Clown class with Dan Kennedy

“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.

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