Clownmommy

OK I’m awake and thinking of the novelty facebook quiz I took last night, what mental illness are you, that told me I was panic anxiety disorder and so now I have awakened in the middle of the night wondering if that is true.

Maybe that’s why Kendall is always telling me I look confused.

Maybe that’s why I feel like my comments during the chat part of rehearsals are being used as ammunition against me.  I’m thinking of the very first workshop the week I got back from Montana when my head was full of the things I wanted to get done before school started.   I expected agreement from others who also felt odd to be doing something we haven’t done in months.  Instead Kendall said, “Well what do you need to do about that?  Eat better?  Get more sleep?”  I hadn’t thought I had a problem.

Now I thought I had a problem and it was my problem and I needed to fix it.  So I went to the next workshop of the “ensemble building and dusting off old material phase”.  (During the last incarnation of this particular show, I had a small part, I came in during tech week and was assigned to walk around carrying a candle with other clowns behind me as a transitional device.  My memories of the show were of standing in full costume in the dark of backstage watching the backs and shoulders of clowns in the spotlight and waiting for a music cue.  I didn’t have any memories of developing material for that show because I hadn’t taken part in the development process.  After that day in the studio Kendall said she wanted to talk with me.  Now that I think I’m insane, I don’t know what she said.  What I heard was;  “I don’t think you’re trying hard enough and neither do most of the other women in the company.  You need to stop being the way that you are.”

I felt like I was being given notice and that if I didn’t improve, I would be kicked off the team.   That was the Friday before Labor Day.  The next rehearsal was on the evening of the first day of school (traditionally and an emotional day in family life–I felt guilty dragging my kid into Manhattan to do a childcare exchange with her father instead of having a family dinner and talking about her what she thought of her new teacher.  I was also determined to do better because I was on notice, even though I know full-well that is not the mindset that produces funny clown material.

During a musical improvisation where a bunch of us were listening to a song and then the music was turned off and we were supposed to sing something in the same emotional tone, and we’re supposed to make eye contact with the audience and we’re supposed to be truthful and we’re supposed to move around and we’re supposed to make sounds, text even.  The song my group was assigned was “Seventeen”.  I can see how this could produce some very funny things, especially in the context of this show, a way for “Cinderella” to be for example in the moment after the stepsisters have gone to the ball but before the fairy godmother has come.  Instead, my mind latched onto a picture of a very sad adolescent at home listening to her radio thinking she wasn’t chosen and nobody likes her (A melancholy adolescent can be a very funny thing.  I’ve seen it work in Shakespeare.)  Kendall was side coaching me to move more and be louder and don’t forget the audience.  I looked into the eyes of the other clowns and thought;  “You don’t want to work with me.  You don’t trust me on stage.  I got nothing.”  Needless to say, I choked.  Nothing worth keeping came out of that improv from me.

Thank God my puppeteer friend who was in town.  We had a pre-arranged get-together after rehearsal.  We went out for drinks and dinner and she talked me down from my failure place.  She reminded me that I actually am funny and list numerous performances and real life occasions during the past 20 years we’ve known each other when I have been genuinely funny.  She’s a good friend.  We remembered how we actually cried at Clown College because we couldn’t come up with a walk-around gag that could get approved by our gag teacher, Frosty Little.  One night a bunch of us stayed up until the wee hours of the morning brainstorming walk-around gags and stuffed the box with our ideas the next morning.  I’d submitted 5 or 6 descriptive sketches and when one of them was approved to be built by the shop I didn’t even remember coming up with the idea (even though the drawing and handwriting were mine).   I’d become so exhausted and punchy that by the time I’d come up with the idea  (It was  a “play on words” which was something Frosty kept telling us not to do even though most of the examples he gave us of successful walk-around gags were puns and plays on words.  Clown College is a guys world.  Our class began with 54 students and 10 were women.  My approved walk-around sight gag involved a fishing tackle box and a third-arm puppet of a football player.