Tag: Chris Lynam

After a workshop with Chris Lynam

Last night, Jef organized a workshop with Chris Lynam, a clown who is in New York for the Broadway run of Slava’s Snowshow. It’s always good to meet new clowns. After the workshop, there were three conversations at once around the table at the diner. Jef and Chris were talking about working with Slava and working on their own work. I was talking to the only other woman from the workshop about writing and the other guys were talking about guys being goofy.

Walking to the train at the end of the evening, Chris mentioned another clown, Thomas Kubenick a Czech clown who has his own show that he tours around the world. It’s good. I’ve seen it. I met Thomas for the first time at Movement Theatre International in Philadelphia in 1990. He was at that time assisting Boleck Polivka who taught a workshop. I met him again when he showed up at the workshop I was taking with Ctibor Turba at his studio in Nectiny, Czechoslovakia (right before it turned into Czech Land–that’s what the locals called the Czech Republic–and Slovakia) I’ve been around a while, but it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve gotten a handle on what may be my particular style…

I’m pretty much the opposite of Amy G. Chris took a call from her about a gig at a club. Organizing and coordinating are so not my thing that the passing mention of a woman I know putting together an evening of acts apparently caused me to have a nightmare. I had a dream, last night, about running a theatre space–like Annex where Allison Narver, Andrea Allen and Gillian Jorgenson have all been artistic director or the Brick where Audrey Crabtree is the face of the organizers of the New York Clown Theatre Festival. In this dream which was more like a nightmare, brought on perhaps by conversation about successful theatrical clowns and the women behind them, (I was reminded of the organized women behind the careers of monologists, Spalding Grey and Mike Daisey and cartoonist Gary Larson, not to mention the countless women who work as personal assistants, executive secretaries and stage moms (The Husband, My Kid, My Sister and I all saw Gypsy this week.) These passing bits of conversation caused me to have a nightmare about being in charge of an art space like Celebration Barn, currently run by the Amanda Huotari. In my dream there 4 toilets on the second floor that were all overflowing and unusable. The Marley dance floor in the rehearsal hall had been scrubbed with Comet by someone’s helpful visiting unsupervised mother and was now ruined… It was a nightmare.

Now, disorganized person that I am, I’ve got to hurry and help My Kid, (who is alternately yanking on my body an falling on the floor to prove the point of gross parental neglect) get dressed in a manner appropriate for both ice skating with her aunt at Rockefeller Center and hooking up at the Museum of Natural History with old Seattle Annex friends and their offspring, who are visting from Chicago.

Gotta go.

Steve Smith’s Big Apple Circus

We went to the Big Apple Circus, yesterday, My Kid, the Husband and I.  It is our holiday tradition.  Although on the way to the circus tent I pointed out to my long-limbed daughter the well dressed crowds coming out of The Nutcracker matinee and the posters advertising the upcoming production of Coppelia.  My Kid rolled her eyes and grunted in disgust.  Damn!  She looks so much like a ballet dancer too.  Oh well she is on the robotics team at school and this week plans to be a computer engineer like her father, I’d better not guide her towards a career that  one of my friends calls a long and painful road towards a job as a fitness instructor. * (see note)

Anyway.  The Big Apple Circus this year, “Play On” was a tight show, thanks to the direction of Steve Smith.  He was the director of Clown College the year that I went, and his two page description of the rehearsal process in the program sent me into a reverie of all that was good and pure and Steve Smith-y about Clown College when I was there.  For the circus program he wrote a description of the rehearsal process;  “Knowing the first day of rehearsal sets the tone for all the days to follow, we filled the practice ring full of enormous helium balloons, musical notes, flowers, ribbons, hopes, dreams, uplifting music, and artists from all over the globe.”  

He did that for the first day of Clown College too. The acceptance letter came filled with confetti.  I remember a huge balloon rainbow over the ring on the first day of clown college.  There were quotes posted everywhere around the arena, things like “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”—Goethe.  That makes me think of Clown College so much and the (…at this point I was interrupted by my offspring and I no longer remember the thread of the post I had intended to craft into a lengthy homage to Steve Smith’s fiercely and intentionally crafted positive energy… and I was going to mention my friend Mark Gindick who was in the show…)

 I will have to write about how wonderful Clown College was another time.

I did get my application in on time for the 5e Festival Internacional de Pallases d’Andorra 2009.  Who knows if they will choose our show or even if Lorraine and I can afford the time or money to go to Spain.

 Tonight I will attend a Modern Clown workshop with British clown, Chris Lynam.  

Little by little…hope…ambition…luck  and fierce, intentional positive energy!

* (note:) Steve Smith also told us “Cynicism is an easy choice. Don’t make it!”