shuttle My Kid to Girl Scouts, soccer, and ballet and write my little mom blogs, I will imagine what it would be like to be clowning in Barcelona:

The 2nd one month “Clown Master Class and Comic Formulas” course will begin Monday, March 1st and conclude Sunday, March 28th. Registration is Sunday Feb. 28th at 16:00 at the Nouveau Clown Institute. Classes will be held 5 days each week from 10 am to 6 pm, Monday thru Friday, totaling 120 hours. On Saturdays students will be in the media rooms to attend special viewing assignments of films and videos. In addition, each student will receive a one on one session with a master teacher. At the end of each week, both Saturday and Sunday evenings, there will be performances presented by the students, faculty and invited guest artists. These performances will be open to the general public.

If you are interested in attending the Nouveau Clown institutes “Clown Master Class and Comic Formulas” March, 2010 session then visit our web site at www.clownfish.es/nci.htm . Here you will find detailed information and the official form to apply for acceptance to the N.C. I. Registration closes January 31st, 2010,

The master class instructors confirmed at the moment are as follows:
John Towsen, Pepa Plana, Alex Navarro, Pat Cashin, Greg de Santo, Mag Lari, Giovanna Bellina, Eric de Bont, Rick Parets, Jorge Pico, Loco Brusca, Grada Peskens, Jef Johnson, Jango Edwards, Monti, Tortell Poltrona, Christian Atanasiu, Jordi Purti…and more. The additional faculty members for the March session will be announced in the near future.
Also we suggest you do a little research about the artist who will be your instructors during the March session so you have a basic knowledge of their approach to the clown art. Those of you who have clown or comedy routines, stage acts or numbers that you would like to perform in the weekly “Cabaret Cabron” productions please bring those items required to present your act including music, props and costumes. A maximum of no more than 3 acts from your repertory is advised. We also recommend that you bring any audio/ video material of your work which can be viewed by us to assist us in directing you. In addition to the in class sessions you will receive selected data based materials .It is a mandatory request that you bring with you a pen drive or memory stick in which this data can be stored. This information will be a useful reference in the future once you have successfully completed the master class and graduated from “The Nouveau Clown Institute”…that is if you graduate!!!
Finally and most important of all it is the wish of the N.C.I. staff to make your visit as creative, productive and inspiring as possible. To achieve this we remind you that the “Nouveau Clown Institute” is an educational institution of the highest standards and if you come with open mind and open heart then we will open the door for you to a new future. The concept of this school is that it is a school for all professional clowns to learn, teach and exchange among each other and second that new actors who are interested can come and the opportunity to have direct contact with master instructors besides each day an exposure to assorted production, skills, technique and an understanding of the comic formulas that make comedy and clowning function in all environments. This school belongs to all members of the Nouveau Clown community. It is the desire of N.C.I. to function as a launching pad for actors to become familiar with the variety of clown artists and schools that specialize in comedy and the art of clown.
If you need additional help of have specific questions please contact us by: email at nouveauclown[at]gmail.com telephone: 00 34 699341100
To view the facilities of the “Nouveau Clown Institute” located in the Roca Umbert Fabrica de les Arts in Granollers, Spain www.rocaumbert.cat/ie6/home.php#
On behalf of the N.C.I.
Sincerely yours,
Jango Edwards

Awaiting the arrival of a big expensive clown show

We were talking about  Broadway shows we’d like to see.  I think My Kid should see The Miracle Worker or Billy Elliot. In the family evening vs couples date equation where we may as well bring My Kid since a babysitter costs more than a ticket, I could stand to see the old classics; South Pacific or West Side Story.

However,

I was talking with another clown recently and we were thinking that when Banana Shpeel opens this month we might do well to try to see it early in the run because it didn’t get good reviews in Chicago.  (But, maybe, hopefully, changes will have been made and it will be a great show!)

So anyway,

I looked up online a review of the Chicago production and found one by Chris Jones who wrote, of the Chicago production, on December 3, 2009

“There is a great deal to fix before this show opens in New York early next year. But here’s a modest proposal: Hire a female clown. Or two.”

Just sayin’…


I’m being so good…

It’s 10 am and I’ve gotten my kid off to school, I’ve shined my sink the way FLYLADY says to and I’ve handwritten my Morning Pages the way Julia Cameron suggests, I’ve researched, composed and sent e-mails regarding potential solo performance options and now I’m sorting laundry.  Why am I so productive during my alone time in this manner on this day.  Because anything is easier than getting ready for this evenings meeting with the tax preparer.

After the long weekend

After my Pilates mat class I had extra time at the Y thanks to the other mom who took the girls to their ballet at Mark Morris.  I took extra long in the steam room and thought about some clown stuff.  I was going to swim laps but forgot my goggles so I walked down 6th Avenue into Greenwich Village.  I bought a latte at Joe’s on Waverly but there weren’t any open seats so I kept walking and ended up at  Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargan Books on Carmine Street where I bought essays by Virginia Woolfe and books about Tracy Ullman and Spike Mulligan with the intention of learning more about the creative processes of others.  Tracy Takes On was interesting to me because I am doing a costume based character at the next Downtown Clown and I picked up The Unpublished Spike Milligan Box 18 because of all the photographs of all the scraps of ideas that the British comedian kept in his own unique filing system that he used to develop material:

Box 18  – Ideas.  This contained Spikes notes.  He would scribble a poem and put it in this file.  Sometimes it would be incomplete and he would work on it perhaps a week or a month later, or it would be ‘chucked’.  The file contained ideas for speeches, stories or sketches for one of his television programmes… When he decided to work on any one of his ideas he would sit at the typewriter and the writing simply flowed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       –Norma Farnes

I would have enjoyed going to Clownlab this weekend but it got cancelled like everything else because of the snow.

It’s hard to believe Friday was a snow day today was so sunny and bright.  Spring is definitely here!  …unless it snows again.