Clownmommy

It was so great to see and catch up with my RBBB Clown College classmate Lorraine Gilman, now a puppeteer based in Boston, and to learn all about the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity at the reunion hosted by our Clown College classmate Jay Stewart to which I have less than six degrees of separation because Chuck Jones came to visit our Clown College class in Venice, Florida…  Life is Good!

We’ve got the rental car. We’ve packed our bags. My Kid has her bear and her doll safely strapped into toy car seats and we are on the road–on the way to Cape Cod for the Clown College Reunion, hosted by none other than the great and powerful Jay Stewart!
Wheeeee!

This is what clown is meant to be. So specific and individual some of it inspired by Joel’s gig in Germany and his divorce.  Yet I can watch it and think about graduate school applications and raising children. This is the best kind of clown.

Apparently it was Stanley Allen Sherman’s turn to blog tonight and he had this to say about me:

“and Katherine M. Horejsi cleaned up the stage between the acts and set the props. Katherine played a mean, stern, take-no-guff-from-anyone clown. All of her actions were truthful and to the point, and it is the best work I have seen her do. Just the simple acts of picking something up and how she did it were captivating. Each object got its own special attention. After the show she told me it is her Mean Mom Clown.”

And so we come to the end of the first full week of school. I don’t know if I’m ready to breathe a sigh of relief yet but I’m close. My Kid seems to be settling into her new school. Most of the other moms I talked to when we picked up our kids at the end of the Girl Scout meeting were in the same place.

“So far, so good.” we all seemed to say.

Now I can come up for air and take another look at where I am with my own work.

It’s just down the street.

A friend is in the show, Kelly Hayes, met her working on a Kendall Cornell piece some years ago.

Date night:  Connie’s Avant Garde Restaurant at Irondale.

A beautiful space.

Wacky cast.

Reminds me of Annex.

Fwp Fwp Fwo Fwp Fwp The rolodex in my head is spinning round as I try to come up with something to do for Joel and Mark in the studio tomorrow. I’m not even sure what kind of piece I want to work on. I think I want a nice 5-10 minute piece for the late nights and cabarets. In that case it should have minimal costumes and props because those gigs are usually a schlep. Or do I want something crisp and clean that I can do at corporate gigs. They do that kind of work so maybe I should take advantage of that. I don’t want to bring in any la la la why am I here why do I exist here on the stage in front of the audience experimentation because that’s not their style. I keep thinking of what Joel said the musical comedy actor said, “Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”
My first thought was to come out and have a nervous breakdown as my piece, but I’ve kind of already done that in my crying mommy piece.
I had that thought earlier today about women, a woman, trying to keep her emotions in check at work or in some other situation (like standing in front of an audience) and having them leak out anyway. But, that’s not really a piece, I have to have something else to do while I go through that. But, what would that be I wonder. I thought of wearing colorful clothing and covering it up buttoning on a suit. That would be something to do in a variety evening but I don’t want to spend my limited moments of coaching distracted by costume malfunctions. Then I thought about the lady in our neighborhood who collects cans and bottles for recycling every week, but I don’t want to haul my shopping cart into the city just for one gag.

I thought I might taking some inspiration from the kiddie pageants in the reality shows my kid was watching last week.  I could be a pageant mom or I could be a pageant kid or a creepy adult who wants to be in a pageant. But, I can think of several women I know who are  already playing wacky aging performers in cabarets around town so I don’t think I need to work on that right now.

I think what I might do is buy a fashion magazine on my way to the studio tomorrow and my piece will be me looking at pictures in the magazine and trying to model myself after the models. It’s not great but it’s something and it doesn’t involve shlepping around costumes or props and I want a piece that I can do anywhere.
Maybe I’ll think of something better tomorrow.

A yellow book caught my eye at the bookstore this morning. I was bad and didn’t support my local independent bookshop and instead purchased it on the Kindle because it’s not the kind of book I want to keep forever and it is the kind of book I want to read on the train. So I feel guilty about that.

Anyway…

The book is called It’s Always Personal, Emotion in the New Workplace, by Anne Kreamer.  I haven’t read that much of it yet, but the author seems to be going somewhere interesting to me with regard to acknowledging or suppressing or ignoring genuine emotions in the workplace all of which I have done in my own “real job” past to great non-effect.  Ms. Kreamer recounts just such an occasion in the first chapter of her book.  She recalls a time when as an executive,  she was in her office celebrating a successful sales negotiation with her team.  For them it was a major accomplishment that came after months of hard work.  So when a call came from the chairman of the board she expected a congratulatory compliment and was completely blindsided to the point of tears when she answered the phone to a screaming personal attack.  Later she figured out that the important man was upset because the public announcement of the deal hadn’t made the parent company’s stock price go up.  That wasn’t something that she, as the manager of a division within a division of the parent company had any control over.  It didn’t matter.  The damage was done.  Something shifted within her and she went from feeling lucky to be in the right place at the right time, part of a team with shared vision and the resources to make their dreams come true to feeling like a tiny cog in a machine “that could be capriciously ripped out, smashed and discarded”.  She went from thinking her job was to “make the world a better place for kids (she worked for Nikelodeon at the time) to thinking her job was to “produce a momentary uptick in a stock price”.

She said, “Two years, seven months, and fifteen days after I cried at work, I quit, without a new job.”

That is a fine example of how and why so many women leave the corporate world and technological fields entirely mid-career.  It’s not because they have children.  It’s because they navigate through life using their powerful emotions as a compass and it’s so damn hard to pretend that they don’t.

Ooohhhhh!  I think I know where my next clown character is going to come from!

“It Ain’t What You Do, It’s How You Do It” – creating physical comedy material

Looking to create or brush up an act? A character? Make a show from scratch?

Join us – we’ve been doing it for years!

Two-time Drama Desk nominee Parallel Exit shares their insights and techniques for creating physical comedy material.

It Ain’t What You Do is ideal for physical performers, actors, and variety artists looking to expand their repertoire, create new material, or gain a little inspiration.

Director Mark Lonergan and Clown and Physical Comedian Joel Jeske introduce students to the Parallel Exit process, incorporating physical and modern theatre techniques to help take an idea from conception to completed act.

This workshop takes place over three successive evenings, and will focus on each student and their own specific needs. Bring us an idea, a character, a sketch, and we’ll help you take it to the next level. Come with a blank slate, and we’ll help you fill it. Wherever you’re at, we’ll help you bring the funny.

This is the second in a series of workshops Parallel Exit is offering and is open to all levels.

Tonight I went up to Theatre Row Studios to work with Mark Lonergan and Joel Jeske who work in a traditional status based vaudeville style. I liked it a lot. To an outsider the two different studios of people in comfortable clothing entering and exiting at the behest of a male in a folding chair probably looked almost identical. But, from my point of view Chris Bayes and Joel Jeske’s approach to clown are completely different.

My sense of the clown gym with Chris Bayes, was very much that of a drama professor and his students, which is to be expected since Chris Bayes teaches clowning in a number of different academic acting programs.

Mark Lonergan and Joel Jeske were also teaching and doing most of the talking, but their approach seemed more like peers taking their turn to show and tell other creators of physical theatre how they came up with their material and what works for them.  They talked about their work in Parallel Exit and how much talking was involved when the ensemble made up of men from different performing disciplines, dance, clown, musical comedy and music first started making new work together.

The clown looked at situation and decided to take the time to figure out all the different ways he could possibly approach it while the musical comedy guy said, Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll give it to you.   Those two would have a difficulty making new work together unless they appreciated the value of each others approach.  Apparently they do since that company has been in existence for over ten years.

Walking to the train, Mark and I had a brief conversation about the RBBB Clown College and how it is missed.  When the clowns were offered contracts at the end of Clown College class they had a cohesive style.  Now that the clowns are hired individually their performance styles are all over the map.

When I got home, The Husband (who used to be a theatre director), was working on a presentation about, Agile, his favorite approach to software development.

I see similarities between the work of self-producing physical theatre companies and  the way an Agile software development team works.  Trust and respect are necessary between all the members of the team or the ensemble for successful communication and collaboration.  Conflict is to be expected as part of the creative work of building the team (or ensemble).  But, when each member comes to understand and willingly participate in the unwritten norms of behavior that define the identity of the team (or ensemble) that is how the stage is set so that amazing things can happen.