Out of the Closet
Clowning was growing in all kinds of ways and influencing everything!
From the Fringe to healthcare – the clowns were everywhere. The clowning was accepted as an art form that created a link between humour, health and well-being. Loonisee’s Fringe show was a potpourri of playful satire. .
Closet Clowns is Both a Success and Disaster
The trouble was we did the same show two years in a row at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. A word of advice – don’t do it. The plan was to make the show better, but it ended up almost the same. The idea was that we would have a door on stage (we made one stand-alone door – it cost $100 which was a lot back then) and the clowns would emerge from the door into the scenes. You can maybe see the problem already.
My favorite bit as Pierrot was miming to Rockbert singing Paul McCartney’s song “Blackbird.” I love miming birds. Another piece we did was to the Leonard Cohen song of the “Story of Isaac.” I believe Mister was Abraham and Pierrot was Isaac. It is a striking story and the clowns with their humour can also catch the pathos.
Another piece Mister did was as a Minister with a collar, suit jacket and boxer shorts reading a passage from the Bible. This was controversial satire but it was meant to raise questions. It was a bit like Mr. Bean.
The first year we performed the show it was a moderate success. There was lots of music and audience participation. Another favorite was, “The Third World Pigs” which was a variation of the “Three Little Pigs” but as the pigs change houses, they change countries and areas of the city. The audience volunteers create houses with their arms while others are the pigs and the wolf. It’s great fun as the pigs and wolf chase each other and the houses fall on the stage. Again, it has a political message but is still family friendly.
The second year we had small audiences. People that liked our kind of comedy had already seen it and there were many more new shows happening. We did have the satisfaction of making conversation with an audience member in another show. I asked the usual question, “What have you seen so far?” He said that the best thing he had seen was Loonisee. I said “Wow. This is Mister and I’m Pierrot.” (Of course, we didn’t look like clowns, exactly.) He looked confused and said, “Oh.”
Popcorn Philosophy
From “The Archetypal Role of the Clown” - Grock was a well-known Swiss clown who performed in circuses and music halls in Europe and America between 1903 and 1954. During the Second World War, Grock sometimes performed for German soldiers. He was often called the “King of Clowns”, because of his widespread success and fame (Grock 1957). He was one of the great European artists that has influenced the style of many performers.
From Grock:The King of Clowns, by Grock -
The only people who were in the audience who were not soldiers were relations of theirs, or nurses and orderlies. I felt utterly alone up on the platform in my Grock make-up; I could only break down this sense of isolation by degrees, to emerge as Grock, simply, Grock, the clown, whose job it was to lighten the faces of these poor maimed youths. There they sat, not only without future, hope and God—but without parts of their bodies God had given them. How was I to make them laugh? All my desire was to enable them to forget the terrible reality of their state, and I concentrated on it so hard that little by little I succeeded in conjuring up that deeply human and tragic-comic world of absurdity, the world of nonsense and, at the same time of profound wisdom. I did not succeed at once, but by degrees they were drawn into this other world where they could forget the world outside….
[T]hen the applause broke out. These young men, boys some of them, clapped their stumps together for lack of hands, stamped, shouted, and laughed; laughed with all their hearts. (202)
Grock demonstrates how when he steps into the role of the clown, he can transcend differences by engaging his audience in laughter; encountering the joy and wonder of being human regardless of the circumstances. I can identify with the moment when he steps in front of the audience as himself in clown make-up wondering how it can be possible to do the work of the clown in that situation. But gradually, the clown becomes present, steps over the threshold and makes the impossible possible. P 68
Odds & Ends
After I worked at Manitoba Developmental Center (MDC) and used my clowning approach to develop a drama program for adults with intellectual disabilities, I started a project in Winnipeg called the Arts Abilities Project at Canadian Centre for Disability Studies (CCDS) which created arts programming for people with disabilities in five different organizations in Manitoba. I went on to create a drama program at Inclusion Winnipeg. In 2019, the United Way wrote this article (which I found in my files) about what we were doing. The programs have since become “The Arts Inclusion Network” with the Crescent Fort Rouge Arts Centre (CAC).
All The World’s A Stage – United Way Article
It was good to see the queen again after all these years, Indiana thought. Strangely, it didn’t look like she’d aged a day, but before he could solve that mystery, the thieves arrived and chaos ensued.
“And then there’s a terrible car chase,” says Sue Proctor, director of Inclusion Winnipeg’s Inclusion Players theatre group. Sue has been working with the United Way Winnipeg supported agency for about four years, developing their drama program specifically for people living with intellectual disabilities.
Gramps Indiana and the Aged Necklace is the players’ latest production, which tells the tale of an elderly Indiana Jones and a stolen necklace with magical anti-ageing powers.
“They improvise. They do it differently every week. I never know how it’s going to go,” says Sue who directed the debut during an art show on November 21, 2019 at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church.
A drama teacher and professional mime, Sue has worked with people with disabilities for the better part of 40 years. It all began when she met a director from the Manitoba Development Centre (MDC) in Portage la Prairie.
“I went in as an artist. I had never worked with people with disabilities, but they said, ‘No, this is what we want. We want someone without prior assumptions.’”
So Sue began with what she knows best: mime. She played music and followed a simple plot-line with plenty of improvisation, trying to engage her would-be students. She took note of how people responded and adapted as she performed.
“If you’re open to it, people can communicate with you,” Sue says. “Sometimes it’s with language, sometimes with sound, sometimes with just movements or gestures or smiles. I saw the benefits of this program for individuals. They just blossomed.”
The MDC program proved such a success that Sue launched similar programs with Deer Lodge Hospital, Canadian Mental Health Association, New Directions, Prairie Theatre Exchange and even Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers. She was also invited to participate in a two-year research project with the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies, examining the benefits of the arts on quality of life for people with disabilities.
“We documented it all. We created a how-to manual. We had videos. And at the end we had a big event where we displayed the art of all the programs at the Millennium Centre.” There was even a concert, dancing, workshops, and readings.
After a brief hiatus, Sue noticed a call for volunteers from Inclusion Winnipeg.
“They had an arts program called Among Friends that had been highly successful, and they wanted to expand. I told them what I’d really like to do is teach drama.”
Now in its fourth, year, Inclusion Winnipeg donates space (a boardroom) and coordinates with clients. Groups average about 10-15 people. Each session is ten weeks long and culminates with a performance for family and friends.
“As they get over the fear and the self-consciousness of moving and expressing themselves, it’s really incredible what they can do. They’re great. I mean, I just sit and laugh at how good they are.”
So good that Sue wanted to find other venues and audiences. That’s how the concert and art show at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church came to be.
What’s next, Sue ponders with a twinkle in her eye. “Maybe a Fringe show. We’ll see. That takes a whole lot of production. And a lot of promotion. Maybe one summer we’ll do it.”
Silly Scripts, Stories and Scenarios: A Matter of Taste
References:
Proctor, Sue. The Archetypal Role of the Clown as a Catalyst for Individual and Societal Transformation. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/977096/