Clowning on the Outdoor Stage
Back in the day, dramatically prone friends and myself formed ‘Loonisee Clown Troupe’ to perform original commedia-like clown shows with music.
Being a mime clown on an outdoor stage is doubly challenging because you don’t have the focus that mime requires. There’s pantomime, corporeal mime, the Mime, mime techniques. I look at mime as talking with the body – another language that crosses barriers and allows us to speak as one human being to another. ‘Liminal space’ is a term that Victor Turner, the anthropologist, coined. Clowns sometimes seem to come from another world.
Pierrot & the Imaginary Dog
Nothing ever seems to go as I plan it - like when Pierrot was performing at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival many years ago, as part of the clown troupe Loonisee. We were on at the outdoor stage in Market Square. We were all set to go. I was in costume and make-up. I felt panicky when we arrived and I saw the crowd. I went to the Porta-Potties and did a yoga stretch. I told myself that I could do this. The idea was that Pierrot would make her entrance through the crowd walking her mime dog. She would walk the dog onto the stage and the show would begin. Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties.
Pierrot walked into the audience her arm extended as if holding a leash. She went through the crowd greeting the audience, being pulled and embarrassed by her canine friend. As Pierrot approached the stage, technicians whispered in the wings, not yet, not yet. So, Pierrot needed to go back into the crowd and greet audience members once again while being pulled by her imaginary dog. As Pierrot circled back to the stage things were still not ready. Finally, the clown sat down at a picnic table by the audience with the imaginary dog.
I was going crazy. I felt so stupid walking around with this imaginary dog. It isn’t a very big space, so I was greeting the same people over and over again. The stage was still not ready. I had nowhere I could hide. I had no flats that I could go behind, so I sat down at a picnic table, holding the leash of my imaginary dog. I sat still. I felt completely deflated, humiliated and wanted to disappear.
Audience members began to come over and pet my imaginary dog. Kids came over to feed him and interact with the clown. It was amazing. They welcomed and affirmed the imaginary world. When the technical problems were overcome, Pierrot went on stage with a flourish.
Popcorn Philosophy – Liminal Space
When I clown, I feel like I fall through the rabbit hole into a kind of liminal space, like a trickster realm. Anything can happen - the role is porous. Everything happens in a different light. My experience of the clown is that it represents a part of myself that is also outside myself. I cannot control the clown; I can simply prepare and allow an opening for the clown to emerge from my unconscious or beyond. I focus in order to put daily cares aside and invite the clown presence to motivate my actions and words. I step into an archetypal role. Sometimes I feel the clown presence like a lightning bolt coming down my spine. The adult censor and sense of intention are still present and directing the clown, but the clown itself is beyond me. My vision changes; I perceive everything in a different way when I am a clown. I feel the energy of the place, I am more aware of energy around people, I ‘see’ atmosphere. I don’t see just things or people, in a shifted sense of consciousness, I ‘see’ and sense what is around them.
The word opportunity comes from “the Latin porta which is an “entrance” or “passage through”… A pore, a portal, a doorway, a nick in time, a gap in the screen, a looseness in the weave – these are all opportunities in the ancient sense. Each being in the world must find the set of opportunities fitted to its nature” (Hyde 46). When I am a clown, I feel that suddenly I am presented with a multitude of opportunities. I am standing on the threshold of possibility.
Peacock Performance: Remembering Mrs. Lipton’s
Mrs. Lipton’s was there for sixteen years. It went through many changes, as did the people involved. One waitress worked there about the third year after Karen Johannsson took over the store and opened the restaurant, and stayed for about six years. During that time, they built booths on the radiators, while they still had the lunch counter. Shortly after she left, they opened the back to tables, closed in the kitchen, and took out the lunch counter. Within a few years, Mrs. Lipton’s was only open at lunch and Arjuna’s Indonesian Restaurant took over the evenings.
Working with a lunch counter was interesting because of the relationships that developed with the customers. There was a house for prostitutes down the street. Every evening about seven, the girls would come in for supper before work.
The Madame was always quite grouchy. She would sit at the counter and glare. If anything went wrong with her order she would snap at the waitress. She had short blond hair, a round face and was well made up but her features were sharp. One day, Mrs. Lipton’s hired a waiter who was good looking and charming. The Madame quickly became good humoured and flirtatious. A different side of her showed altogether. When the girls came in, they made quite a fuss about this fellow. He would stand by their booths laughing and joking. Within a couple of weeks, the other servers noticed that he was carrying a pager. He blushed. Parked outside was the Madame’s Pink Cadillac. He now had a second job as her driver.
Once this waiter spilled the large pot of chicken noodle soup at lunchtime rush. The rush was so busy that the staff learned to move fast and run with the orders. He had a great attitude. He said “The floor needed washing anyway”, as he began to wipe it up. Behind the narrow counter the three servers were skidding on the soup while they were trying to get the order out. They were laughing so much, it even made it harder.
Odds & Ends - My Take on Clowning
I think of mime as non-verbal communication. It is physical, as well as spiritual and emotional. I say spiritual, or metaphysical, not in a religious sense, but in a sense that our communication, our connection with other people happens on many levels, not all of which can be explained by a movement of the eyelids or a rotation of the arm. Gestures often have an emotional impact, depending on the intention behind them. Look at the gesture for Hello and Goodbye. They are essentially the same – a slight rotation of the wrist, holding the forearm vertical, with the hand open. Whether it means hello or goodbye is usually apparent to the observer, although it would be hard to identify any physical difference in the movement. It is the emotion and the intention that give the movement meaning.
The emotion is often expressed in the physical context of the body. For example, the shoulders slope, the chest caves in, the head droops – it is clear to the observer that the person is sad. There is something much more subtle that can happen to the physical expression of the body. If one is feeling great sorrow, thinking about loss, there is something that communicates to others, although one is going about an ordinary task in the usual way. There is a “heaviness” about the person, indeed they have not gained weight, but the observer can sense a heaviness. There is an “air” of sadness about the person that communicates itself to the observer. This is a spiritual communication, a communication of simply what “is”.
To allow the work of an actor to have a spiritual component, the actor needs to connect with their inner being and allow that to be present in their work. I say “allow” because it isn’t something that we can “make” or that we can necessarily control. It is essential to deal with one’s fears, in order to open the curtains to one’s soul and simply be there with that connection unbroken. Intending and sustaining this connection are techniques that can be learned. It is like a well of being that is there for us to draw from. We did not create the well and many of us become estranged from it. Once we are aware of that well within ourselves, we can learn techniques to connect with it and draw from it at will. At times it seems like the well has run dry. It is time to become aware of our fears, learn to relax and allow ourselves to be nourished.
References
Hyde, Lewis. Trickster makes this world: mischief, myth, and art. New York: North Point Press, 1998.3. Print.
Proctor, Sue. The Archetypal Role of the Clown as a Catalyst for Individual and Societal Transformation. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/977096/