Mummenschanz Revisited

[post 319]

Long before there was Blue Man Group, nouveau cirque, and dozens of genre-bending mask / mime / movement troupes, there was Mummenschanz. To see their show back in the seventies was to be at the birth of entirely new theatrical possibilities. Founded in '72 by Bernie Schürch and Andres Bossard (both Swiss, both Lecoq graduates), and the Italian-American Floriana Frassetto, Mummenschanz was a commercial hit, popular enough to merit a three-year Broadway run.

The commitment to this long New York run led to the training of other actors to work as understudies and to perform in simultaneously touring international companies, giving birth to a sort of Mummenschanz franchise. Now they're back on the road again in a 40th-anniversary show, with a cast of four that includes two of the three founders, Bossard having been lost to AIDS in 1992. I caught them last week at NYU's Skirball Center.

Before Mummenschanz, mask theatre usually meant actors wearing character masks, often drawn from such classical traditions as commedia dell'arte and Balinese dance. Schürch, Bossard, and Frassetto took mask work further into sculpture and the plastic arts, creating full-body, puppet-like creatures — not just humans, but animals and even abstract shapes. Sometimes the fun was trying to locate the performer's actual body; they were flexible enough (at least back then!) to make you puzzle over whether or not they were bending forward or backward.

_______________________________________

"We invested all our intelligence and personality into the visual aspects of Mummenschanz. Mummenschanz is the glases, the pillows, the cylinders, the boulders, the foams, the figures, the soft masks — all these strong images that we were able to impress upon people."
—Bernie Schürch

_______________________________________

If you haven't seen their work or need a refresher, here's a short video with a few seconds each from their greatest hits:



And here's a video clip about their working with a variety of physical materials, from a pretty good documentary, Mummenschanz: The Musicians of Silence.

____________________________

"We are craftsmen of imagination... musicians of silence... our aim is to be sculptors of the imagination." — Floriana Frassetto

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Here is what is by far my favorite piece, in which two performers rapidly and deftly reshape their gooey masks into new identities.

I remember loving this piece but also wishing there were more to it, or that the technique could be applied to stronger subject matter. I even fantasized directing a production of Ionesco's Rhinoceros in which the transformation from human to beast was done this way. Well, I never did, but feel free to steal my idea (with fawning full credit).

I certainly was not the only big fan of this piece: elements of it show up in Devil's Ball, an award-winning 1987 music video by the band Double (also Swiss), featuring Herb Alpert on trumpet and showing a strong debt to the imagery of the surrealist painter, René Magritte. Quite the mélange!

My reaction to the current Mummenschanz show was more mixed than I anticipated, my admiration tempered with a yearning for new material and bolder content. Dance companies such as Pilobolus (four decades) and Momix (three decades) also pioneered new movement vocabularies, and continue to tour today, but they are constantly generating fresh material while keeping a few of the classics in the repertory.

For me, too many of these pieces do little more than show off their visual cleverness. If there are two characters on stage, they briefly interact but not much happens and a minute later the piece is over. At its weakest, it reminds me of the less interesting pantomime from that same era, when some thought escaping from a mime box was a deep existential statement. But most didn't, and pantomime was equated with kids entertainment — it was good for them because it stimulated their imagination — but meanwhile became an easy target for derision by wise-cracking adults.

That being said, this show is still a visual feast and inventive as all get out, so of course you should see it if you get the chance, and all credit to Schürch, Bossard, and Frassetto for their ground-breaking work.
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Click here for the Mummenschanz web site.
Click here for their performance calendar.
The 2010 New York Times review is here.
The current New York Times review is here.
A less enthusiastic review from Backstage.
And here for a Jim Moore VaudeVisuals post.

Movement Training for Actors

Moni Yakim teaches a class at Juilliard
(Photo: Jessica Katz)

[post 190]

The notion that physical comedians and other movement artists might have something to teach traditional actors goes back at least a century, when such innovative directors as Jacques Copeau in France and Vsevolod Meyerhold in Russia hired accomplished clowns and variety performers as guest instructors. In the United States, this became a trend in the 60s and 70s as "experimental" theatres sought to break the confines of the fourth wall and Stanislavski method acting to forge more theatrical performance styles.

Jewel Walker and Hovey Burgess were two of the first teachers to become influential fixtures at major universities ((Carnegie-Mellon and NYU). Nowadays no respectable college acting program is without its movement specialist and — if you believe the optimistic job descriptions you see in the ad postings — the desired skill set includes mime, circus, clown, acrobatics, masks, dance, biomechanics, yoga, and stage combat, not to mention the techniques of Laban, Feldenkrais, Alexander, Grotowski, Decroux, Lecoq, and Pilates. If you can integrate it with vocal training, so much the better! All this for a position that is often low on the faculty pay scale and not even tenure-track.

Movement training for actors was not just some trendy idea that came and went. It is now widely accepted in the profession and has demonstrably expanded the range and possibilities of many a successful performer. I bring this up because I recently stumbled upon two useful articles on the subject in American Theatre magazine that are available on the web. This first offers a broad survey of the field, what the disciplines are, and what value various teachers and performers see in it.

Here are a few quotes:

"Suppose I hit a line drive over the head of the second baseman. I'm off running right away. And I'm watching the ball, and there comes the possibility I can get to second base on this hit. My body knows without looking where first base is, and I need to watch only the ball and the fielder. If I have to look down at my feet, I've lost. That's like being on stage—you have to be super aware." — Jewel Walker

"What is essential? It tends to change, depending upon the time period. I've been teaching for a long time, and students used to be a bit more out there and crazy: curious, and wildly splattering themselves on the walls. So it was a matter of focusing that wild energy. Students coming in now are better trained, in many ways, and more disciplined. Sometimes you want to tweak that wildness." — Jim Calder

"The hardest things to teach actors are that the pedestrian body embodies a kind of virtuosity, and that movement has a theatrical power that must be trusted in its own right. Actors want to act; they want to create some reason why they are standing on the stage. I take that away from an actor—I say, 'Oh, just raise your arm, just take four steps to the right, just bow your head'—it has meaning. The body is expressing things that are way beyond what you can impose on it in this moment." — Annie Parsons

"Three strong voices spoke to me—Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski and Étienne Decroux—and I see them as a triangle of aspects of what I think constitutes full actor training. From Grotowski, it was the visceral aspect, of going beyond the socially acceptable and really finding the primal, visceral self; and from Brecht it was the whole aspect of dramaturgy and social relevance and the importance of the relationship of the artist on stage to the audience. And from Decroux, the concept of shape and form spoke to me—this idea of the actor's ability to physically manifest thought and give specificity to emotion.... The laws of physics tell us that gravity falls through us and pulls us to a perfect vertical. And life pushes us off of that sense of neutrality. If we understand that neutrality, then we understand how a character is pulled off of being perfect. Life creates our imperfections. And a character is a beautiful collection of imperfections."  — Kari Margolis

"I deal with various forms of the mask, including the red nose. One is the full-faced character mask; it is a nonverbal mask. I follow that by the neutral, universal mask—also nonverbal—and that I follow with the character half-mask, which is a verbal mask. All of that is followed by the red nose, for what I call contemporary classic clowning. [Prior to the clown work, Francesconi works with...] “...movement improvisation, which is nonverbal. It is somewhat abstract, somewhat of a combination of modern dance and eccentric behavior, which is the basis, really, of physical comedy. 'Eccentric behavior' could be something as simple as a body part going out of control. It is essential that the early work be somewhat abstract and focused on the body in space, rather than on creating story."

— Robert Francesconi

You can read the whole article here.

The second article features ten prominent performers, each explaining what approach they use for creating a more dynamic stage presence.

Again some quotes:

"I encourage Synetic actors to train in parkour movements because there is an emphasis on gaining knowledge of one's body in space as it relates to dangers (falling, colliding with objects, losing balance) and applying that knowledge to move through obstacles with ease and safety. To me, parkour is about understanding the relationship between your body and the physical world, and enjoying it. Learn to fall, roll, land, climb and interact with the physical world so that you can perform better in your run, play or dance piece. The real joy of parkour is that it changes how you look at your environment—everything becomes a potential playground!" — Ben Cunis

"Lecoq is a way, a path—not a 'technique'—that asks the actor: What do you have to say? Tragedy, commedia and bouffon all have a different approach, but the overarching theme in Lecoq is 'actor as creator.' The process helps you develop your own voice, not just as an actor but also as a theatre artist. That rounded training is lacking in the U.S. The empowerment of the actor to understand more than just the role he is playing is not often embraced here, and in New York there is a palpable hunger for physical-theatre training." — Richard Crawford

"I just played Florindo, the boastful lover in A Servant of Two Masters, at Yale Rep. I went back to basics: leading with the chest, exercising muscles in my back, realizing how to look upward when I walked around, asking where my character's power comes from. Florindo is a funny character, but not to himself. Even doing commedia, I had to find the truth in this body. I did a whole monologue walking straight downstage till I got to the apron, and then ran all the way back crying and yelling. To do that eight times a week, you have to go back to your training. That's what Moni's [Yakim] about: the freedom inside the body when doing these extreme characterizations." — Jesse Perez

And you can read that whole article here.

The articles have lots of links, plus the reader comments to each article provide some additional information and pespectives.

Complete Books: More Commedia (in italiano)

[post 174]

La commedia dell'arte è nata in Italia nel XVI secolo e rimasta popolare sino al XVIII secolo. Non si trattava di un genere di rappresentazione teatrale, bensì di una diversa modalità di produzione degli spettacoli. Le rappresentazioni non erano basate su testi scritti ma dei canovacci detti anche scenari, i primi tempi erano tenute all'aperto con una scenografia fatta di pochi oggetti. Le compagnie erano composte da dieci persone: otto uomini e due donne. All'estero era conosciuta come "Commedia italiana."

Pretty impressive, eh? Like I know me some Italian! Okay, so what if I just copied that from the commedia entry on the Italian Wikipedia to impress those folks who only read the first paragraph? You know, superficial people, not like you second-paragraph types. The truth is that one of the regrets of my life is never having found the time to learn Italian. Some of my blog readers, however, did find the time to learn Italian, especially the ones who grew up in Italy, and since commedia dell'arte also grew up in Italy, there are, not surprisingly, Italian commedia books that I figure are worth including here. Of course I haven't read them, so you couldn't prove it by me, but here are four that may be of interest; if not, remember they were free!


Carlo Gozzi e la Commedia Dell Arte by Ernesto Masi (1890)
You'll find more about Gozzi in my two previous posts. This one is all of 25 pages long, whereas the one that follows on Goldoni, apparently in the same series (see below), is 151 pages.

Carlo Gozzi e La Commedia Dell Arte



Il Goldoni e la Commedia dell'Arte by Alfonso Aloi (1883)
Il Goldoni e La Commedia Dell Arte



Le Maschere Italiane Nella Commedia dell'Arte e Nel Teatro di Goldoni by Elvira Ferretti (1904)
This appears to be more about the masked characters than about the actual physical masks.

Le Maschere Italiane Nella Commedia Dell



Scenari Inediti della Commedia Dell'Arte
As most of you know, commedia performers improvised around specific scenarios, and the most famous of these is the 1611 collection attributed to Flaminio Scala. The following work, which translates as Unpublished Scenarios of the Commedia Dell'Arte, is not contemporaneous, but rather from 1880, and was collected by one Adolfo Bartoli, who
I am assuming to be the very same scholar of Italian literature that you can read about here.

Scenari Inediti Della Commedia Dell Arte


You can purchase the English translation of the Flaminio Scala scenario collection here.

You can read some scenarios used by the modern-day commedia troupe, I Sebastiani, by clicking here.

Ciao!

Complete Books: More Commedia (en français)

[post 173]

Let's give the French some credit!

They may tend to over-intellectualize, but historically they have been enthusiastic fans and loyal supporters of clowns, mime, and circus. Commedia troupes — la Comédie-Italienne — made their homes in Paris, and while the best clowns may have been from England, Italy, or Spain, often they had to come to the French capital to be fully appreciated.

The French also write (and even read!) books, so it's not surprising that some of the best works on this whole physical comedy tradition were written in French. My own Clowns book would have been significantly diminished had I not been able to read Rémy, Thétard, Strehly, Perrodil, Adrian, and many others. And if I'm a bit of a francophile, you'll have to forgive me, because the truth is I've been bought: in 1990 I had a Fulbright fellowship to France to study physical comedy, half of which was funded by the French government. I have, however, been dutifully repaying them ever since (with interest) in the form of regularly scheduled purchases of French wine, with a marked preference for the earthier Bordeaux reds.

But enough about moi. Google tells me a lot of my blog fans come from la France, and je sais for a fact that more than a few of my Anglophone readers also lisent French. The least I can do is include a few free books en français.

Holy vache, I see que this blog post se transforme progressivement into français.... ça is becoming vachement dif. Tant pis, car maintenant vous devez souffrir mon français maladroit!

Okay, eau quais.... allons-y!

Masques et Bouffons de Maurice Sand (1860)
Commençons par Masques et Bouffons de Maurice Sand, mon introduction et la traduction anglaise de laquelle j'ai déjà publié dans ce précédent post.

Tome 1:

Masques_et_Bouffons_vol01

Tome 2:

Masques Et Bouffons Vol02



Mémoires de Carlo Gozzi (1797)
Mon introduction et la traduction anglaise se trouvent aussi dans ce précédent post.

MémoirsDeGozzi



Mimes et Pierrots: Notes et Documents de Paul Hugounet  (1889)
Le dernier, mais non le moindre, c'est le plus tôt importante étude scientifique de la pantomime, celle de Paul Hugounet (né 1859), un contemporain de Charles Deburau. Après les trois premiers chapitres, ce livre se concentre sur la pantomime française du 19ème siècle.

Mimes Et Pierrots



Prochainement: des livres en français sur le Théâtre des Funambules.

Complete Book: "Masks and Marionettes" by Joseph Kennard

[post 167]

When I was writing Clowns, these were the books I consulted the most for my section on commedia dell'arte:
• Masks, Mimes & Miracles by Alardyce Nicoll
• The World of Harlequin by Alardyce Nicoll
• The Italian Comedy by Pierre Duchartre
• The History of the Harlequinade by Maurice Sand
• Scenarios of the Commedia Dell'Arte by Flaminio Scala
• The Commedia Dell'Arte by Giacomo Oreglia

I did not read Masks and Marionettes by Joseph Kennard, nor have I since then, but browsing through it now it seems to be a reasonable overview of the subject, and one that touches on the closely related puppet theatre of the time. And since the above-mentioned books are not available for free and this one is, I though it worth including here.

Masks and Marionettes

Masks from the National Museum of Denmark

[post 049]

Copenhagen's NationalMuseet is sponsoring several excellent exhibitions relevant to the climate change summit, including Indians of the Rain Forest; Climate: Denmark from Glaciers to Global Warming; and especially Many Strong Voices, featuring projects and speakers from Arctic and Small Island Developing States who are already struggling with the results of global warning.

During my two visits there, I also found time to tour the superb ethnographic collection and was fascinated by the vast array of masks from indigenous cultures. This is one of those museums where they jam fifty examples of an artifact into one glass display case with minimal explanation. You don't always know exactly what you're looking at, but you do get to experience a rich variety of human expression. It was therefore easy for me to think of many of the masks as being clownesque, even if this was not necessarily their official function.

I only had my Flip video camera with me, and I was shooting through glass and unavoidable glare, but it wasn't a total disaster, as you can see from the shot above and those at the end of the post. First, though, some masks scanned from the museum's publication, Ethnographic Collection: Peoples of the Earth, complete with actual explanations.


Theatre mask. Painted wood
19 cm h. (Mus. no. CC. 224).
Java. Ca. 1860.
Javanese mask theatre (wayang topeng), like the shadow play, is led by a dalang who recites the plot and conducts the orchestra and actors. The actors' movements and performance of the roles are deliberately impersonal, as they seek to imitate the appearance of shadow puppets. The facial features of the heroes and villains reveal their spiritual qualities. This mask represents a coarse, ungainly demon character — a total contrast to the refined princely mask type. Mask theatre is
limited on Java today, but much more widespread on Bali.




Mask. Wood, rattan, hornbill feathers.
38 cm x 53 cm. (Mus. no. C.6121)
Dayak, Mahakam River, Kalimantan
(Indonesian Borneo). Ca. 1920.
This hudoq mask represents one of the animal spirits central to the ceremonial celebration of the sowing of rice. These spirits were to ensure that the rice spirits were comfortable in the rice paddy and would provide a good harvest. The masks were worn by male dancers dressed in costumes of banana leaves that hid their bodies. During the dance other masked dancers attempted with exaggerated clumsiness to copy the movements of the hudoq dancers and the
dance turned into a comic performance. Rice ceremonies and mask dances are still performed today but on a much smaller scale since the conversion of many Dayak to Christianity or Islam.





Mask. Wood, skin and bone.
2S-5 cm h, 13.7 cm b.
(Mus. no. L19.17S).
Ammassalik, East Greenland. 1933.
Masks were used during some drum dances and originally came from the religious ceremonies held during the winter. The masks represented different spirits. Masks that are more than 100 years old are discarded or buried with the dead. The mask with a skin strap shown here is carved with grooves representing tattoos and a wide mouth representing a stick inserted to puff out the cheeks. The teeth are pieces of bone, and the eyebrows are made of dark, depilated sealskin.




Mask. Woven painted rattan.
49 em h. (Mus. no. 1.3771).
Sepik. Papua New Guinea. Ca. 1920.
Woven masks covered with coloured clay were traditionally seen as manifestations of demonic spirits. Such masks were worn during the initiation of boys into adulthood and the secret spirit world of the clan that was only accessible to initiated men. During the initiation rites the masks were worn by older men hidden under a cloak of frayed plant fibers to make them look like formidable spirits. Their real identity was not revealed until they removed their masks as part of the ceremony.


Ritual dance costume 330 em h.
(Mus. no. Da.s82a-o).
Tamil Nadu, India. 1894.
Once a year the village goddess is celebrated at a feast for the entire village. When her figure is taken in procession through the streets it is often accompanied by male dancers who possessed by the goddess and wearing masks and women's dress stamp their feet to the rousing
rhythms of drums. Others pierce their cheeks and tongues with long spears or walk on hot coals, after which the village tries to appease the formidable, aggressive goddess by sacrificing chickens and goats.











Mask. Wood, metal.
31 cm h, 21 cm d.
(Mus. no. C.1478).
Karo Batak, Sumatra. Ca. 1900.
Among the Batak of Sumatra masks like this one were worn during the dances and ceremonies at the funerals of influential individuals. The dancers were enveloped in black cloth and held a pair of wooden hands. After performing their dance outside the home of the deceased they escorted the coffin to the burial site. They placed a mask on the grave, presumably in order to keep evil spirits at bay and guide the deceased to the kingdom of the dead. Several years later the deceased was honored with reburial in a sarcophagus or stone urn. Reburial is still common among the Toba Batak today, although now the tomb monuments are made of cement and decorated with both local and Christian symbols.





Shadow puppet (Rawana).
Painted leather, buffalo horn.
64 cm h. (Mus. no. C.4511 ).
Surakarta, Central Java. Ca. 1930.
The noblest characters can be identified by their slender form and narrow eyes and noses — the outer symbols of moral and spiritual strength. The coarser figures, like the demon prince Rawana, have round eyes, bulbous noses and often sharp canines. The good characters stand to the right of the puppeteer and the bad characters to the left. The world of shadow play, however, is not only black and white: The villains on the left may also perform heroic deeds for their family and country, whilst the heroes on the right are occasionally driven by lust, the desire
for revenge, and other equally base feelings.


Okay, eau-quais, enough with quality pics and reasonable explanations! Here are those stills extracted from the Flip camera footage. Let your imagination provide the interpretation.

Chapter 1 — Supplementary Material

[post 045]

Hmm... Fools, Natural and Artificial... what a topic!

This was my opening chapter, though actually written towards the end. In it I tried to bring together manifestations of the clown spirit in a wide range of contexts, though with an emphasis on cultures variously labeled as primitive, indigenous, non-literate or non-technological. The argument is that if the Clown Spirit emerges spontaneously amongst these isolated peoples, separated as they are by time and geography, then this spirit must speak to something deep in human nature. Its appearance in more than a few creation myths perhaps offers the strongest proof.

It's great stuff, though the problem is that to do it justice you need to be a seasoned anthropologist, which I'm not, despite several visits to the American Museum of Natural History before the age of twelve. It's one thing to put together a reasonable narrative about the evolution of the tramp clown figure, and quite another to chart a vaguely defined clown impulse through all of recorded time, especially since it forces you to have to define exactly what it is you mean by "clown" in the first place. So I feel like I'm on shaky ground here, academically speaking, but nevertheless on the right track. Help and suggestions are certainly in order!

Since I started the book by writing about the dances of the Hopi people, and go on to also discuss the Navajo, the Zuni, the Yaqui, the Crow, the Cheyenne, and even Sri Lankan demon plays, I have of course been curious and hopeful that, living in the YouTube generation where everything is supposedly online, some choice ethnographic film might surface showing clown figures in performance, more or less in their native authenticity, uncorrupted by the white man pointing a camera at them. I'm just beginning a serious search, but in the meantime, here's some stuff...

Creation Myths
Clown figures do figure prominently in many creation myths, though it's usually more the clown as trickster than it is the clown as bumbler. The standard text on this when I was writing my book seemed to be Paul Radin's The Trickster (1956), but since then at least three other books of note have come along, all of which I'm trying to find time for.

First up is Barbara Sproul's 1979 collection, Primal Myths, an anthology of well over one hundred creation myths from throughout the world. Yes, Genesis is included. Only some of the texts touch on trickster figures, but the scope is impressive, and Sproul's intelligent and very readable 30-page introduction to the subject is a great way for the layman to understand how these stories function within a society.



Apparently along similar lines is Kimberley Christen's and Sam Gill's Clowns and Tricksters, though I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. Subtitled "An Encyclopedia of Tradition and Culture," it would seem to be a valuable resource in this area. According to the review in Library Journal, the authors have "created a reference to tricksters and clowns, figures found in cultures and myths worldwide but whose characteristics differ according to the culture in which they originate. The work lists 185 cultures by geographical area, followed by a main section consisting of 194 alphabetically arranged entries related to tricksters and clowns; the entries, which are heavily cross-referenced, cite the name of the character with its culture or country of origin followed by stories or other information. The entries conclude with bibliographic citations, and there is a comprehensive bibliography as well. The scope of this work is vast, covering clowns and tricksters from the ancient world to the present and including some references to cultures that no longer exist as well as material from current popular culture. As the introduction states: 'This volume is meant as a general introduction to both the characters and the people who see the world through their eyes.' It succeeds admirably."

For an even broader perspective on the trickster spirit, there's Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World (1998), which I am currently reading. Hyde is also the author of The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, and has been praised to the skies by David Foster Wallace as "one of our true superstars of non-fiction." Hyde's real subject is "trickster consciousness,'' which he traces across a broad spectrum, from dozens of folklore myths through the work of such modern artists as Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg, and Maxine Hong Kingston.


The Feast of Fools
The title of the chapter, "Fools, Natural & Artificial," hearkens back to the middle ages and points to the distinction (or confusion) between those performers who acted the role of the fool for fun and profit, and those who were kept on by the rich and powerful, who found their very real physical and mental deformities amusing.


While this practice seems to have somewhat died out, I would take this opportunity to draw your attention to a NYC-based theatre company I'm fond of that has done a lot of exploration based on the Feast of Fools and the Fool's Mass. They are Dzieci Theatre, whose roots are in the teachings of Jerzy Grotowski, but whose explorations have included not only the fool's mass, but burlesque and circus as well. I want to cover more of their work at a later date, but meanwhile here's a pdf of a full-length article about their work from Ecumenica:

dzieciecumenica

If you're in the New York area, be sure to check out one of the December 2009 performances of their Fool's Mass, which are listed here.





Jesters
The medieval jester who, like Lear's fool, could speak truth to power has no doubt been romanticized. I suspect it was not all that common, and that many a "jester" had to shut up or at least tone down their criticism to keep their head attached to their neck. Even in our day and age, freedom of speech is not all it's made out to be, given the control of the media usually exercised by the rich and powerful inisde or outside the government. That being said, here are two modern examples of comics taking on the powers that be...

Will Rogers
The political humor of Will Rogers (1879–1935) seems pretty tame today, yet in his heyday as a star of film and the vaudeville stage, he was unique in his folksy ability to say some pretty nasty things about politicians without having everyone hate him; kind of a lovable Bill Maher. Here's a clip of Lance Brown as Will Rogers:




Stephen Colbert
For me, the most significant moment in modern comedy was Stephen Colbert tearing apart George W. Bush to his face at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The character he plays on The Colbert Show is very much a jester, as he pretends to espouse a set of views while ripping them to shreds through exaggeration and the recital of inconvenient facts. When I saw the show being taped live, Colbert chatted with the audience beforehand and wanted to make sure they really understood that he was playing a character. (Hey, you never know who's going to wander in off of West 54th Street.) At the correspondents' dinner he destroys Bush by praising him, kind of like Mark Antony praising Caesar, only a lot funnier. It's in three parts...

Chapter 1— Fools, Natural & Artificial

[post 044]

Chapter 1 from my book, Clowns: A Panoramic History
It's been my intention to get my entire Clowns book up on the blog, but since this is only the second chapter in six months, it looks like I'm going to have to accelerate the pace. [Click here for chapter five.]

There are two problems. One is that scanning a book (yes, it was written in the pre-digital Dark Ages), then correcting all the scanning errors (OCR is still not perfect), scanning the photos, redoing the layout, etc. is a tedious and time-consuming job. Not much fun either. The other obstacle is my silly desire to take a few small steps towards improving the book, both by correcting any errors and by adding supplementary material.



Okay, enough excuses. Here's a pdf of chapter one, to be followed by a post of supplementary material. And to be followed by chapter two in a lot less than six months!

Clowns—Chapter 1