Clowning #2 – Creating and Performing

“What’s my plan? And how do I perform now what I planned earlier?”

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This workshop is aimed at those who have already done clowning previously. It builds on the foundations of Clowning #1.

 

In this workshop we will explore in depth the material you create to clown with and the relationship with the in-the-moment performance.

 

1. What’s my plan? - what and how to plan, create, devise what you’re going to clown with

2. How do I perform now what I planned earlier? – keeping your in-the-moment responsiveness while performing an already created piece

 

How do we bring together your own particular way of clowning (your stupidity and craziness) with careful crafting and composition of performance material?

 

We shall be looking at how to make sure the material you create really works for you. There are countless practical ways of devising material appropriate for your clowning. Awareness of and understanding of these is far preferable to just a single idea will survive the real stage situation.

 

​This work fuses a personal approach to your clowning together with taking care to set up and structure your performance. Other kinds of comic performers habitually spend a lot of time and effort on ‘material’. Stand-up comedians worry over joke structure, sketch comedians search for strong premises for their ideas. Why should clowns be different? Just because clowns incarnate the chaotic, the inept and the disruptive, doesn’t mean that clowning is not, in part, a craft. Popular misconceptions suppose that clowns just get up there and are funny just by being true to their inner selves. But looking inside yourself won’t really save you if your number isn’t working for an audience.

  

This part of the workshop works for differing levels of experience, but you will already have had some experience of how you clown. It might be your first encounter with how clowning works. You might have begun to create your own performances as clown. You might be stuck and want to find a way to complete your creation, or want to revisit your material and improve it or change it, or find a way to make your ideas suit your own way of clowning more closely.