Pie Throwing — Live from Barcelona! #5

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"God always has a custard pie up his sleeve."

—the character Georgy (played by Lynn Redgrave) in the movie Georgy Girl

Okay, so I'm not really in Barcelona any more and I'm no expert on the art or history of pie throwing, but these photos really are from Tuesday afternoon at the Nouveau Clown Institute and I knew you'd all enjoy seeing a photo of me with pie on my face, shot by Rich Potter with much joy in his heart.

The occasion was a workshop by Pat Cashin and Greg DeSanto in — yep, you guessed it — the making and launching of pies. Despite a career that has not been without its unique experiences, I had never been on either end of an airborne pie, so I found myself actually eager to volunteer my mug for target practice. It was totally stupid and very funny. Sometimes we (yeah, me) get too analytical about clowning and forget the power of pure silliness. Well, this was silly.


A very short action video of Daniela ConTe on the receiving end:




Update (3-17-10): Some more pie photos from the Facebook album, N.C.I. -Second Class- March 2010, courtesy of Mandy Dalton, and featuring Pat Cashin making a batch of pies and then delivering one up in top balletic form.







Like I said, I'm no pie historian, but it was fun unearthing a few famous scenes for you....

The first pie in the movies was apparently received, not by Fatty Arbuckle or Mabel Normand, as is often said, but by Ben Turpin in Mr. Flip (1909). The annoyingly flirtatious Mr. Flip gets his pie comeuppance in the final scene of this 3:45 short. (You can see or download the whole movie here.)




But to give Arbuckle his due, here he is wrecking the general store in The Butcher Boy (1917) with Buster Keaton (in his first film) and Al St. John. They start with flour but work their way up to pies. Pies in the kisser must be funny because you can actually see Keaton smile for a brief moment. (You can see or download the whole movie for free here.)




Here's Keaton on This is Your Life in 1957 talking about getting hit by Arbuckle's sack of flour.




In his autobiography, Keaton commented: "When we turned to the making of features we found a whole set of new problems facing us. One of the first decisions I made was to cut out custard-pie throwing. It seemed to me that the public — by that time it was 1923 — had had enough of that. The pies looked messy on the screen anyway. So no pie was ever thrown in a Buster Keaton feature." (My Wonderful World of Slapstick, pp.173–4) However, when Keaton made somewhat of a comeback on television in the 50s and 60s, it was pies they wanted to hear about. Here he is demonstrating the technique in 1962:



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Update (4-13-10): This just in from 1916! Less than two years after leaving Keystone, Charlie Chaplin was already making fun of Mack Sennett's studio in Behind the Screen, in which pie throwing is sarcastically referred to as "a new idea." But while Chaplin may be spoofing Sennett, he still puts together a pretty good pie fight. Most of the throws in this are done in two shots, but just past the 3-minute mark you can see Chaplin get off two accurate long-distance tosses, accomplished without any editing.



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Laurel & Hardy take it up a notch in The Battle of the Century (1927)




The Great Race (1965) features a take-no-prisoners, multi-colored pie battle. It was directed by Blake Edwards, of Pink Panther fame, is dedicated to Laurel & Hardy, and stars Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Natalie Wood, but is still a pretty disappointing movie. I do like the joke of Curtis strolling through the mayhem unscathed, though the payoff could be stronger. I didn't like the fact that 99% of the pie tosses are done in two shots so you never get to see a pie fly any real distance. This film is available on Netflix Instant Play.




And in more recent times, click here or on the image to see Greg DeSanto shaking it like a modern-day Arbuckle in the soap entrée with Barry Lubin. (Big Apple Circus, The Medicine Show, 1996) .




Finally, for the serious pie scholar:
• Thanks to alert reader Hank Smith (see comment to this post) for pointing out that the original ending to the classic satirical film, Dr. Strangelove, was a pie fight (photo, right) in the War Room! Director Stanley Kubrick cut it because "I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film."
• The flying flour in The Butcher Boy reminds me of one story, which may or may not be apocryphal, about the origins of the clown's whiteface makeup. The practice is usually attributed to French Pierrots of the 1600s, who were said to have powdered their faces white, inspired by the laughs they got from a comic combat with bags of flour.
• The Keystone Cops, popularizers of pie throwing in the early days of silent film comedy.
• Soupy Sales, who brought pie throwing to television in a big way starting in the 1950s.
• Pieing, the controversial practice of embarrassing political opponents with a pie in the face.
• And did you know that Sunday (3-14) was Pi Day?

Charlie Rivel: Homage to a Catalonian Clown — Live from Barcelona! #4

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It is my last night in Barcelona and Jango Edwards brought together for dinner all of the clown / circus /variety historians he could muster in the person of Raffaele De Ritis, whose blog, Novelties and Wonders, is indeed full of wonders; Pat Cashin, whose Clown Alley blog is the place to go for all things clown; Greg DeSanto, director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center; and yours truly. Or to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, there hasn't been a greater concentration of clown knowledge at one table since Tristan Rémy dined alone.

This being Catalonia, the meandering conversation had to come around to its most famous clown, Charlie Rivel (1896 –1983). In fact, in Barcelona's Joan Brossa Gardens you will find a statue (photo, below) of Rivel , and there is even a Charlie Rivel Museum in his birthplace, the village of Cubelles, half way down the coast between here and Tarragona.

Born Josep Andreu Lasserre, his father was a Catalan trapeze artist and his mother a French acrobat. By age two he was performing in his father's risley act. Thus was launched an eight-decade performing career that brought him the kind of superstar status in Europe only enjoyed by clowns like Grock and the Fratellini.

It's been decades since I read Rivel's autobiography, Poor Clown so I won't pretend to be an expert on his life. Instead I will turn you right back over to Raffaele De Ritis, whose article on Rivel on Circopedia is the best starting point. Once you promise me you've read that, I'll share a few video highlights with you.

Okay, did you really read it? Alrighty then, let's get started...

Because many of the clips we have of Rivel are from late in his long performing career, his early days as an acrobat and an acrobatic clown tend to be overlooked. But you already knew that, right? Here are two shots of him as the topmounter in an unconventional two-high, courtesy of circus practitioner, teacher, and historian Hovey Burgess:














According to the Circopedia bio, one of the tricks he and his brothers became known for was "The Little Bridge." Though I don't have any footage of this, again with the help of Hovey Burgess I was able to identify the trick and with the help of Nicanor Cancellieri track down what seems to be a more recent version of it as performed by The Three Rebertis.



And as an aside, here's a third photo supplied by Hovey of Los Yacopis, with this commentary: Note the hands-to-shoulders element (not head-to-head, not, at least, in the moment of this photograph). Irving Pond mentions the Yacopi troupe in Big Top Rhythms (1937) RE: their teeterboard four-person high column. This photograph is from: Julio Revollendo Cardenas CIRCO EN MÉXICO (2004), page 71.


Update from Hovey: I herewith submit two (2) photographs from Fernand Rausser (photographer) Le Cirque (1975) [Toole Stott No. 13,465] which purportedly depict the 1975 Circus Knie revival of the unconventional two-high (page 148) and the "bridge" (page 149) by Rolfe Knie Junior, Juanito Rivel and José Bétrix. If we are to judge from the photograph, and perhaps we should not so judge, the latter seems not quite up to snuff somehow. That is hardly a free head-to-head element that is shown. Hmmm!



















Update courtesy of Pat Cashin (3-21-10):
Mystery solved! Here's our bridge, performed nonchalantly by Rivel and company during a 1937 hospital visit. Click on image.

Hovey Burgess comments: "That is it. But with a couple of twists.This 1937 Viennese version clip is also a five-person bridge akin to the Yacopis photograph. Five people are also hinted at in the somewhat inconclusive 1975 Swiss revival version photograph. Unlike the Rebertis clip, however, the non-feet-to-shoulders link is NOT a straight head-to-head at ANY point shown in the clip, but is reinforced with a Yacopi-like hands-to-shoulders [throughout]. With the Rebertis it is a straight head-to-head ("no hands!") all the way, both ascending and descending. Mystery solved? Yes, but we would still like to see and know more."
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And now back to our regularly scheduled program:
Since his father was a trapeze artist, it's not surprising that comedy trapeze became one of Rivel's signature acts. Here he is from 1943, when he would have already been 46 or 47.




Later in his career Rivel became more of a minimalist, extracting a lot of clown gold from a chair and a guitar. Here he is on this youTube piece posted by none other than Pat Cashin. Small world, eh?



And here he is on Eurovision Song Contest:



This is the Rivel segment from Fellini's movie, I Clowns; I'll try to replace it with a version with English subtitles sometime soon!




And to be thorough, here are Rivel's sons, the Charlivels, performing their popular night club act, which included singing and acrobatics.






Like I said, check back soon for additional material.

Tricicle — Live From Barcelona! #3

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If you spend your days in the United States, chances are you've never heard of the Catalonian physical comedy trio, Tricicle. In Europe, however, they're a well-known brand name, almost a small industry, having performed extensively in major theatres and festivals for over thirty years, as well as on tv and in movies, and even as part of the opening ceremonies for the 1992 Olympics here in Barcelona. Founded by Joan Gracia, Paco Mir and Carles Sans in 1979, they expanded their international reach in 1988 by adding a second 3-man company (photo, right), known as Tricicle-2 or Clownic, which performs pieces from the by-now large Tricicle sketch repertory, and which is who I saw last night.

Here they are (almost) winning racewalking gold at the Olympics. Very funny.



Their theatre work is minimally verbal and can easily be followed by an audience not speaking the language, so I'm sure it travels well. It would be accurate to describe what they do as physical comedy, but it comes more from the world of mime than that of the knockabout comedian and has the feel of sketch comedy without the words. This explanation from their website gets to the point pretty well:

Tricicle’s style is the fruit of an era in which visual humor was rising in popularity. Performers such as Comediants, Jango Edwards, and Albert Vidal were an undeniable point of reference for those wishing to devote their lives to the world of theatre and this was why Joan, Paco and Carles (each one separately) decided to give up their free mornings and enroll at Barcelona’s Institute of Drama with the aim of steeping themselves in all the various types of drama techniques. But how they really learned the bases of their unique style was by memorizing the Lubitsch, Wilder and Keaton films they would see at Barcelona’s Filmoteca and, especially, by dissecting and analysing the performances of humorists appearing in Barcelona, which was then a city thirsty for refreshing entertainment.

Gags are the basis of the company’s theatrical technique. All Tricicle shows are replete with gags and have a seemingly incredible average of one gag per ten seconds. The company’s shows are never considered as finished products and are constantly open to the inclusion of new gags as each production progresses, although they do have their limits. Tricicle draws the line at humor based on bad taste.

From the outset, Tricicle avoided conventional mime techniques and opted for a “realistic” acting style based on day-to-day gesture; Action Theatre, the company calls it, thus comparing it to action cinema in which the characters, who often have very little to say to each other, simply spring into “action.” The company’s style is mainly characterized by its dynamic nature, short scenes, frequent changes of character, natural onomatopoeia (with a very occasional spoken word), the dramatic use of stage props and constant surprises. Their concept is that the audience should leave the theatre without even realizing they have attended a “silent” show. There is nothing worse than hearing someone utter “Why are they not speaking?” during a performance.

The performance I saw was energetic, finely tuned, and very well received by the audience. I found much of it inventive and quite funny — for example, the "if men were pregnant" piece, photo above — but there were also sections and entire pieces where it was all a bit too light and safe, too much like television in its choice of humorous topics and how far it would go with them. I started to want more substance for my 18 euros. And despite the name Clownic and a performance style that could loosely be termed clownesque, do not go expecting to see strong clown characters. Their focus is more on the everyday, on naturalistic behavior, albeit exaggerated, and less on the psychology of memorable individuals.

Their last piece, The Waiting Room, was their strongest in terms of sustained gags and creativity, and you payasos out there will appreciate that it ends with a variation on the classic clown entrée, Dead or Alive. Today I found it on YouTube, though performed by the main company rather than Clownic. See for yourself...






There are a lot more videos on YouTube, but definitely check them out live if they ever come to a theatre near you. Click here for their touring schedule.

Tables are Funny — Live from Barcelona! #2

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Pure acrobatics operates in a precise world where time and 3D space intersect in ways even Einstein could not have imagined without vaudeville. As my old Russian circus teacher Gregory Fedin put it, "if you are able to see space, the acrobat has to go through it... go with the curves, like the tracks of a railway."

Physical comedy often hitches a ride along these same curvy tracks, but it also inhabits the messier world of people and objects, of personality and ambition and conflict. When I teach physical comedy, I like to play with this material world as much as possible, with oddball characters at odds with one another, and with all kinds of man-made stuff — chairs and tables, stairs and doors, walls and windows, and with every object that dares challenge our pride with the label "unbreakable." So here in Barcelona we’ve been developing a vocabulary of theatrical acrobatics by using our partner's weight and mass to create counterbalances and human levers. Add to that an exploration of the material world starting with our old friends, chairs and tables. As I mentioned in my previous post, within two hours we had reconfigured four chairs and one table (and by reconfigured I mean smashed to smithereens). No, not a record for my classes; not even close.

Which brings us to this post — Tables are Funny — and a new blog feature that looks at how physical comedy makes use of specific elements within its real-world environment. Stay tuned for Chairs are Funny, Doors are Funny , etc.. I’ll be combining clips of imaginative work from the past with some how-to instruction that should give an idea of how I approach this when I teach hands-on physical comedy.

I first became enamored of table tricks while on the Hubert Castle Circus in the late 70s, where a French troupe, the Gaspards, performed a sure-fire act with many of the tricks you'll see in the videos below. I don't know whatever happened to the Gaspards, I've never uncovered any footage of them, but many other acts have performed very similar routines, which have surfaced in various video archives.


Tables for Dummies
Some obvious things we know about tables:
• they are flat, so we should be able to walk, roll, or lie down on them just as we do on the ground
• they are elevated, so we have the possibility of vertical movement to and from them, including from the table to a higher target
• they can be a surface for working or a gathering place for eating, often bringing people together in a festive and sharing atmosphere
• if it's a dining table, a variety of objects — plates, cups, utensils, food — are placed on and eventually cleared away
• because we associate cleanliness with fine dining, human bodies on top of tables or hands other than our own contacting our food are simply unacceptable in polite company; let us not forget that it was standing on a kitchen countertop that precipitated movie Max's journey into the land of the Wild Things.
• many other structures share some of these characteristics with tables and are therefore eligible for similar treatment at the hands of the unrepentant physical comedian

As with most physical comedy elements, we can look at tables both from a purely physical point of view — what tricks can we perform on them? — and from a comedic angle — how do we make that funny? In fact, we pretty much have to do both, don’t we, or it won’t be physical comedy? Physical + comedy = physical comedy (more or less).

Tricks
We’ll see numerous variations on these in the videos that follow, but here’s a breakdown of the physical possibilities:
• diving, leaping or falling onto and off the table
• sliding onto, along, and off the table
• balancing in precarious positions on or from the table
• using the table as an obstacle, chasing around it, diving over or under it, etc.
• hiding under the table
• manipulating the objects on the table
• moving, manipulating or even destroying the table itself


Basic Table Technique:

The better the acrobat, the fancier the tricks possible on a table, but you have to begin with the basics. This is what I started them on here in Barcelona:

1. Forward Roll onto Table: Because you are working against gravity here rather than with it, you will need to initiate the roll with more force to push your hips up and over this higher center of gravity, but you will need less arm strength in the second half of the roll to cushion your landing. Be careful to get the hips up and straighten the legs (point those toes!) so you don 't scrape your shin bones on the edge of the table. Unless the table is too long, you should be able to come smoothly off the other end and onto your feet. From there you might go into another roll or into a front fall, as in the video below from my NCI class.



2. Backward Roll from Table: A back shoulder roll is actually easier than a symmetrical roll and also frees up your hands for other activities, such as balancing bowls of soup. First figure out where your butt will sit on the table so that your head is actually off the edge of the table and you are pivoting directly on the shoulders. Sit in the same spot every time and you should be fine. As you go over, think of your shoulders as the pivot point for your rotation and actually see the floor long before your feet make contact. If you are doing a symmetrical, two-hand back roll, push off hard and straighten those legs to avoid the edge of the table.

Here are two in a row, the first by Tony Curtis or his double, from the 1965 movie The Great Race.




3. Peanut Roll onto and off the Table:
[Peanut roll = partners holding each other's ankles.]
First of all you need to be able to perform a smooth peanut roll on the ground, and especially be able to keep the speed up. It's mostly timing and momentum, but some arm strength does help.
Doing it on and off the table looks a lot harder than it is. The person diving from the table needs to plant their partner's feet on the ground and to maintain tension in the arms to minimize the impact. The person sitting on the table can help a lot by resisting on their partner's legs. This is not difficult and, in fact, it's easy to execute the dive from the table in slow motion — admittedly not very spectacular, but a good starting point.

When rolling back onto the table, the partner doing the pulling should be fine so long as they use their butt on the table as a fulcrum and lift more with their legs than they yank with their arms. In the video below two NCI students who just learned the trick muscle their way through it. With more practice, using movement similar to a back extension roll (= back roll to a handstand) will allow the bottom person to make it easier for the lifter, and momentum will replace muscle. Here it is performed by Stefano Battai (Italy) and Giovanni Sanjiva Margio (Australia)




4. Slide Across the Table
This is everyone's favorite stunt! In the movies you might see it across the length of a saloon bar, though in this clip from a barroom brawl in The Great Race, it spans a stage catwalk and down some stairs.



You'll want a smooth laminated table top and will probably want to sprinkle some baby powder on it as well. The idea is to slide clear across the table and off the other side, your body in a slightly arched position, toes pointed. It can be done with no hands, but try starting by placing both hands on the table to boost you up there and push you forward. The hands can grab again to pull you off the end, but with a running start and minimum friction you won't even need to.

Sliding between the legs of one or more people who just happen to be standing on the table is pretty common, as is deliberately knocking objects off the table as you go. I still remember Charles Murray, in a class of mine in Athens, Ohio in the early 80s, sliding desperately across the table to get to a ringing telephone in time. (You see, back then we had these big loud telephones that sat on tables and didn't take messages and didn't tell you who the missed call was from... oh forget it, you wouldn't understand.)

A more common crowd-pleaser is the two-person table slide with the partners approaching from opposite directions. This can be dangerous if you get your signals crossed but is not particularly difficult so long as each person sticks to their side of the table. A demilitarized zone of a few inches is recommended.



An even funnier ending for the table slide is to maintain the swan dive position and belly flop to the ground rather than go into a roll:




5. Hair Pull onto Table
Everyone loves the hair pull, even those of us who are starting to get receding hairlines. In the politically incorrect Age of the Flinstones, caveman grabbed cavewoman by the hair and yanked her left and right, up and down. This was called courting. Nowadays we are only allowed to pretend. As in most stage combat — or as Joe Martinez aptly labeled it, Combat Mime — the "victim" initiates all the action, which keeps things safe and believable.

The basic move goes as follows. To make up for an ice age of discrimination, we'll let cavewoman do the honors.
• Cavewoman reaches her hand into the lushest region of caveman's hair, bringing her hand into a fist as she does so. The idea is to give the impression that she has gathered a clump of hair into that fist, but in fact she should have none.
• Fighting back, caveman grabs cavewoman's wrist in a futile attempt to disengage. What he is actually doing is pressing her wrist into his head because if we ever see a gap between her fist and his skull, the illusion is shattered.
• All movement, from a simple shake to dragging the whole body across the floor, must be initiated by the victim, aka the caveman. The cavewoman follows through, miming being the aggressor. This is both for safety purposes and to maintain the illusion.

Same technique for pulling someone up to the table.
• Cavewoman stands on the table, caveman on the floor.
• Cavewoman reaches down and grabs caveman's hair, as explained above. Caveman grabs her wrist. You may find a two-hand grip easier.
• Caveman plies and jumps to the table while cavewoman mimes being the cause of it all. While caveman may get some support from his woman's arm, the bottom line is still that fist and head cannot come apart.

In class we first tried this jumping to a chair just to get the movement down and our confidence up.

Here are the Three Ghezzi doing it (their full-act video can be seen later on in this post).




6. Ye Olde Tablecoth Pull
We've all tried pulling a table cloth out from underneath the dishes, but did you know it can be done with 4 plates supporting 4 legs of a chair and a person sitting in that chair? The principles remain the same, and are all designed to minimize friction:
• use a smooth table with a sharp edge
• use a tablecloth with no edge seams
• let the tablecloth hang down on your side but not off the back
• put fruit in bowls, etc.; crockery is more likely to stay in place if it's heavier
• taller objects are more precarious, so place them closer to the near edge of the table so they have less contact time with the tablecloth
• pull quickly downwards with both hands as you step back

And, yes, this is me with hair (Toronto, 1989).



And, yes, those front two plates were supposed to stay put. It looks to me like my yank was slightly up rather than slightly down. Don't you make the same mistake! An even worse mistake would be to ask a horse to do a human's job, as in this early Max Linder film:





A Table Safety Note:
Most tables these days fold up. You probably don't want this to happen while you are on them. When I use this type, I like to brace the opposing legs with a 2" x 2" wedged between them so they cannot fold inward. Of course in a workshop setting you can always use a spare human:





Table Acrobatic Acts

No doubt tables have been funny ever since they grew that third leg, and certainly hit their stride with the fourth. I have no idea which caveman did the first table comedy acrobatic act, but such shenanigans were common by the time vaudeville came along, and the black & white photograph at the top of this post is indeed of Buster Keaton's father, Joe. Their vaudeville act was the Three Keatons (that's Buster on the left) and Joe was the Man with the Table. "He would dive on it headfirst, turn handsprings along its top, and then from apogee plunge head down almost to the floor before, with a catlike turn, he would land on his feet."

It's unlikely we'll ever discover footage of the Three Keatons, but Buster never tired of doing his trademark table fall, a bizarrely brilliant piece of business which he may or may not have gotten from dear old dad. To get up onto the table, he places one foot up there so that leg is now parallel to the ground. Hmm...that worked well enough, so why not just do the same thing with the other leg? Here he is, still demonstrating it well into his senior years.




Through the miracles of DVDs and YouTube, we do have some complete table acrobatic acts that hearken back to vaudeville. The oldest piece I have is from the early days of television, performed by two comedy acrobats on the Colgate Comedy Hour. (I don't have their names, but I'm working on it!).




Fast forward to 1966, where Allan Sherman ("Hello muddah, hello fuddah...") is introducing The Three Ghezzis at the London Hippodrome. They combine standard table tricks with clown carpenter shtick to create some high-level mayhem. Pay attention at the 1:40 mark as one of the Ghezzis reprises Buster Keaton's table fall.




Next up are the Stanek, performing in the Tarzan Zerbini Circus (USA) in 1989. (I had not heard of them and the announcer seems to be calling them by another name.)



More recent are Quartour Stomp, who go more in and out of the comedy in order to show off their formidable acrobatic prowess.



Our final full-length piece comes from the excellent web site Circopedia This act by the Fumagalli in the 2007 edition of the Big Apple Circus is more clown than comedy acrobatics, perhaps a bit thin in both areas, but interesting enough.




Shorter Table Bits (the bits are shorter, not the tables)

The Launching Pad
Usually we descend from a table. Usually. Here's Buster Keaton cornered by Joe Roberts in his short film, The Goat (1921). Buster has succeeded in getting invited home by the girl he's been chasing, only to discover that her father is the cop who's been chasing him all day.




The Folding Table
On a sillier note, here's Harpo Marx, thwarting an attempt to fold the legs of a card table.




The Mobile Table
Usually a table is stable, but there's no reason it can't be moved and manipulated, as in this brilliant sequence from the Beijing Opera sketch, The Crossroads, or, The Fight in the Dark.




Breakaway Tables
And finally, it is of course possible to destroy a table. Breakaway furniture has been a mainstay of physical comedy since the invention of the 3-legged stool, and I think when I asked Jango months before my workshop to get me some tables and chairs, that must have been what he thought I meant, because they all kept breaking.

In the 19th century, the Hanlon-Lees were famous for breaking anything and everything: trains and stage coaches, and of course ceilings and tables...


In The Great Race saloon brawl, they break everything within sight: chairs, tables, windows, mirrors, doors, stairs, railings, and two balconies. Here's the most explosive table smash:




On a lamer note, here's the Brit comic Spike Milligan crashing onto a card table in his multi-cultural "waiter, there's a fly in my soup" routine, in this variation making fun of the Irish:




Table That Story

Now after looking at those videos you might think that all table tricks are good for is a highly technical comedy acrobatic act. As much fun as such acts are, they require highly skilled acrobats, which very few of my students are and which I never was. Furthermore, the 10-tricks-a-minute approach is fine for presentational acts but not for routines with a narrative structure where falls, flips, and nosedives have to be motivated.

So let's look at the use of table tricks within a storyline....

First up is Joe's Restaurant, a 10-minute piece created by and starring Christopher Agostino, Laine Barton, Aaron Watkins, Joe Killian and Mari Briggs, and performed at the 2nd NY International Festival of Clown-Theatre (1985). The piece actually grew out of work in a physical comedy class I taught and was reshaped and directed by Steve Kaplan. I remember Steve liked to say "what's the joke here?" in an attempt to sort through all the shtick and hone in on the primary comedy angle in a scene. This piece was more a series of tricks than a story until it was agreed that the joke was that there were not enough chairs for all the customers.



Joe's Restaurant has dozens of tricks, but this is not the only way to go. Instead of trying to string together a series of table tricks into a substantial sequence, it's equally valid to use a single technique at just the right moment in just the right away. The move doesn't have to be hard, it just has to work within the context of the piece. Here's a good example from this past weekend's Cabaret Cabron at the Nouveau Clown Institute. In this funeral home sketch, Giuseppe Vetti and Salvatore Caggiari, who in real life work together as as Il Duo Dorant, reprise the Dead or Alive motif, using just a few partner and table moves from my class. This was put together in one afternoon after three physical comedy classes. Giuseppe is the undertaker, Salvatore the body.

Because this was shot with a basic Flip camera and from a bad angle, first a couple of high-rez stills by Manel Salla "Ulls" to set the mood:




You can find a dozen more stills here, but onto the video:

Nouveau Clown Institute — Live from Barcelona! #1

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Greetings from Barcelona, I mean Barthelona, by many reports the coolest city in Europe. And arguably cooler now that it is the home of the Nouveau Clown Institute, an international clown school started just this past year by Jango Edwards, who is amazingly energetic for someone who may or may not be as old as me. I'm running away from administration and he's starting a school. Go figure.

I'm doing a physical comedy workshop this week for students taking a month-long clown intensive, and I hope to do several blog posts on our work here. There are forty participants from eleven different countries, most of them already working at a professional level, and it is an exciting mix of very creative talent. While many performance academies espouse a particular method (Stanislavsky, Lecoq, Decroux, etc.), these students are being exposed to a wide variety of styles and approaches to clownesque performance. Every few days a new teacher with a new angle. It may get overwhelming at times, but from an educational point of view I like the idea of them getting to play with so much. Plenty of time to sort it out and use what works for them — starting in April.

Here are a few pics of the space at the Roca Umbert Fàbrica de les Arts, a former factory complex being transformed into a formidable arts center.











Today was a good day. As far as I know, we only broke four chairs (here's two of them) and one table. Don't tell Jango until after I get paid.


Jango's Office:


The café, just steps away from the main classroom space.



And here's Jango (not to be confused with his long-lost cousin, Django Reinhardt) doing the classic but deadly headfirst dive into the cup of water, proving he's no slouch when it comes to physical comedy.



Stay tuned for more posts from the NCI...