​An intense meeting with clown technique.

By Lila Monti.

 

I always wanted to find a word to describe what an Intensive Clown Weekend Workshop means to me.

 

Many words came to my mind: Dip, Sip, Bit, Chip, Sniff, Peep. I liked those words, they are all nice and funny, but they didn't really mean what I wanted to say. Because I wanted to name how brief any short meeting can be to really dive into the immense and wonderful vastness of clown technique and, at the same time, how beautifully profound it always turns out to be. Every single time.

 

Then the word Core found me. It just came. And as it means both “nucleus” and “seed,” and in Spanish, it is very similar to the word “corazón” (heart), I knew it was the right one.

 

What can we find at the heart of clowning technique? What are, for me, the fundamental rules/things/aspects for a performance to be considered clowning? Where does the immense freedom of clowning technique come from and what feeds it?

 

Questions like these will be the highlights of the weekend. We will, then, surely work on: the complicity (with the audience and with our stage partners); the internal listening (to our emotions, impulses, actions, and reactions); on finding the balance between doing what we enjoy doing and doing what the audience wants us to do (or what we think the audience wants us to do); on costumes, props, and music and their enormous capacity to inspire actions, emotions, ideas, and impulses; on what sustains laughter and joy, both for ourselves and for the people watching us.

 

This workshop is, therefore, for people with previous clowning experience (whether extensive, moderate, or modest) who want to explore that center and, from there, expand the boundaries of their own clown.

 

OBJECTIVES:

To work with:

-The game and the playful spirit.

-The availability of all expressive tools: body, gesture, voice.

-Contact with the audience, with one's own emotions, and with the “here and now.”

-Contact with partners on stage.

-The translation of impulses into actions.

-Projection and availability on stage.

-The great allies of clown physicality: costumes, objects, and sounds.

 

WORKING ELEMENTS

.Comfortable clothes.

.Red clown's nose (with elastic, or easy to put on and off –ot glued-).

.Your clown costume and some extra costumes and clothes to share.

.Objects, materials and inspirational things (once registered, participants will receive an explanatory text about the rest of the things needed for the workshop).

 

LANGUAGE OF THE WORKSHOP: The Workshop will be held in English without german translation.