Under the Nose: Memoirs of a Clown
Fringe Theatre Festivals can be an inspiration to get out and create something new.
I wrote ‘Under the Nose’ to pack up my clowns and retire from clowning. I thought I could put them in the cupboard and they would stay there. I would tell stories about them and I’d never have to put on my nose or paint my face again. Little did I know, these clowns are bigger than me.
Here is the write-up from 2011:
Under the Nose: Memoirs of a Clown is a 60 minute real-life, autobiographical comedy telling of the charms and tribulations in the life of not one, not two, but three clowns living inside one woman. As the clowns come to life — Pierrot, Marmalade, and Agnes — the Narrator finds it increasingly hard to manage them all together at once. Fortunately, Fraise stumbles on stage, and turns her good ear into a red nose. The newly acquainted pair tumble into the upside-down, intriguing, magical world of clowns
From Under the Nose: Memoirs of a Clown -
MANAGER talks to the audience:
These clowns, sometimes I felt like they’re taking over my life. They take so much energy. Sometimes I feel like I plug myself into an electric socket. And then whammo—all my energy’s gone.
As I explained before, I am growing older. I know you are all growing older, too, but clowns don’t grow older. Pierrot used to wear a whiteface with red triangles on her cheeks and small red lips. I watched my wrinkles get deeper in the whiteface and my rest breaks get longer. I was beginning to get skin cancer. Marmalade used to twist balloon animals and paint faces for hours at a time. My shoulder seized up and I got tendonitis in my right arm. It was time for a change.
I couldn’t retire from clowning because it was my moment of freedom. Freedom from who I thought I should be, from who other people thought I should be. Freedom from what I should say or how I should look. Everybody has a different way to find a moment of freedom from what binds them. For some it’s a trip to the Bahamas, or a bottle of wine, or illicit drugs, or a good book or something obscene—for me I’ve tasted freedom by becoming a clown.
Popcorn Philosophy from over the nose:
When I had written my script, I had centered the conflict between the manager character (me) and the clowns (them). Although this had some truth to it, it wasn’t working for me in performance. It didn’t feel grounded. The real conflict was between myself and my body. My body was aging, but the clowns were not. How could this aging individual represent the eternal, when I was so limited? The conflict was also between my idea of the show and what the show actually was. The challenge was to be able to open myself to possession of the other while remaining centered in my body/life and my relation to the audience—in letting myself open, so that the story could come through me and so that I was both clown and person at once. In accepting the role of Joker and the multiple rather than singular perception of reality, I was able to tell the singular story of my life in a multi-faceted way. Clear?
In the eleventh show, it felt as though the needle in the stylus of the record player hit the centre of the track. I played my show, I told my stories. They rang true. The clowns were present and the audience was with me.
A component of this run was the inclusion of a student clown in the performance whom I had been coaching in Montreal. In the last few days before the first performance, she came to Winnipeg and we wrote her into the script. She had developed a strong clown named Fraise that acted as a counterpoint to my characters and was excellent at rolling with the constant improvisation and changes. The premise was that she had come from Montreal to see Agnes, the famous clown, and she set her ladder up on the stage so that she would be high in society and could see better. The audience loved her. She represented the young and beautiful clown of the new generation, and provided delicious transitions to the stories. In the end, she convinces the older clown that there can be new beginnings.
Over ten years later, I was thrilled to let her know that Agnes had finally performed in France and fulfilled her sought-after dream.
Odds & Ends
Here’s another one that I found under the mending pile in the closet. Those flowers are magic! Elizabeth Kübler-Ross writes about stopping at a garden to see the fairies in her book “The Wheel of Life.” Back in the day, with no computers or TV, my friends and I would sit in the garden with a sense of wonder at the vibrancy of the aliveness of the growing plants and moving catepillars.
The Flowers that Danced - by Sue Proctor
One day a little girl named Selina was walking along and she saw some beautiful yellow, red and orange flowers dancing to the wind. Selina stopped and stared because the flowers were so beautiful. It made her feel good just to stand and look at them. To her surprise the flowers seemed to talk to her.
“We want feet,” they said. “We want to really be able to dance. We want wings too. We want to really be able to fly.”
Selina laughed. What a silly idea! Flowers with feet, and flowers with wings. She thought that she could hear the flowers pleading. The sound of their high voices blew with the wind.
“We want feet,” the flowers said. “We want to really be able to dance. We want wings too. We want to really be able to fly.”
“Well,” Selina thought, “I might as well try.” She counted to ten backwards, which was very hard for her to do and then she said the only magic word she knew, “ABRACADABRA!”. She giggled. Selina danced and skipped all the way home. She was laughing about flowers dancing like ballerinas and flying like fairies.
Maybe the fairies were listening because as it grew dark, the flowers realized they could move their feet. “Feet! I have feet!” shouted the red flower.
“Me too!” shouted the orange Nasturtium as she danced around.
“I have wings like a butterfly!” gasped the yellow Daisy.
For a few minutes they all delighted in the freedom of their movement. When the flowers were tired, they whispered to each other.
“Do you think we should tell anyone?” asked the yellow Daisy.
“Oh no,” whispered the orange Nasturtium.
“Let’s keep it our secret!” said the red Poppy. “Let’s only dance at fly at night when all the people are asleep.”
“Yes, let’s!” agreed the others.
Madeleine was still giggling when she put her head on her pillow. “Flowers that dance and fly,” she thought. “How silly!!”
As she was drifting off to dreams, she thought she heard a whispered “Thank you!” drifting on the wind.
And so, the flowers look steady and rooted during the day. If you come to visit and sit so still at the bottom of my garden in the dark evening, you might be in for a surprise!
END
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/