Say Hello to my Little Clown Friend

Hi, I’m Madeleine M. Oulevey, one of the camp interns for this summer. Working with the American Shakespeare Center and so many talented young adults is quickly shaping up to be the highlight of my summer. Camp has only just started up, but preparations for the three shows that ASCTC culminates in are very much underway. Our directors have cast the shows, the casts have gone through their first read-throughs, and the kids are heading off to meet with their directors for their first official rehearsal. 

 

Along with getting the opportunity to work with Shakespeare’s text and to perform it in Blackfriars Playhouse, campers also attend workshops in various fields. These workshops aim to teach the campers some techniques that help facilitate their understanding of the text and how to approach it in performance.  Symmonie Preston led one of the two workshops held this morning. Entitled “Say Hello to my Little Clown Friend”, the workshop allowed the campers to discover their alternate “clown selves” and to interact with everyday objects in a different way.  After donning a red clown nose, the campers transformed into friendly, inquisitive, newborn beings, curious of the world around them. Our new clowns interacted with common objects, such as chairs, as if they had never seen them before. They played around with them and acted out different scenarios as they learned about their new environment.

After making new friends with inanimate objects and learning about “the other red nosed people,” our clowns took off their noses and became their former selves. In groups of three or four, the campers read through truncated scenes of Shakespearean text, alternating who was the clown in the group. The campers soon discovered that when all involved are clowns, things can get pretty loud and hard to follow! With one clown to help guide the action, the result is not only entertaining and understandable, but can also highlight the solemnity of a soliloquy that might follow in the next scene.  

Shakespeare has literal clowns in his plays, but in some scenes we read, the clown in question was surprising. For example, we had three campers play a scene from Richard II. Herein, the Duchess of York, a dignified lady pleading for her son’s life, was the primary clown. The scene is serious, but the actor portraying the Duchess made the needs of the character more evident by incorporating clown-like aspects into his performance. The overall lesson being: clowns are sometimes located where you’d least expect them.

Watching the campers interact with their new world and implement what they had learned into their performance was both entertaining and hilarious. Each camper was able to apply his or her natural humor and turn complicated text into intelligible physical comedy. 

--Madeleine M. Oulevey