Motion: From Authentic Emotion to Clown Play
This workshop is aimed at taking the participants to connect the pre-play state of opening and engagement with emotions/events and the clown play per se, leading to more complex improvisation, although rooted in a state of authenticity.
This journey will go through the following stages:
- Openness – Listening as readyness to let yourself be changed
- Connecting and Breathing – with yourself, the audience or a partner
- Acknowledging and Accepting – your emotion, audience reaction, any event
- Reacting – Discovering your clown personality through your reactions
- Losing Control and Failing – Playing with failure, lack of control and mistakes
- Experimenting/Amplifying/Risking – raising stakes, full body involvement
- Personal Madness – What gives your play permission, freedom and joy
–– Ideal training to balance and bring together into the play different clown personalities, both action/technique oriented or more relational clowns, cutting through ideas and constructs.
The Clown Duo Improvisation Toolkit
The basic improvisation tools for clown duos. What makes a clown improvisation work? There are a number of very practical concepts and hacks that can bring amazing clarity to the play, thus releasing it to fun and trust.
If we as clown improvisers can identify what is missing from these basic tools, we'll be able to immediately bring the missing element that will put things back on track. Elements like mask play technique, clear "who" and "what", physicalisation of the reaction, rhythm, repetition, single proposition, crescendo, differentiation of roles, conflict, tension release, among several others will be clarified and put into practice to generate fresh, clear and funny clown improvised numbers for a clown duo.
The Four Classic Clown Duo Relationships
Twins | Complicity | Conflict | White/Red Face
The four main branches where all the play in a Clown duo stems from. It's common to combine these classic relationships, but as a writer learns syntax and grammar and a musician learns harmony, clowns should know the basic relationships they may establish with their clown partner to make clear choices and unblock the true comedy that lies in every relationship.
The body extreme
A physical approach to what makes clowning a body based discipline, where the frailty and shortcomings of the body are celebrated and amplified and we understand with sensations created by movement. This is a very practical and hands on experience of discovering what is most communicative about your body and the way you move in the space, and how you can make it even more clear, closing or opening the space, segmenting your body, finding it's force and counterforce and turning all into play. We'll use Lecoq's movement analysis, Gaulier's mask and Le Jeu physical games and the audience to find a more lively and clear body experience.