Clownmommy

Darn!  10:00pm and I still don’t have my NYCMOMS blog post up.  I feel I need The Husband to oversee to make sure I do it right. 

But,

At Target, My Kid saw the game of LIFE and really wanted it…and since she was such a good girl at the doctor’s office and got her flu shot and the doctor pronounced her “Perfect” at the check-up…so we bought the board game LIFE.  And that shaped the rest of the evening.

My Kid wanted family game night.

So…

Pasta is easy…

…with jar sauce…

…and Daddy had his new phone…

…so after dinner he could multi-task…

Play the game of LIFE when we told him it was his turn…

And program his new phone at the same time…

Now…

The new phone is programmed…

Homework is done…

The game of LIFE has been played…

But…

Mommy didn’t get to upload her new blog on the new blogsite…

That’s not impotant…

It’s time for everyone to go to bed…

Good Nite!

involving earthquake, fires, refugee camp and me as a clown.

On Friday I took my bags of costumes with me to drop-off at My Kid’s school because from there I went straight to rehearsal.  After rehearsal and went right back to My Kid’s school.  Dismissal was over and the woman with whom I’d made previous arrangements to pick up my kid after school along with her own was already on the way to the park.  I caught up with them there and sat on a bench and talked to the other mother while the girls practiced their cartwheels and walked around the ball field pretending they were unsupervised.

On Saturday I dropped my bags of costumes off at the apartment and went directly to the soccer fields by Prospect Park to stand in the rain and watch my daughter and her soaked to the skin teammates run around on a field of fake grass and ground up bits of rubber.  The fall season is already half over and this was the first game I’ve seen.

It is now Sunday morning. I am preparing to awaken my daughter and take her to church because today is the first day of the new school year of religious education.  I will drop her off on my way to rehearsal and The Husband will pick her up.

I dreamed I was at a clown conference at Seattle Center.  There were high profile stage and circus clowns teaching workshops including the man who had been director of clown college when I was there. There were inspirational clowns who worked with sick orphans in Africa.  I was excited to be talking to former CC classmates who had been working in the business for 20 years since I’d last seen them. 

We were walking to a workshop about hospital clowning in Uganda.  I was talking to old friends I hadn’t seen in years.

I had on a full Ringling style agent suit with wig and makeup and big shoes. 

My cell phone rang.

It was from my daughter’s school.

“Your daughter was not picked up fifteen minutes ago at 3 o’clock.  She’s still waiting to be picked up.  This is the third day in a row no-one has been here to pick her up.  Don’t you care about your child?”

I feel so much more comfortable now that the rehearsals have taken the on the shape of theatrical rehearsals.  The goals and hierarchy and priorities are clear.

And… if you have some plastic flowers, strings of fake pearls or rhinestones, overly sweet stuffed animal — or a large ugly Toad — perhaps you could bring it for a Positive/Negative prop.  Or fake legs for the gore fabric…

Hey child of mine do you have any stuffed animals we could use for the…

NO!

…show.

After rehearsal today I talked to some friends on the way to pick up my kid.

I was remembering a particular workshop when we were improvising from songs and the song I was assigned was; “At Seventeen” and I had felt like such a failure because I didn’t have any impulses for movement or vocalization.  I just had a very strong image of a very sad teenaged girl in her room alone listening to the radio.  It seemed an inauspicious place from which to begin to create some clown magic.

When I got home tonight, I looked up the song on youtube and found out the artist was Janis Ian and she is a fascinating person who still has a career.  I watched about six youtube videos of the song by various artists and they all just stood there and sang as simply as possible holding their bodies almost still (if they weren’t playing a guitar) with eyes downcast part of the time because the music and lyrics are so powerful.  So I was overriding my impulses that night I thought I was failing at improvisation.  The impulse really was to do nothing but just to be still and to be sad.   I fought that impulse and choked.  I thought I had to move and sing gibberish.  The text is strong.  I just wanted to listen to the text and then I wanted to continue the original text, and the image of a sad teenaged girl alone in her room was so strong.  It seemed wrong as a starting point for clown.  I can see using that music and having a piece work.  I love the pathetic clown.  And yet…

What can I say…

…I choked…

It was just an exercise…

Just an improv…

Nothing anyone did from the improvisations that grew out of that song made it into the final show…

Just sayin…

This has been a long month.  The Husband has had major project deadlines at work.  My Kid has begun 4th grade which has been emotional for me because when I began 4th grade it was in a new school, in a new town, in a new state.

The clown show rehearsals have been frequent and sometimes arduous.  Four rehearsals a week is almost 5 days a week.  Five days a week is almost full time work.  I know, I know, it’s part time…

I don’t know why this September has been so stressful, but it has so there it is.

Perhaps it’s just the change of seasons and the shorter days.

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I had to take My Kid to rehearsal, but only for a few minutes.   The Husband was able to leave his office early and he got to Great Jones street to pick up My Kid before we got started.  Another clown mommy had her kid there for just as long.  He’s almost 2.  The dad showed up about 15 minutes after call time.  Transitions are hard when we have to be somewhere at 6:30.  Too late for after school care but too early for the student-babysitters to be home and available.