Stories About Silence
One day as I was lying in the ‘dead man’s pose’ at the end of a yoga class, I imagined this show. I wrote it down. A year later, I managed to convince ‘Loonisee’ to perform it as an opening.
In this issue: The show worked. Through a series of coincidences, I began creating drama programs for people with intellectual disabilities. Although I did not teach clowning, I worked with participants in a playful, clown-like way. Until recently, indigenous clowns around the world had been dismissed by anthropologists as foolish and without meaning. Back at Mrs. Lipton’s I was pondering an interesting relationship between a mother and her son.
The Sorrow and Strength Story
Content warning: this story talks about childhood sexual abuse.
In 1990 a clown troupe that I was involved with performed the opening number for a conference about recovering from childhood sexual abuse called “Sorrow and Strength: the Process”. I was the mime clown Pierrot.
The Union Centre in Winnipeg had four hundred and fifty people who were waiting to register lined up down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. Most stood with their heads hung down, looking at their feet, seeming ashamed and embarrassed. Pierrot, the mime clown, danced down the stairs and out onto the street, making eye contact and holding up her arm in a gesture of victory. People looked up in surprise, astonished not only to see a clown, but also one who was celebrating.
People filed into the huge ballroom and took their seats. After the perfunctory introductions, the music began. Pierrot was on stage doing mime to Rockbert singing “Turn Out the Lights”, Stephen Fearing’s song about coming to terms with being sexually abused as a child. The audience was weeping. Boxes of tissues were being handed along the aisles.
Suddenly, the clown “Mister” came barging into the auditorium, apologizing for being late. He was a small balding man with curly hair sticking out at the sides in a tight Manitoba tartan jacket, a belly and fortrel pants with a big red nose. He hurried onto the stage and addressed the audience.
MISTER: Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the Pork Producers Conference.
PIERROT shakes her head “No”.
MISTER: Oh? Then what kind of conference is it then?
PIERROT mimes holding a baby, the baby growing bigger, taking the babies clothes off, shoving a penis in its mouth and then jabbing it in the rear end. MISTER jumps in front of her, knocking her over.
MISTER: I’m sorry Ladies and Gentlemen, I don’t know what got into her, maybe it’s something that she ate.
PIERROT stands up, dust herself off and gestures “no, no”.
MISTER: Those things never happen!!
PIERROT gestures to the audience “Yes they do” and encourages the audience to call out. The audience calls out, “Yes they do!”
MISTER: Well, if they happen, nobody ever thinks about them!!
PIERROT gestures to the audience and they call out, “Yes, they do!” MISTER is looking more uncomfortable.
MISTER: Well, even if they think about them, nobody ever talks about them!!
PIERROT gestures to the audience, the audience is yelling, “Yes we do!!”
MISTER: Well I, well I must run, I have a caucus meeting. No, not that kind! My meter is up!
The audience is laughing. MISTER runs out of the auditorium and Rockbert sings John Lennon’s song, “How?” The first lines are, “How do I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing? How do I give love when I don’t know what love is?” PIERROT mimes to the song. The mime is subtle but the audience is totally focused!
After the piece, the conference participants break into small groups and talk about who they are and what brought them to the conference. The room is buzzing with amazing energy. When people leave the room for workshops on the different ways of healing from sexual abuse, heads are held high..
Popcorn Philosophy
The trickster and the clown participate in an other-worldliness, alien to a specific context or environment, and often partly spiritual or divine in nature. Victor Turner describes “liminal” in reference to the people who are being set apart for the purpose of initiation in sacred rituals: “Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (95). The experience of coming into a group as a clown - whether it is in a hospital room, or at a festival, a party, or a mall - is like being an alien. The clown is set apart not only by costume and make-up but by perception of the world. According to Barbara Babcock-Abrahams sacred clowns like Kossa can have a special vision: “Kossa can see what no one else can perceive, that is, the invisible” (1984, 118). Pierrot lives in a world that is invisible to us until she makes it visible.
The clown, by showing us the incongruence present in the world, by turning each piece to examine it for possibility, by making the invisible visible, by laughing at himself, the role of the clown can enable us to shift paradigms and to engage in renewal.
Peacock Performance: Remembering Mrs. Lipton’s
One woman who worked across the street in the Ambulance Station was engaged to the milkman. She wore his engagement ring. She was neat, tidy and well-groomed. She was blonde and always wore blue. Sometimes, she would sit at the lunch counter with the milkman and they would talk about their cottage and the barbecue that they were going to have on the weekend.
Another regular customer was a young man with a roguish look in his eye. When a waitress asked him what he wanted he looked at her and laughed and said, “I don’t think it’s on the menu!” He had shaggy hair and shabby, unkempt clothes. He was a hippy of his time.
One day he was sitting in a booth for quite a while. He said he was waiting for his mother, but he thought that she didn’t want to talk to him. Eventually, the woman who worked at the station across the street came and sat down with him. It was his mother! What a contrast in appearance. She didn’t stay long. I don’t think that she even ordered.
Odds & Ends - My Take on Clowning
When I worked with the individuals at the Manitoba Developmental Center (MDC) in Portage La Prairie I found that they had a great appreciation of the arts. The residents there have developmental disabilities, as well as other incapacitating physical, mental or social challenges. I would combine storytelling, mime, clowning and music in the drama program that I developed. The laughter benefited the resident’s physical health by improving their circulation and attitudes, while storytelling and mime gave them a context to understand and express their relationship to the larger world. For example, while exploring an African story, we would talk about carrying groceries on our heads and give it a try. Wheelchairs could become dog sleds, or boats, or motor vehicles. Music was an essential element that enhanced all levels of ability.
One challenge that remained constant was involving individuals in an artistic process that was within their range but not demeaning in any way. Often individuals had intellectual abilities that had not developed beyond childhood but at the same time they had deep and rich experience. The arts resonated on a spiritual level that sometimes seemed to circumspect any disability. Oliver Sacks describes this phenomenon in “The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”.
And in drama there is still more — there is the power of role to give organisation, to confer, while it lasts, an entire personality. The capacity to perform, to play, to be, seems to be a ‘given’ in human life, in a way which has nothing to do with intellectual differences (193).
Creating a show each year with over 50 participants from the drama program was an interesting and challenging opportunity. The celebration and empowerment that came from people with disabilities performing for other people with disabilities was incredible. With over 300 people in the audience cheering and clapping our stars rose to the occasion. We combined narration, acting, music and mime. Staff pushed people about in their wheelchairs as they acted out their parts. Some participants moved in chorus, some were only able to bang a musical instrument – a group of severely disabled men were fishermen, holding fishing rods in their wheelchairs.
One highlight was a woman in a wheelchair who could only move her chin voluntarily. She was able to make sound on cue and so became a lead in the show. At the climax she roared a terrible sound while the staff helped her to lift her arm and throw the imaginary hatchet at the sea serpent, who died in an appropriately noisy manner. The crowd cheered.
After the show, when we resumed classes, I could see that the participants were empowered by the performance. Physically, individuals showed improved motor control skills, their attitudes were brighter, effort was being made to move their bodies. I realized that it makes perfect sense for people with disabilities to perform for other people with disabilities. The staff and families that were there also greatly enjoyed themselves and were inspired that participants could shine.
Access to imagination can become limited in an adult’s daily life in the pursuit of addressing daily concerns. What I was surprised to find at MDC was that participants in the drama program were easily able to access rich resources of imagination. I realized that people would often go into their imagination when they sit for hours at a time. I also noticed that people knew of the greater world through TV and were interested in putting pieces of information together. Through the storytelling, acting, discussion and music, I was able to help them process this information and place it in the context of their lives.
References
Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara. “Arrange Me into Disorder: Fragments and Reflections on Ritual Clowning.” Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Per-formance.
Ed. John J. MacAloon, 102-108. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1984.
Proctor, Sue. “Clowning But Not: A Clown’s Approach to Drama for People with Physical and Intellectual Disabilities”. Canadian Theatre Review vol 183, Summer 2020. Stephenson, Jenn Ed. University of Toronto press incorporated (30-33).
Proctor, Sue. The Archetypal Role of the Clown as a Catalyst for Individual and Societal Transformation. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/977096/
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Cornell University Press, 1969.
Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. New York: Summit Books, 1987 [1970].