Clown College – Clownmommy

The Day after the Jango Edwards Workshop

Jango warned us that we would experience a let down after the workshop is over, and it is true. I am feeling very much alone here in my apartment while My Kid is at school and The Husband is at work. But, thankfully, I have a performance coming up on Monday to keep my mind and body occupied. I am feeling connected to the clown community though. Last night in Soho I talked to Michael Bongar and Stanley Sherman and Jim Moore, contemporaries of Jango Edwards, who became a clown in the 1970’s, working the streets of Europe. John Towsen, author of Clowns was there too. I just got an e-mail from Kendall. Someone from Circus Cirkor playing at BAM this week contacted her to talk about clown and risk.

Speaking of risk, it was a risk to take the Jango Edwards workshop this week. Based on what I had seen on the internet, I found him offensive and scary and I was dis-inclined to take the workshop. But, Jef Johnson said that his workshops are inspirational. So I took the risk.

Jango’s aesthetic is certainly not mine, but the way he talks about the importance of clowns in the world is something I have not heard since I was last around Steve Smith. There is something wonderful about the belief that the world needs more clowns when one is a clown or a clown in training. When I was at Clown College, we were working and sweating and nursing injuries because we were trying so hard to win of the contracts to tour with The Greatest Show on Earth, kind of like So You Think You Can Dance. At the same time we were taught that it was important for us to appreciate what we had been given. It seemed a happy bit of subversive action, reflected in the promotional materials at the time, that there was as much pride in the Clown College graduates who had gone on to become doctors, teachers and lawyers as those who become name entertainers or part of Clown Alley on the Red Unit or the Blue Unit.

Steve Smith made sure that when we left Clown College, with our professionally designed agent suits and our make-up kits full of the Krylon, Mehron and Ben Nye products that worked best for our particular skin, in addition to all of the crafts and skills we had been taught by our many impressive teachers, that it was our obligation to be kind and generous to all clowns. As healthy 20-somethings who had just had the door to the corporate entertainment industry opened for us, it was humbling to be reminded to respect and appreciate the work of those who learned everything they know about clowning in a class at a senior center or at clown club conventions.

Sometimes stage and cabaret clowns and Ringling-style clowns look askance at each other’s aesthetic sensibilities, but Jango, who brings to mind Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters wants all the clowns to come together in the same community.

The way Jango used music in his workshop reminded me of the Search Weekends at the Newman Center when I was in college. After intensive days of learning and sharing we would stand in a circle with our arms around each other, tears shining in our eyes as we sang Simon and Garfunkle’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. With Jango we did the same thing, but the song was Smile, by Charlie Chaplin.

The Sunday before I took Jango’s workshop, I attended a talk about fasting and almsgiving, which are part of all the major world religions because they can lead to humility and transformation. The same can be said of a good clown.

2:42 am

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.

Clown Choices

It’s lovely to have choices. There were two different Downtown Clown options in Manhattan this evening. The New York Downtown Clown Revue had the Bongar Challenge: enter, be really funny, exit in 3 minutes. And over at the Flea Theatre Greg DeSanto was showing clips from his vast collection of comedy videos. I chose the latter because Greg DeSanto was one of the clowns who came off the road to teach us slaps and falls when I went to Clown College. The films I enjoyed most were a short film from the 70’s of clowns in Clown Alley putting on their makeup. It featured a young Frosty Little who had retired from the road by the time he taught us at Clown College. The other really cool thing to see was home movies of a young George Carl doing gymnastics and parts of his act out on the lawn for his family in Ohio. I am glad people like Greg DeSanto have taken it upon themselves to collect this cool stuff.

Golden Nose Awards

Yes, the New York clown community has its own awards show. Flying under the radar at the Krane Theatre on the Lower East Side, last night, individuals in street clothes, were publicly acknowledged for their contributions to the art form of clown.

Before and after the show there was socializing at Phoebe’s bar on Bowery and 4th where there was the usual talk about upcoming shows and gigs as well as more discussion of the Swiss clown Dimitri and his family who just finished a run at the New Victory Theatre. There were random smart people digressions on topics as diverse as the Food and Drug Administration and the public education system. I saw Kevin Carr, stand-up-comedian/actor/clown for the first time since…some year waaaaaay back during the last century, when we were both in the same Clown College class in Florida. Adam Gertsacov, another classmate, from back in the day, who books his flea circus and other solo shows at community events and schools, was also there –slightly stunned that this was his first social night out with a bunch of clowns since the birth of his son six months ago.

Barry Lubin, better known as “Grandma” of The Big Apple Circus, presented Dick Monday and his wife Tiffany Riley, who were in town from their home in Dallas, Texas (where they relocated for a more affordable lifestyle after having kids) with the Clowns of the Year award for their work as the ensemble The New York Goofs and for their teaching of clown skills in New York City for over 10 years. They remain a vital part of the New York clown scene returning several times each year to teach and perform.

Hovey Burgess, a master teacher in the NYU graduate acting program received a lifetime achievement award for his work as a circus and clown historian. Everyone knows him because he goes to everything and he is acknowledged somewhere in almost every book about American clowns and circus published in the past 25 years.

Deven Sisler, just back from Haiti, accepted an award on behalf of Clowns Without Boarders, a volunteer organization that sends groups of clowns to areas of crisis all over the world, including refugee camps, conflict zones and territories in situations of emergency.

Very cute, very young Spencer Novich, a student in the experimental theatre wing of the NYU drama school won an audience choice award for his eccentric dancing character and mid-career professional Joel Jeske and Mike Richter, and Christopher Lueck received one for their act “Musique”.

But, mostly the evening was a celebration of people who embrace the art form of clowning.

“There’s no competition here, we’re all fighting to make a living,” said Dick Monday as he picked up his award: “This does weigh a lot and it will keep the credit card debt in one pile.”

Humor Abuse

We went to see Lorenzo Pisoni’s solo show, “Humor Abuse” at the Manhattan Theatre Club last night. It was a touching performance by a man who in the 1970’s was a child clown in the San Francisco based Pickle Family Circus and who as an adult is a serious New York actor.

I never saw the Pickle Family Circus, but we watched videos with reverence at Clown College because that was where Bill Irwin (the clown who became a MacArthur Fellow had gone to develop his own style with Larry Pisoni and Geoff Hoyle after graduating from the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown College (and Oberlin). But, I remember the black and white photograph of Larry Pisoni with his son in identical clown costumes. As a novice clown struggling to master basic juggling in a few short weeks, growing up with circus parents seemed like a much easier way to go.

Apparently not.

According to the show “Humor Abuse” learning to be a clown from a father who is a professional clown didn’t sound that much different from growing up with a football coach for a father. Same type of obsession just practicing different skills. I’m thinking sports analogies because yesterday afternoon before seeing Lorenzo Pisoni’s show and this morning after the performance, I escorted My Kid to her first and second AYSO soccer games of the season. As an eight-year-old she is unable to participate in league soccer unless her parents are also willing to participate on a game by game basis.

I think about the similarities between playing fields and circus rings. I didn’t play team sports as a child and didn’t find that kind of focus until I began to perform with the Missoula Children’s Theatre under the direction of Jim Caron, at about the same time that Lorenzo. Pisoni was working with his father. The two organizations had the same do-it-yourself aesthetic of the 1970’s that grew out of the cooperative ideals of the 1960’s and shaped the lives of those who came of age in the 1980’s.

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!”

My body doesn’t work like it used to

I went running in the morning, just around the park, just for half an hour. But, by evening my hip hurt and after googling I think it is bursitis. That’s not who I think I am. That’s not how I move in the world.

I was multi-tasking, can’t get out of the apartment alone for very long, need some physical exercise (I want to juggle my fat around and really annoy it until it decides to leave me forever) and some time to think about the piece, and was thinking of it as a physical warm-up for a creative day.

When I found out I had been accepted in to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, not yet 20 years ago, I began almost immediately to run several miles a day in the swampy Washington, D. C. heat with a significant number of push ups and sit ups every day. Clown College was like boot camp, a large percentage of the students were just out of high school and most were male. I had flexibility and stamina but I lacked upper body strength (my entire experience of flying trapeze was taking one swing out over the mat and sliding off onto the mats below). I was not one of the students singled out special trapeze work. I was pretty thrilled to be one of the small flexible women who were pulled out to be taught some two person basket hanging move (the name of which I can’t remember even though I desperately want to write it to prove will know I’m not lying and actually did once know circus people) for an idea the director had for clowns falling out of a flying kite.

I am working now as a stage clown, different from that kind of circus clown in that the gymnastics are emotional not physical. In Europe clown is an older person’s game. I wish I had seen Deborah Kauffman’s clown piece “Veni Vidi Vici” this past weekend, as I had planned. She’s a local female clown role model. But, The Husband’s sudden business trip required me, as The Mom, to make my priority family time and not ditch them to go into Manhattan for some obscure theatre that only I wanted to see.

Baggy Pants and Big Black Shoes

As The Husband and My Child are playing miniature air hockey (it’s really cute 6-inch table we got at the gift shop of the Please Touch Museum) on the train from Trenton, as we make our way back to Brooklyn from Philadelphia, it seems as good a time as any to write a blog entry.

Halfway through Bill Irwin’s show last night, my heart started racing as my mind wandered from his work, “The Happiness Lectures” to my work and what if anything I would do next. Thank God I can’t compare myself to him since in addition to being a MacArthur and Tony award winner he is also tall and male, two things that never come into play when I create my own work.

When I was at Clown College (Class of ’89, Bill Irwin who I’ve shaken hands with but don’t know, was Class of ’74) there came a point, when we were watching lots of black and white silent movies and learning the classic slap and fall gags. Almost everyone went to their designer and said they wanted big black shoes and baggy pants. The women in the class were told point blank that they couldn’t have big black shoes and baggy pants “…because Mr. Feld only hires girl clowns who look like girls.” We were told the number of women clowns who were hired depended on the number of show girls who were hired. Women clowns lived on the showgirl car. More showgirls meant fewer slots for women clowns and so those who were hired had better look like girls. Otherwise he may as well hire a guy and avoid the complications.

I don’t know why I thought of that, except that Bill Irwin does so much with his baggy pants and his big black shoes.

Gypsy on Broadway

I saw Gypsy on Broadway today!

OK I think I myself was completely warped by playing “Dainty June” in a UM Summer Stock production of Gypsy. My New York stage clown friends frequently try to get me to stop being “ON” in front of an audience and I realize now there was some feeling of sucess in playing that cartoon vaudeville child that still worked at RBBCC and that I still cling to in some clown situations. I went to Clown College there was something about it that worked better than anything else I had ever done…

I’m not “Dainty June” anymore, I’m “Mama Rose” now!

Even last night at Clownlab, an exercise and I started doing a spot-on imitation of Sally Anne Howes as the “Music Box Doll” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang–and I just stopped for no reason–it was just an improv game. We were just supposed to be action figures–whatever that meant–I started out as “Wonder Woman”. Whatever the exercise was meant to be it became a send up of ’70’s toys and movies. It wasn’t like I was auditioning for a play a someone else…

Something about not having permission to be…

This performing thing is complicated…

No wonder my child is not interested…

Patty LuPone was incredible today

Also

Boyd Gaines, who is married to someone I went to high school with, is absolutely charming

I was wondering who the hyper-energetic-girl-I-knew/mare-at-the-starting-gate, has turned into to be married to such a charming man It must be worth a drink or a coffee to find out.

I am aware of their plays. I wanted to see Contact at Lincoln Center, but I had a baby and there was that 9/11 event that constricted movement and enthusiasm. My friend was in The Country Girl and Coram Boy both of which closed before I got around to seening them. I really meant to seee Twelve Angry Men and really really regretted not seeing it after I had to spend two months of my life as a juror on a Brooklyn murder trial.

I have had no contact with her since we first were moving to New York and my sister got her sister to give her e-mail to me and we corresponded about strollers appropriate to the city.

Tonight,

A dinner at Tratoria Spagetto in Greenwich Village between the church and the fountain. I love the “Lady and the Tramp” eating spagettiI aesthetic of the place.

The husband’s former co-worker who moved back to India and lives in Bangalore, his wife and daughter. We have much hope for their classes to exchange letters–“Wow you live in a totally different country, but you have the Disney Channel too!!!! OMG” Also the husbands former boss and socially ept wife–when will we organize joint vacations??? There are posibilities…

I lost or had stolen my cell phone today, had to pay for a new one to keep myself and my life in the same place, a future essay I owe this blog about the evils of sharecropping in cyper-space…