director – Clownmommy

switching fears

Oh that is such a funny Fruedian slip type-o that I’m going to leave it up! I meant to type: “switching gears”!

I’m home from rehearsal and I’m tired, wanna put my feet up and relax but not that’s not going to happen. I’m a mom. I gotta go meet The Husband and My Kid in the park on this beautiful sunny Sunday for some family time.

We switched gears at rehearsal today. We’re not coming up with new stuff anymore. We have to go back over the material we’ve been improvising in the studio that made us laugh, do it again and see if it still makes us laugh. Kendall, as the director, has the task of putting the pieces into an order that balances a multitude of elements and we the clowns start acting more like actors in rehearsal.

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!”

Is it possible to make theatre with children in the room?

That is the question of the current project I’m involved in. A call went put out for actors with children to work on a piece for the Six Figures Theatre Artists of Tomorrow Festival. I signed on with My Kid, even though she has no intention of performing. The director is pregnant and has a 2-year-old. One actress has a 3-year-old and another has a 10-month-old. Everyone at rehearsal, but the musician, has a kid that they bring to rehearsal but the musician. My kid is the oldest, the only one who even knows what is going on. But, she comes willingly because she likes playing with the babies. Sometimes it’s complete chaos more like a playgroup or toddler music class with the 3-year-old running and screaming and the 2-year-old refusing to relinquish the musician’s song sheet and the baby moving around the room followed by her mother who is pinching off bits of banana and placing the food in the baby’s mouth like a mother bird. My Kid adds her own notes to the cacophony.

Families of Clowns

Sometimes I have dreams that are so clear and simple that when I wake up I am surprised that it didn’t really happen. This morning I awoke after one such dream.

I was sitting in a booth in a dark dive bar in Williamsburg with friends looking at a 4-page color pull-out section of the newspaper about the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Clown College Reunion taking place across the river. The feature contained a full page of yearbook-like rows of small portraits of families of clowns, parents and children in full makeup and costume. I felt sad and left out because I clown alone without my family.

This much is true: As the New York Clown Theatre Festival was taking place, there was also a reunion of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clowns hosted by Greg and Karen DeSanto in Baraboo, Wisconsin (Not Manhattan as in my dream). Jay Stewart was involved in the organization of the event. Jay is married to Kristen and they have 2 kids who perform with them sometimes. There are other couples I know, or know of, mostly former Ringling Clowns, like Tommy and Tammy Parrish who worked together on the circus and went back to the real world after they had kids. They still perform, and sometimes their kids join in the act. There is a part of me who would love to clown like that.

However, my life did not work out that way. Although I did meet my husband working in a theatre and he has an acting resume, that’s was never really his thing. He was a director and uses the skills he developed in that capacity in a management role in the real world. (So we have insurance–yeah!) The Kid we produced together hid in my arms in the kitchen when there was a clown at a birthday party. She was not at all happy when I paid attention to other children when I was a clown at her preschool’s annual fundraiser. As a dance student she refused to perform and would not even put on the little tutu for a photo with classmates.

During the recent New York Clown Festival I went to events on my own. I didn’t see as many performances as I had planned. I didn’t see many performances at all. The nights I was scheduled to be on stage involved so much planning and jumping through hoops in order for My Kid to be picked up from school and escorted to and picked up from Brownies and soccer. She requires frequent feedings and regular bedtimes. It is considered bad form for an 8-year-old to hang out with a bunch of clowns in a dive bar in Williamsburg on a school night. There were other complications. The Husband was away on a business trip for much of the festival. Although I’d visualized many evenings of passing the ball of responsibility for My Kid to The Husband the moment he walked through the door, hopping on the G-train on Lafayette and hopping off at Metropolitan for an evening of cutting edge clown performances from all over the world– that I would be able to see FOR FREE with my participants badge–followed by career promoting beer, shop talk and networking at the Lazy Catfish. Ha!. I saw one show on a night I did not perform. It cost me over $50 for a babysitter. As I was leaving, I passed Ishah Jansen-Faith on her way to the theatre. Hey are you coming back? No way. I would have had to pay the babysitter over $100 if I stayed for the free cabaret.

That’s why people put their kids in their acts.

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.