students from a recent London Workshop When I teach the Clown & Dark Clown course it's most often a 2 day course. Occasionally I teach Clown & Dark Clown (this is the course where people learn Dark Clown at the entry level)* and Dark Clown Level 2 over 4 days. In the Level 2 days, we can cover as many of the Dark Clown scenarios as the energy and focus of the participants will allow.
I recently taught for the wonderful Escola Galega De Tempo Libre in northern Spain. The participants were courageous and full of fun. Many Scenarios were beautifully explored.
I have written before about the Consumer Guilt scenario. One participant was both adept with the mechanics of the tasks and also available to the emotion of the moment, that the exercise brought some sublime pleasure/catharsis to those of us watching.
At the start, he registered high stakes of the predicament/dilemma (coming specifically clean about all the items one owns - the simultaneous needing to be comprehensive in direct conflict with the realising that each added item one also enlarges the possibility of punishment). He also accessed and conveyed the obscenity of possession. He accessed (released into) the shame and contrition, apologising to the metaphorical grandma. He opened to the upper space with weeping and regret. When prompted to say ‘oh god’ , he accessed a profound and spacious regret, conveying a dawning realisation of an irreversible life-long fault.
I then (in my alternating roles as controller / friendly coach) asked him to apologise to Mother Earth. He did this. Then I suggested he address all the resources used to make all the things he owned – and all the resources damaged in the process: ‘I’m sorry landscape disturbed by the excavation of coal’, ‘I’m sorry water used in the manufacture’, ‘I’m sorry air for the pollution of the vehicles that brought the goods to the store’… The audience's laughter was enriched.
After this, he turned to his own existence, his very being part of the horror of consumption. He regretted and apologised for the food he ate, for the cotton in the clothing he wore, for the litres and litres of water he had drunk, for the litres of sun screen he had used, for the carbon monoxide he had exhaled.
At the technical level, this is an example of how to build on laughter with the accumulation of detail, with the repetitive rhythm of lists, with the contrasting sobbing and moans of regret, with the escalation of stakes, with spatially employing the upper and lower performance space (in addition to the horizontal direct to audience space). And all of this done with the appropriate shifts in eye expression. And all of this interspersed with little adrenal surges and
I now say at the beginning of teaching Clown & Dark Clown that the clown is an entity that has all the shifting emotions and fleeting thought processes that the ‘sad normals’** would prefer to not have, or not to be seen having. I also point out how suffering is already part of the portrayal of Red Nose Clown. Dark Clown extends the palette of human expression on offer.
Omg - what a highly technical blog post. I bet it made incredibly dry reading. But in the room, the scenario provided much Troubled Laughter, which is one of the key concepts of the work.
It is natural in the Clown & Dark Clown workshop that people are anxious about where the work is going. I fully acknowledge what a vulnerable place a workshop can be. People come with openness and are working with their psycho-physical being. Many return to review the C&DC workshop. Once the aim and ethos of the work has been assimilated (I speak about it on the workshop and write about it in the FAQ's and here on the blog, but people need to encounter the work in their own being), then people can really get to grips with the Dark Side Play. One of the sentences I now use is that a lot of the work needs the player to be 'a factory of noises'. At it's essence, the work takes a deep, and I always intend ultimately compassionate, look at humanity in extremis. But at a practical level, there is a lot that is mechanical and technical.
* To see the reasons for this – go here.
** I explain that ‘sad normals’ is my joke term (a teaching tool) for myself in the supermarket. There is no normal. I also explain that things I say are teaching statements, not overall truths. Sentences used in teaching serve as prompts – phrases and statements are collections of words that have proven useful in the teaching process to get a result or a shift.
I recently taught for the wonderful Escola Galega De Tempo Libre in northern Spain. The participants were courageous and full of fun. Many Scenarios were beautifully explored.
I have written before about the Consumer Guilt scenario. One participant was both adept with the mechanics of the tasks and also available to the emotion of the moment, that the exercise brought some sublime pleasure/catharsis to those of us watching.
At the start, he registered high stakes of the predicament/dilemma (coming specifically clean about all the items one owns - the simultaneous needing to be comprehensive in direct conflict with the realising that each added item one also enlarges the possibility of punishment). He also accessed and conveyed the obscenity of possession. He accessed (released into) the shame and contrition, apologising to the metaphorical grandma. He opened to the upper space with weeping and regret. When prompted to say ‘oh god’ , he accessed a profound and spacious regret, conveying a dawning realisation of an irreversible life-long fault.
I then (in my alternating roles as controller / friendly coach) asked him to apologise to Mother Earth. He did this. Then I suggested he address all the resources used to make all the things he owned – and all the resources damaged in the process: ‘I’m sorry landscape disturbed by the excavation of coal’, ‘I’m sorry water used in the manufacture’, ‘I’m sorry air for the pollution of the vehicles that brought the goods to the store’… The audience's laughter was enriched.
After this, he turned to his own existence, his very being part of the horror of consumption. He regretted and apologised for the food he ate, for the cotton in the clothing he wore, for the litres and litres of water he had drunk, for the litres of sun screen he had used, for the carbon monoxide he had exhaled.
At the technical level, this is an example of how to build on laughter with the accumulation of detail, with the repetitive rhythm of lists, with the contrasting sobbing and moans of regret, with the escalation of stakes, with spatially employing the upper and lower performance space (in addition to the horizontal direct to audience space). And all of this done with the appropriate shifts in eye expression. And all of this interspersed with little adrenal surges and
I now say at the beginning of teaching Clown & Dark Clown that the clown is an entity that has all the shifting emotions and fleeting thought processes that the ‘sad normals’** would prefer to not have, or not to be seen having. I also point out how suffering is already part of the portrayal of Red Nose Clown. Dark Clown extends the palette of human expression on offer.
Omg - what a highly technical blog post. I bet it made incredibly dry reading. But in the room, the scenario provided much Troubled Laughter, which is one of the key concepts of the work.
It is natural in the Clown & Dark Clown workshop that people are anxious about where the work is going. I fully acknowledge what a vulnerable place a workshop can be. People come with openness and are working with their psycho-physical being. Many return to review the C&DC workshop. Once the aim and ethos of the work has been assimilated (I speak about it on the workshop and write about it in the FAQ's and here on the blog, but people need to encounter the work in their own being), then people can really get to grips with the Dark Side Play. One of the sentences I now use is that a lot of the work needs the player to be 'a factory of noises'. At it's essence, the work takes a deep, and I always intend ultimately compassionate, look at humanity in extremis. But at a practical level, there is a lot that is mechanical and technical.
* To see the reasons for this – go here.
** I explain that ‘sad normals’ is my joke term (a teaching tool) for myself in the supermarket. There is no normal. I also explain that things I say are teaching statements, not overall truths. Sentences used in teaching serve as prompts – phrases and statements are collections of words that have proven useful in the teaching process to get a result or a shift.
the participants in Spain
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