Showing posts with label SF Circus Center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SF Circus Center. Show all posts

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Resurrecting the Clown Conservatory

[post 286]



About a year ago, rumor had it that San Francisco's Clown Conservatory, which I'd written about in this 2010 blog post, was on its last legs. Another hard pie in the face for  Bay Area zaniness, what with the School of the Flying Actor (James Donlon & Leonard Pitt) having recently closed its doors.

But as Mark Twain famously said, and I quote, "reports of the Clown Conservatory's death are greatly exaggerated." The conservatory, which is a wing of the SF Circus Center, is once again up and running, its new school year having gotten under way earlier this month.
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"A well-trained physical comedian with strong circus and clown skills is always in demand."
Clown Conservatory web site publicity
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As far as I can tell from the web site, it's a solid program. Its curriculum:
• Neutral Mask
• Movement / Mime
• Games 

• Slapstick comedy
• Acrobatics
• Improvisation
• Dance
• Skills

• Clown
• Performance

• The Business of Showbusiness
• Clown Makeup and Nose making
• Research


Click here for complete course descriptions.

The conservatory is under the new leadership of director Joe Dieffenbacher and associate director Dan Griffiths, though without the services of such past stalwarts as Jeff Raz, Judy Finelli, and Domenique Jando. Paoli Lacy and William Hall, who were there when I visited, are still listed as faculty. Joe and Dan both have very strong clown and physical comedy credentials, as you can see here.

The main program runs from October through May and is divided up into four 7-week intensives, the first two devoted to clown, the third to commedia, and the fourth to bouffon. They are also offering weekly 2-hour "studio classes," apparently intended for those who can't do the full program, but the details on this so far are sketchy.

Although there are similarities beween the conservatory and the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater in Blue Lake, Ca.  — which both Joe and Dan attended — this is as far as I know the only full-time program in the United States devoted to clowning. It's good to have them back!


Click here for Clown Conservatory home page.


Monday, March 22, 2010

Physical Comedy in the 21st Century: Legs & All


[post 087]

Right before my trip to Barcelona, I got a chance to catch Legs & All, a charming and inventive physical comedy piece, first in a short preview at the next-to-last installment of the New York Downtown Clown Monthly Revue, and then in its full-length incarnation at the Frigid New York Festival. It was inventive enough to get me thinking again about the new and innovative paths physical comedy might follow in this post-post-modern-pre-apocalypse world of ours.

I'll come back to Legs & All in a bit, but first some thinking out loud...

When I first launched the blog feature Physical Comedy in the 21st Century, I had only the vaguest idea what I was talking about. I knew I wanted to highlight work that wasn't just funny, but that took physical comedy in new directions — conceptual, political, whatever...

What I was getting at is that all art forms change over time, often inspired by visionary artists who break the mold and demonstrate a new way of seeing. In the visual arts, just think of all the isms: impressionism, cubism, expressionism, dadaism, surrealism, futurism, abstract expressionism, pop art-ism, post-modernism, etc.

Physical comedy is, however, a very traditional — one might even say conservative — art form. Not only are many character types and gags traceable to antiquity, but these same characters and gags show up spontaneously in isolated indigenous cultures throughout the world and throughout history, proving (at least to me) that this stuff is ingrained in our collective DNA.

But while the deep truth underlying physical comedy — the realization that "we're all bozos on this bus" (Firesign Theatre) — remains a vérité eternelle, the new shapes physical comedy has taken over the past few decades are refreshingly varied. Think of Mummenschanz and Pilobolus and Momix. Think of much of the innovative work that gets labeled New Vaudeville or Clown-Theatre or Nouveau Cirque. Or try this: compare Grock's full-length clown entrée with Bill Irwin's decidedly post-modern Regard of Flight; many parallels and yet worlds apart. The bottom line may always be laughter, but what you're laughing at and how and when you get those laughs are another matter.

Hypothesis: Physical comedy very much needs to reflect its era, to move with the times.

...but before you start thinking I'm about to trash the tried and true, some background as to where I'm coming from....

Back in my graduate school days at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, I worked as an assistant editor at TDR (The Drama Review), then under the guidance of Michael Kirby, chair of the Drama Department, author of Happenings, and strong advocate for avant-garde theatre. I was turned on by all the new stuff going on in the New York theatre scene, but turned off by any arguments that assumed that the new was superior just because it was new. I am, truth be told, a fan of old-fashioned storytelling. I can happily devour a 19th-century novel or a contemporary page-turner by Richard Russo or Richard Price, by Anne Tyler or Zadie Smith, but I never did make it through a Robbe-Grillet nouveau roman. I was, however, struck by Michael's frequent use of the word significant to describe certain theatrical productions. Significant as in influential, which is not necessarily the same thing as good, better, or best. Significant as in, gee, I didn't know you could do it that way. Avant-garde literally means advance guard, or vanguard, those who go ahead and forge new paths.


Some axioms:

• When it comes to comedy, it's hard to be influential if you're not funny, so the work has to be accessible enough to grab and hold audiences, but it doesn't have to be THE BEST THING EVER.

• Simply being different or new is not the same as being significant. Anyone can be different — think of all the work you see today in music and theatre and film that is done just for the shock value — but that doesn't make it significant.

• New directions and different styles are not necessarily in competition with one another. It's okay to like them all. No art form and no performance piece has a copyright on the shining truth.


Evidence:
Physical comedy seems to be heading in a lot of new directions these days. Here are some I've noticed:


1. Combined with technology.
If you haven't seen my first post in this series on the work of Circoripopolo yet, check it out; you're in for a treat. Too often video editing is used as a shortcut to con us into believing an actor has performed some amazing feat, but the possibilities of creating comedy by combining technology with legitimate physical comedy chops are enormous. A popular example these days would be all the shadow pieces done by Momix and Pilobolus. The technology is in the lighting, but the movement is authentic.












2. In Real-life Settings.

The audience's role in comedy is usually well-defined. Safe in our seats, we're given the privilege of feeling superior to the characters onstage. We know stuff they don't know, we're one step ahead of them. Ideally we'll recognize our own humanity in their predicament, but it's not a requirement. More and more, however, you see performers creating public events that deny spectators their lofty perch and play with the audience's ability to tell what is or isn't real. Improv Everywhere (motto: "We Cause Scenes") is famous for such happenings as its annual and global No Pants Subway Ride, its Frozen Grand Central, and its Spontaneous Musicals. Their mission is to "cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places." For another example, check out my post on Dance in the Central Station of Antwerp. And of course much political theatre does the same thing: check out the underwater Maldives cabinet meeting in my post on the Copenhagen climate summit.


3. As a Visual Theatre Component
Traditional comedy, be it physical or stand-up, usually follows tried-and-true formulas to build toward surefire "punchlines," and the seasoned comedian will have a good sense of where the routine's small laughs and big laughs are to be found. Lenny Bruce once famously said that “the role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds; I'm not a comedian, I'm Lenny Bruce.” Bruce had a comic perspective on society, and it was this perspective that made him who he was; the individual jokes, not so much.

Likewise, there are many visual theatre pieces that draw heavily upon the vocabulary of physical comedy without aspiring to non-stop belly laughs. Again, watch a comedic piece by Pilobolus or Momix and the smiles and laughs will be less structured, less predictable, even to the trained eye. We will probably laugh less — after all, this is dance, not clowning — but still be immersed in the whimsy and overall humor of the alternate reality they've created. Likewise, many of the nouveau cirque productions I've seen have contained exquisite moments of physical comedy, though overall you would not describe these productions as comedies.


I have to think about this some more — hey, this is a blog, not a book — but meanwhile back to the show....



Legs & All


Legs & All is a 50-minute piece created and performed by Summer Shapiro and Peter Musante, who once upon a time were roommates as undergrads at UCLA. Shapiro is a San Francisco Clown Conservatory graduate and Climate Theater resident artist, and Musante a member of the current New York cast of Blue Man Group, amongst other impressive credits.

Their publicity describes the show as "a magical look at the mundane," which reminds me of a piece of sage Moni Yakim advice: "Don't do something ordinary with the extraordinary; do something extraordinary with the ordinary." It's a clown show, but not in the traditional sense. As Shapiro comments in the interview below, "I like clowning that’s more realistic, even though what I do I’m not quite sure if you’d call it realistic or not. Things that are not 'Hey I’m a clown!' More like 'I’m an exaggerated human being.'”

And one more quote from her web site: "Summer looks to create orchestrated mishaps, controlled chaos and a playful electricity of risky humanity on stage."

It's not a total cop-out to describe this show as indescribable. Yes, it's a take on the standard boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl story, only the man is in an attic, the girl in a box, and their relationship centers around a pink rubber ball. They circle each other with various flirtation games, and eventually get transported to a world that defies gravity; no, this photo is not an aerial shot. Their world is surreal, which is to say it has its own beautiful logic.

Well, it's late, I've had too much wine, so why not let someone else describe it better than I can. Okay, better than I could even without the wine. Here's Bonny Prince Billy on the Cultural Capitol blog:


Romantic love, the kind all the movies are about, often produces the same vertiginous feeling, as if the room you are in is about to be suddenly and without warning tipped on its side, and you and the charming person you are with might be literally thrown together into all kinds of awkward, unexpected physical intimacies. Poets have used anthologies full of metaphors to explain this effect: love is magic, transforming a skinny, awkward duckling into a graceful swan; love is a hallucinogenic drug that can give you angelic (or demonic) visions; ultimately, love is the feeling of flying, and the attendant fear, complete with sweaty palms, a queasy stomach, and the desire to squeeze your eyes tightly shut, so you can’t see what a predicament you’re in.

Summer Shapiro and Peter Musante have taken the words out of these metaphors to re-articulate them with a purely physical vocabulary in Legs and All. Their wonderful hour-long play (in my opinion, the best of the festival) is a kinetic poem about the space we share with our desires, the space taken up by the desires of others, and the uncomfortably delicious vertigo one feels when your personal space crashes into someone else’s.

Love’s sweet confusion commences when a recorded voice, deep and seductive, mumbles and purrs something in pseudo-French gibberish. The lights come up on a woman, standing in a box, rotating in a circle and staring into space, like a specimen on display in a replicant boutique. The lights go down and come up again on a man in the same situation. The gibberish French pretends it’s the narrator of a New Wave movie and implies that these are the two who are going to fall all over each other while they fall in love.

Their story is particularly touching because both characters are so awkward. The romantic axis on which many love stories turn – the strong man and the ethereal woman – is wonderfully inverted. The man is shy, a collector of trifles, a little squeamish, and definitely hemmed in by timidity. The woman, on the other hand, is palpably physical, almost to the point that her head (the place of thinking and feeling) is alienated from her overpowering corporeality. Her opening scene describes the strangeness of the body, like a scene from Sartre’s Nausea, or a teenager’s horror on finding hair growing where no sane person would grow hair. In the scene her hand appears out of a giant blue box to do a sexy dance routine. Ms. Hand is joined by the another hand who appears to have three legs, and then morphs into a quadruped. Finally the woman’s head pops up to take a look at the goings on, and in a fit of anger Head bites the naughty Hand and gives it a death shake – until she realizes it’s connected.

After the pair negotiate their personal space, they start to move around in each other’s shared space, and that’s when things go topsy-turvy. The picture at the top of the post was not taken by a photographer hanging from the rafters. Rather, the man and the woman fall to the left in order to have a romantic picnic. The visual metaphor is so charming you can’t help but get hot and cold running blushes and chills. The woman continues to be uncomfortably physical, and the man continues to be freaked out, like someone with OCD negotiating the subway and realizing they just ran out of hand sanitizer. This situation morphs through several situations until the two get comfortable with each other and climb into a big blue box of shared, intimate space.

Words don’t do it justice, and I must resist the urge to read Ms. Shapiro and Mr. Musant’s every gesture! There are so many tasty ones, so many hilarious moments, if I took the time to relate them all we’d be here until next week. Suffice it to say that Ms. Shapiro and Mr. Musante both have strong physical theater chops.... Ms. Shapiro has the most expressive face that she uses to maximum comedic effect, and Mr. Musante is a picture of grace, even when he’s falling on his face.

Nice writing!

Here's an interview of Peter & Summer by Christopher Lueck, mastermind of the New York Downtown Clown Monthly Revue, produced by Jim Moore, mastermind of the very cool Vaude Visuals blog.



As usual, I don't think you can truly appreciate the show from the promo videos, but here they are anyway. This first one is short, all of 36 seconds:




And here's an eight-and-a-half minute demo reel:




And some links for you:
Summer Shapiro web site
The full Cultural Capitol review
More Jim Moore photos
Scallyway & Vagabond review
NewYorkTheatre.com review

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Gettin' Schooled in San Francisco

[post 064]

The Clown Conservatory & The Flying Actor Studio


This January I finally got back to San Francisco for a week, my first visit to the west coast in something like seven years; always flying out of the country instead of across it.

Much to see there — friends, family, a beautiful city, a breathtaking coastline — but no visit to the Bay Area would be complete without checking out the local performance scene. San Francisco has one-tenth the population of New York City, but when it comes to the whole physical comedy / circus /new vaudeville / clown scene, it may have us beat. For starters, they've got not one but two — count 'em, two — schools devoted to our favorite art form: the Clown Conservatory (one of several programs offered by the Circus Center) and the Flying Actor Studio, a physical theatre training program under the tutelage of James Donlon and Leonard Pitt. Take that, New York!

A lot of this activity can be traced back to the strong influence of the commedia-style political satire of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, founded by R.G. Davis (see next post) way back in 1959, and the Pickle Family Circus, launched in 1975 by jugglers Peggy Snider, Larry Pisoni, and Cecil MacKinnon, who as the Pickle Family Jugglers had been working with the SF Mime Troupe at the time. Pisoni had vaudevillian grandparents as well as circus training in New York from Hovey Burgess

I once got Paul Binder, director of the Big Apple Circus, very mad at me for writing in our obscure 1980s clown-theatre newsletter that the Pickle Family Circus was America's only indigenous circus because all of its acts were home-grown. He had a point, some of Big Apple's were too, but not to the extent that Pickle's were.

The Pickle's accomplishments were not insignificant:
• They were living proof of the artistic advantages of the small, intimate one-ring circus format.
• They raised the status of clowning and launched the careers of Larry Pisoni (aka Lorenzo Pickle), Geoff Hoyle (aka Mr. Sniff), and Bill Irwin (aka Willie the Clown). [For more on this, check out Joel Schechter's book, The Pickle Clowns: New American Circus Comedy]
• They created a new funding model, touring up and down the west coast under the sponsorship of local not-for-profit organizations.
• They gave juggling more prominence in their show; in those days it was not uncommon to go to a circus and not see a single juggling act.
• They established a circus school in San Francisco.

[ Click here to read my post on Humor Abuse, Lorenzo Pisoni's show about growing up as a child performer on the Pickle Family Circus.]

As a performing unit, the Pickle Family Circus eventually dissolved. It was later replaced by the New Pickle Family Circus, but it has not had the resources to maintain an ongoing ensemble or touring schedule. The school, however, very much survives in the form of the San Francisco Circus Center. Here's their promo video:





The Clown Conservatory

The Clown Conservatory program is directed by Jeff Raz, who was off performing with Cirque du Soleil's Corteo during my visit, but I did have a chance to visit with Paoli Lacy, Dominique Jando, and my first juggling teacher, Judy Finelli. I cannot actually offer any behind-the-scenes revelation about the training there because instead of me watching them, they put me to work talking with students and faculty about this and that. (Okay, it's true, I did just happen to bring along some videos, but that was only because I was afraid that the students — for whom my Clowns book is actually required reading — might ask me questions about it that I wouldn't be able to answer. Not having read the damn thing since I wrote it 35 years ago, I figured I better have something to distract them with.) However, the facilities, teachers, and students were all impressive, and I do look forward to getting back there.

The clown program takes a full academic year, meeting all day three days a week. Judy felt that this wasn't really enough time, though I suppose lacking substantial funding you have to give the students time to eke out a living, no? And besides, know any other full-year clown program in the United States?

Admittedly the more training the better, but I also think that clowning is such an all-encompassing art form that no program, no matter its depth, is going to automatically churn out creative and polished performers. Nor should it. Better to think of clown school the way we used to think of an undergraduate education: it exposes you to all the pieces but you have to put them together yourself, over time, with input from an amazing variety of unforeseeable resources.

But if you're thinking of going to San Francisco, with or without some flowers in your hair, do check out the Clown Conservatory. Here's the basic info from their web site:

The Clown Conservatory accepts students from a variety of performing arts backgrounds who show a strong potential to become professional clowns, whether in the circus ring, on stage, or in other settings (such as clowning in hospitals). Students submit to a selection process and upon acceptance enter the First Year Program (September to June). Weekly classes (three days-a-week) include:
• Core clowning (classic routines, character development, history, performance, creating material, clowns in community)
• Acrobatics
• Circus skills (juggling, stilt-walking, balancing and more)
• Dance
• Mime
• Body awareness
An Advanced Program (September to May) is offered to Clown Conservatory graduates and qualified non-graduates in one of three specialized tracks:
• Clown Ensemble Performing Track – Creating and performing an original production directed by top professionals (acceptance by audition only)
• Social Circus Track – Instruction and hands-on work in hospital clowning, teaching, clown therapy, and other aspects of Social Circus
• Independent Study Track – Additional one-to-one artistic and business coaching for working performers


Evaluation and Performance
Our program directors and faculty evaluate students on a regular basis. Students are offered an opportunity to perform in front of an audience at the end of each session (December and June), and possibly at other times (every five weeks for Clown students) in order to gain performing experience. When they have completed their course of study and are considered ready for professional work, students are given resources and assistance to help them get started in the circus business.

Some photos of the Circus Center:






Above with Paoli Lacy. Below with Judy Finelli and Dr. Nora Bell




No, we're not back in the Haight in '68; that last photo is of clown students doing contact improv.

Finally, if you're anywhere near SF, get on the Circus Center's mailing list because they sponsor a lot of performances in the bay area, including a clown cabaret at The Climate Theater on the first Monday of the month. Here's what went on earlier this week:

LOVE is in the air this month- and it's funny! Join emcee Jeff Raz, straight off of his tour with Cirque du Soleil's "Corteo", advanced students from Tony Award-winning ACT, scenes from the "Monkey King, a Circus Adventure", graduates from Dell’Arte International, our resident pranksters, Pi, the Physical Comedy Troupe and some very special guests (who may or may not be from a BIG circus, opening soon in San Jose, whose name we cannot mention). Marco Martinez-Galarce’s video art and some students from the Class of 2010 will be making their Clown Cabaret debut; Clown Cabaret Favorites The Stringsters and Jonah, Fae and Calvin of Wuqiao Festival fame will be back, bringing some of their own love.

See what you're missing?

Update (only 2 days later): "Coastal Carolina University, in association with the Clown Conservatory of San Francisco Circus Center, has just been approved to offer an accredited BFA degree in Physical Theater, the first in the nation!... We are currently recruiting students to begin in the fall of 2010, graduating in the spring of 2014. Students will spend the first 3 years at Coastal Carolina University in a rigorous BFA program, which includes movement, acting, technical theatre, and general education requirements, with a faculty member from the Clown Conservatory in residence for one semester during the sophomore and junior years, and will spend the entire 4th year as first-year students at the Clown Conservatory. As students of Coastal Carolina University, students will be eligible for federal financial aid and student loan packages, and will receive a NAST accredited BFA degree upon graduation."



The Flying Actor Studio


Right in the heart of downtown San Francisco you will find a handsome and spacious studio that houses what is probably the town's newest professional performance training center, the Flying Actors Studio, opened this past fall by James Donlon and Leonard Pitt. The focus of the training is physical theatre, defined broadly enough to include "movement, mime, mask, clown, circus arts, improvisation, voice, and new performance.
" They are offering a 28-week professional conservatory program, already up and running, with classes 30 hours per week, as well as shorter courses open to the general public.

Once again your intrepid reporter came away with no eyewitness account of training in progress because they used my arrival as an excuse to stop working and sit down and have a discussion with me. Luckily, animator Jonathon Lyons has already provided this blog with a guest post about an introductory class he took at the studio this past fall. I can report that the students I chatted with for a couple of hours were already quite knowledgeable and bright and seemed to be exploring some very interesting performance areas. I look forward to seeing their work!

Other than the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre, almost 300 miles north in Blue Lake, California, I don't know of another conservatory program in the United States devoted exclusively to physical theatre training. As James Donlon was pointing out to me, there are several university graduate theatre programs with excellent physical theatre training. He should know, having taught at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Yale School of Drama, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. The difference, however, is that those graduate programs are all geared toward integrating physical training into more text-based theatre, whereas the Flying Actor Studio also encourages the creation of original work whose roots are as much in the body as in the word.

It's great to see these two highly accomplished artists, both now in their 60s, forsake the easy life and launch such an ambitious enterprise, and one I'm sure they won't exactly get rich from. The breadth of their experience is staggering. Just a few highlights: Leonard Pitt was a student of Etienne Decroux in Paris, studied mask theater and carving in Bali and performed with the Balinese in their villages and temple festivals, and was movement consultant for the film Jurassic Park. James Donlon has toured internationally to wide acclaim, has taught at several prestigious institutions, was a teacher of Bill Irwin at Ringling Brothers Clown College, and has been a coach for several Oscar-winning actors. Click here for the complete scoop. You can see why I couldn't resist telling the students how lucky they were to be able to work with them and plug into all the tradition they represent.
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A few photos:





With James Donlon (l.) and Leonard Pitt (r.) .



Physical Comedy in Real Life
So... I'm staying in our home-exchange house in West Portal, about to head downtown to visit the Flying Actor Studio. I like to bike around cities I visit, and I've mapped out the route in great detail. I'm excited about this, hills be damned! I've been told there's a bike in the basement I can borrow, but it turns out the tires are flat and there's no pump. No problem, I wheel the bike to a gas station six blocks away and pump up the tires. The air holds, the tires seem good. I hop on the bike and start pedaling. The pedals spin around very rapidly, as if I'm in a super-low gear... only I notice I'm not going anywhere. I hop off the bike and look down: no chain.