clown performer, teacher and researcher
"Mamiydaddy" (1994)
Two clowns attempt to fulfill the roles of Man and Woman, without really knowing too much about their chosen subject. However, a bizarre kind of success does result, though the subsequent offspring of this particular union is none too sure whether to get itself born into their chaotic ‘Garden of Eden’.
Companyia d'Idiotes
Formed in Barcelona after meeting in 1993 at the École Philippe Gaulier in London, producing a string of full-length shows both experimentally daring and hugely accessible throughout the 90s and 2000s, at the forefornt of the city’s clown revival.
"Ou Xou"(1996)
A box of eggs, an inflammable frying pan, disappearing food, a pile of plates….and unique omelettes! Customer instructions in the event of an emergency: “Don’t worry – you will be provided with protective headgear”.
"Clown Impromptu" (1998)
A silly show about spirit possession, tap dancing, suicide, sleeping, drinking tea and, of course, sex.
WHAT THE CRITICS HAVE SAID:
“They display their inner clowns impeccably” Reseña, Madrid
“Delicious, malevolent clown perversion with disquieting contemporary resonances” Guia del Ocio de Madrid
“Exceptional clown” El Mundo, Madrid
“All the rage” Bares de Barcelona
“Absurd” ABC, Madrid
“Macbez” (1999)
"A delicious, malevolent clown perversion of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ with disquieting contemporary resonances" (Guia del Ocio de Madrid).
"Macbez" mixes contemporary and classical clown with Shakespearean tragedy, political satire, surreal puppetry and the saga of the world’s latest ‘Macbeth’ couple, Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mira Markovic, to create a fine balance between infantile ridiculousness and the horrors of tragedy. The hit of the 4th Madrid International Clown Festival.
“TZIRK!” (2000)
"The show that’s all the rage" (Bares de Barcelona)
A contemporary circus-clown-music experience performed at a roller-coaster pace that grips the audience by the guts and doesn’t let go. The beautiful, the ridiculous and the dangerous meet head-on as trapeze artists, chairs, champagne, eggs, a 5cm human cannonball and other threatening objects fly in perfect time to live virtuoso high-energy Balkan Pop. A show whose preferred habitat is the packed bar on a Saturday night. (Co-production with “L’Orkestina”.)
“Don’t Play It Again, Sam” (2002)
A new musical spectacular with a completely unoriginal repertoire with something for everyone that’s bound to please no one. Yes, this is the new craze, ‘Banana Music’, a unique fusion of virtuosity and cock-ups. Picture the scene: an empty stage, a piano (only if there is one, otherwise forget about the piano), a one-handed pianist (the other hand’s stuck up his woolly glove puppet) and the sweetness of a soprano voice that the next moment screams into operatic action, demolishing musical barriers along the way. The only thing these two have in common is their (unrequited) love of music.
"Look Into My Eyes!!!"(2001)
‘An exceptional clown’ (El Mundo, Madrid)
Alone she can do nothing! Her occult powers will be useless, she needs ... volunteers! But do we really want to know our futures? Do we like being hypnotised? Do we want to know if we were Napoleon in a former life? Probably not, but she’s going to tell us anyway. And as an added bonus she’ll give us a psychic shower, libido-enhancing rituals, and bend any spoons we happen to have on us (no, not really, just joking about the spoons!). “LOOK INTO MY EYES!!!” is a continuous game played with the audience by a charlatan who doesn’t realise it with a foreign accent that keeps disappearing (the accent, that is), taking us on a whirlwind ride to the next life, the other side and the back-of-beyond. But don’t worry! Death is just a phase we all go through!
"Clown Klezmer" (2004)
Klezmer and Balkan music provide the base for a group where at any moment someone might do something silly (should music be played like this?) With no pretensions other than pleasure, sometimes we play music of extraordinary beauty, sometimes we’re the backing band for a clown with a stringless guitar, and sometimes….. should musicians be allowed to fall asleep in the middle of a song?
Why “Clown Klezmer ”?
With this show we are attempting to find where music stops being music and becomes clown and vice versa. Klezmer music is the music of the Jews of north and eastern europe. Klezmer music is ideal for clowns, as it is one moment joyful and the next despairing, or even at the same time happy and sad, but never self-indulgent, heavy or depressing. It carries us through a whole range of emotions, but always with a lightness that avoids us slipping into tragedy or melodrama. And this is clown, too. A lightness of touch, however big the emotion.
So, we take the rhythms of klezmer and through them find the actions of the clown: walking, dancing, jumping, dying, thinking, making love, sitting, drinking, playing jokes, sleeping, crying.....
We take the melodies of klezmer and through them find the emotions of the clown: joyful, sad, pensative, confused, proud, furious, distracted, determined.......
We also take the language of klezmer, Yiddish, and find the thoughts of the clown: of food, of wine, of granny, of home, of God, of money, of love.....
And we hope to find a true fusion of the two art forms. They are two art forms that we have worked with for many years. Both Clara Cenoz and Jon Davison have worked on the clown since founding Companyia d’Idiotes in 1993, Jon Davison has been a musician since age 4, and playing klezmer/balkan for more than 10 years (founding the groups Orkestina (1996), and Ciuri-Ciuri(2003))
When in 1999 two trapeze artists with a twice weekly gig with the music on CD in a half-empty bar let a bunch of real life musicians play for their numbers, without getting paid of course, and then joined up with two clowns dying of hunger who were performing in the same street in the smallest theatre in town (now closed) but unable to fill it, and the audience was so big that the bar owner stopped the shows so as not to draw attention of the neighbours to the lack of a licence, so leaving everyone on the street once again, few would have thought that the dream would live on today.
there then followed the bar concert version...
Sometimes we rehearse a lot but when we‘re having a lot of fun on stage, then accidents might happen… (should musicians be allowed to go to sleep in the middle of a song?) We make no attempt at aesthetic unity - 5 performers, 5 styles (frequently asked question: “how on earth did you get all those different kinds of people onto the same stage?”) - without once stopping to check if they’ve overstepped the genre boundaries, and without pretensions other than pleasure.
Sometimes we like playing beautiful music (frequently asked question: how come it seems to sound better when you’re all covered up by a huge newspaper? Possible answers: a). the paper acts as a kind of amplifier. b). the newspaper acts as a kind of acoustic filter, removing the dissonances. c). everyone knows blind people have better hearing. d). it makes it sound more like a CD when you can’t see the band).
Sometimes we’re a backing group for a clown with a stringless guitar
And sometimes miniature magnet-propelled puppet musicians take over.
then came the street version...
The group were a great success in Russia, at the Arkhangelsk Street Theatre Festival, taking their fusion of klezmer and clown to the country of... klezmer and clown!
and now the theatre version......
premiered at the Festival Internacional de Clown de Madrid...
