TPRC5010

Clown requires us to embrace, through openness and humor, our unique ridiculousness. Accepting the less than perfect brings our humanity to the forefront, transforms restrictive habits into freer expression, and allows us to be fully present. We experience vulnerability and resilience in playful balance. We are “experts” and “know nothing” simultaneously. Clown essentials (such as isolating actions, interrupting your own pattern, singularity of focus, and building complicité with the publique) are foundational and reveal new possibilities about ourselves as artists and collaborators. Each class begins with a physical warm-up and/or a series of movement games (Le Jeu). This is followed by a progression of solo and group projects designed to identify and explore, in clown language, dilemmas. Clowns solve dilemmas, big and small, humorous and poignant in non-traditional ways. One thing we know for sure, clowns are never undone by dilemma. Our underlying goal is to develop a relentless urge to reach beyond the literal, beyond right answers, standard solutions, existing opinions and judgments, to see the world as if it could be otherwise; and to bring new, sometimes ridiculous, possibilities into being. Throughout the course, a guest playwright, director, and performer will join the class to share how elements of clown have informed their work in direct and in-direct ways.