“Hello, my name is Danny, and I am a clown.” That’s how our clowning class
began. Every camper walked across the space in total neutrality and sat
in the chair, looked at everyone, said that one line, and walked off
stage. Dan Kennedy, a long time ASC actor and experienced clown, started
the class by saying that “the hardest thing you’ll ever be asked to do
onstage is nothing.” The campers began by attempting to show nothing,
and even though everyone was trying hard to remain neutral, their
personalities showed through anyways -- personalities that we would
exaggerate and expand as the class went on.
To
shake things up, next we did a bunch of fast theater games -- keeping a
ball in the air, bippity-bippity-bop, woosh-woah-zap, and then a game
of silent redlight-greenlight. As they played, the campers and Dan
together looked at the comedy in the games. When the redlight greenlight
game started to lose energy, he shook it up and turned it into “oscar
variety” red-light green light and set up a scenario of a flock of girls
running to meet a particularly handsome man, but not wanting him to
know of their attempts to get close to him. The running and stopping of
red-light greenlight became a game of posing, of sudden changes of
attitude. One girl would be running for all she was worth one second and
the next second she would have frozen - effortlessly arranging her hair
when the guy was turned to see her. Dan threw in lots of obstacles for
the kids. One time when they guys were the ones racing, they needed to
“look sexy” when the lady turned their way, but since they had been
running the moment before they were not necessarily in a good position
to make that work, they had to find a way to “deal with the problem”
they’d created for themselves. These campers had to make strong choices.
Specific choices. Big choices. Clowns are made of big choices. And so
we zipped to the next exercise.
FUNNY
WALKS. This clown routine is one all about imitation and exaggeration.
The campers paired up and then followed their partners around, imitating
any quirks or personality exaggerating the idiosyncrasies to the point
of absurdity. Then all the funny walks paraded around, and though they
were crazy, the walkers strode with absolute seriousness. We learned
about poker faces and how serious presentations can be much funnier than
goofy acts. Then we traveled on to playing with props.
The
campers divided into groups, and Dan gave each group a bunch of props
with the instruction to use the prop to tell as many different stories
as possible, without using any words. So suddenly a pasta strainer
became a hat and a magnifying glass and butterfly net and land mine and
dozen other things. Flip flops became a defibrillator, then the flip
flops became the ears of a baby elephant (with a pool noodle trunk and a
laundry basket body); the laundry basket became a boat and the boat
became an umbrella, and an umbrella became the head of a rattlesnake
made of all the campers in the group with a tambourine for its rattle at
the tail. Creativity poured right out of these kids, and it led us
right into our last exercise.
Dan
divided them into groups of three, and those groups each had to make up
a scene, without any words, with this scenario: A couple is at a
restaurant. A waiter is annoying. A proposal occurs. What makes it a
clown scene? How high the stakes are can make it a clown scene. Are the
couple a little bit in love? Or madly, wildly, passionately in love? Is
the waiter a little annoying or annoying beyond comprehension and
belief? Is it McDonalds or a five star cuisine with 7 courses? They made
the scenes in 4 minutes flat, and every one had us in stitches.
Comedy. It’s serious business.
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