Clownmommy

Conflict is the name of the game and next Sunday will be no exception.  A Clowns Ex Machina photo shoot has been scheduled for which I have to prepare to be in full make-up with at least two different outfits packed and carried into Manhattan by subway.  No biggie.  I am available for the photo shoot, however, the job of getting there is complicated by the fact that it occurs on the very same time as the first day of the new school year of religious education for My Kid who I expect will attend in her soccer uniform because she will have to leave half-way through (unless it is raining) because she has a game.  There is an assumption (Assumption = a Catholic word…) that the parents will be attending Sunday Mass while  the children are in class.  However, I expect My Kid to attend class in her soccer uniform and I expect  My Husband ( hope, actually at this point, since have not yet spoken with him about the weekend plans and make an assumption that he will be available and willing to transport My Kid from her religious education class to the soccer field has not even been broached.  I hope I ask him about it before he reads it her first on my blog).  But first,  I myself will have to run the gauntlet of volunteer sign-up sheets on the way to My Kid’s classroom because it’s my religion, not his.  There is a good chance that after all this I will walk into the studio for the photo shoot completely frazzled by the convoluted path I will have taken by the time I show up for this fun and easy first thing in the morning event thereby presenting myself as unprofessional.  And yet.   Well.  Some days I would like to let even more slide than I already do.

I just got an e-mail from someone from Planned Parenthood about sex ed in the schools.  I’m all for it and yet it’s not my battle to fight.  Arts funding is higher on my list.  Fresh fruit and vegetables at lunch is higher on my list.  Bringing back recess is higher on  my list.  Math and science programs for girls is higher on my list.  Foreign language instruction is higher on my list.  If this is  your battle go for it.  I’ll sigh your petition, but that’s all I’ll do.

While I was writing my last post about conflicting feelings, wanting to be on stage full of energy and also focusing on gently nurturing my child, an interview show on WNYC featured Alex Cohen and Jennifer Barbee, talking their new book Down and Derby, Insiders Guide to Roller Derby and I suddenly remembered Nikki Appino’s 2000 show Rain City Rollers and how I had wanted to be in it when I lived in Seattle because I’d be able to use the slaps and falls I’d learned at Clown College.  However I was 8 months pregnant at the time of the production.  So, never mind.

This week at the New York Clown Theater Festival I saw Channel One. It made me think of the first couple of shows I did at Annex where the excitement and energy backstage and after the show was just as intense as what happened on stage, under the lights, in front of the audience.  At 30,  all hair and silver shorts, Emily and Ishah are single in the city and the possibility that someone seeing the show may give them a job or become their next romantic partner is a built in thrill for the performers that was understandably absent from Carmen the Mopera. Julie Goell, a seasoned professional with years of theater and mask work under her belt, has also spent more years than Ishah and Emily  have been old enough to drink in bars, raising a family and playing second fiddle to her husband’s more prominent performing career.  I recognize a kindred spirit.   Her son was a little older than my daughter is now, when I first met her at Celebration Barn over 10 years ago.  At that time I saw an exerpt from her show about a maid performing the opera Carmen using found objects as puppets and I loved it.  Last nights performance seemed have the energy of a woman competently checking off task after task on a to-do list. Of course that interpretation of the piece is highly colored by my experience earlier in the day when I went out for lunch and to see the film Catfish with another mommy friend from my neighborhood.  We talked about how hard it is to keep the home clean and get the kids to all their games, and finding babysitters so we can attend curriculum night, and the middle school search… I’ve just become class parent and my friend spoke of how she should have paced herself.  She said she was such an active parent right out of the gate when her first child started elementary school that she burnt out.  Now the teachers of her third child who is left at early drop-off and picked up from the after-school program don’t even know what the mother looks like.  And then there was that film in which I was struck most by the physical difference between the young entitled Manhattan artists and the wearying daily realities of a worn down middle American mom.

Last fall over tea at a Pan Quotiden, after a Clown Axioms performance, Ishah asked me if I liked being a mom, “Because sometimes you look like you don’t like it.”

That’s because she always sees me when I am in the middle of getting to rehearsal or rushing out of rehearsal;  worrying about childcare and how long will I be away and what will I miss and who will be there to take care of it and oh yeah here I am supposed to be a funny clown but need to look at my notes to remember who I am–out of context without my child.

For the last several years, as I have tried to work out some kind of artistic career, I have struggled with the physical transition between the roles of watchful, unseen mother and focus drawing performer.  I love being a mom and I love being on stage but the extra distance that I must travel from one to the other and back again (compared to when I was young and single) is an exhausting albeit worthwhile detour.

I saw the movie Catfish today, unexpectedly.  The Husband and My Kid had just left for school and work and I was finishing my coffee and checking my e-mail when my artistmommy friend called me and said she was going uptown to the 10:00 am showing of the film “Catfish”.  I had intended to spend the entire day cleaning and doing laundry so of course I said “yes” immediately.  I didn’t even have time to shower before I met her at the subway stop.

I recommend this movie.  It’s a documentary.  There’s a secret to be kept by those who have seen it, (remember The Crying Game?  I was so impressed when I saw that weeks into the run and was so impressed that nobody in my Seattle world had given away the surprise.)

I read a review online that said at Sundance, the film had been so well crafted as it was edited that it was taken for fiction…

…which reminded me of my Montana Writers class, taught by Bill Bevis at the University of Montana.  We read the James Welch novel, The Death of Jim Loney and I remember the teacher asking if there were any students in the class who were from the part of Montana where the book takes place and he asked them if the descriptions were true to life and they said yes.  Then he told us that the New Yorker review of the book had called it “far-fetched”.  The film Catfish is like that.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

I very much missed taking part in the New York Clown Theater Festival today.  However,  I did enjoy laying in bed with My Kid who is down with a cold, watching the movie “Shopaholic” starring Isla Fisher the Lecoq trained actress, that’s CLOWN too!

Is that N_______’s older sister picking her up after school?!  She looks 16 at least.. very sophisticated… jaded even???   Do we want our daughter to look like that when she’s in 7th grade?  Maybe I don’t want My Kid to commute into Manhattan after all—even if it is the best middle school available to us…  I just don’t know!

We went to see, Anne Rabson, the mother of a mommy friend from the ‘hood, play her blues at Jalopy tonight and she was fabulous.  Paul Geremia also played.  I had no idea I liked blues music so much.

I thought about clown acts while I listened to the music.

Blues seems more appropriate for a middle-aged clown than the frenetic eager ragtime used for circus and vaudeville style clown acts.

I want to craft my next clown piece against a blues song.

I’m reading Richard Hugo’s book, The Triggering Town, and am finding much to think about regarding the application of his insights about writing poems to the creation of clown pieces.

THE ROTTEN PLANTAINS presents FRENCH CONNECTION (via Texas & Brazil)

ONE NIGHT ONLY

45 Bleecker: Bleecker Street Theatre

Recommended for 18 +
Children under the age of 4 are not permitted in the theatre.

Fred Blin, Claudio Carneiro, Julie Ferrier, Patrick de Valette, and Wayne Wilson are THE ROTTEN PLANTAINS…

Never before have you seen such a gathering of clowns, comedians, and a Brazilian alcoholic (who happens to be our roommate) take the stage. A mix of clowns and circus, cultures and experiences, together, form this new comedy show. Here, they will meet on the stage together for the first time.

From Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai/ Love/Banana Shpeel/Dralion, Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Franco Dragone’s Le Reve, and the Betty Ford Clinic – comes this flawlessly rehearsed production of beautiful idiots attempting to make you laugh.

This is the beginning of their collaboration together, this one night only show, will plan their world tour – from NYC, London, Paris, Rio, Calcutta, Nigeria, Osasco (SP), Australia, Beirut, and the Netherlands. Come join in on this ground-breaking event.

For me, experience of a fourth distinct style of clowning in one week.  Kendall Cornell’s Clowns Ex Machina experimental studies of women and riffing off cultural images.  Jef Johnson’s esoteric deconstruction of the performers exploration of an object in front of an audience.  The New York Goofs with Jay Stewart and Joel Jeske perpetuating the stylized movement of circus clowns and silent movie comedians and finally Patrick de Vallette and his French compatriots from street performance, cabaret and Cirque du Soleil.

My head is spinning as I sort out from all of this what is familiar and comfortable for me.  A colleague at a bar told me she that piece I did about a mother waiting for a subway train resonated with her enough that she still remembers it years later after hundreds of pieces she has seen.  I would like to work on that again.  Puppeteer friend is coming into town this week for an audition and we will have a chance to talk and brainstorm if not actually work together.  Some friends and I are putting together a proposal for a low-stakes evening of clown at Theaterlab later this fall.  I hope to use my nervous energy to advantage by approaching the performance as hosting a party.  I want to generate an energy in the room akin to the memories I have giddy slumber party excitement practicing trust falls and playing games like “Light as a feather, Stiff as a board”.  I don’t know if I can make that happen but that is my intent after this exciting week of many clown styles and time now to process what I have experienced and to distill from all that what is mine to own.