Dark Clown Methodology 
If you know me, you know the old story about how, watching a particular scene in a play circa 1980, I was compelled by the particular quality of laughter I experienced.
 
I was compelled and wanted to recreate this experience of what I now call Troubled Laughter. I was already teaching Clown – and towards the end of the course I’d ask the participants whether they were interested to try an experiment and thankfully, they always said yes.
 
Early Exercises
And I’d try out various improvisations. Early provocations included: ‘do something extreme’ or ‘can you eat your own body?’ and ‘can you despair each time we laugh?’. One of the more successful exercises was ‘my body is full of holes’: a solo player explores the idea that they are horrified by owning a mouth, and nose holes – Where do those holes go? Why are they there? Am I hollow? What is this? Why? 
 
Over many years and workshops a step-by-step process is now in place. People’s bodies and minds are prepared for the work. 
The links to Red Nose Clown* are made overt and the differences articulated. You’ll see, for example, in the description below the principles of repetition, clocking, calibration and accumulation. 
 
We love to see the Clown think and feel. Clear body and eye movements indicate thinking and feeling processes. And breath of course. When you are devising Clown work and building a scene you create beats to tell the story.
 
There are a growing number of Dark Clown exercises and a growing number of Dark Clown Scenarios.
 
One of these is Body Horror.

N.B. Please note that the course is designed to lead up to the Scenarios. People's well-being is attended to along the way. There is an introductory talk on the aims and ethics of the work (perhaps one day I'll post that), so people are aware of where the work is leading. I have spent 30 years creating, devising and designing a teaching methodology for my Dark Clown work. As with many Dark Clown I describe the exercise so people can opt out if needed (no one has elected to opt out of this exercise - most people find it energising and fun to explore). Course participants in the audience have reported feeling the pain and pity, while still laughing heartily. Dark Clown represents Humanity in Extremis, so it can be witnessed. I always emphasise that the aim of the work is NOT to laugh at suffering, but to create laughter in a dark context. To implicate the audience with direct gaze (and other awarenesses and techniques). The aim of the work is to give the audience the experience of Troubled Laughter. The work is layered and needs to be done well to get the result. It's a rewarding, cathartic challenge and really boosts your awareness of the performer/audience relationship. 
 
It starts with players standing in the space. Players are invited to choose a body part. Use your intuition (Why did I choose my elbow?) – just go with it. 
 
Everyone tries in plenary.
Here are some suggested beats. Mapping beats is strategic. Well-plotted beats mean the play (the ‘game’)can go on for longer and the build and journey you talk the audience on are fully satisfying.
 
Start with sensing something is wrong. A feeling of dread and dawning horror. You must find the source of the unease.
You locate it! Maybe the aversion only lets you glimpse it. 
You want to look but are afraid.
Repeated attempts to see it.
You manage to look (body part permitting!) and are horrified.
You are repelled, lean or spiral away, maybe close eyes …
but you are compelled to see.
Is it still there? Exactly how horrific is it!
Does it make you gag? 
Do you touch with other hand? And now do you have the problem that that hand is infected? (Wipe the hand and now there are 3 spots of aversion! Ergh … ergh!  ERRRGH!)
Try to run away from it.
Try to shake it off.
 
Then two or three people can be chosen so the audience can learn by watching. Then one is selected to play further.
 
Once the body horror is established … the player becomes aware of the audience.
Take time to look and have all the unspoken questions – What is that? People on chairs? How did that happen? Why? Who are they? How long have they been there?
The shame of being seen (this can be vocalised).
Then - why are they not alarmed? Why are they not helping me? 
Look / show / calibrate understanding … 
What kind of world is this? 
Whether they have blank faces or are laughing – either way the player takes I to mean that they don’t understand.
So show them. Show them more clearly.
Then beg: help me help me 
Really look to see if audience are about to help.
Allow their inaction to affect you and add to your plight.
Why won’t you help me?
 
… then you can go the further step of begging them to chop it off.
Repeat the beat of horror and frustration that they do not do as you ask.
Sob in despair.
Look up and appeal to ‘God or the godless heavens’.
 
There’s more but that’s enough for this blog post!
 
* There are many kinds of clown but I use Red Nose Clown as a handy way to distinguish from Dark Clown (regardless of whether the little red nose mask is actually used).

The image below shows the power of costume. This is a creation of a then student designer in 2016. A woman wanting cosmetic surgery looks almost flayed.

Costume, Movement and Comedy workshop on Aristophanes' The Women of the Thesmaphoria, MA Costume Design for Performance at UAL:LCF. 
Performer: Ramona Metcalfe 
Concept and realisation by: Georgia Clark
Movement director: Peta Lily
Project leadership and photography by Donatella Barbieri for UAL: LCF

What makes a great story? 
Chorus lean in eagerly. 
All great stories must deal with blood, (le sang) sperm (sperm), and tears (des larmes).
- Gaspar Noé / The No Way Brothers

Content alert: knee-jerk violence and the ever-ongoing oppression by those in power. Mention of body fluids.
 
Summer 2022 - the latest ''Tis Pity She's A Whore' clown play adaptation. The third iteration of 'Tis Pity - but (because of Covid-19) the FIRST one to be seen before an audience.

This post is a tad long – apologies! The start looks at the process including useful communications and framing for the process.
You can scroll down to find more jokes!
 
Preproduction
As mentioned earlier I have a process for creating clown adaptations for a classical text. This is on RADA’s MA Theatre Lab – dedicated to develop theatre-makers. (When we worked The Revenger's Tragedy, the student cohort would be tasked with drawing a storyboard for the play (stickmen or geometric shapes for the characters are fine!). Also some years I asked them to draw a family tree to get fully acquainted with the complex relations in TRT. The text of ‘Tis Pity reads much more easily and the family tree is not so complex so we skipped this step)

Skills and Clown Council
Clowns bring their skills to create magic as well as laughter (the superb clown Tweedy has an astonishing level of horsemanship). We set aside time to make a collection of people’s skills: Singing, Martial arts, the ability to crush a watermelon between one’s thighs … all was noted down.
As described in a previous post, the clowns discuss the themes and give their responses to the play in the Clown Council process. This year one clown stood up and said: 'I wonder how they got the heart out of the body?'. The  clown's direct, simple curiousity adding the clarity of overlooked detail to an already shocking event. Now we can't help thinking - at what point did Giovanni prise his sister's ribcage apart?
 
Process questions
We had had one discussion of the play where it started to spin off into issues and ideas. Our work would be build beat by beat so I like to help people think concretely. Ideas need to be grounded in detail – what are the audience actually going to see? Character is plot and plot is character. And Clown Dramaturgy is where jokes meet heart (I haven't fully articulated this as a theory, but it's intuitively sound and at least kinda pithy).

The cohort were set 4 homework questions: 
1/ What is your potential interest as a performer for our Clown adaptation of ‘Tis Pity?
For example: ‘I want to explore stillness’, ‘I would find a rewarding challenge in playing a tragic scene’. Are you interested in speaking classical text? Are there monologues from other plays that might make a point (e.g. a student in a previous year brought Wilde’s Salome’s love/hate speech for Hippolita). Or are you interested in Mime performance? What scene might you enact using Mime?
 
2/ Regardless of any gender expression, what is a character role you are interested in? And what character would be a stretch/challenge for you as performer? Feel free to include ‘lesser’ characters from the play. Clown world is open to the overlooked perspective. There is also the possibility of playing a character from the conceptual ‘world’ – see #3. Also there can be Clowns who play representational roles e.g. the clown who played Vengeance in one TRT production and who literally stopped the show for an entire minute, to great hilarity.
 
3/ Think about the possible ‘world’ for the adapted piece (or one of the chapters -might we have a different world for each ‘chapter’?
By this I mean what is the ‘game’ – i.e. why are the clowns doing the show for the Sad Normals*? What kind of troupe are they? Are they a troupe? Or are they strangers to each other (reflections of today’s algorithm-divided world) …
Depending on the world we agree upon (I will play a role as guide and arbiter in our process), there are potential roles of interrupter, stage manager, Footnote Clown, lecturer (e.g. on the subject of women’s anatomy, perhaps).
It could be 4 (or 5) distinct pieces focusing on different themes with a character/pair of clowns who link/s the presentation …?
 
4/ What scene or event from the play intuitively fascinates you – what is it about that which fascinates you?
 
The ‘game’ with the audience
Looking over the responses to these four questions enables me to see the commonalities. A number of students mentioned a film set as the location and game for the show. 
 
Brilliant – the situation is that this is a rare (unique?) event – the live-before-a-studio-audience making of a film. In the opening this would be clearly set up, so that the fourth wall was eradicated. Also because Clarity is one of the prime useful ingredients of comedy**.
 
A Cardboard Camera 
Props maketh the world – in any production, you need to ensure the materiality of the production supports your aesthetic/ concept. In any student production (or low-budget show), you need to know you can realise the concept. (e.g. Will the budget allow for a stunning red tapestry to lay before Agamemnon’s feet? No? Is that piece of red cloth really cutting it? Might the carpet be represented with lighting? Are there other moments in the piece can lighting play a graphic, non-naturalistic role? Can this be your aesthetic? No lighting? So can you use the ensemble to all draw apart with awe, like something stretching apart, like the Red Sea parting, with a music cue or a vocal sound of dread and awe?). A student made a cardboard camera and boom mike. These objects added exquisite focus in more than one scene. An actual clapperboard was provided, which was a god send – a cardboard clapperboard would have fit the visual bill but would not provide the iconic percussive sound needed to kickstart/frame a scene. I ask for students who enjoy make or who are willing to making props. An artistic student put herself forward and I asked for a large anatomical heart to be made. ‘Can’t it be like a cartoon heart?’ Yes, I said, but it will be useful if it has an element of arteries coming out of it – to serve the visceral horror a the heart of the story. The final object was beautiful - big, rounded with toilet-roll arteries sticking out.
 
Happenstance
I had just listened to a podcast with maverick film maker Gaspar Noé. His extreme, eclectic style encompasses violence and sexuality in a way that is a lovely Contrast to the sweetness of the clown. At the core of the play is the physical love – the physical taboo love of the brother and sister and the high level of abandonment to risk-taking. I thought the spirit of the opening dance scene of Noé’s film Climax was a model for an expression of erotic energy/urgency, which we had visited in the studio in a danced improvisation on that subject (people ranged in two rows, no touching permitted – aim of the improv and consent to do the exploration checked and the possibility of anyone having the right to elect to leave the improv etc - all discussed in advance).
 
The skeleton and the heart 
As a group we check in and gather agreement. I then emailed the group saying:
 
We are now in agreement on the idea of the Film Set for our Clown adaptation of ‘Tis Pity. (Thank you for your flexibility and generosity, those whose concepts were not chosen). The Film Set allows for a possible switch back and forth of the timeline, should that be needed.
 
Commedia dell’Arte master Carlo Boso used to talk about having a ‘skeleton’ (i.e. a rough draft) for a show shape/plot. At this starting point, I can see where some of your suggestions might hang ... other suggestions and contributions are still waiting to find their place. Please may I have your willingness to be flexible and patient with me and the process. Please forgive me if I have mentioned some people more or less than others. I'll keep checking in with everyone, and please do let me know if you have any thoughts or concerns, or if you want to remind me of anything you think would be useful. Write your ideas down – I may say no to something first then later see possibility for it – it’s dependent on themes being woven / pieces falling into place.
 
I will be aiming for the piece to allow us to be invested in the heart of the story which is the weird plight of being human and the plight of the disempowered (as exemplified in Annabella’s difficult predicament).
 
Please know that this will be an ensemble piece and in my experience all performers will be well seen. All of you will be onstage throughout (sat at the sides when not in the central stage action – there are often little playing moments, details or choral action for those who are visible, in clown state, at the sides of the stage).
We need to make a show that is not over an hour (max 1 hour 10) – this is in order to
a/ allow it to work as a clown performance with taut energy and b/ also to allow us to prepare it rehearsal-wise in the tight time allotted to us.
 
I will aim for everyone to shine but cannot guarantee a meticulously equal distribution of roles / centre stage action. Please do help me with positive suggestions – in the past people have said things like: ‘actually I am doing this and that and perhaps someone else can take this part of what I was initially offered.’ Some roles may crystalize later than others.
 
Any making process will bring change and edits (things may be cut) – please be aware this may happen – again, please do offer me 
your suggestions 
and also
your flexibility, resourcefulness, and patience.
 
Any concerns - just come and speak to me or email me – forgive me if I don’t have an answer / solution straight away.
 
Those who mentioned Giovanni, please select and learn your favourite lines / stage directions / devised-physical-score-iteration-of-a-moment in Giovanni’s journey or inner life for the Big Giovanni Audition (which will be a scene in our show).
 
This process allows you to witness a making / assembling process. It is not the only process, but it is a process you can later examine as you define and refine your own methodologies. See the document attached – it is a ROUGH DRAFT.
I added columns to the right because I find it useful to think of the function of each scene, so you can get a suggestion of a thinking / planning process.
(Later, when working in the room, I find it useful to clarify the beats within the scenes, too).
 
Be aware and flexible - some moments of our process will include improvisation and then there will be moments of precise direction. (Often people get the hang of this building of beats and can start to work with it themselves). 
 
Regarding the attached rough draft, please know
The first scenes are in place but the scenes that follow are ingredients, not yet ordered– the order will reveal itself (it may correlate to the chronology of the play or not). I will be looking to have changes in tone and energy from scene to scene.
Listed scenes that seem on the page like they might be solo pieces, may well have other performers involved.
Some scenes will need an introduction / framing / explanation - we have an appointed audience liason character, but it might not always be this clown that provides this – it might be a ‘make-up artist’ clown or the boom-holder clown or the clapperboard clown or another actor who does that in a given moment. Clowns may have multiple functions / roles – so long as that is not confusing. The reality of the film set needs to be preserved and followed through but not where it may hold up the action.
 
Hanging the flesh on the ‘skeleton’ 
The ingredients accumulate around the theme and concept .
As we worked the starting group scene, clowns found their film set activities: focus puller, social media person, stunt practitioners, waiting actors, production team. 

Jokes are the building blocks of Clown dramaturgy
There would be a kind of PSA on Incest. And there would be a moment where a clown dressed as cupid would outline (using martial arts) the seven different kinds of love (as defined by the Greeks). There were ingredients from previous years that were recyclable. The as-yet-unperformed Salome speech. A ‘splitscreen’ scene where marriage, love and death are counterpointed. The as-yet-unperformed soliloquy by the unborn issue of Giovanni and Annabella.
Two clowns would play the enfant terrible film directors, the ‘No Way’ brothers: Gaspar and No Way. It's in part a nod to the Cohen Bros and the Watchowskis. Doubled roles are useful in ensemble productions to maximise access and to keep playing-time and featured events concise, but their siblinghood actually allowed for an added embarrassed amplification of the incest theme. In clown dramaturgy, running gags can uphold and underscore theme.

One student elected to play the ‘Great Actor’ and had a personal assistant.

Another brought the beautiful contribution of being an Intimacy Coach:
Hello, I’m Crysanthemum Garcia, Intimacy Coach with a speciality in Incest. 
And in case anyone in the audience here tonight is involved with their sibling – we welcome you!

One student added a beautiful Queer perspective as the Friar. Giovanni is tormented by his love for Annabella and the forbiddenness of it. The Friar experiences an equal or greater agony at counselling Giovanni to deny his love and desire  – tormented all the while by his own feelings for Giovanni. 
He delivers a poignant yet show-biz fragment of the Pet Shop Boys song It’s a Sin.
 
Two students who wanted to stretch themselves to play calm sweetness together portrayed Annabella, wearing blue pyjamas, and delivering a speech from Emilia:
 
‘My voice is too loud in here. I must try to whisper more.’ 
 
The role of Putana - a flawed but affectionate woman – was played with a hat-tip to a panto dame who delivers a rap on her entrance: 
Yo – my name is Putana, 
Here is my Katana, 
Nursemaid to Annabella in the beautiful city of Parma!
 
… and who later meets a disproportionately cruel punishment. 
 
One clown plays a kind of live-audience warm-up man – with incest jokes:
 
My sister hates it when I invade her privacy. hands together Jimmy-Carr-style in front of chest
It's written clearly right here in her diary.  open hands as book
 
Knock knock face right
Who’s there? jump face left
Your brother. face right
Come on in and lock the door behind you. centre
 
I used text lifted verbatim from an interview with Gaspar Noé as the No Way Brothers are being interviewed:
 
What makes a great story? 
The whole chorus lean in
All great stories must deal with blood, (le sang) sperm (sperm), and tears (et des larmes).
 
The interviewer clown hesitantly asks:
(bounce bounce, intake of breath) As brothers, what’s it like making a film about micropause incest?
 
The No Way Brothers look at each other for 4 beats, then stand and, hiding their unsettled feeling, ebulliently wave the suggestion off.
What? no. We are brothers, but no, no incest.
 
Following the rules of clown chaos, and emulating the spontaneity of the film auteur, there is an audition midway through.  The Brothers return from an absence on stage up the central aisle of the audience, announcing: ‘Giovanni, Giovanni.’ – they face the audience centre.
NoWay: We have a very organic process, 
Gaspard: The camera is the lover. The camera is a murderer, it kisses, it kills.
NoWay: Le tout c’est de créer dans une diagonale qui se positionne entre le submersif, le subversif, l’irreversible. You see ?
Et maintenant, on incarne Giovanni.
 
Three would-be Giovannis perform their monologues (one is delivered in Hindi). There is an intrusive amount of scrutiny by the No Way brothers and the carboard camera and the predatory, hanging boom. The brothers feverishly frame the shots – they lay on the floor between one actor’s legs – they climb on each others’ shoulders to tower over another. A visual depiction of the discomfort some actors experience in the world of film. This is the joy of clown work. In one way this scene is a celebration of the untrammelled creativity of the loveable No Way Brothers, but it’s also a metaphoric echo of the established regime’s control over people – Vasques forces the truth out of Putana and punishes her for not reporting the siblings.
 
A Binoche-like Hippolita storms onto the set and out-Diva’s the Great Actor with her Salome speech of lust and hatred doctored to deliver a socially responsible ecological message:
Thy hair is like the great cedars of Lebanon that give their shade to the lions - rawwrr! (claws on his back) - before they were poached and used as living room decoration. Thy black hair is as beautiful as the night, as black as the silence that dwells in the deep forest, before it was chopped down by IKEA ... Let me touch thy hair. 
 
The maiden Philotis speaks to the Brothers:
This film isn’t only about Giovanni and Annabella, and Soranzo and Hippolita. 
My character, Philotis – is about to marry and yet will remain forever unwed.
The machinations and violence of Annabel’s suitors rob me of my beloved Bergetto
Bergetto: Haha that’s me !
Philotis: … and so, I shall hereafter need 
to get me to a nunnery.
You see, 
there are other stories that have blood and tears, 
but which don’t have the luxury of sperm. 
The comic principle of re-incorporation allows a development of thematic threads.

Finally, we reach the scene of all the deaths (prefigured at the very start of the show).
 
The unborn child appears and delivers a speech ending with:
Murdered. Unborn.  
by my uncledad’s blade.
Was ever nephewson afflicted thus! 
 
The maidenly Philotis sits and places a watermelon between her thighs, shouts: Death to the Patriarchy!
It breaks into glorious wet red - like blood, like a birth or a gynaecological procedure gone wrong.
Brothers: What was that?
Philotis: A symbolic act. This is the melon in the plot that the Doctor says is the cause of Annabella’s stomach-ache – when really, she was pregnant … the melon is the TRUTH!
Annabella receives the title slur of the original play text – as if she were to blame for the bloodshed hotly meted out by other characters. 
 
The production assistant / audience greeting clown comes quickly (stepping over bodies):
Er, Gaspar? No Way?
Bros: Oui. Yes?
Helen: The audience need to go home. 
No Way Bros: Oh. (look at audience) Did we cover everything?
Helen (flips though script): …. Er …No.
No Way Bros: No. But it was beautiful!
Character is plot.
Plot is character and action. Blood is plot and Sperm is plot. Tears are plot. The extraneous is subcutaneous, the negligible is the indelible.
We put sound and images together that have never been put together before. 
It’s like a man jumping off the Pont Neuf and never reaching the water.***
It’s over. It’s not over. ... It’s perfect! 
It’s a wrap everybody!!
Bodies start to clear but Putana is still sightless centre back.
 
But, in the true manner of comedy, we added a song and a reconciliation, in the mood of a Wrap Party.

                                                                                          .....
 
 
* Sad Normals  - a phrase I use when teaching clowning. ‘It’s the clown’s job to show all the thought processes, failures and feelings the Sad Normals (me in the supermarket) would prefer to suppress and hide.’
** A handy guideline – as ever, I acknowledge ‘there is the rule and there is the breaking of the rule’.
*** at the beginning in the interview the Brothers quote Noé.

Interviewer clown leans in to the two clown brothers.
 
No Way: We are kind of unique, and kind of twisted.
 
Gaspar: Psychedelic, cerebral, chaotic, gut-wrenching, nihilistic – and fun.
 
No Way:  We were inspirated by experimental movies – Kenneth Anger …
 
Gaspar: …and witchcraft 
 
Both: When we were 16 we shot a Super 8 of our best friend jumping from the Pont Neuf bridge. 
 
No Way: It was our first psychological drama. (said with action of sitting)
 
No Way: You ask what makes a great film? Chorus moment When you meet images and sounds that you haven’t experienced before.
 
Gaspar: What makes a great story? Chorus moment All great stories must deal with blood ...

No Way: le sang

Gaspar: sperm

No Way: sperm

Gaspar: and tears

No Way: ... et des larmes.
 
Adapted from this interview.

​
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'Great Actress: 
Pity   verb:  3rd person present:
to feel sorrow for the misfortunes of – for example: "I could see from their faces that they pitied me."
Putana (blinded):    
I can’t see, I can’t see!' 
- 'Tis Pity 'Tis A Pity 2021


'… nice Philosophy may tolerate unlikely arguments,
but Heaven admits no jest’
 - ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore Act 1 scene i
 

​


There was no showing - but the e-poster might have looked like this.



2021
In Summer 2021, travelling to work by tube where most people's best efforts to socially distance contrasted with free-ranging groups of football enthusiasts chanting unmasked and beating on the sides of the trains, I was again approaching John Ford’s play 'Tis Pity She’s A Whore as a Clown Drama.
 
Risk Assessment & Laughter
I achieved a First Aid certification prior to beginning the module, as we were to be working isolated in a special offsite location. The student cast were ‘bubbling’, keeping to their small community each day, so we were able to work unmasked. It was unnerving doing the risk assessment for devising a Clown production.

Hazard: covid aerosol inhalation via the normally joyful and health-giving phenomena of laughter.
Precaution: social distancing.

But Clowns are unpredictable, and in one exercise, one clown inadvertently stuck his hand right into another clown’s mouth (you had to be there). A kind of spontaneous Lateral Flow Test, but with fingers instead of a swab. Luckily no harm was done.

Ingredients
Inspired by the timbre of Phil Collins' Something In The Air Tonight, the clown adaptation was to open with a chorus of clowns tasting and testing the air - sensing, some with fingers raised, some with tongues out. 
 
For a chorus clown, this sliver of text from Oedipus was repurposed and re-phrased.  

Oh Oh Oh Oh 
My soul is racked and shivers with fear. 
I wish no harm but beg ye (to audience]
drive 
From our land the plague, 
please hear us now and defend us! 

Ah me, what countless, countless woes! 
Hope on hope down-striken goes.

Coughing is forbidden and so are sighs
while the powerful spread the contagion of their lies  !
 
Clown Council
My clown dramaturgy process of the Clown Council yielded, among other themes, a voice for sex-positivity, realised within the character of the lovable, flawed Putana.
 
One student had discovered a high status clown. She developed the character of Great Actress.
She wanted to read the Frontispiece on the play – here it is, adapted for clown delivery:
 
‘TIS
PityShe’sAWhore
Not quite ‘as acted by the Queen’s Majesty’s Servants
AT The Phoenix in Drury Lane, LONDON' (words in caps meaninglessly shouted)
(she weeps) 
Printed by one Nicholas Okes for one Richard Collins and to be sold at the latter’s shop In Paul’s Churchyard, 
inthenookonthelefthandside under the sign of the 
Three Kings, 1633 (gesture of 3 crowns)
(dramatic) Dramatis  Personae (theatrically humble):
Bonaventure, A Friar - but no one calls him by his name
A Cardinal - Nuncio to the Pope
Soranzo - who’s a Nobleman
Florio - a mere citizen
Ditto Donado
Grimaldi - described as a Gentleman but quite frankly a thug
Giovanni, son to Florio
Bergetto nephew to Donado - are you keeping up?
Richardetto, Vasques, Poggio, Banditti, Annabella, Hippolita, Philotis and 
Putana

'The writing of this potent tome
Was done with safety from the author’s home
It tells of love in unlikely times
And portrays incest and other crimes.'
 
Empty cities
The drone shots of empty cities that sprouted up on YouTube inspired a section on the architecture of Parma, which one clown narrated as the clown chorus embodied:

The Strada Repubblica, once a Roman road built in 187 BC.
The Ponte di Mezzo (Middle Bridge), the Ponte Romano.
The Battistero di Parma (the city’s Baptistery), in the Gothic style. Oct-ag-onal. 
Pink Verona marble exterior 
And within: a highly frescoed cupola.  
Porticos, cupolas, churches  …. Cathedrals.
 
Losing our religion
We had a Godfather-style Pope.

Pope:
Kiss my ring.
Friar: 
Of course.
Pope:
Take The Gun, Leave The Cannoli.
Friar: What? What gun?
Pope:
I Don’t Like Violence, Tom. I’m A Businessman. Blood Is A Big Expense.
Friar: 
(confused) My name’s not Tom.

The powerful men of town
In the real world, Dominic Cummings was driving long distances to test his eyesight and spread the virus, and there were regular briefings from our PM - Text here filched and re-fashioned from Moliere.
 
The powerful men of town place rubber-gloved hands on Hippolita and Annabella while Putana assists. 
Soranzo:
There’s no shame in hypocrisy, nowadays; it’s
so fashionable, people think it’s a virtue.
So prevalent – it’s invisible! Like an air-bourne plague.
Hypocrisy has friends in the highest places;
with special privileges …
 
Something is rotten in the state
Putana (in a  costume made entirely of blue surgical masks) speaks:
 
Putana:
Hello everybody, Ciao bello! My name is Putana.
As I am a very woman, I am here to orally (tongue through slitted mask)
express my own truth.
Something is rotten in the state of Italy!
Can you taste it in the air?
(Chorus of clowns very briefly reprise tasting air)
This place is filled up with some rich and handsome fellas: Giovanni, Soranzo, Berghetto, Poggio, Florio, Vasquez and Donado …
 
The problem is that they are all so Pious!
I try my best, I offered ‘orizontal refreshment to them, jelly rolls, comfort, slap & tickle.
Even threesies. Nada. Niente.
The church has everyone in a tight grip
The town of Parma is afraid.
The people of Parma are paralysed,
Petrified. Afraid of their own bodies. Their own desires.
 
Pride
A little later, she announces:

Putana:
Happy Pride month everybody! It Is so lovely to see you all together.
Let the whole city of Parma hear us: LOVE IS LOVE! (get audience to say it)
I can’t hear you …. LOVE IS LOVE!  One more time LOVE IS LOVE!
Yes!!!
And this year, I am honoured to open the first ever INCEST PRIDE MARCH!
(Pairs of clowns parade: each wears a cardboard sign on blue rope.)
Dad / Nephew
Sister / Sister
Brother / Step-brother
Mum / Grandpa
Sib   /  Lings
 
Clown chorus sing:
We are family
Brother sister mother and me
We are family
Get up everybody and sing!
 
The problem with Parties
There was a frission around the gathering of the play’s wedding party. A clown appointed to count and recount, ineptly. 
Hippolita crashes the wedding party, reciting text from Pity Party. (Melanie Martinez's video shows a party where no one has shown up - a 2015 pre-figuring of covid isolation!).

Knee-jerk reactions
The knee-jerk reactions on social media each day made a mark:
 
Vasques: Tricking my master to buy a calzone pizza for a bride!
This calls for more random, knee-jerk and self-righteous vengeance –
Bandits: (they move quickly to appear at his side in in their huddle) At your service, sir!
Vasques points at Giovanni. Bandits surround him saying stab stabstab stab stabstab)
Bandits: stab stabstab stab stabstab
Giovanni: Whose hand gave me this wound?
(Bandits raise hands 1234 in staccato rhythm.)
Giovanni: Oh, I bleed fast.
Death, I …
… Annabella's face. (G says this as if seeing her in heaven, but the dead Annabella shows her face, eyes crossed and tongue out)
(Giovanni dies.)
Vasques: Let me use my random agency to compel you all to spit on the memory of Annabella. (the powerful characters make a raspy sound of preparing to spit – Vasques says, swiftly) Metaphorically!  They don’t call me Vasques the Socially Responsible for nothing.
(The Friar is appalled at the exhortation to spit, then nods at the social responsibility.)
 
(The Bandits - whose day job does not interfere with them being proudly ’woke’ and ethical - applaud ‘socially responsible’ and nod.)
 
Punishment
Unlike in the original play, in this ‘Tis Pity, Putana’s punishment takes centre stage;
 
Vasques: Grab the whore-mongering whore.
(Bandits appear quickly in their huddle)
Bandit 2: Do you mean the sex-worker?
Bandit 1: We prefer the term sex-worker.
Bandit 3: Word.
Vasques: Grab Annabella’s nurse, Putana!
 
Tis Pity There's No Pity
You could argue how well the pandemic was dealt with by the government – you could be forgiven for saying that there seemed to be a failure of compassion* among many of those in power.
 
The ‘Great Actress’ Clown) delivers a dictionary definition of Pity while poor Putana is tortured.
Great Actress: Pity  … pronunciation: /ˈpɪti/    noun.
The feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others.
Vasques: Take out her eyes!
Putana: What?! No No
(One arm, two arms to place hands on Putana’s eyes. If possible, the front 2 bandits have red makeup on their fingers [warmed in hands] to smear on Putana’s eyelids.)
Clown Chorus: Ooooh! (flinching)
Great Actress: For example:  "the sight of the maiming filled the onlookers with pity"
(Putana cries out.   Clown chorus look appalled / distraught.)
Great Actress: Synonyms:
compassion    ,    commiseration    ,     condolence
sorrow         ,       sympathy
distress    ,    regret
Antonyms:     Indifference, …
(Clown Chorus turn away with shame, not indifference while
The Powerful - Soranzo etc - check their fingernails, phones, or use antibacterial wipes.)

Great Actress:  … Cruelty.      (sobs from Putana)
Pity   verb:  3rd person present:
to feel sorrow for the misfortunes of – for example:
"I could see from their faces that they pitied me"
Putana:    I can’t see, I can’t see
(Vasques stabs her – Putana dies, but remains standing in crucifix position, but drooped.)
 
Great Actress: Pity, alternate meaning: a cause for regret or disappointment.
For example:
"it's a pity she got pregnant”
“it’s a pity a sweet idiot like Bergetto was killed. By ‘accident’”
“It’s a pity a brother and sister fell for one another”
“It’s a pity about the plight of the hard-working, disenfranchised bandits dehumanised by the capitalist structure”
Bandits: hear hear, right on, word. (and solidarity fists)

Ex-machina
The character known as ‘Pope/God thing’ arrives. In an ideal world, they would be suspended from on high, but in this student clown production, piggy-backed in by someone.
 
All: (inhale) it’s the pope / god / supreme being thing!!
 
God Pope Thing: Take up these slaughter'd bodies,
Clown chorus intone: shame
God Pope Thing: see them buried;
Clown chorus: crying shame
God Pope Thing: And all the gold and jewels,
Wallets, spare-change whatsoever,
Clown chorus: misfortune
God Pope Thing: Confiscate by the canons of the Church,
Clown chorus: crime (then feel a bit worried they said that)
God Pope Thing: We seize upon these goods - and divert them to the Pope's proper use.
All, including Friar, but not Putana: Of course.
(All leave the stage – some flouncing, some ashamed and compromised.)
 
Interruption
Along with contrast, clarity, pace, stupidity, alternate logic, micro-pauses, clocks, drops, rhythm, timing, representation of minor characters,
interruption
is a useful comic device.
 
Putana: The Parmesan people …
(Quick appearance by Poggio with a wedge of parmesan cheese.)
Daniel/Poggio: ‘My Master said that he loved her almost as well as he loved Parmesan.’

Interruption is Interruption
But IRL, interruption is interruption. Abruptly (as in 2020), our 2021 covid-themed ‘Tis Pity rehearsals stopped because an-extra mural workshop brought Covid into the group, so, as in 2020, this new iteration of Clownacy never had a sharing, not even to a small, covid-safely-distanced group of viewers.




* lack of compassion towards nurses, the disabled, the elderly ... and others

The past is the past until …
 
1981
I was one of the co-founders of a physical theatre company, Three Women, touring UK and Europe with our shows ‘High Heels’, ‘Follies Berserk’ and ‘Wounds’. 
 
I was living with boyfriend and friends in a rented house off the Wandsworth Bridge Road. That boho house in Fulham had a bead curtain instead of a bathroom door, and a wall phone (old-school handset with the classic coiled cord) beside the bath. There was a big green sofa in the living room, a blackboard on the kitchen wall and a spacious basement where we once held a party to which innovative pop hit-maker Joe Jackson came. We got to know him because he came to see ‘High Heels’. We brought him out of the audience to join in a ‘magic act’ (not realising at all who he was).
 

One of the household was musician Roy Nicolson*. He set up his piano and keyboard in the basement, where he worked long days writing electro-pop songs under the name of Michael Process. 
​
We’d all gather to watch Top of The Pops** each Thursday night. We enjoyed seeing the art school-inspired pop artists and discussed the style innovations (e.g. Adam Ant’s post-punk/New Romantic transformation into a re-envisioned Dandy Highwayman via Vivienne Westwood). 

I loved the pared-back percussive dissonance of ‘Money’ by the Flying Lizards and the vocalist’s deadpan delivery. And there was Nina Hagen. There was no Google back then to check the lyrics of ‘Unbeschreiblich Weiblich’ – it was only this year I realised the full scope of the bold originality of her lyrics.
 
Having checked out Hagen on YouTube for the writing of this piece, I noticed that the show makeup we wore in Three Women was similar to Nina’s. This was probably the contribution of Claudia, the German member in our touring company, as we crafted of a female version of the classic ‘everyman’ mime makeup. The 80’s was, in general, the era of pink eyeshadow, blue lips and lightening-bolt blusher.

Three Women created shows with a feminist twist. For one piece: ‘Business Men’, my friend Roy wrote an absurd, bouncy march for the start of the piece where the ‘men’ did a formation ‘parade’ with jackets on our heads and ties on our foreheads.
 
Collaboration
Maybe it was because of this that I felt bold enough to show Roy a few lyrics I had scrawled: ‘Sheep’s Clothing’ and ‘Boys Aren’t All Bad’ (which had arch delivery and rhythm inspired by the aforementioned ‘Money’). I also wrote a song called ‘I Am a Time Bomb’.
 




Fulham Broadway - as mentioned in Ian Dury’s ‘What a Waste’ - was the nearest tube station, a good 15 minutes’ walk from our house. It was a walk I always seemed to be doing alone in the damp and dark - an activity that required focus and vigilance. One evening there had been more than the usual amount of dodgy looks and cat calls: a group passed, enveloping and expelling me like an amoeba absorbing its food. Later, a car careered past and a lad leaned half his body out the window to shout at me: ‘VD, VD, VD!’ I was almost home when a small group coming the other way passed close and purely on reflex, I punched one of them in the ribs (I was jumpy, it was a dumb idea, never repeated). He broke away and gave chase for a bit and I ran all the way to the front door. No great trauma – but a thing. 
 
The men who walk the dark
They mumble as I pass
They have me in their sights
But am I really dressed to kill?
The echoes of my feet, the shadows in the street, all stop when I stand still.
– ‘I Am a Time Bomb’
 
Building a song
The song took shape in a few sessions in the basement. I came with a rough suggestion of the vocal line and Roy (aka Michael) worked his talent, experience and craft on the song structure and musical choices. He liked the result of our collaboration enough to mention it to his producer. 
 
Tick-Tock
When I got into the recording studio (with Andy Arthurs, Phil Chambon and Roy aka Michael) I was nervous, due to my lack of knowledge and modest vocal ability. The instrumentation of the piece was put in place. Compelling beats conveyed an alarmed heartbeat. I sang the verses and ‘Michael Process’ sang backup lines and then the producer said it needed something extra: a voiceover at the top, to set the context for the song. I wrote something and read it. I was asked to do it again in a breathy voice – I thought, hm, ok, fear can be breathy, right? Then a phrase was needed to punctuate and someone came up with ‘Or I’ll explode on you!’ It’s a logical extension of the Time Bomb metaphor, but I had misgivings - together with the breathy intro, wouldn’t this give the song a sexual slant? The studio clock is always ticking (whoops, a pun) and I couldn’t propose anything else that had as effective an impact for that moment of the song structure.
 
On the 45
The image for the sleeve of the 45 was shot in Elephant and Castle, at the entrance to a grimy pedestrian tunnel. I am looking back over my shoulder and carrying shoes to suggest a need to be fleet of foot. I wore my then most prized garment: a black patterned satin gentleman’s jacket, accessorized with a glittered pink scarf from the Kings Road and dangly earrings (the 80’s was ALL ABOUT EARRINGS). Over-plucked eyebrows, intense eye makeup and (god help me) permed, crimped hair completed the ‘look.’
 
I’m looking at the cover design now. Graphic designers then worked with Letraset – did some of the letters come adrift? Or was the uneven, drooping lettering a deliberate, if reserved, nod to punk design?

​B side
On the flip side was an instrumental track – the pompous, infectious, comical march Roy had written for ‘Business Men’. 

We sold the records at our shows, with the ‘Business Men’ track (the ‘B side’) facing out. Yes, Three Women had merch! Pink t-shirts with our logo (a surreal line drawing of a shoe created by artist Tessa Schneideman). It was a strappy, high-heeled sandal with toes, but an absent foot

I was too terrified to imagine myself even as an aspiring pop star - it was more the act of creation that compelled me. I played ‘Time Bomb’ to the other two Three Women and Tessa said: ‘It’s beneath you.’ I had thought Tessa would understand the concept of a message delivered in an accessible format – wasn’t that what we did with our shows? Doesn’t pop (like comedy) allow for a message to be at once serious and not serious? I felt I had failed. Failed my own brief: to create a feminist pop song. 
 
I put it behind me. Someone posted ‘Time Bomb’ on YouTube a number of years ago and a couple of my drama school students managed to discover it. ‘Great,’ I said to them. ‘My decades of (pre-digital) ground-breaking physical theatre work are undocumented … but this, you see!’ 
 
The past will rise up
In 2021, I received a Facebook message from someone compiling an album of 80’s electro-pop, wanting to include ‘Time Bomb’.
 
Brené Brown tells us to be vulnerable, to get comfortable with discomfort. Clown teaches us to view ‘failure’ as creative opportunity.
 
I contacted Roy who contacted the producer who okayed the rights for the track to go on the album. This unexpected resurfacing of ‘Time Bomb’ has had a wonderful outcome. I am working on a new mystery project and am once again, and more prolifically, collaborating with my talented musician friend. It is now decades later and we are working, not side by side in a basement in Fulham, but by email between two hemispheres. 
 
Timebomb today
Feminism today is more nuanced and I can’t help looking back critically as I listen to ‘Time Bomb’ again.***
 
Michael Process definitely made good music. It’s a catchy, well-crafted track, sounding of its era, yet satisfyingly fresh.
 
Flawed metaphor or not, ‘I Am a Time Bomb’ is still uncomfortably relevant.
 
I wonder what you might make of it?
 
Listen to  'I Am a Timebomb' - as randomly posted on YouTube in 2009.

 FOOTNOTES:
* Among many other things, Roy Nicolson co-wrote and played on ‘I Eat Cannibals’ by Toto Coelo. 
  He also released records as Michael Process.
 
** On the subject of pop in general - a bit of tangential trivia/unnecessary namedrop: my 1982 wedding dress (a black Lois Lane affair with a pillbox hat) was made by Natasha Korniloff, who, as well as designing ‘Follies Berserk’ for Three Women, had designed the gorgeous White Clown costume for her then-lover David Bowie in the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video. 
 
*** ‘Don’t take me for a whore’ – was written before awareness of the importance of being an ally for sex-workers. A few lines were added under pressure of time in the studio: ‘The city is a warzone’ had the right argument, ‘I am a deadly weapon’ is misleading and ‘There’s gonna be a big explosion’ – is off target. My intention for the song was a critique of a real situation rather than a revenge fantasy.


​Thanks to Kelly Burke for her invaluable assistance in reading and editing previous drafts of this blog post. 


If you'd like to support the blog - or to help make possible the writing of the Dark Clown book - go here.

I came across this image I had posted on Instagram in 2019 - a reminder of so many things.

Can we see this image as a red nose awaiting your next pratfall, but without any obligation to take it seriously? I know  - ouch - sometimes it takes a while before we see the funny side.
Or perhaps it's better to say it's an invitation to take it philosophically? Or (let's keep it simple) an invitation to forget philosophy and take it with a breath and a shrug ... and move on into the next beat, the continually renewing 'Now'?

I say all of this as a reminder to myself of course. Shrug and the chips on the shoulder will flitter off onto the floor
.
This image is a bit like a red nose but it's also like an eye - a clown's-eye-view?
​
My clown 'coat of arms' has the motto 'Dignity in No Dignity'.
I have a healthy dark humour, but, as I continue on my journey with my Dark Clown work, more and more often, people pick up on the compassion that work evokes. I am currently reading 'The Clown, from Heart to Heart' by Ton Kurstjens.

​The poem below was written in 2015 and occurs earlier on the blog. Maybe it will come to someone today (whichever day that may be) at just the right moment.

The Clown

Roll the drums and raise the curtain

chaos is glory and uncertainty, certain.

The facts are all useless,

speak nonsense instead -

because down is up when you stand on your head.

How delightful it is to be defective -

a kick in the pants brings a fresh perspective:

serious is stupid, dignity overrated -
 
the fairground mirrors are all silver-plated.

Deliberately misread the riot act -

know that smart is never as clever as the cracked. 

Step up, step inside, 

make failure your friend -

bake a cake with sawdust

make despair wag its rear end.


Let identity slip

balloon, string, fingertip

transform:

artichoke, angel, bookcase, fish.

Let loose your grip, tumble,   

stub your toe, trip

and blow your nose with a victory trumpet.

Dance badly, cry buckets.

let us see you survive, 

then hang out your unholy laundry to dry - 

for chaos is glory 

and clumsiness divine

and the buddah 

is always known by his smile

For my Alchemy of Archetypes course, I was inspired to work with Frankie Armstrong and Janet Rodgers' book ‘Acting and Singing With Archetypes.’  and to combine the journeys with mask work. Trestle Theatre Company sell a set of 8 archetype half-masks. But now when I teach, I work with 10 Archetypes. I commissioned a Maiden mask from British mask-maker Stephen Jon Cooper. And I found, in the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre giftshop, a papier-mâché skull mask. I didn’t buy it when I first saw it but something was planted in me and I made a phone call. ‘Yes, we just have the one left’. ‘Hold it for me!’ and I dashed across town to buy it.
 
Archetypes Online
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, I adapted to run my Alchemy of Archetypes workshop online, without masks, using the process of stepping in and stepping out as described in Frankie and Janet’s book but also as I learned it from theatre practitioner Mollie Guilfoyle who ran Soylent Theatre People’s Theatre, creating plays that included masked and unmasked characters which demanded a shared level of ‘heightened’ playing (more physical / not-naturalism). In most of my teaching, I encourage a playing state which is both physically embodied and imaginatively immersed. My experience learning with Butoh performers (Sankai Juku, Natsu Nakajima and UK-based Yumino Seki), planted the seed for surrender to the essence. My great respect for comedy and clown also brings forward the joy of play and the joy of otherness.

How I came to develop the Death Archetype:
Inspiration was always there in memento mori paintings and illustrations of Death and the Maiden, and
in recent years, the work of Hungarian artist Zsuzsanna Ujj. I took her images below as inspiration for the character of Gloriana, in a  freely-adapted student production  of ‘The Revengers Tragedy’
at RADA in order to give Vindice’s dead girl friend a presence and a voice in the play.

The process for playing the Archetype of Death includes a warmup guided by the skeleton and celebrating joint articulations. 
 
‘Enjoy your bones as you move.’ I repeat Viola Spolin’s phrase from her book ‘Theatre Games for the Lone Actor’. Spolin says: Feel your skull. Feel your skull with your skull. 
 
Next follows a Carnival-esque ‘Dance your Bones’. Tom Waits’ track ‘Singapore’ has a perfect rhythm and is dark and downbeat but still jaunty.
I give side prompts during dance to get people to raise elbows, explore hips, think of empty eye sockets and explore teeth and jaw. Have fun playing with what funny things your legs can do. And then the hips. Death can be as dry as dust, but s/he/they can be a bit cheeky as well.
Towards the end of the track, everyone is at the Skeleton Ball, and dance together (if online, it’s fun to play ‘peekaboo’ by coming and going out of the screen).
 
Set up for the Immersion / Guided Journey:
Dina Glouberman invented ‘Imagework’. You use the body-mind’s ability to access knowledge intuitively by allowing spontaneous images or sensings of metaphors which can contain helpful information of issues and allow, through inhabiting and moving and calling in mentors or adopting different viewpoints, a transformation of unhelpful fixed patterns. The work includes imaginal journeys - for example, you can visit the House of Health; The House of Sleep; The House of Time; the House of Money - there are steps to pass through and it's possible to gain some startlingly helpful insights. 
 
On an advanced course, Dina led us on a journey to meet Death. And  most of us were empowered to find how calming it was to have that experience. Many of us found that Death is just a doorkeeper. That's their job. They're not scarily coming after you with a knife, they're just very patient. And very pragmatic. 
 
Death The Doorkeeper
Can you get a sense of this expression of Death, the functionary? For your voice: use your bones, or use your parchment skin or use the atmosphere; the dry, possibly dusty or slightly chill environment Death is in. Is there a table? On the table there is a ledger. Do you have a thermos? Is there a clock on the wall – does it tick? Are there no hands on the clock?  You can be whatever gender expression you like. What are you wearing? A poorly cut suit? A drab skirt and cardigan? Summon an image of an empty office space, a grey-hued Kafka-esque scene. Film director Roy Andersson in his film 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence’ evokes a cold-colour-palette world where figures with pasty faces stand in uninspiring, pragmatic surroundings. See image below.

Preparation for Immersion / Guided Journey
Participants are invited to close your eyes, if you are willing, but to stay safe in the space, do crack your eyelids open to see where you are stepping.
 
Immersion / Guided Journey
The 'journey' allows participants to explore Death in her/his/their workplace. First, participants are invited to visualise how they this Archetype of Death, to invite a spontaneous sensing or visualisation – the way inspiration delivers that he/she/they appear for you in this moment - then to step in and transform in shape and texture.
 
There you are, in your place of work. Just a functionary. Long hours, but you’re used to it. What does it sound like in there? Is there a desk in the room beside you? With a ledger on it? Is there a clock? Perhaps a filing cabinet you never use. You're on duty. There beside the door. It's a slow day today. So you're just patiently there: and your mantra is: ‘I am the inevitable.’ Sing it, speak it, chant it, or hum while thinking it.
 
The 'journey' continues with Death meeting a succession of characters: old man, young man, maiden, dog, child. Their names are crossed off and Death ushers them through the door.

There may be little admin tasks in the lulls. A pencil to sharpen? A sip of tea? Or just waiting. 
 
When Death's breaktime rolls round, I encourage participants to explore: What do you like to do in your break? Do you have a stand-up comedy set that you’ve been working on? A nice ‘tight five’ for the next open mic? What’s your catch phrase? Is it: ‘I am the inevitable’? Are you working up a tap routine? Are you practicing to juggle? Or is there a song that that you're working on? Do the lyrics include: ‘I am the inevitable’? Flamenco dancing? Where you rattle your bones like castanets? 

Very, very occasionally Death gets to go up and get someone. Up in the sun. But it's rare, you have to wait for orders.

You are good at your job, it may be hard work on your feet, but you’re used to it.
'I am the inevitable’ …
 
Step out step in:
And in this next moment, I'm going to invite you to take a small step backwards or to the side like a hand coming out of a glove. You're going to step yourself out. Don't open your eyes. Just step out for a moment. So you can feel the difference: feet on the floor, crown toward the ceiling - the normal self. 
And then just step back in so that you can prove to yourself that you can access that Archetype again. Yes. ‘I am the inevitable’ - their memories, their physicality, the quality of their skin. Go to your favourite moment, either from the dance or from the most vivid moment or from the most boring moment …
 
And once again, breathe and breathe and just slip out like a hand coming out of a glove.
 
And be sure to transition gently. Respect what you've done. Respect the transformation of the body.
twinkle your fingers and toes. Shimmy like a dog coming out of a puddle (as per Frankie Armstrong and Janet Rodger's journeys) and then place your hands either side of your face and remove that imaginary mask and set it very respectfully somewhere safe for now.
 
If you are feeling cold after the Journey:
This is Donna Eden’s Triple Warmer exercise from her book Energy Medicine. It’s a Chinese Medicine meridian, governing the adrenal gland.
https://www.edenmethodvictoria.com/triple-warmer
Mainly used for soothing nerves or when overheated, you can run Triple Warmer in the opposite direction to warm-up, if cold.
Rub your hands. Place the palm of your right hand on the ring finger of your left hand. Smooth up the slight outside of the forearm, upper arm, the back-ish of the neck, behind the ear and up over the ear to the temple. Do it three times.
Repeat on other side (x3).
 
Moving on to work with Text
I use a monologue I pieced together for the character of the dead Gloriana from the adapted version of ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’ and I also use a slightly adapted piece of text from Selena Godden’s book ‘Mrs Death Misses Death’.
 
Moving on to work with Improv
I work with the practitioner in the mask (or without, if online), responding to how they are in the space, or asking the 'mask' questions and seeing what arises. To play Death’s vaudeville aspect, I sometimes suggest the player sings ‘Chatanooga Choo Choo’. One course participant on an in-person workshop (playing Death) managed to entice a wary course participant out of their chair and on to the performing area to come aboard the ‘train’ and follow Death in the song, conga-style.
 
Literary references for the Death Archetype:
Philip Pullman ‘His Dark Materials’
Selena Godden ‘Mrs Death Misses Death’
Markus Zusak ‘The Book Thief’

Myth:
Charon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon
Also Anubis, Yama, Hermes, Mercury, Valkyries, Xolotl and Vanth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp
 
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I recently inaugurated a new Dark Clown Scenario.

Like Fox and Maiden, it has a Fairytale inspiration. As a child, I was fascinated by the story of The Little Mermaid. 

Here’s an edited excerpt from the Wikipedia synopsis of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale: ‘The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, visits the Sea Witch who lives in a dangerous part of the ocean. The witch willingly helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue and beautiful voice, as the Little Mermaid has the most enchanting voice in the world. The witch warns the Little Mermaid that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body, yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives. 
​
(The Mermaid will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam upon the waves.)
She agrees, swims to the surface and drinks the potion. The liquid feels like a sword piercing through her body and she passes out. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace, even though she is mute. Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step.’
 
The Little Mermaid Scenario is a game for two players. It is based on the particular pain of not having one’s suffering understood … can you relate? Or is it only me? The scenario features the Prince gazing lovingly at the newly-legged Mer-girl  and paying her compliments. She is mute, but inside she is in agony. Two kinds of pain – physical pain and the psychological agony of not being seen. The Mermaid player will use their voice and body to communicate their agony while the Prince player is unmoved by it. Imagine you are watching a film where we see the ‘subtext’ or ‘inside a character’s head’, invisible to the outside world and other characters.
 
I aim to teach the Dark Clown work with maximum care and clarity and course participants learn to travel from the light (Red Nose Clown) to the Dark in a step-by-step process. For all the tragedies of the pandemic, the plus-side of teaching online is that it prompted a finessed breaking down of the craft involved in preparing for the Scenarios. I set specific tasks and people try them in break-out rooms, building a muscle memory for the skills involved.
 
First, the Prince player needs to work on delivering lines such as ‘You are so beautiful. Your face, your hair. And yet you are silent. Oh how I’d love to hear your voice. I can imagine it trilling and cascading, the way your hair cascades and coils. Ah, How sweet it would be to hear you sing.’ - all this must in a poetic, longing, legato way. As with the The Beloved scenario (I’ve not written about The Beloved scenario on the blog yet) - there must be no complaint, no sarcasm, no reproach, no cynicism, no blame, no emotional blackmail. The Prince is a support role – it is the Mermaid where the Dark Clown work proper happens.
To advance the game, The Prince can move on to: 'How it would please me if you would dance with me. Come, let's waltz! A fast and beautiful Waltz.'

Here is the preparatory step for the Mermaid player. The conceit of the exercise is that the Prince will not see or react to anything you are saying while you job is to express the agony you are feeling. ‘It hurts!!!! It burns. Knives driving through my feet!!! Oh God oh God. Even just standing here hurts. I. AM. IN. AGONY.’ Then, to raise the game: ‘Can’t you SEE? I can't speak but inside I am screaming. SCREAMING. Agony. Agony.’ Of course using all the Dark Play strategies of contrast, variety of timbre, managing the audience’s physiology (‘laughing gear’) etc … 'No don't make me dance! Please - aiiiiiighhhhh! But you can't hear me can you? Searing hot knives! '

The two players are then set to improvise / play the scene.
 
People on the course found it (pardon the pun) painfully funny (Troubled Laughter).
 
*Side note: This is my favourite fairy tale. Which somehow mystifies me. Was I inspired by her resolve? I felt very ineffectual and cowardly as a child (I feel fairly much the same now, actually). Was I inspired by her ability to withstand pain? To transcend pain to achieve her goals (walk like a human)? Or was there something I deeply related to regarding her muteness - that her colossal suffering would go unseen? As a very anxious child, it seemed that I was often out of step with the normal world, witnessing how others all seemed to be coping unperturbedly, while I was invisibly trapped in some ghastly alternate realm.

 

​Trigger warning: pain, torture and some rather pernickety explanation. 
 
One of my Dark Clown scenarios is called 'The Menu' (subtitle, or 'For Her' - think of Don Draper-era gentleman ordering for his date).
 
Before we begin, some elements are put in place* – see below – but for a better reading experience I’ll get straight into the setup now.
 
It’s for two players (any gender). 
Imaginary Circumstances: I invite the players to imagine they are two prisoners in an anonymous torture realm. They are put in the ghastly predicament of being forced to choose the day's torture for the other. 
A loud voice (me, in the role of Controller): ‘The first prisoner will choose for their comrade. NOW!’
Prisoner One pants or grizzles with anxiety** Choices flash before their eyes, each one more horrific and problematic than the other.
Prisoner Two has the predicament of high-stakes uncertainty (I instruct frequent clocking of the other player – the head-turn of the clock acts like a laughter nudge). 

Prisoner Two is aware that their fellow is in charge of their well-being (or rather, unwell being). 
Prisoner Two is also aware that under duress (humans do not think well or kindly under duress).
(Both prisoners are also aware that is something is chosen that is not sufficiently dreadful, then something even worse will await them.)
Hesitations, false starts, stutters can all be used rhythmically.
Prisoner One finally chooses something. 
Prisoner Two makes a yelp or other involuntary sound. Their job is to really imagine what that would feel like, and to make a sound of anticipating that pain (and indignity sometimes). I just did this on a recent workshop and the player whose partner announced ‘stoning’ – portrayed such shock. Her eyes widened ina compelling disbelief and something happened to her body almost as if she had just been stoned.
Two must then make a transition from this trauma, must somehow put this abomination aside because now they have something equally? more? dreadful to do. They must now choose a torture for ‘Prisoner One’. 
Two is so distressed they cannot think (but the performer inside is making rhythmic sounds of distress to work the audience's laughing gear). 
Perhaps they take too long (the delay is now excruciating for ‘Prisoner One’.
Perhaps the Controller yells: ‘Taking too long, Prisoner One, choose again!’
Problem for both of them. One’s reprieve is nothing in the face of having to again contemplate a torture choice for Two. 
A squeal from number Two. The tension is held or ramping (perhaps the prisoners play a call response rhythm of contrasting sounds), stretching out the suspense for the audience.
Depending on the sensing of the impulse and the moment, perhaps at this point One shouts something very horrific (some maiming may be involved).
Or, perhaps ….
Prisoner One (coping with the stress and regret at having already traumatised his fellow, continues to painfully dither).
Unable to deal with the stress of waiting any longer to hear their own torture (and secretly, attending to the need to adjust the audience’s breathing with a softer timbre), Two might, from the corner of their mouth, begin to urgently whisper: 'Choose, choose something ... Just choose!' They have been forced in to the ghastly and absurd predicament of urging the other to name their next harming.
 
About two minutes playing-time is plenty for this exercise.
 
‘Thank you!’ I will say. ‘Well done, well done. Step out of it, everybody have a shimmy. Good work.’
In an in-person situation, I will ask the audience (the watchers of the exercise) to hug the players***  I also prompt the players to hug each other. 
 
*Preparation for this exercise
Of course, there is the preliminary training leading up to this: bodies prepared, voices prepared, key comedy craft given, Dark Side Play on a number of the Marginalised Emotions, my talk on the aims, origin, inspirations and ethics of the work. The possibility (rare, but possible) of upset explained and normalised and Upset Procedure put in place. 
 
For Red Nose Clown I transparently let people know that I may be speaking to them in the role of grumpy Clown Professor. I explain the source of this (the Lecoq/Gaulier pedagogy) and explain some of the many reasons for this: to help them feel some of the useful alertness that is useful for the clown, to keep them I the present moment, to stop them going into their hears or the future and theyebylosing contact with their flexible, expanded physicality and contact with their audience etc, etc. In the Dark Clown work, I explain that I will play the role of a Controller. I remind the watchers that they are to be themselves (although the Dark Clown player will be looking at them as if they are an invited audience in the torture facility, and responding to them from within that reality). I also let people know that I speak in tow voices - the Controller, but also in a voice where I am offering side-coaching in my role as course leader or feeding in text.
 
I put a pre-step in place where people name some types of torture. Sadly there are many. Humanity, it seems, just loves to inventively hurt its fellows. I suggest a number of methods I have researched. 
 
I also check whether participants have any no go areas e.g. ‘You can do anything but don’t do anything to my teeth.’ Or ‘Anything, but nothing to do with fire.’ Consent is important and this step can take some stress off each player.
 
Always before beginning, and I put this in place when I work with Red Nose Clown too. I make it clear that a course participant is free to leave an exercise if they feel the wrong level of discomfort. 
 
** see the previous post on this blog the importance of the players’ use of audible breath (among other things) as a way of working rhythm and keeping the audiences’s laughing gear ready and flexible.
 
*** At the start of the Dark Clown section of the work, I give a recommendation for hugging, it helps to soothe the adrenal system. I also acknowledge that those who are hug-averse can offer a bow with hand gesture of thanks instead. I also lead the whole group periodically with an adrenal soothing exercise from Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine work.
 

An alphabetised list of Key Phrases for Dark Clown practice (as part of the 'Clown & Dark Clown Course' and the 'Level 2 Dark Clown Course').
 
Having chosen to arrange this list alphabetically makes this post a bit of a deconstructed Scavenger Hunt - but it all flows together in the room. The Clown & Dark Clown course progresses in a way that is fun and enlivening. There are practical tasks and exercises for each principle and we get there step by step - these principles and techniques become understood and assimilated experientially. The Level 2 Dark Clown Course builds on ground gained and gives more opportunity to play with the Dark Clown Scenarios e.g. this one.
 
A believable verisimilitude of pain and distress
Verisimilitude means a likeness, or a portrayal.
If the clown player looks like they are enjoying their pain, the audience cannot experience the Troubled Laughter which is one of the defining characteristics of the Dark Clown. In order to Implicate the Audience (see below), the Dark Clown player needs to create / present ‘a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress’ (using rhythm, timbre, energy and imagination; using a set of given imaginary circumstances).
 
​Clown/ Red Nose Clown 
There are many different types of Clown, for the purposes of teaching on the Clown & Dark Clown course, I use ‘Red Nose Clown’ as a handy distinction from Dark Clown. (I use Red Nose to refer mostly to the Lecoq-lineage of clown regardless of whether a player uses a painted or rubber nose or different coloured nose or no nose at all in their clowning).
 
Comedy Craft 
This is a collection of principles and techniques (rhythm, phrasing, musicality, timbre, clocks, beats, contrast, repetition, call backs, nudges, alternation, acceleration/deceleration, escalation (snowballing), spatial embroidery, micropauses etc) that can then be applied to generate laughter. In order to have Troubled Laughter, we need first to have the ability to reliably provoke/create laughter. Comedy Craft plus audience awareness (and calibration) is then applied to generate laughter in Dark contexts.
As part of Comedy Craft, I emphasise that laughter is a physiological phenomenon – I speak of priming* (priming as you prime a  motor – see below) the ‘laughing gear’. 

Carlo Boso, Commedia dell’Arte Teacher and director of TAG Teatro di Venezia (in a London workshop circa 1990):
‘It’s easy to make people laugh, all you need to do is to control people’s breathing and their heart rate.’ (nowadays I prefer to say ‘affect’ rather than control).
 
Cost / Palpable cost
In a Red Nose Clown exercise, we love to see the Clown thinking and reacting - for example, when another clown in the scene/exercise is being praised. We love the micro expressions, the tiny momentary reactions or 'tells'* of humanity which the ‘Sad Normals’ (see below) take considerable pains to mask or suppress. In Dark Clown I call this the Cost. The psychological Cost - the visible processing of thoughts and emotions of humanity in extremis.
In class I may well call out as an instruction: ‘we want to see the cost’. With the Red Nose Clowns, we love to see their humanity, their emotions. We specially enjoy seeing this in the eyes: the micro-expressions of pride, affront, surprise, confusion, disappointment or other thought processes. Also in tiny head turns or spontaneous micro gestures, or the breath. 
In Dark Clown work, the audience gets to see how the Dark Clown player responds to a command or predicament where they must make a terrible choice, how they look when they are wrestling with themselves in the moment before they must jettison they dignity, or betray a fellow ‘prisoner’, and how they look when (within the scene) they must live with what they just did for the rest of their lives.
 
Dark Clown as distinct from Philippe Gaulier’s Bouffon work 
Bouffon plays Satire – Dark Clown does not have the luxury to play satire.
Historically (it is said) the outcast had a day of the year to enter the church or village and mock those who had privilege. The Dark Clown does not have the luxury to mock. The Dark Clown is concerned with how to survive the next 30 seconds.
 
Dark Side Play
Once players (course participants) are clear on the aims and parameters of the work – and then on the given predicament (for the exercise or scenario) – with its context and stakes, the play can begin. At this point we are looking for physical and verbal motifs, as well as the player being strategic with rhythms and vocal timbre / breath, space (where possible). Dark Side Play works the Comedy Craft with the Marginalised Emotions in a Dark context.
 
Dramaturgy and implication
There isn’t time on a Clown & Dark Clown course to deal with the subject of Dark Clown Dramaturgy. it will be a course that requires Level Two Dark Clown - but here’s a brief note:
Just as the Marx Brothers films need the breathing space of the lover’s plots, Dark Clown dramaturgies are allowed strategic moments of pathos and poetry. (In the context of teaching, I discourage moments of pathos and poetry because it deprives the student of learning the less-familiar Dark Clown craft. But when organising a dramaturgy for the audience, or in a longer-duration improvisation with an audience in mind, we can certainly go there for a beat or so. Wonderful if the pathos still keeps the audience on the hook, though – take a look at the Seal scenario in the Dark Clown Documentary or consider the dramaturgy for The Maids - i.e. the moment towards the end where one sister is reading the lines of her dying poisoned 'sister' while the audience looks on.) 
 
Enforced Performance: 
For some exercises we imagine a prison scenario – the purpose of this is to Raise the Stakes* to help the release into the Marginalised Emotions. I may also mention Life or Death Stakes.
 
Extraordinary Physiological Response
With sufficient (imaginary, of course) pressure, logical thought stalls, emotion short-circuits and the player can find themselves releasing into a panicked amygdala response, allowing the audience the possibility to witness a  spontaneously-released extraordinary physiological response (a pulsing brow vein, an involuntary twitch or flinch ... ). This is one of the compelling features of the Dark Clown work. 
The EPR is in fact a motif. This is something you can see in Clown, comedy and Commedia work where the performer creates motifs (succinct, repeatable gestures, often combining sound and movement, and aimed to charm the audience or to be a laughter nudge for the audience.) The EPR is a motif of a different flavour, but still designed to create laughter, or prime the laughing gear for future potential laughter.

Hyper-vigilance (one could say it's a physiological state, but I list it as one of the Marginalised Emotions)
Hyper-vigilance is a natural result of fear. It’s when you are highly alert to any movement or sound, perceiving it as a potential source of threat. In Dark Clown work, this replaces the 'complicité' style of eye-contact and responsiveness of the Red Nose Clown. In an enforced performance scenario, the player will give ‘a believable verisimilitude of hyper-vigilance’.
 
Humanity in extremis
Dark Clown is in extremis or trying to survive. It is a more existential look at the human condition (yes some other kinds of Clown can go there too, but usually via moments of pathos).
The Dark Clown work I teach resonates with a life-long personal questions: Come torture or duress, what choices would I make?  When given appalling choices (impossible choices), how does one feel as one continues to exist after whatever ghastly choice was made (under duress)? When oppression is so great that courage is punished by death (or worse) - what are the options? When exactly does one succumb to force? What does the word 'force' really mean? 
 
High Stakes Predicament
Course participants are invited to imagine ghastly or highly constrained / oppressive circumstances in certain exercises and scenarios in order to help fuel release into Marginalised Emotions, using Dark Side Play (comedy craft) in a way that hopefully produces laughter-provoking text or sounds and motifs (including Extraordinary Physiological Responses). (See below for explanation of Stakes)
 
Implicating the Audience
I use the term Implicating the Audience to refer to the Dark Clown practice where the performer or ensemble manage to create the conditions whereby the audience feel that they are somehow 'on the hook'/at cause/somehow responsible/or that they just feel guilty watching/or that their comfort is in stark contrast to the player onstage portraying the suffering. Although all audiences know that they paid for their ticket and walked in to watch a composed performance, they can, via the suspension of disbelief, feel conflicted or shamed in their witnessing and even to a degree, culpable. While no one may actually think: 'Oh my, I must rush on stage and help these people', they feel compelled and conflicted that 'It is not me suffering over there.' 
Allied to this is the Dark Clown concept of Troubled Laughter whereby the audience laughs and at some level feels troubled or shamed or conflicted in their laughter.
 
Impossible choices
As with Enforced performance, or inside an Enforced scenario, the player/prisoner may have to make a choice. We will see the Cost and we will witness Marginalised Emotions, possibly some Extraordinary Physiological responses.
 
Laughing Gear
An Australian expression meaning mouth – but I mean it to refer to the heart, lungs and diaphragm (eyes and mouth/jaw are also important). Key principle: Carlo Boso Commedia dell’Arte Teacher - TAG Teatro di Venezia said (workshop, London circa 1986): ‘It’s easy to make people laugh, all you need to do is to control people’s breathing and their heart rate.’ Nowadays I prefer to say ‘affect’ rather than control. 

Laughter Nudge 
We all show that moment when sitting next to your friend in the serious seminar when they nudge you in the arm or your ribs and they will probably do it again and again. Or substitute an eyebrow raise or mouth movement or just a head turn. And do remember, if your friend was funny, they'd do this at the perfect moments to keep you going or to bring back the game. In the context of Dark Clown work sound motifs or physical tics or surprising changes in breath can all be employed with the aim of keeping the audience laughing or keeping them ready to laugh. In my C-words blogpost I talk about Creating the Conditions for Comedy. When I am teaching I often say the phrase: Creating the Conditions for Laughter, and yes' it's related to 'Priming' see here below. 
 
Marginalised Emotions
Imagine human expression were expressed as a line or continuum. Say that on one side we have the expression we might most often see in the Red Nose Clown, e.g. joy, silliness, loveliness, pride, bashfulness … near the centre of the line there may be grumpiness, crossness, even anger. But what about the other half of the line? Here we are heading for the expressions of the Dark Clown and what I call the Marginalised Emotions – such as: hyper-vigilance, fear, distress, shame, anguish, regret, guilt, humiliation, indignity, disbelief, grief, shock, absurdity, desolation, dread, despair, physical pain, horror, terror and existential dread. (Listed in no special or incremental order). N.B.: No 'emotional recall' is used in Dark Clown work. ('Emotional recall' is a technique used by some Stanislavsky teachers whereby the performer deliberately recalls an upsetting moments from their own life in order to summon emotion – we do not do this).  The Dark Clown work relies on the natural human ability to pretend in a set of imaginary circumstances.
 
Priming the Laughing Gear
Enlivening your own agility with your own heart, lungs and diaphragm so as to be able to affect your audience’s Laughing Gear.
What does priming mean?  (I use it to mean getting the ‘laughing gear’: i.e. heart, lungs and diaphragm nice and flexible/available; but this following definition refers to its everyday meaning of readying an engine)

1. Fill the oil pan with a quality Break-In Oil.
2. Prime the system by turning the oil pump with a power drill and Priming Tool, or with an external Engine Preluber.
3. Rotate the crankshaft by hand, while priming the system. This ensures that oil gets around all the bearings and into all the internal oil passages.

 
*Raise the Stakes 
Definition of 'raise the stakes' from the Collins English Dictionary:
a. to increase the amount of money or valuables hazarded in a gambling game. b. to increase the costs, risks, or considerations involved in taking an action or reaching a conclusion. the Libyan allegations raised the stakes in the propaganda war between Libya and the United States.
 
Ridiculous (a judicious use of the ridiculous)
Adding a skilful touch of the ridiculous to a ghastly situation is a useful technique to surprise the audience into Troubled Laughter. For example, in the Buzzer exercise (an image here), players employ clocks and beats and express the appropriate Marginalised Emotions (strategically, using comedy craft and with audience awareness). It’s helpful/an extra level of skill to add something ridiculous - e.g.: a feigned electric shock, presented believably, yet which causes the Dark Clown player to spin in a circle like a wind-up toy. Another example: in the setup for The Somali Pirates scenario, I give the players a back story where there is a small past niggle between the two hostages. They are instructed not to play this niggle, but to allow it to bleed into their reactions to the other within the larger predicament. This layering can produce compelling results – a portrayal of a genuine predicament of suffering, inflected with little micro-beats of flawed humanity – which, once released, can in turn release a further micro-beat (or sound/movement motif) of Marginalised Emotion - i.e. ‘Oh no, I was just selfish, in such an awful situation! I feel shame at my own behaviour.’
 
‘Sad Normals’ 
This is a playful teaching phrase to encourage the compassion of the clown performer – this is us in our normal life (in the supermarket, travelling to work etc).
 
*Tell
‘A tell in the card game poker is a change in a player's behaviour or demeanour that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. Sometimes a player may fake a tell, hoping to induce their opponents to make poor judgments in response to the false tell. More often, people try to avoid giving out a tell, by maintaining a ‘poker face’ regardless of how strong or weak their hand is.’ - Wikipedia
 
Troubled Laughter
In the intro into the Dark Clown work proper, I usually tell the story of watching a scene in a show I saw in 1980 (mentioned here) where I first experienced what I later came to call Troubled Laughter. From my book-in-progress: “I laughed, while at the same time thinking 'I shouldn’t be laughing at this’. I laughed with a particular sensation in my ribs and lungs. I laughed with hot cheeks. That ‘shouldn’t’ wasn’t simply the transgression of naughtiness, it was something else. I felt awful and I was somehow glad to feel awful because what I was witnessing was a depiction of an appalling predicament. As much as it was ghastly, it was somehow a relief to sit there and make a noise, to find a noise being released out of me; to give expression to a conflicted response via this rhymical release of the breath, to physically and vocally resonate with the stage action.”
 
If this document raises questions about the way the work unfolds on the course – go here.

If you'd like to support the writing on the book, please go here.

oThe painter Tessa Schneideman (see below) turned to me one night at Desmond Jones' Mime School on Kings Road, Chelsea and said 'I want to keep doing this'. We would meet in the lounge room of my basement flat in Marylebone or in the upstairs room that was her studio in Brixton (see me in the suit in front of her canvases below). She was an astonishing painter, but found the work too solitary and turned to performance. Together with Claudia Prietzel trained puppeteer (now a film writer / director), we formed a company called Three Women.

The mime 'everyman' was ready to be refreshed - with a female viewpoint.

We were doing mime, but a lot of it was clown. 
Brabarella was not a take on the Jane Fonda film Barbarella but the story of Cinderella told in lingerie. If you step away from their purpose-built function, bras are fascinating objects. A front-opening maternity bra with a strange panel shape was 'Cindy's' 'apron, and another light-support bra her cleaning rag.  (As a base costume, we all wore the then de-rigeur black unitards - at the time only available from the Gandolfi Dance Shop on Marylebone Road).

As fairy godmother I wore - ok google is not helping me with nomenclature - it was a thing women wore ('all-in-one'? step-ins'?) that was a bra that carried on down to tighten the tummy and ended in suspender clips for stockings - Tessa's mother-in-law somehow had a copious quantity of them that she donated to us. I had a peach-coloured diaphanous front-closing bra attached to the back of that which I made to flap like wings (the fairy costume I never had as a child!). Tessa as 'Cindy' brought on more 'rags' which, with a strike of my wand (was the wand a rolled-up Time Out magazine?) turned into a gown made of cascading tiers of B cups. A mouse (strapless bra upside down on her head like mouse ears) transformed into a blinkered horse (adjustment of headpiece bra - snorting and pawing the ground). Other lightweight bras were slung around the 'horse' and Cindy galloped merrily off whipping the reins. Claudia made a gloriously dashing prince all in black. Upside-down step-ins whose cups suggested 'puffing pants' and a piece of corsetry on each arm as regal sleeves.

Housewives' Circus. We also did a circus performed by 'Housewives' - yes this was the 1980's when that was still a word. Entrance of the Gladiators played and a roving spotlight set the scene for a parade of three women in aprons and respectively headscarf, hairnet and mobcap. There was stilt walking (two large brooms), a bearded-lady (dustpan brush), weightlifting (wooden pastry roller). A high-wire unicycle act (rotary eggbeater), a daredevil motorcyclist (tea-strainer goggles, round jaffle iron as handlebars. An elephant (using an old fashioned hair-bonnet with attached air-tube as a mask). Saucepan lids were cymbals for a hoover-hose snake charmer. 
There was a magic act where a toy panda was trapped beneath a colander and skewers put through then a disappearing act - using the classic clown trope of clown appearing disguised as a member of the audience Claudia would come forward with her handbag and her 'husband'. One night  at BAC, Claudia brought on pop musician Joe Jackson. Tessa (magician) and I ('lovely assistant') would hold a sheet, held in place by a peg: it was triple- not double-folded, so the 'couple' were disappeared, but of course, after the sheet is flourished away, they were revealed crouching at the back. 

Man, there is a hilarious amount of vintage references in this post!

Businessmen ​began with a dance. To a jaunty/plodding music track, three (almost) faceless figures walked in rhythmic patterns backwards and forwards, flat-on like playing cards. Charity-shop jackets were pulled onto heads and the ties were tied on our foreheads and hung between our eyes in front of our noses. Tiny garden stools were carried in like briefcases, then snapped out in dynamic ways (think a fringe-theatre low-tech pre-envisioning of the business cards in America Psycho), then assembled for an inevitable status game with the seating. After a while a blow-up sex doll was brought on. She was naked but for a spiral bound secretary’s notebook covering her, erm, lap (remember short-hand, remember stenography?). There is nothing achieved and no real meeting, but the men use the secretary's listening** for a long winded word salad riff ‘My wife doesn’t understand me. Stand doesn’t wife under my me? Under-wife my stand. Stand me under my wife!’. Phones start to ring. From pockets come phone receivers with curly cords (1980, remember?!). The ‘men’ are in a cat's cradle, choking as a cacophony of ringing grows. 

Three Women performed in Art Centres up and down the UK, toured to Holland, performed in festivals in Denmark and Spain and on British Council tours to Germany. We won an Edinburgh Festival Fringe First for 'High Heels', performed in the London International Mime Festival. Other shows were 'Follies Berserk' (a satire on women in popular performance) and 'Clotted Cream' which featured the ground-breaking piece 'Wounds' directed by the remarkable Hilary Westlake.

* Sadly Tessa's bold and creative life was cut short. I owe her so much. I wish I could find more of her paintings online. You can see a couple of her canvases here below behind me in the piece Businessmen.

** I recently re-watched My Fair Lady - Professor Higgins asks his housekeeper Mrs Pearce 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' (zero cut-away shot for Mrs Pearce's eye-roll - I joke - there would have been no eye-roll, not even the faintest glimmer of an eyebrow lift. Mrs Pearce could not risk anything other than obedient indulgence - her livelihood depends on humouring as well as serving).

#clown #feministclown #womenintheatre #mime #DesmondJones