Bill Irwin & David Shiner in "Old Hats"

[post 327]

I must admit I feared a let-down might await me last night as I went to see the new Bill Irwin / David Shiner production, Old Hats. Too much talent! Expectations way too high!! Plus weren't these guys turning 63 and 60 this year?

Nellie McKay

Well, yes they are, not that you'd know it from Old Hats. This is an impressive production, full of new, richly textured material, and as physical as anything I've seen them do. They do get a few breathers while a band led by cabaret singer and comedienne Nellie McKay entertains us, but this may have as much to do with elaborate costume changes as it does with stamina.

Old Hats, as directed by Tina Landau, comes across as a loving tribute to vaudeville and in fact takes the form of a traditional variety show, though one with electronic title cards and state-of-the-art video effects. Most of the material is mostly new, but they are clowns, so of course lots of business from their past work surfaces throughout. And there are a couple of old favorites performed intact: Bill does his Italian waiter routine, juggling plates full of "spaghetti," that I first saw him do in the Pickle Family Circus in the 70s. David again directs his silent cowboy movie with a cast of audience volunteers, a feature of their Broadway show, Fool Moon. As for the new stuff, no duds, but these were the highlights for me:

• After an opening of our intrepid duo escaping from a cosmic wormhole (video projected onto the back wall) and the noisy entrance through the audience of the late-arriving band, Irwin and Shiner settle into a classic softshoe routine where they try to outdo each other with fancy footwork and hat tricks even fancier than in previous shows. They are both technically amazing, though no clown and few dancers can match Bill Irwin's fluidity of movement.
• "The Businessman," a solo piece by Bill brilliantly combining movement with technology, beginning with a battle between his iPhone and iPad and ending with his identity being swallowed whole by larger-than-life electronic media. Reminiscent of his work in Largely New York, though much more ambitious and fully realized.
• "The Encounter," in which two doddering old men get on each other's nerves while waiting for a train. Their oversized costumes give them room for all sorts of bodily metamorphoses. A sweet and touching piece that seamlessly blends physical comedy with rich character work.
• A magic act performed by a pair of third-rate artistes. Shiner's magician is a creepy delight, defined perfectly by his own idiosyncratic idea of flashy movement. Irwin is hysterical as his female assistant, ever jealous of the old guy's flirtations with the younger ladies in the first row. And, yes, they do some real magic, including sawing a woman from the audience in half. This kind of parody has been done before, but the interplay of these two characters was absolutely delicious.

A lot of NYC clowns were there last night, and as fate would have it, David Shiner picked our own Missus Clown, aka Kelly Anne Burns, to play the damsel in the Cowboy Movie. Of course she stole the show. (Click to enlarge.)

Kelly told me afterwards that when she was on stage, Shiner whispered to her to "ham it up because this guy  [meaning another volunteer] is a dud!" and when she got to the death scene "to go really long."

As far as I can tell, the show hasn't officially opened, but it has already sold out its regular run through the end of March. A week has been added in April, and rumor has it that a second week will be added, but those tickets are $75.

You can learn more about the show and buy (April) tickets here.

You can watch the PBS documentary, Bill Irwin, Clown Prince, right here.

Click here to watch Nellie McKay perform "Feminists Don't Have a Sense of Humor" around the corner from me at Cooper Union's Great Hall, back in 2008. She does this one in Old Hats, but "Sarah Palin" becomes "Michelle Bachman." Thanks to  Mary Dohnalek for the link!

Update: Click here for a NY Times preview article (not a review) of the production, in which I am reminded that they did an earlier version of "The Encounter" in Fool Moon.

Update: Click here for all the reviews, courtesy of stagegrade.com.

Guest Post: Ashley Griffin on Physical Comedy in Musical Theater

[post 320]

I am pleased to be able to introduce a new contributor to this blog who, like my other guest writers, knows a lot of stuff that I don't. Ashley Griffin is a writer, actor, singer, and dancer whose expertise is in the area of musical theatre, the history of which she has taught at New York University. She has performed on- and off-Broadway as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, and London. Her plays have been produced off-Broadway, in L.A, and Chicago, and she is most well known as the creator of the pop-culture phenomenon Twilight: The Unauthorized Musical Parody. Ashley has a long-time interest in circus, clowning, and physical comedy, and one of her current projects is a collaboration with Joel Jeske on a physical comedy version of Alice in Wonderland. — jt
_______________________________________

Donald O'Connor in Singing in the Rain

When John asked me to write a guest post about physical comedy in musical theatre, I instantly started brainstorming on all the wonderful performers and shows I would reference, all the great examples I would pull out like….um…well…that one thing in…no…wait…um…uh…shoot. Wait, that’s not right! Musical theater was, at least partly, founded with physical comedy as one of its main elements. It’s a staple, right? Let's go back a bit....

In essence, the American musical was created out of two very different art forms that were popular in the early 1900s: operetta, and ethnic theatre. As I discussed in my blog entry Changed For Good – or The Famous Thesis, operetta, a lighter version of traditional opera (think Babes in Toyland) was considered sophisticated entertainment.

Operetta was the basis for the traditional musical theatre form – a narrative story told through song, occasionally employing dialogue in between numbers. Ethnic theater – especially Yiddish and Jewish theater — was thriving in America at the same time as operetta, and was hugely popular. It was, however, often looked down upon as “low” theater, and not respected the same way operetta was.

This dichotomy has found its way into contemporary musical theater, where it seems all shows are either delegated to the “high art” category (think The Light in the Piazza, or anything Sondheim) or the “popular, financially successful” category (think Mamma Mia! and Cats.) It seems that as far as the critics are concerned, never the twain shall meet, although there have been some rare “grey area” shows that might fall into both categories.

Though physical comedy was not a huge staple of operetta, it was all but mandatory in ethnic theater, which in general was far more comedy-based. It was this type of theater that eventually developed into vaudeville in the 1920s and 30s. In fact, physical comedy was such a staple that almost all the famous silent movie comedians began their careers in vaudeville. Vaudeville was not what we would currently term “musical theater.” There was not a single narrative — in fact it was made up of a collection of “acts.” Some of these acts, however, did have mini-narratives, and might even use music to tell their story.  Some of these sketches became so popular; they eventually evolved into full-length pieces.

The most famous example of this was the Marx Brothers, who began their career in vaudeville, pairing their natural comic talent with their adept musical skill. They became so famous that in the early 1920s they were asked to create a full length review, I’ll Say She Is, which was followed by The Cocoanuts and then Animal Crackers – both Broadway musicals (with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, no less) that went on to become classic films.

The physical comedy genius of the Marx brothers has been brilliantly analyzed by writers far more knowledgeable of the subject then me. But what is unusual in terms of the musical form is how much they rely on physicality not for gags (though they do that) but to advance the story, create the world, and develop character. They almost use a comic physicality to replace dance — which traditionally has been the third component of the “integrated musical” — the “physical” component along with singing, and acting.  Harpo, for example, never speaks a word.

After that, the waters get a bit murky. While the “first” musical is generally agreed to have been The Black Crook, it was Show Boat that truly began paving the way to what we now consider the classical musical. Show Boat was every inch an operetta and, indeed, that’s the direction musicals have been heading ever since. In fact, quite a bit of the comedy in the late 20s / early 30s on Broadway was found in review shows like The Garrick Gaieties – the SNL of their day (though there were certainly comic musicals, for example Good News in the 1920s, and Babes in Arms in the 1930s.) But there was a strong trend in the 30s towards verbal comedy, and parody as opposed to physical. While film saw the rise of screwball comedies, in general American entertainment reacted to the Depression with a desire for glamor and escapism.

The 40s and 50s ushered in the “Golden Age of Broadway,” largely heralded by the collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Although their shows were landmarks, none could really be described as funny, although South Pacific (which won the Pulitzer Prize) does open act two with a holiday performance put on by the nurses and Seabees, which includes a drag performance of “Honey Bun” with nurse Nellie dressed as a sailor, and one of the sailors dressed as the “honey bun” of the song — complete with coconut bra and grass skirt.



Another gender-reversed comic moment occurred around the same time in the musical White Christmas, which was a film musical first, long before it was recently adapted for the stage. In White Christmas, the male leads first encounter the female leads when the two girls perform a song called “Sisters” as part of their nightclub routine. Later, in order to help the girls escape from the police, the guys wind up taking their places in the act — creating comic hilarity when they begrudgingly perform the girl’s number to the “t.”



There is also of course the classic number “Make ‘em Laugh” from Singing in the Rain, which was also a film long before it was on the stage.



“Make ‘em Laugh” was in itself a deliberate reference to “Be a Clown” from The Pirate – also a movie, never a stage musical.



 Are we noticing a pattern here? Film has a great history of physical comedy. Theater…well…kind of stumbled along the way.  Or at least, we don’t have hard evidence to the contrary.

Part of the difficulty of commenting on physical comedy in musical theater, especially during this time period, is in a lack of recorded performance. Most physical comedy is not written down. Even when an entire sketch is nothing but physical comedy, it is usually written as a simple outline meant to help the performers remember the order of actions. A talented physical comedian could turn the stage direction “he goes to the mirror and shaves” into a half-hour, riotous routine.

The original Ado Annie (Celeste Holm) from Oklahoma

Film is forever — and we can easily find the physical comedy in films from the beginning of the medium onwards. We have almost no visual record of most live musical theater shows written before the 1970s — and therefore only have the scripts to go by. And the scripts are not much help. For example, “classic” musicals are somewhat characterized by their character structure of having two principle “romantic leads” and the secondary “comic leads.” In Oklahoma, Laurie and Curly are the romantic leads, and Will and Ado Annie are the comic leads. I’ve seen Ado Annie played completely deadpan, and with raucous physicality – and both are hysterical. However, one is physical comedy, and the other is not. It’s up to the performer, and not dictated by the material. And we don’t have records of a lot of performances.

The further we get away from vaudeville, the further the musical gets away from physical comedy. We get comic moments, certainly, but nothing groundbreaking, or revolutionary or, sadly, hardly ever relevant to the plot. Ado Annie can certainly be played by a physical comedian; but if it’s not, it won’t devastate the show. This of course leads me to ask: why is this so? Well, my personal experience leads me to conclude this:

Being a musical theater performer requires an immense amount of training in many different fields. First you have to sing. And especially today, you can’t just sing – if you’re a girl you have to belt, and sing legit. Then you have to act. And you have to dance — that includes at bare minimum tap, jazz, and ballet. Each of those elements could take up a lifetime of study. As it is in most musical theater training programs, acting seems to fall by the wayside. Nowadays you practically have to play an instrument too. (You can’t audition for Once or, well, any John Doyle production if you don’t.) And it helps to know aerial acrobatics and gymnastics. You know, for Spiderman, Wicked, Peter Pan, The Pirate Queen, and every vampire musical. Learning physical comedy is not a casual skill you can just “pick up.” The amount of work required to be really good at it is one reason it’s probably not emphasized, at least in training programs.

Then there’s also the issue of musical theater and “high art.” Physical comedy is a vocabulary in and of itself that, to be truly incorporated into a musical, would not only have to have performers capable of doing it, but writers who are adept at writing it. All musical theater writers have to be incredibly well trained in music theory, composition, etc. Book writers analyze structure. To truly incorporate physical comedy means being fluent in it. That’s much easier in a traditional physical comedy show where the performer almost always has a hand in creating a piece. In musical theater, a team of people write a show, then give it to actors who are expected to, yes, bring themselves to a role, but most importantly translate the vision of the writer(s) and director(s). Either the writers have to write a piece with physical comedy clearly in it, then find performers who can sing, act, dance, and do physical comedy, or else an actor might find one or two small moments to bring in some physical comedy, but it’s never going to completely define the role, or the show.

from the original off-Broadway production of Peter and the Starcatcher

This seems to be at least slightly different with plays as opposed to musicals – we all know and love Noises Off – but that was written as a farce. Robin Williams, Steve Martin, and Bill Irwin did a Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot that used quite extensive physical comedy — but those were adept physical comedians who were allowed to reinterpret a text. Most recently, Peter and the Starcatcher on Broadway utilized great physical comedy, and was a rare exception where both the writer and cast understood the vocabulary. But that was also in essence a play, not a musical.



There is of course the amazing Bill Irwin — and his Broadway work — but those were physical comedy plays that happened to go to Broadway. Not to mention the fact that musicals are so expensive to produce now that they must run several years just to make their money back. That means living through far more than the original cast. Can you imagine if they had to hold auditions to recast Bill Irwin in Regard of Flight? I doubt it would continue running for very long. And one of the reasons is that what’s funny on one person may not be funny on another.

The original production of Pippin

In the 1970s, some experimental theater techniques began to make their way into mainstream musical theater – most notably (and I emphasize him because of his physicality) with Bob Fosse. The 70s, following upon the work of the amazing Jerome Robbins, became a time when physicality began to become more of a storytelling device. Pippin for example, uses an ensemble of highly stylized “players” (complete with white face) who lead an innocent (Pippin) down a path searching for ultimate fulfillment. While this is certainly not a physical comedy show, it is arguably a physical show, and therefore moments of physical comedy do come in to it.

In the early 2000s, Broadway saw a return to the “good old fashioned musical comedy” with The Producers. This was truly a landmark show in many ways, partly because there literally hadn’t been an original, traditional musical comedy in a very long time. The Producers featured great moments of physical comedy, such as this one that was featured on the Tony awards. Notice the use of the walkers, not to mention the beautiful physicality of the performers. Those are guys and  girls playing the little old ladies.

Jeffry Denman

I have to take a moment to reference one of the best resources when it comes to physical comedy in musical theater (and there aren’t a ton.) The wonderful book A Year With The Producers by Jeffry Denman is a must read for anyone interested in theater, comedy, or being entertained/educated in any way. It chronicles Jeffry’s year auditioning for/being cast in/performing with The Producers on Broadway in which he played/created a myriad of hysterical characters His description of both his process, and the inner workings of musical theater (which would be greatly enlightening to any physical comedians who aren’t as familiar with the world of musical theater) are genius.

Here's Jeffry's piece "A Drop in the Bucket" from his choreography demo reel.

I also mention Jeffry for another reason – I had the great fortune to get to work with him on Twilight: The Unauthorized Musical Parody and got to see first-hand his genius at creating brilliant characters and comedy moments. We were very fortunate that all of our Twilight cast members were fantastic comedians, and I especially noticed in how many different shows Jeff was able to introduce brilliant elements of physical comedy, so I highly recommend checking out Jeff’s book and looking at his process.

The following year, Broadway and musical theater were shaken up by the truly genius musical Urinetown. Part of what made this show feel so fresh and original was that it was created by the experimental theater group the Neo Futurists — who used many of their experimental conceits and techniques within a traditional musical theater structure. Check out this clip of their Tony awards performance (yes, they were winners that night.)



I particularly love their unusual use of physical humor in this number. The physical comedy “gag” is not the focus of the piece – it is the elephant in the room. Notice the lovely young girl bound up and gagged who proceeds to do all the choreography, even though she is tied up for the whole number. And notice how the fact that there is a dancing hostage is never acknowledged. Brilliance. Even more so when you know the show and realize how much this moment is actually advancing the plot.

Another shout out also has to go to the incomparable Lauren Lopez, who first gained notoriety for her performance as Draco Malfoy in the youTube sensation, A Very Potter Musical. Though this is not a Broadway show, Ms. Lopez wonderfully created physical comedy moments within the musical as a way to define Draco’s character, and his relationships with other characters. Here’s a highlights reel. It’s a great example of some of the “underground” work being done in musical theater. Physicality really starts around :44



As with Mr. Denman, I’ve seen Ms. Lopez’s work in many projects, and she always brings a unique physical comedy element to whatever she’s doing. I wish everyone reading could watch her live performing as the spastic child Renesmee in Twilight. Her talent as a physical comedian, as well as a musical theater performer is one of the reasons I work with her so often.

Then there are moments of physical comedy in musical theater that don’t relate to a specific show. My favorite is Bill Irwin and Karen Ziemba’s interpretation of Sondheim’s song “Sooner or Later” for “Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall.” The song was originally written for the film Dick Tracy.



What is the future of physical comedy in musical theater? It’s hard to say. With the advent of the rock musical (Rent, American Idiot, Next To Normal), original comedies in general on Broadway seem to be diminishing. Then again the recent show Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson managed to incorporate elements of physical comedy into a rock musical. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was highly physical, but it was more a use of funny physicality than actual physical comedy. The Book of Mormon also has moments of physical comedy; one of my favorites, and one of the most subtle, is at the end of the song “I Believe.” See how hopeful Mormon Elder Price and evil warlord “Butt-Fucking-Naked” (yes, that’s his name) relate to each other. It’s at the very end of the song:



However, and I may get some flack for this, I think most of the humor in Book of Mormon is based on verbal and musical jokes, how people look, and the situations they are put in — which is not true-blue physical comedy, although there are certainly elements of that in the show as well most notably in the song “Turn It Off.”

Truly incorporating physical comedy into musical theater is tricky. Musical theater is by nature narrative-driven, and is largely verbal. It has to be. The performers are singing more than half the show, not to mention the fact that it would be near impossible to perform comic physical moments while singing for purely technical reasons. In film, on the other hand, you have multiple takes, not to mention usually having a playback recording. Physical comedy is by nature episodic and non-verbal. I think in some ways the decline of physical comedy in musical theater can be linked to the decline of dance in musical theater. The fact that almost no new shows use dance to advance the story is a real sore spot in the musical theater community. I think that if there were a way to open a dialogue between the two schools something revolutionary would take place. But there needs to be a sharing of vocabulary. In the words of Elder Price: "I believe!"

_________________________

Click here for Ashley's blog, visit her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter, view her youTube channel, and read her Guide to Collaboration.

Mime Bashing

Marcel Marceau

[post 242]

I suppose I could write a post about the virtues and limitations of mime training, but this isn't it. Sure, I took a smattering of classes, studying with Reid Gilbert, René Houtrides, Tom Leabhart, and Moni Yakim (and salivating over Children of Paradise), but I never really took to mime. (Translation: I sucked at it.) So instead of a treatise, just a few hopefully amusing snapshots of mime's public image over the years.

There was a time back in the day, following on the first wave of Marcel Marceau's popularity, that an aura of bold creativity was associated with mime.

And then there was the backlash.

Maybe it was all those white-faced pantomimists who thought being trapped inside an imaginary box was a profound statement on the human condition. Maybe it was all the Shields & Yarnell wannabees,  mimicking people on the street for cheap laughs. Or maybe it was all Woody Allen's fault.

In A Little Louder, Please, a 1966 comic piece for The New Yorker,  Allen pointed out the obvious: much of the audience just didn't get it:

The curtain-raiser was a little silent entertainment entitled Going to a Picnic. The mime... proceeded to spread a picnic blanket, and, instantly, my old confusion set in. He was either spreading a picnic blanket or milking a small goat. Next, he elaborately removed his shoes, except that I'm not positive they were his shoes, because he drank one of them and mailed the other to Pittsburgh. I say "Pittsburgh," but actually it is hard to mime the concept of Pittsburgh, and as I look back on it, I now think what he was miming was not Pittsburgh at all but a man driving a golf cart through a revolving door — or possibly two men dismantling a printing press.

And so on and so forth. You can read the whole selection here.

Not only were mimes confusing, they were annoying as hell. Before you knew it, mime bashing had become quite acceptable. If you couldn't make derogatory jokes about minorities, women, or gays, you could still put down mimes and — ha ha — not worry about them talking back.

This had been going on for a long time already when Bill Irwin was recruited to play an annoying mime ("worse than Hare Krishnas") in the 1991 movie, Scenes from a Mall, co-starring (guess who?) Woody Allen. (In fairness to Woody, he didn't direct this one, Paul Mazursky did.) Here's a compilation of the annoying mime scenes:




I hadn't thought much about mime lately, at least not about traditional illusion pantomime, until last month when I had two pantomime sightings. The first was Brooklyn clown and mime Jeff Seal, who decided to make a video based on all those Shit __ Say videos so popular on YouTube today. (Shit Girls Say; Shit Boyfriends Say; Shit Hipsters Say; etc.) You guessed it: Jeff did Shit Mimes Say. It turns out so did several other people, but I'm happy to report that his is by far the best:




So far mimes aren't looking great in this post, so let's go to my second pantomime sighting: Billy the Mime. Friends encouraged me to see his show at UCB (Upright Citizen's Brigade), a home for up-and-coming stand-up and sketch comics. How would a mime do there, especially one who wore the traditional costume and whiteface, and communicated through placards and silent illusions?

Quite well, actually. His show sold out and the audience laughed a lot; there was no mime bashing from that crowd. His technique is good, but what separates him from a lot of mime is his weighty and at times sensationalist subject matter. A lot of the content is sexual, and he does not hesitate to mime a variety of sexual acts in graphic detail. If anything, he can be faulted for sometimes being lewd and outrageous just for the shock value. Still, many of the pieces are quite good. First his publicity trailer:




And A Night at Monticello:




Somehow I can't quite imagine Marceau performing that one!

The Lady, the Tiger, or Mr. Noodle?

[post 233]
Brian Bernhard recently did a Facebook post sharing this funny Sesame Street Elmo's World video of Bill Irwin as Mr. Noodle. With the help of Mr. Wiggles and Leon Chesney, the milquetoast Noodle overcomes his inhibitions and embraces his inner hip-hop dancer. I especially like how Wiggles & Chesney wave their dance rhythm directly into Noodle's body.



Now if you just watched that, you no doubt noticed that whoever put this on YouTube cut off the ending. This of course left me wondering how I would have ended it, just like in 6th grade when we had to write our own climax to the short story, The Lady, or the Tiger? I was definitely leaning toward them getting on the bus, sitting quietly reading their Wall St. Journals, and never acknowledging their wild time together, not even making eye contact.

So, before going any further: what do you think? What's your ending? Because as it turns out there was another version online that did have the ending. Here are the final moments:

Hmm, guess I should try to think more positive thoughts....

See Every Show You Ever Missed!! — The TOFT Archive

[post 215]

Okay, so I exaggerate ever so slightly, but I do want you all to know about TOFT, the Theatre on Film & Tape Archive at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts, which I mentioned in my previous post. Located at Lincoln Center, it is definitely something to be grateful for this Thanksgiving!

Even if you live in New York, you're going to miss a lot of "must-see" shows for one reason or another. And then there are the shows that you would love the chance to see again, to study from a professional perspective, rewinding and replaying key sequences.

Well, your prayers are answered:

Since 1970, TOFT has preserved live theatrical productions and documented the creative contributions of distinguished artists and legendary figures of the theatre. With the consent and cooperation of the theatrical unions and each production's artistic collaborators, TOFT produces video recordings of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions as well as dialogues between notable theatre personalities.

You heard it right. Thousands of theatre shows — and it's free!

Take for example that famous 1988 Mike Nichols production of Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center starring Steve Martin, Robin Williams, F. Murray Abraham, and Bill Irwin. I was teaching at Juilliard at the time, so I was lucky to get to see it. Most people didn't, however, including a lot of angry Lincoln Center subscribers; the theatre was too small, the run too short. But all is not lost: the show was videotaped and you can sit and watch it, over and over again if you like, just by visiting the library.

And speaking of Bill Irwin, let's use his work as an example. Here's a partial list of videos featuring him available at TOFT:

1981: Bill Irwin Sketches
1981: Not Quite / New York
1982: Regard of Flight
1984: Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Fo)
1985: The Courtroom
1987: As Seen on TV
1988: Waiting for Godot (Bill as Lucky)
1989: Largely New York
1992: Texts for Nothing (Beckett)
1993: Fool Moon
1995: The Tempest
1996: Dialogue with Bill Irwin and David Shiner
1997: Scapin (Molière)
1998: A Flea in Her Ear (Feydeau; directed by Bill)
2003: The Harlequin Studies
2004: Mr. Fox—A Rumination
2004: Bill Irwin, Clown Prince (documentary)
2005: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
2009: Waiting for Godot (Bill as Vladimir)

This list is partial because the online catalog is not complete, and because I've omitted dozens of clips of Bill performing at benefits, tributes, and award ceremonies. But you get the idea.

So let's say you want to use the archive... what do you do?
• Search the archive online first and choose what you want to view
• Call (212-870-1642) and make an appointment; you'll need to tell them your choice of videos
• Go there (no, you can't take out any of these items)

Once there, you can see the larger print catalog, with even more goodies.

Click here for details on using the online catalog. Basically the idea is that you have to search the entire NY Public Library catalog found at http://catalog.nypl.org/search. The items with a call number starting with NCOV, NCOX, or NCOW are available in the TOFT archive.

One catch: the archives are not meant for the general public, but for those doing serious research. No, you don't need to be writing a book. Performers studying performance qualify, but make yourself sound important!

So... what's not to like?

Don't live anywhere near New York? Now you have yet another reason to visit!

Happy Thanksgiving all. Eat too much, but do try to appreciate all the good that's being done by so many on so many fronts!

Bill Irwin Plays King Lear's Fool

[post 213]

Never content to rest on his clown laurels, nor to just stick with well-paying movie gigs, Bill Irwin has consistently returned to the stage to star in ingenious pieces of his own creation or to take on challenging works by Beckett, Brecht, Moliere, Fo, Feydeau, and Shakespeare.

He is now at the Public Theatre, all of a block from my apartment here in New York, playing the Fool to Sam Waterston's King Lear, and your intrepid reporter is there. Oh wait, no I'm not. It's $85, the production got bad reviews, and it closes tomorrow. Three strikes and I'm out.

While the production was mostly panned, Bill's reviews were much better, especially in the New York Times:

You can read the whole Times review here.
You can read 20 — count 'em, 20 — more reviews at the Stagegrade web site.

The only video trailer for the show is here, but it's only about Waterston and it's all talking heads with no actual performance footage. More fun is this old Lear parody by Bill, one of the Clown Bagatelles that served as an afterpiece to his 1987 Regard of Flight. This is very much in the style of 19th-century talking clowns such as Dan Rice, who delighted in comic summations of Shakespearean plays.

‪Bill Irwin's "Largely New York" at the 1989 Tony Awards

[post 202]

An excerpt from the full-length show, introduced by Angela Lansbury. Great stuff, even if they lost out to Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles. Thanks to Jango Edwards for the link.

The "Fake" Physical Comedy Lecture

[post 199]

In The Art of Laughter, which I reviewed three posts ago, Jos Houben tells you what's funny, performs something to illustrate his theme, and then we do indeed laugh. All pretty straightforward. But there's another kind of physical comedy lecture-demo featuring a less trustworthy narrator, where there's a disconnect between lecture and demo, between our host's pretentious words and silly actions.

‪Here's Zach Galifianakis‬, from Comedians of Comedy, with a deliberately "fake" lecture:

And here's a Monty Python classic from their Hollywood Bowl concert, with Graham Chapman lecturing very intellectually about comedy while his cohorts do their best to surprise us with twists on standard bits. Funny!

Good as these are, the ultimate to my mind is Bill Irwin's The Regard of Flight, which borrows this notion and transforms it into a brilliant 46-minute, post-modern theatre piece. Irwin's efforts to deliver a manifesto on the founding of a "new theatre" are constantly undermined by a nettlesome critic who forces him to admit to his reliance on the tried and true props of the variety stage. Here are three excerpts:

_________________________________

Coming Soon: Rowan Atkinson's physical comedy lecture, Laughing Matters (aka Funny Business)

Some links:
• Two previous posts in which Dick Van Dyke delivers mock physical comedy lectures.
• Leslie Nielsen introductions to a series of Three Stooges movies on American Movie Channel. Some stabs at a humorous lecture here.
• Buy DVD of Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl here.
• Regard of Flight was available from PBS as a VHS, but not any longer, and is now hard to find for purchase, though you could check back here or on eBay.

Guest Post: The Art of Karen Gersch — Contemporary Clowns (part one)

[post 140]

In a previous and popular post, this blog had the privilege of sharing Karen Gersch's paintings and drawings of classic clowns.  If you haven't seen it, Do Not Pass Go and instead click here immediately!

Sweet, eh?  And now that you've savored that, I won't repeat everything I already wrote about Karen, but I will plug her upcoming exhibition of paintings, Circus Lives, which runs from May 25th to June 28th on the fabuloso Waterfront Museum barge in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an amazing decades-old project of David Sharps, nice guy and highly talented clown, juggler, and nautical impressario.

The barge is also home to a long-running tradition of hosting a circus show every Sunday in June.  Originally called Circus Sundays, it now goes under the name of Showboat Shazzam. If you're going to be in the NYC area next month, check out the schedule of performances. And to bring it full circle, you'll never guess who produces and hosts Shazzam....  yep, none other than Karen Gersch. So come see the paintings, the shows, and Karen. Three for the price of one!

So here we go with another amazing series of clowns.  Enjoy!

__________________________________________

Clown, Slava's Snow Show, NYC

Clown, Slava's Snow Show, NYC

Clown, Cirque du Soleil 

Bill Irwin

Michael Davis

Jamie Adkins

Clownesse, Jamie Adkin's assistant

Tom Dougherty 

Guy La France, France

Drew Richardson & Donna Pennoyer, USA

Guy & Jean-Louis, Clowns with Le Rire Medecin, France

Ami Hattab as "Mr. Baxter"

Clown, Cirque du Soleil's "Alegria"

Clown, Cirque Gruss, France   

Plate Spinner, Cirque Gruss

Stiltwalker, Big Apple Circus

That's it for now. Don't want to crash your browser but — not to worry — part two of Contemporary Clowns is coming very soon.  In the meantime, check out Karen's web site by clicking here.