In October 2019, something was bothering me. It had been bothering me for a while. Br*xit. Writing this blog post in COVID-19 days, it seems a dim memory, albeit an event which is still unfolding.

I was hired by a Drama School. I had just a few days in which to teach a group of acting students Clown, and to also create a Clown performance.

The teaching was going well and on Day Two, as time was short, I decided to offer the idea that was visiting itself upon me. I would, as ever, ask for the students' improvisations, ideas and contributions but it's good to have a framework to glue it onto. I checked that they had no other ideas to put forward and that they found the idea appealing to play inside.  

Title: Klown-zit. It's a twist on, but not an allegory for Br*xit. It would also follow a recurring interest of mine in the marginal nature of Clowns, by which I mean Clowns under threat.* 

The Clowns are leaving - they have prepared this presentation as their last show, before taking themselves away and leaving us Sad Normals without them.

For the first show-oriented exercise, I divided the group in two and set them each to improvise a Clown Funeral (classic clown trope - there is a lovely take on this in the 1924 film He Who Gets Slapped). I thought I'd choose one improv or perhaps amalgamate the best ideas from either group into it. They were both strong ideas and the two groups had each worked well together. Great, a problem - two versions of a funeral, yes, we'll use them both and make that work!

One boy was ill and absent for a day or two and on his return, I wanted to find a way to let him feature. I asked the group if they could find a cardboard box - or any kind of box. Ultimately, on show night, he was stationed on stage as the audience waited for the show to begin, holding a shoe box, wearing smart black pants, a white shirt and a sombrero.

Sombrero Clown: Hello Madam, would you like to make a contribution?
You sir? Would you like to make a contribution?
All contributions welcome.
Thank you Madam. Thank you there. Thank you.
Whenever audience members laugh – he opens and closes the box lid to ‘capture the laugh’. The inside of the shoe box reads ‘Laughter Bank.’ He holds it like it's precious.
 
A group of clowns enter. They are singing the Wedding March. They carry aloft a bear who has a red nose and big shoes (red trainers on its feet). They gather in a small U shape around the bear which is now on the floor.
 
Clown with an air of authority: Any last words?
Spotted Clown: Words.
Minnie Mouse Clown: Words.
Clown with an air of authority: (a touch long-sufferingly) Thank you. Any more last words?
Pyjama-clad Clown: Yes. 
They turn to look at him.
Pyjama-clad Clown: Oranges … (they nod, with varying degrees of certainty) Dave …  (they nod as before) ... Knees. (they nod - either touched, or relieved it's over).

Another group enter, including two angel clowns – they are singing the Death March.
 
Minnie Mouse Clown: Oh no, we ‘ve been singing the wrong song!
 
They hold a clown aloft with a gurning death face (tongue out). She opens her eyes and winks at the audience as they cross the stage in front of the first group and resumes her death face. The Death March goes into double time. They place the Goofy gurning clown on the floor and circle sombrely. Someone places a rubber chicken on her chest like a flower. The angels throw tinsel. Group two start to cry. They huddle to cry. The first group of clowns, who have been feeling inadequate and wrong, are suddenly also overcome and join the crying circle too. 

The 'dead' clown raises her head - looks at the group. Her interest is piqued. She approaches, then is overcome, wailing louder than them all.

Clown with an air of Authority notices, congratulates the troupe of clowns: 'Well done, well done!' Shakes hands with Goofy, then turns to the audience to address them. He is flanked by Spotty Clown and the Goofy 'dead' clown.

​The Authority Clown:  Good Evening and welcome to Klown-zit.
A colourful cardboard sign with Klown-zit written on it is unfolded and held up.
 
One of the angel clowns who is actually quite curt and bossy takes over: 'People think that Clowns are stupid and can't do anything properly.' This prompts a series of ridiculous routines including spaghetti being cooked with one clown contorting herself into everything from sink to stove to kitchen table.

The curt Angel: ... And some people think Clowns are Scary ...
​PJ Clown has a moment of terror when his shark slippers come alive. He runs around the stage and clings to another clown for safety - when he looks up, Spotty Clown is doing her best impression of the balloon-holding 'Pennywise'. The moment is defused by the balloon being released and farting round the room.

The curt Angel: But mostly people think clowns are just a big Joke.

​The clowns come in pairs delivering lame jokes (one does the set-up and the other
does the punch).
A man goes to the doctor because he has a clown growing out of his neck.
- The doctor tells him, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.” Boom tish
Why don’t cannibals eat clowns? - Because they taste funny. Boom tish
How big is a clown’s hard drive? - 50 Gigglebytes. Bada ba flop
Two cannibals captured and killed a clown. - They made a laughing stock
out of him.
What’s left of a clown after a bear attack? - Just his funny bone.
Clowns can no longer afford their balloons… - Because of inflation.
Did you ever hear about the unlucky clown? - He tried ten times to make
​the audience laugh, but no pun in ten did. Get it? No pun in ten did … No pun in …
 
What is the gooey red stuff between an elephant’s toes?

... Slow clowns.

There is an act that combines juggling and percussion with a metal tea tray.

There is a sweet interlude when the PJ clown and Minnie Mouse do a version of the leaving song from The Sound of Music with the Teddy bear animated like a puppet: "So long farewell, adieu adieu adieu ..."

Authority Clown returns with his henchmen.
So - we bring you all of this (indicating the stage) - music, surprises, colour.
Will you miss us?
Because we're going now.
Klown-zit means Klown-zit.
We've had enough.
We see the way you look at us. We hear you thinking:
'Their hair is too big, their shoes are too big.
Their voices are too squeaky.
Their clothes are all wrong.'

He starts to speak as if in a big tunnel and the henchman clowns make an echo effect.
People think Clowns (clowns clowns clowns)
Are chaotic (otic otic otic)
But it's you, (oo oo oo)
the Sad Normals - (ormals ormals ormals)
You (oo oo oo)
are the Chaos (aos aos aos)
Bringers (ingers ingers ingers)
and 
we 
are going (going going going)

Carousel music starts to bleed in and they make a double circle, beautifully gliding up and down like gorgeous horses on their shining brass poles ... after a few circuits, they peel off and leave, still in merry-go-round mode ...

The lights dim - the Sombrero Clown is last to leave - he pats his laughter bank as if comforting it and hugs it close as he goes.

Applause.

Bright lights up and joyful circus music and the clowns cascade one by one back onto the stage with a dazzling display of acrobatics (and the odd rather lame roly poly). In a line they wave, and lead again joyfully off with kicks and kisses

The first time I was told to 'Sing as if your life depended on it' - it was in a workshop situation, happily, not IRL - 
and I gave it my best shot.
But I remember, at the moment of hearing the instruction, feeling dumbstruck and demotivated.
For most of us in the Western world, our lives are blessed to the degree that having to actually sing for one's life is something difficult to imagine. 






​High Stakes Predicaments and Marginalised Emotions

You are standing in a hole you were forced to dig. It is wartime and it is clear this is going to be your grave. War films I saw as a child had heroic behaviour. The clown can be courageous but the clown is mainly there to show human failure. In Dark Clown terms, failure is less of a personal failing/flaw but a result of circumstances being so strong and oppressive that we are forced to jettison our own values and dignity. Later in this post I will describe an exercise I call 'Selling Yourself Out to the Enemy'.

With the Red Nose Clown, we enter Clown State and the spontaneous play follows (having greased the wheels with exercises enlivening the body and derailing the control brain, of course).

With the Dark Clown, I set up predicaments for people to imagine themselves in - Predicaments with High Stakes, so as to help people release imaginatively into the Marginalised Emotions. On a the Clown & Dark Clown workshop, before we approach the Predicaments we prime the body; visit the Emotional Zones with voice and breath; and open up awareness of patterns of rhythmic play. 

A Dark Clown Level Two Course Participant reflects

On an early Level Two Dark Clown course in Oldham 2012, I inaugurated a couple of what were at the time new exercises. One Course Participant from that course answered my recent* questionnaire* and wrote this:

'Dark Clown is an exhilarating opportunity to embody devastating emotions and to admit the inadmissible in a safe environment. Two experiences stand out for me – one I watched and one I performed. I wept with deep humiliation and guilt as I laughed, whilst watching an exercise where a workshop participant was being asked to recount what he was going to have for Christmas dinner to a child in famine-struck Ethiopia.

How could it be possible to experience two such contrasting experiences at once? How freeing it was to be able to admit to experiencing emotions that would be condemned by my upbringing?

The one I performed was the following: I was playing my cello in a concentration camp and not only my life depended on it, but so did that of all my fellow inmates. And a small detail - I did not have any instrument to play either. I relive this from time to time. I remember feeling authentic rage at the abuse of me, my instrument, my art and the co-sufferers for whom I was responsible. That experience shone a laser mirror into my soul - reflecting back a sheer and bitter bloodymindedness - of which I can now feel proud.’

Saving Private Ryan - the Steam Boat Willie Scene 

There is a scene in Saving Private Ryan - I sat and transcribed it from the film (you're welcome!)

A German prisoner with a shovel standing in a hole is handed a cigarette by his American captor. He inhales, looks at the cigarette appreciatively.

German Prisoner: American? I like America - Steamboat Willie. Toot toot!
 
Steamboat Willie’s American …
 
More soldiers come with their guns at the ready. He stops smoking the cigarette he was given.
 
Ich bin gar nichts fertig. Es muss noch mehr tiefer geworden. (trans: I'm not ready. It's got to be much deeper.)
 
US Soldier: That’s what you think.

One soldier grabs the Prisoner.
 
German Prisoner: Nein (it’s a sob)
 
He jumps back in the grave and starts to dig vigorously.

 ... noch nichts fertig ...
 
He looks at gun and begs:
 
Please…

Resumes energetically digging.

I like America! Fancy Shmancy, go fly a kite, Cat got your tongue, cool beans! Betty Boop, what a dish! 
Betty Gable, nice gams ... sings: "I say can you see, I say can you see, I say".
... Fuck Hitler ... FUCK HITLER!

'Selling Yourself Out to the Enemy' Scenario

Giving the example of this scene from Saving Private Ryan, I asked the group: can you think of  a person or group whose values are in opposition to yours?

The Course Participant I quoted earlier threw her hand up. 'The Taliban! I'd like to do the Taliban!'
So she did. The improvisation went something like this:

I love your approach to justice! I agree with you. Women should be covered up, women should not speak - not like me, now, speaking to you. Gah! Speaking to herself, shouting: SHUT UP! See?! And women, women should be covered, Yes, Silent. Silent! SHUT UP! 
And invisible! Yes!
She held her hands in front of her face, she desperately tried to hide her uncovered areas.
Speaking about herself: Gah! Disgusting! beating her own bare arms: Disgusting!
Western women are disgusting! Let me show you - Beyonce, yes? Skimpy leotard. Give me a machete, I'll show her! Take that, Beyonce!
She waved an imaginary blade about as if hacking at Beyonce. Gah! Take that! More hacking.
Singing: 'Single ladies' No! no singing. Death - death to western women ... Death to Beyonce!
She held her arms out pleadingly:
I can help you. Gahh, my arms sorry about my arms - I'll chop them off, look ... look ... look!
Death to women who speak! And think! Gah! Beyonce! Oprah, Mary Beard. More hacking. At the imaginary women, at her own arms.
​'Who runs the world?' You! You the Taliban. I'll ... I'll grow a beard, yes! Let me join you, please.  Please?
​Please!

See here the many comedy craft games involved to make this Dark Clown scene work (aiming to generate laughter even while generating a believable portrait of desperation and fear): physical games, the games of repetition (of words, of movement motifs), the game of solution/new problem and the breath and emotions all employed with variety and calibration i.e.responding to the audience (reacting hopefully or anxiously to laughter or other audience reactions as if responding to the reactions of the enemy). All with the aim of generating  the experience of Troubled Laughter for the workshop audience.

The talented comic performer Trixie Mattel said in an interview somewhere: 'Comedy is the intersection between specificity and exaggeration.'

The more vivid and specific the predicament is, the more the Dark Clown player can launch off into the Marginalised Emotions and flights of fancy caused - not by wonder (as for Red Nose Clown) - but through the imaginative investment in a high stakes predicament and the cathartic joy of employing and enjoying an agile vocal and physical play to depict extreme desperation, fear, alarm.

The Dark Clown performer needs a good predicament,  and then to be able to Mine the Predicament - choosing things to say that make logical, emotional, dramaturgical sense; things that will keep the audience on the hook. To Mine the Predicament, the Dark Clown performer also needs to find agile changes in rhythm, timbre and emotion in relation to the audience's reactions, or in reacting to the previous thing they themselves did. Things can be extraordinary (in extremis, we do not cry or flinch in socially inflected ways), but the suffering must be believable - there can be no sense of the clown enjoying shocking us by appearing to relish the pain or enjoy the exaggeration for its own sake. As soon as the Dark Clown performer comments on or adopts a self-indulgent grotesquerie, the audience is let off the hook, and the laughter is no longer a Troubled Laughter - i.e. a laughter born of / or containing conflict.

* The questionnaire is for 'graduates' of the Clown & Dark Clown course  and or the Level Two Dark Clown course. Any 'graduates' reading this I welcome your contributions! Write to me and I'll send you the questionnaire.

'Pretty girls in nice gowns - no.'

I was approached by the remarkable performing artist Ines Lua to direct a production of Jean Genet's play The Maids in Oporto, Portugal in 2013.

Playwright Jean Genet wished for the play to be performed by men. Here I would have three attractive young women to play the two maids and their employer, Madame. Although there is plenty of self-loathing in the play, there are also evening gowns and maids uniforms and I wanted to avoid any possibility of the audience's attention being de-railed from the bleakness of the situation portrayed. So I thought - Enforced Performance is the way!

I was introduced to the writing of Jean Genet when I was seventeen and a strong imprint was made. Genet inspired me with his underdog stance and his aesthetic of degradation. For those who do not know, Jean Genet was wrongly accused of theft when he was a boy in foster care. He decided that he would make the active choice to live as a thief, and wrote a long-form poem and a novel while in prison. He sought out and introduced himself to Jean Cocteau, who was impressed by Genet's writing and not only got Genet's first novel published, but, enlisting the help of Sartre and Picasso, petitioned the French President to save Genet from life imprisonment. Genet never returned to prison and spent the rest of his life as a writer and as a political activist. Theatre maverick Lindsay Kemp created his production Flowers, inspired by Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers.)

I offered my concept to Ines Lua and Micaela Miranda (co-producers) - that the piece be set in a women's prison. They, and the actor playing Madame (Lecoq-trained actor Sandra Salome) agreed.

Play within a play

When the Marquis de Sade was confined within the asylum Charenton, he was permitted to create plays using the inmates, to which members of the public were invited, as memorably explored in Peter Weiss' play 'Marat/Sade: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.'

Of course, setting something in a location (or time period) is not enough - you need a clearly articulated and delivered game. So - imagine a regime* presents plays for the public, performed by actual prisoners. For the prisoners, first night nerves combine with the humiliation of public scrutiny, plus uncertainty - what will happen if they do not perform well? Backstory: female cellmates are separated and rehearsed separately. 

​I had to check with the young company as to their budget, because performing in a black box would not do - we needed the audience to be presented with a space they (the audience) could believe (with the support of suspension of disbelief) was as secure as a prison space. Their set designer came up with an ingenious solution: there would be two angled walls, and a flat as a back 'wall'. The soundscape would provide loud metallic door slams to make viewers believe that unseen doors could be opened to admit the prisoners onto the stage area, and securely slammed and locked behind. All the furnishings - a bunk bed SL, a lidless toilet SR would be clearly bolted to the grey walls which were painted to appear sturdy. Also clearly bolted to the SR wall was a shallow little belle époque console, and above that a gilt-framed oval 'mirror'  (just the frame, as a mirror could of course be broken and used as a shiv). There was a peep-hole which connected to the guard's station and above that a surveillance camera pointed into the cell and streaming live feed to a monitor visible above the guard's desk. See below for a space plan.

​The audience would enter past a guard. She had a tiny office or station just inside the theatre doors.  She would solemnly nod at them, perhaps frisking the odd person or asking to see inside their bag. (Ideally she could have also pointed at a poster saying 'Do not speak to or hand anything to the prisoners', but we did not have the resources to do everything, and what we had worked well enough).

​A little bit of Implicating the Audience

As the lights lowered there were musical theatre announcement chimes, then a soft and pleasant voice said: 'Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. The performance of "The Maids' by Jen Genet is about to begin. If your mobile phone rings during the performance, the actors will stop - and wait for you to finish your call. Alternatively, you can opt to switch off any electronic beeping device. Thank you. Please remain seated for the Security Test.' This was followed by a a loud sound of crackling electricity - lights flickered, and an orange lighting strip embedded into the floor blinked - all giving the illusion of a kind of electric forcefield between stage action and auditorium. 'Teste de segurança terminado.** Attention guards, open the doors.'

​Black out lights up and loud airhorns, the sound of batons thumping along corridor walls, doors opening and closing*** (rhythm) and a female prisoner in an unattractive uniform (I think we chose a kind of catering uniform), arrives on stage as if she has been shoved - staggering and falling. She orients herself - bright lights, she sees the audience, feels self-conscious, looks about in disbelief (clear clocks) at the replica of her old cell presented as stage set. A second prisoner is also thrust out, less violently.

High Stakes

​The two prisoners regard each other - the horror of being surveilled - by the guard SR, by the audience. Imagine the way prisoners look at each other when they are being watched, careful not to endanger themselves or each other. In torture realms, uncertainty is part of the torment. You are never sure what the rules are, what the duration of time will be, what will be coming next. The trope of embarrassed non-activity at the start of a show has been done beautifully by a number of clowns (and Beckett) ****.

Here their anxiety is ramped, their breathing is activated. Their eyebrows are each telegraphing each other - it's like a Mexican standoff. The second prisoner (Micaela/Claire) makes a gesture of urgency to her comrade. Ines/Solange is looking intently back at her, after all, Claire has the first line. So Micaela/Claire speaks, in anguish 'Those gloves! those eternal gloves!' Ines/Solange starts, looks at her bare hands, panics, looks at the audience, then sees, laid out along the front of the stage a row of plastic bags - like evidence bags in a police station, the props are contained within them. Ines/Solange flings herself to her knees, crawls back and forth urgently along the front until she finds the correct bag, claws it open and frantically tries to get on the rubber gloves. The fingers are not fitted right and flop about. (real emotion plus touches of the ridiculous). 'Everything that comes out of the kitchen is spit.' Ines/Solange is nervous (the prisoner playing Solange is not a trained actor*****) and on reflex she spits onto the floor.  Horror for Micaela/Claire. The classic clown trope of problem-solution-leading to new problem leading to new solution ad infinitum; the Clown's Sisyphusian predicament. Ines/Solange starts to scrub frantically to clean it. 'So stop it!' By reflex, and in keeping with the principle of comedy nudges, Ines/Solange does one more scrub. 'Go!' Ines/Solange, has a problem ... there is no escape (clock audience, video, entrance)  ... and solves the problem by standing with her face to the wall.  

Two lines were cut but, we follow Genet's stage direction where Micaela/Claire goes to the 'mirror' and touches the unfamiliar and absurd dressing table and the fake, securely attached flowers in the securely attached vase.  (We played Claire as more vulnerable, traumatised, given to hypnotic moments. Ines as Solange had a vigorous, nervous, courageous, protective quality).
Micaela now must say the lines 'Claire, Claire are you there?' as if her fellow player were not in view.*****

At this moment we had the prison guard (Sandra Salome) shunt open the peephole (it makes a sound). Ines/Solange is startled as the slit is right in front of her and she is eye-to-eye with the guard.
Sandra/Guard (stage whisper): 'Turn. Around.' Hesitating, Ines/Solange does so and Micaela/Claire says: 'Ah, you're back.' (For Ines/Solange this is a playing moment similar to the disorientation played by Pedrolino in Commedia dell'Arte, when everyone is pretending that he is dead).

​... and so forth. Important at the start to a/ clearly establish the situation and b/ creating some comedy using contrast, rhythm 

Believable yet exaggerated 

The Prison Guard had an old-school cartoon jailor large ring with keys around her waist. Her costume had a pleated skirt, like some ghastly headmistress.
She also has a thermos - I must have seen a film where a petty official had a thermos on their desk. (I's an intuitive choice - but if I seek to elaborate - although she is obnoxious it also brings a feeling of; she's harmless. Or does it? Somehow the thermos is creepy. She is too comfortable with her thermos - the obscenity/chilling reality that a jobsworth is a figure of power ... the banality of evil). The Controller in Hamlet or Die had a thermos. (Spoiler alert: more than being a predilection of mine, the thermos turned out to have plot ramifications.)

Plot Twist - use everything

So the prisoners are reciting the play, performing it as best they can - they notice at one point that that surveillance camera is off - they investigate and find a something and realise that these are their actual usual bunkbeds. They start to hunt in their hiding places and discover a vial of pills.

The Madame is due to return - guess who it is? The prison guard. She wears a wig hat and feather boa over her uniform. She suspects something is up and is violent with the prison playing Solange, pushing her around and forcing her head into the open toilet basin. A beautiful red satin dress also gets pushed in to the toilet. 

The plot of Genet's play has the sisters doing a role-play ritual that is intended to end with the death of one of them, via the preparation of a poison tea. In this version of the play, they sisters manage to place the drugs in Madame's thermos (she carries it with her, of course).

Follow through

Madam realises something is up and makes the prisoner playing Claire drink the tea. The guard leaves.
Death is here and she is watching us.' says Solange.
'Let me go', says Claire.
Micaela/Claire takes to her bunk.
Solange continues, distraught - a moment comes when there is no reply. Solange repeats her line, waits then says (inserted line) : 'don't worry darling, I'll do your part.'
Solange finishes the play, reciting both parts, poignantly.
C: Let's finish with this, Solange. I can't bear it anymore. Leave me alone.
S: I shall continue, on  my own, alone my dear? Don't move .... (she clock that by now Claire is completely inert ... but continues - out of grief, out of fear, out of divine hopelessness? 
The prisoner playing Solange tears off her prison uniform and strips to her knickers.
During the 'condemned to be mourning for my maid' speech she goes to the toilet, retrieves and puts on the damp red dress mentioned in the text: 'It's the red costume of criminals' ...
She is looking at the audience in disbelief as they continue to watch.

One evening Ines was having difficulty getting the red dress on and lost her way in the text and she started improvising. She looked at the audience, really eyeballed them across the now gently glowing 'force field' strip. It was brilliant!
'Oh you think it's funny do you? You sitting there in your seats and me here in my knickers!'
She used some of Genet also: ''Who, who is going to make me shut my mouth up? Who will be brave enough to call me "my child" ... I served. I did the appropriate gestures to serve. ...I smiled at you ... I bent over to clean the floor' (these sections of text wonderfully appropriate to our adaptation), ending Solange's soliloquy with: 'We are lost, Clara'.

And continuing, the dialogue all being spoken by the sole survivor.
'Clara you may serve the tea ... My lime tea, I ordered you, Let's finish with this ... this house is poisoned ...'
And she finds the damn thermos and drains it and licks the inside of the cup top, continuing: 'Madame should have her Lime tea ... Madame is having her Lime tea ... for she needs to sleep ... don't you interrupt me again ...But madame ... I said, Tea!'

And she crawls onto the bunk, spooning her dead fellow prisoner. 

Leaving it in their laps

Announcement by the same sweet-toned female voice at the start, a little more firm and official sounding now : 
Ladies and Gentlemen, a peça terminou ... the play is finished. Please leave the vicinity. Thank you for choosing our play and good night.

Black out.


* hm, one of the things that bothered me about Bouffon was that is was meant to poke fun at the beautiful people - I guess this model works where upperclass (wealthy) people are in the audience. In my experience of Fringe theatre there will be a good amount of your audience who are other performers (i.e. not really a privileged class) - of course we can all benefit by having our faults and privileges mocked. I wonder if this is why the idea of 'enrolling the audience' appeals to me. Jon Davison came and witnessed day two of my Clown & Dark Clown course years ago and said - 'so you put the audience in the role of the oppressors'. I was not sure at the time that that was correct, or possible. I feel that an audience know who they are - they are the ones who paid for their ticket and then walked in. Someone has to accept a role to play it, I thought. But perhaps what Jon meant was simply ascribing them this role, not synonymous with asking them  to play the role.  You can jolly audiences in to taking part, as many clowns and cabaret artist do. (Or entrance them into taking part as Lucy Hopkins did in her transcendent show 'Ceremony of Golden Truth').
As I reflect on the dramaturgy of this production of The Maids and also Hamlet or Die, I went to efforts to let the audience know what the situation was. The audience find themselves 'cast' as an audience witnessing oppression for their entertainment. It is not that I wish place the audience in the role of perpetrator. No. I aim for the audience to find themselves in a situation which they find unsettling and repugnant - and while they know it is 'only a play', due to the 'suspension of dis-belief' effect' they can experience conflicted emotions ('I witnessed it therefore I am complicit' or, as happened in Hamlet or Die 'I sang along with the Controller and afterwards I felt so bad.')
**actually, the whole play was performed in Portuguese. I can find no translation in English that satisfies as much as the use of the word 'terminado'.
***actually, on a page of notes for the sound designer I see I have written very specifically: 'aruga aruga (2 secs gap) aruga aruga (2secs gap) aruga aruga (2secs gap) aruga argua aruga argua aruga argua SLAM!!!!)
****The wonderful Australian clowns Los Trios Ringbarkus spoke with nervous high-pitched voices: 'Our band hasn't arrived yet ... so ... we'll wait.' And they got chairs and sat and faced the audience uncomfortably.
*****The actor acts a prisoner who is not an actor, trying to act the role of Solange, currently in role as her sister 'Claire' - phewph.

Slave Clowns in some heartless regime are forced to perform - they are kept as some kind of underclass serving as roustabouts - rigging the equipment for the star acts, and cleaning up afterwards. That was the concept for the 2013 show, Strange Forces. Lynn Gardner tweeted ‘Peta Lily directed show at Circus Space last night was terrific. Clowns like wounded refugees from a post apocalyptic Beckett play.’ 

I taught for a few years at Circus Space (which then become NCCA - the National Centre for Circus Arts). For the school's annual graduation show there was a tradition that the first year students were led by a director to provide the 'links' - short ensemble acts to cover for and accomplishing the rig and de-rig necessary for the different disciplines of the various acts: Chinese Pole, Slack- or Tight-wire, Arial Hoop, Straps ... and so on. This is akin to the role of the Clowns in traditional touring circus where they would come on to discharge the tension created by the more dangerous acts. I also think of the Rodeo Clowns who come on to keep the show action going and the crowd engaged when things have gone dangerously awry.

'What is the world we are creating?' is a question to be considered in any performed production.

The opening scene had low light and later, bleak, blue-green tinged ilumination. The sound score contributed with a desolate-sounding drip and an occasional electrical fizz - we are in a large unfriendly space with, perhaps, puddles and exposed electrical wiring, occasionally some flickering due to power surges - due to punishment happening somewhere off, unseen.

All the clowns were dressed in white - unified, but with variation in detail. Disposable decorators' overalls suggested both institutional garb and chem-haz gear. Their hats were in fact disposable shoe covers. ​The designer for the Slave Clown 'links' was circus design specialist Andie Scott. 

A tall and small clown pair (the small one riding a child's tricycle) do a sad circuit bearing a sign to announce the show title. We hear a squeaking of the tricycle wheels.

Next came a single clown, pushed out on to the stage from stage left. Then a white rope is flung and flops to the floor. The lone clown looks at the rope, the audience - all with dread. She picks up and shoulders the rope, taking lunging Volga bargemen steps. The rope extends and tautens. Next comes a shuffling bunch of humanity - terrified slave clowns lassoed inside the rope, making their way across the stage. One at the back starts to collapse, but they must, must keep on going, like Jane Fonda carrying her dead dance partner in They Shoot Horses Don't They?  The whole process is made more difficult, but them manage to exit, with him being dragged behind, their anxious faces to us, hoping we don't notice too much. 

This was followed by a circus parade - traditionally this would be circular, inside the space of the circus ring. In this staging it was a linear procession (evoking the regimenting of prisoners rather than a festive celebration - even though, originally, there was the deathly circle of the coliseum). Each prisoner had small costume details or props - one dressed as a lion, others juggling, one repeatedly pulling a dead rabbit from a hat.

First act: Chinese Pole was followed by two clowns pushed out. One has a buzzer and is being forced to inflict electric shocks on her partner. Clowns hurry on behind, dragging the inert body of the clown who collapsed earlier - one of the team steal the buzzer to shock him back to life as they cannot do it without that extra man. The revived slave clown manages his part of the de-rig, then takes another bad turn and must be dragged off - there is an image of this moment in the slide show here. Meanwhile pillow-case-headed slave clowns (you can see the pillow heads in the slide-show mentioned earlier) drag on a body in a sheet - opened to reveal a twisted body - a loop is placed round the ankle of the body which is winched up - this is the next performer (the wonderful Lydia Harper, now touring with Cirque du Soleil), who performs her cloud swing act, which ends in a poignant neck spin.

This shows a dramaturgical opportunity dilemma. The purpose of the evening is a show-case for graduating students so it was not possible or appropriate to inflect the actual  acts. We certainly established that there was a hierarchy where the performers of the featured acts were of a different order to the slaves. If this had been a production where the remit was for all the content of the piece - one choice could have been to make the acts even more glamorous and elaborate in their visuals e.g. bejewelled and feathered costumes. Another choice could have been to make each act a life-or death trial in some way (such as Lydia's entry and finish allowed for). Also there would have been an opportunity here - what might have been a good game for the implication of the audience? Might a slave clown have been sent out with a kind of geiger counter to measure he applause after the featured acts, and then looked at a dial and reacted in a number of ways - e.g. at first, just a general agitation to set up how important it was to get an accurate recording (or risk punishment), on another occasion - a head shake and a concerned look at the way the performer had exited; another time measuring clown might appear late and only catch the tail end of the audience reaction and look with appealing eyes to the audience who might only partially clap - reacting to what ever the audience did with desperate hope and ultimately their expression would read culpability as well as anxiety - they might well leave with a sob ... etc.

​While the cloud swing was being de-rigged, the Pillow heads make a return. A height-adjustable black screen is quickly erected and when the slave clowns step aside we see Little Man - he so sweet natured and happy, the expressions of the slave clowns is a nice Contrast. As with a doctor about to deliver a bad diagnosis, the pillow-heads cannot participate in his optimism. One slave clown advances with a barber-striped stick tipped with red feathers and tickling begins, resulting in suffering and eventually the existential, unanswerable cry of 'why? why? why?' (In Ancient Japan, this was a genuine method of torture - kusuguri-zeme: 'merciless tickling').
A cue point within the 'Little Man' scene set other slave clowns in traction setting up a table for the next act - juggling. One slave clown was given a tiny bellboy hat to wear to assist the performer by delivering her prop suitcases and collecting her coat. This act leaves some mess and an operational vacuum cleaner inside the headdress of a costume made to look like a small elephant comes on to clear.

A rope act follows, ending in a heel hang. The next link featured a clown with goggles and a whip and the entry of a tragic-looking unicorn (pantomime horse). In this reality, even a magical beast is degraded. The whip cracks force the unicorn to raise on hind legs and then to endure the humiliation of  a nervous slave clown throwing juggling hoops onto his horn. In Dark Clown all options are painful - the fails cause fear of punishment and the successful throws hurt the soul of the slave clown (and the unicorn).
​
The set-up for the following act is accomplished in the background. (A delightfully upbeat act by Tom Ball who plays a boy scout - the act starts in a tent, he climbs a ladder like some kind of scout task up to a high trapeze - beautiful). 

​The unicorn dolefully returns to support an acrobatic interlude in solving tutu-ed slave clowns.
The stage is set with hoops for a hula hoop act to follow (the consummate Helen Orford).

The long-suffering unicorn is tempted on with an apple ... he is reluctant but allows himself to put his faith in humanity once more. Once more, humiliation as the hula hoops left on the floor are slung around his neck. As he exited, one slave clowns sang an 'orphan' song accompanied but another on a ukulele while a third clown came on quietly up stage and yo-yoed.

At the end of the song, the interval play out music - Tom Waits 'Satisfied' (an upbeat song about death).

To welcome the audience back there was a scene of three terrified (yet highly skilled) slave clowns performing acrobatics to totalitarian music. Unless you were there, you'll never know. It was hilarious.

Tightrope act. Then three slave clowns dance/contort in three isolated spotlights (one is dressed as a skeleton) to cover de-rig of tightrope and rig for straps. Also, the collapsing clown is dragged across the stage, clutching a juggling club (my notes don't carry all the detail of this running motif - which built to a lowkey payoff).

Staps act.

The slave clowns nervously build acrobatic tableaux - they quiver with the strain of holding their positions while one hapless slave clown must make a painstaking squeaky tricycle journey across the wide length of the stage (meaningless activity is a spirit-breaking exercise in political camps) to deliver a juggling club at the furthest end as the final detail.

A rope act, which ended with silver PVS film dropping from the ceiling. Nelly vac makes another entrance to help hoover that up. The littlest tuttu-ed clown crosses with a brush also followed by the unicorn wrangler and her whip. Bag Heads dance, not no good reason (I love working with ensembles - once can generate a lot of material - I always ask people what skill they bring and it's wonderful to try to honour everyone's contributions). The Nellyvac, having cleaned, does a tinselly poo onstage (ah the pointless-ness of life). The 'elephant' wrangler takes out a plastic bag of course to clear up  the elephant's mess.

The wonderful Matt Green does a juggling act - it is reminiscent of Beckett's Act Without Words - his hoody is on back-to-front so he is working blind some of the time. He loses clubs, throws away clubs, reaches for clubs that don't arrive and then clubs thrown on him (as if an assault by fate).

At the end of the act clowns come on singly to clear the clubs strewn about. Here the slave clowns came together in couples and slow-danced. Two central clowns take focus and move apart as if pulled by external forces (other clowns subtly place a crash mat), ready for Ben Browns lovely aerial hoop act, with an atmosphere of pining.

Andie Scott had used a scrim at the back. In a dramatic change of mood, with an impressive soundscape chord, we see a through the scrim where a kind of 'Wailing Wall' is revealed - a vertical vision of hell. Against the bare brick wall we hung white hoops and ropes - all the slave clowns were writhing there in agony and despair. My intention was to evoke something like Hans Memling's The Last Judgement.

​Suddenly in tutus and balaclavas come the clowns dressed like Pussy Riot. Their very can-can kicking liberates and enlivens the clowns who descend on to the stage area and raise up the Pussy Riot dancers and leave, triumphant. 

Fizz, drip, desolate lighting - two clowns enter, enthusiastically pumping placards ... their pace, energy, mood slows and drops as they see they are too late for the revolution .. and they sadly set the scene for the next act.

They place a chair for the harpist who will play live to accompany a stunning and moving acrobatic balance duo about love and interdependence.

​To finish the evening on a high - there is a triumphant celebratory juggling arcade with exuberant acro - the slave clowns are free after all.

I was invited by Clown Power to have a chat with a gaggle of female clowns from Oz and UK on Sunday 29th March - you can eavesdrop here: 

We five clown practitioners from different backgrounds gathered to speak about how it is to be a female clown. The panel members were:  

• Sue Broadway is a director, academic and teacher of circus and physical theatre. She also performs as a clown, compere, eccentric juggler and Vaudevillian. She’s interested in the intersection between Clown, feminism, aging and caring and is wondering where next.
• Debra Battton is a Performer  / Director of Circus and Physical Theatre based in Melbourne, Australia. Debra is interested in experiments with theatrical forms including Circus Dance Text and Improvisation. She has over thirty years of professional experience including leading Legs on the Wall as Artistic Director for ten years. 
• Maggie Irving is a clown, teacher and researcher with a ‘Practice as Research’ PhD in becoming a female clown. A Clown Doctor! Passionate about clowning in everyday life, and bringing the art of clowning into stand up comedy, business and beyond.
• Peta Lily is a prolific devising performer who often uses autobiographical material in her work; clown-informed, mixed with spoken word, song and gently wry satire. She  directs, leads independent workshops & is a Visiting Lecturer at leading drama schools in London. 
• Holly Stoppit is a facilitator, performance skills teacher, theatre director, dramatherapist and clown academic, specialising in live, interactive, improvised and devised performance. At the heart of all of Holly’s work is a desire to promote creative discovery and connection through play.

The discussion was chaired by Vicki Amedume from Upswing Aerial and produced by Dave Spathaky for Clown Power.
This is the first of a series of discussions between clowns, to find out more join the Clownpower Facebook group here.

As part of my Drama School teaching, it is my great joy to be tasked with creating clown pieces.

Just before the quarantine started, I was working on a student production: Clowns perform John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. It's a theatre laboratory course so our brief includes deconstructing and responding to the original text.

The group were all on board with including a feminist point of view. They had recently created a scene to deal with the role of women in their previous module's production of Threepenny Opera.

John Ford actually writes well for women - the female characters here are spirited, feisty and wry, even so, the idea of the clowns coming out saying 'We have a problem with the title!' was in the forefront of my mind.

I developed a process for approaching classical texts to be played by clowns.

In previous years, we worked with The Revengers Tragedy. One year we used a #DarkClown concept: the audience entered to find themselves in a 'rehabilitation centre for clowns'. The concept was: sweet clowns are punished by being forced to present a vicious and violent play, so that they can better fit into society. Towards the end of the show, there was an alarm and an announcement - the clowns had failed at their task and had to depart as their identifying number was called. I had given this direction: 'You are leaving to your death. The prop you are holding now will be the instrument of your death.'

One character left with a haunted face, holding a cucumber before him ...

Another year, a different production/concept for TRT, an organisation of clowns were attempting to understand the 'sad normals' (regular people). The production was divided into chapters: The Clowns try to understand Power. The Clowns try to understand Flawed Humanity. The Clowns try to understand Grief. The Clowns try to understand The Plot ... etc.

I am always inspired by the underdog and for me clowning is a way to present neglected points of view. With The Revengers Tragedy, we included Vindice's dead girlfriend Gloriana as a cast role. After the scene where Vindice dresses the corpse of his dead beloved - Gloriana - in order to to trick and punish the Duke, poor Gloriana, decked in a necklace of 'Magic Tree' car deodorisers (remember the room for the sin of Sloth in the film SEVEN?) broken-heartedly mourns to Vindice: 'You used me!' This was all the more poignant by being played with wonderful sensitivity and vulnerability by a very tall male student.

Clown Dramaturgical Process 
​
​An early step is to check out what skills your group has - appoint a monitor and circulate a list. A skill can help inspire a scene. The act of making the list puts that elements in the group imagination. It's also a concrete invitation into clown thinking e.g. 'when can we fit acrobatics into this classical text?' One student was thirsty to use her mime skills which led to the idea of a play with in the play scene between relatively minor characters Philotis and Bergetto being played in a half-and -half costume - check out RuPaul's Drag Race Season 7 Ep 10.

A key step in the devising adaptation is the Clown Council. We make a circle of chairs. Everyone takes a seat and enters clown state. I tell them that this is a meeting of the Clown Council and they are instructed to stand up when they feel the urge to speak about the themes of the play. I act as scribe to capture what the clowns say.

Later, back in 'sad normal' state, we discuss and find common ground / significant connections.

I encouraged students to put forward their favourite moments from the play, nurturing the emotional connection of clown through their enthusiasms for and reactions to the material.

Processes I used on earlier years included using Arnold MIndell's World Cafe process and the Marketplace Lazy Susan (more information to come).

Looking to the underrepresented led to the idea for extra scenes for Putana and Hippolita, and the acknowledgement of the point of view of the embryo produced from the love affair between Annabella and Giovanni. Good to bear in mind that a clowns don't discriminate between animate and inanimate the way 'sad normals' do. Annabella's heart is brought onstage in Act Five, skewered on Giovanni's knife. In our production, on clown volunteered to play the heart.

Taking things literally is another useful vein. A quick instance from one of the The Revenger's Tragedy productions - one clown played Vengeance and came on every time Vengeance was mentioned (once mistakenly coming on at the mention of Virtue) and when Vindice raised his sword and said: 'now nine years' vengeance crowd into a minute!' (3.5.124), Vengeance came on and stopped the show as he counted 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi ...' Yup, all the way to 'sixty!'

Another process consists is the theme ideas cloud: I pair students up randomly and assigning each pair a theme. I ask them to put their clown brains and hearts to this task - to think of metaphors and clown-logic ideas, and songs for possible inclusion. 

Making Metaphors concrete: working on this year's text: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, one student, working on the theme of Vows came up with the idea of a ring. Vows are binding. Two Clowns conjoin themselves by wearing a rubber ring in various unwieldy ways, hampering their joy and freedom. Another pair of clowns had the idea of costuming themselves as halves of a pantomime horse. The clown playing Annabella would have worn a bridle. One clown was fascinated by the mention of Parmesan cheese in the text (which is set in Parma) - this would have been inserted as a choric running motif. Another clown was perplexed by the mention of melons in the play - the event where Putana's eyes are put out could have included a clown sitting quietly onstage using a kitchen utensil to make melon balls, while the clown playing Putana screamed.

Costume as dramaturgy. If there is an overriding concept - e.g. Clown correctional centre, there will be a base costume (or base colour palette) indicating the prison costume or the prison atmosphere. Elaborate bits such as period ruffs would be permitted/supplied by the authorities and clown props (balloon, wooden saw) could work their way in to make a poignant contrast. For 'Tis Pity, I held conversations with each student regarding what their clown might be wearing. A Jacobean crinoline would be worn by one clown, mime apparel, cowboy gear and a rabbit headdress (one clown took inspiration from Vasques' line 'let my hot hare have law.')

The combined metaphors, prop, improvs, running gag ideas birthed a coherent (according to clown logic) approach and the whole would have come together something like this:

​'Tis Pity She's a Horse

The clowns found a script in the back of a Ford Fiesta. 
They were really impressed that, 
while singlehanded-ly revolutionising the automotive industry (yay horsepower), 
Ford
​had somehow also found the time to also write a play 
(and make some fine Western movies, too, apparently). 
The clowns felt that their presentation of ''Tis Pity She's a Horse' (sic) would be a great opportunity to show that clowns can do high-brow material.
Well some of them. A couple of them just welcomed an opportunity to dress as cowboys.
Or as Death (from The Seventh Seal).
Under the 'leadership' of a Peter Quince-like Company Manager,
this famous tale of incestuous love would have begun 
with a smooth, lively rendering of Sly and the Family Stone's 'It's a Family Affair'.
The suitors would have competed in a Derby for the hand of Annabella. 
Soranzo would have disqualified Grimaldi for unspecified reasons and 
Bergetto's horse would have been shot, and sadly not responded to any of the normal methods of resuscitation.
Hippolita would have made a splendid entrance with 
terrifying black-bin-bag wings and spoken of her betrayal with Valkyrie-like rage.
There was going to be a Punishment Rabbit (don't ask), and a Public Service Announcement 
about how the stork arrives when he sees True Love.
There would have been a special appearance by the newly conceived 
Clown of Shame, with an Oedipus-inspired monologue:
Whose tale more shameful than mine, 
whose lot more dire?
My motheraunt and uncledad 
Did beget me, commingled in one bed.
The fruit of sibling loins;
Monstrous progeny made in equal parts 
of sublimest love and darkest sin.
Ah me! ah woe! oh misery!
And my life short and brutish in the dark
To be murdered unclean and unborn  
by my uncledad’s blade.
Was ever nephewson afflicted thus!
Annbella, Putana and Hippolita would have risen up from their various deaths to 
address their dead beloveds (using text from Oscar Wilde’s Salome): 
Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit ... There was a bitter taste on thy lips. 

It would have been edgy, elevated and stupid - with touches of pathos and just a little feminist rage.
Due to COVID-19, the production only exists now in the imagination. 
​But the imagination is a wonderful place.

Performer: Sue Swallow Designer: Shivani Kokkonda Photographer: Valeria Torresan
Direction by Peta Lily Project Leadership by Donatella Barbieri for MA costume LCF
#movement #costume #costumedesign #physicaltheatre #magic #performance

In January (2020) I led seventeen intensive 1-2-1 workshops as part of the Costume Design for Performance MA at the London College of Fashion, led by international designer Agnes Treplin.

Each January, 17 new design students are invited to design for a radical re-telling of a text (in previous years: Woycek, Mr Broucek’s Trip to the Moon, Caucasian Chalk Circle and Ubu Roi) – this year, Englebert Humperdinck’s Opera Hansel and Gretel. The design students are coached in this module by the remarkable Donatella Barbieri (author of the wonderfully readable and insightful ‘Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body’).

Donatella Barbieri coaches the students to push the boundaries of design, to create costumes which transform; to employ materials in such a way that there can be a creative dialogue between performer and costume. The result is an imaginative dreamspace, a heightened reality. 
 
Peter Brook said that with Opera, performers enter a heightened reality due to the music. The same applies here with these costumes. The performers who participate in the workshops leave the sessions having had a vivid imaginative and emotional experience. They also gain an expanded awareness of the possibilities of creative costume. Donatella holds a rigorous and nurturing dialogue with each design student, inviting and entraining them to expand their horizons, their way of thinking, to explore a range of inspirations, to weigh and realise the potentials of textiles and other materials, to think and feel into the metaphors of their concepts and their materials, to explore their impulses and interrogate and push further as they envisage a full, innovative costume design for the text and make a single costume for one character from the text. I call this work #costumeembodiment.
 
The costumes Donatella guides the students to create not only serve each student's original vision (and of course serve the character) but also serve the chosen character’s narrative journey and existential predicament.

These costume creations transform ... twice, maybe three times!

Each costume is a playground whose terrain shifts and provokes and leads the performer to make connections with powerful themes of human and material existence.
 
And I get to facilitate this journey – I use my experience of Butoh, Commedia, comedy, Opera, mime , physical theatre, and theatre making to guide each performer to immerse into the possibilities of the costume and discover how a character can be realised in full depth and vigour and complexity from an experiential process.

At the start of each session, I check in with the designer and the potential of their creation. (I ask each designer to prepare in advance a story board, but also, Donatella and I brief them in advance to let go of all their plans and projected outcomes). It is beautiful after the sessions to see the designers bedazzled by the unexpected richness in terms of atmosphere, emotion, shape and narrative they have seen unfold in the room.

​I speak with the performers and ask them what connection they might have with the character and their predicament. First the performer is given free range to warm their body into its new shape(s), then I offer suggestions and also encourage the discoveries of the moment, the impulses arising from play, from the interaction between human and material.  
 
Al the end of the workshop days, my dreams are more vivid - fuelled by the experience.

At the end of each year the students of the Costume Design for Performance MA go on to create a costume inspired by a character or theme in a text of their own choosing. I have directed pieces for this graduating showcase for four consecutive years - you can see the work in the students in their November 2019 show called  Hidden Stories here.

Are you one of those people who love theatre but who find reading a play for the first time a less-than-joyful experience? Especially when it's a classical text?

An actor friend of mine once told me about an informal play reading where they did not have enough people to cover all the roles. One person was given a model T-Rex and supplied a growly voice to cover one of the extra parts (useful as their two designated characters were present in the same scene).

In my 2015 post about learning lines I mentioned how valuable I have found it to engage as many of the senses as possible.

These little guys (pictured) helped me read a play the other day - a play I had been successfully not reading for a few months (partly down to available time). Angel-winged Hello Kitty played the Friar - can you guess who played Putana and who played the Cardinal? All castings were intuitive. Soranzo's nephew Bergetto was represented by the teeniest baby and I was delighted to find he was called a 'baby' a couple of times in the text.

I had a multilevel stage - my closed laptop was the main stage area and there was a fore-stage (surface of my work table), even a top balcony 'Enter Annabella and Putana above' provided by the jar these found toys had been stored in.

It worked a treat. I found the scenes and play structure and character's through-lines and even agendas jumped into memorable life.

I was on the verge of gifting these little figures to the Charity Shop. I am keeping them and have ordered a set of Pokemon characters for future readings. Do not judge me.

Work on the book has begun - I will be writing the book throughout this year.

In 1980 or 1981 I had the precious good fortune to work with Yoshi Oida. More about him another time, perhaps.

Among many things Yoshi introduced us to was the lower physical centre of the Hara (this is the Japanese word for it - in Chinese it is the Dan Tien or Tan Tien).  I had also read about it in books on Chi Gung - it is often described as being located as 'an inch and a half below the navel and an inch inside'.

​I also had the great good fortune to work alongside Aikido Master Dennis Burke. He teaches the Hara this way: imagine your pelvic basin as just that - a basin or bowl. Give it a colour or texture perhaps, make it real to yourself. Now place a ball in that bowl. (A cricket ball is good - it has weight and texture, but  choose a silver or golden ball if you like!) any slight tilt to your pelvis will make the ball roll and gravity will bring the ball to a moment of stasis. Play with this and your torso will move like an oscillating top. Once you have made a strong connection in your physical imagination, forget about the oscillating effect. Breathe from the Hara. See through the eyes but stay connected to the Hara. Try walking 'from the Hara'.

The superimposed diagram is from 'The Way of Energy'  by Master Lam Kam Chuen, (with whom I had the privilege of attending his class in Chi Gung/ Chi Kung).

I mention the HARA in my Clown State Process post.

Here below is a list of some of the benefits people experience in short and long term practice of putting the attention on the Hara.
Take these for your own gentle testing - don't expect to notice them straightaway! Remember the new can feel unfamiliar and that placing and opening your awareness is a practice that takes takes time.

• Refined, more efficient, deep breathing

 

• Better blood flow to brain - more efficient activity in synapses – better choices of ideas and syntax in conversation

 

• Better flow of energy all round body – you look and feel more ‘integrated’ (a good and palpable sense of the concept ‘integrity’)

 

• Increased peripheral vision - improved spatial perception and more inclusive and aware demeanour

 

• Increased inner quiet – self awareness is superior to self consciousness (‘selfish is the new generous’ – as with Feet in Clay, you notice the other more when on the Hara and so can interact and engage with others more)

 

• Generally improved perception – data per second (one benefit is that you become more and more likely to pick up on people’s micro-language e.g. breath, muscle tension and blood flow to the face – the start of being able to intuit the needs and values of others and therefore collaborate fully with them)

 

• More harmonious interaction with others and the world

 

• More resonant voice

 

• Body connectivity = better EQ (emotional intelligence)

 

• Slows brain (slows time) – replacing reactivity with respons-ABILITY

 

• Curiosity increased

 

• Equanimity promoted

 

• Relaxed awareness = sense of readiness, optimism, capability

 

• Improved intuition

 

• Slight flexion in knees (in fact in all joints made more mobile and ‘ready’) – more graceful movement, more sense of flow - again giving both the visual impression plus the internal resource of more respons-ABILITY. It gives a less stressful use of the body thereby promoting better health, guard against impact and repetitive injury, promoting well-being