It's been longer than I intended since my last post...I'm not very good at this bloggin malarkey, am I? Well, since then, lots and lots (and lots) of things have happened - most notably, our performances at the Centre George Pompidou on 29th May.
Yes. It finally happened. After months of preparation, countless revisions, rehearsals, tearing out of hair and minor mental breakdowns, fires in train stations, national strikes, postponements and possible cancellations, it actually happened.
The extra time that we have had to devote to the CGP Project has had one unfortunate consequence, which is that we have mostly had to ignore, or perhaps even for some people, abandon entirely, our personal projects for the Developing Your Disciplines Project (hence the terrible lack of posts on this blog). So where does that leave the Failure Project now? Well, it will play a part in the Viva Voce I have to prepare and present as assessment for this course, albeit in a slightly different way and less visible form than I had first imagined. The main task now is to look at it in the context of the work I have done at the Pompidou Centre, discovering, interpreting and analysing the links and divergences between them. Hopefully, I will be able to devote more time to this Project in the summer.
Anyway...another day, another clown workshop, this time by Jon Davison, and a very different atmosphere and direction to the workshops I observed from John Wright. I sensed a shift in focus in the act of clowning, which semms to lead to a shift in the performer-audience dynamic.
Jon Davison placed great emphasis on honesty of emotion in performance: about each performer being honest about the emotions they were experiencing at that very moment, in real life, as it were, which would then be used in the performance. For example, when an exercise performed by two of the participants in the workshop seemed to be failing, with the scene becoming uninspired and boring, Jon encouraged the performers to use the real feelings of frustration and discomfort that they were experiencing when continuing with the scene. As a result, the scene almost immediately picked up, becoming more interesting, more engaging, and more funny. As Jon himself said at the time "when you don't like where you are...that's a good place to stay". It was all about committing yourself as a performer to the emotion present, whatever it may be, whether positive or negative, whether reasonable or completely weird, without fighting it or trying to change it or lie about it. In this way, the clown character was more of an extension of their real selves and personalities, rather than an outside character added on quite artificially (as I sometimes sensed in the John Wright workshop).
Because of this, I feel the focus of this workshop was more performer-centered, rather than the more heavily audience-centered workshop from John Wright. I felt that during the exercises, the performers were encouraged to focus primarily on what was NOW - what they knew to be present at that very moment, i.e. their own emotions, rather than what they anticipated in the audience later (such as laughter).
Now, in all honestly, the performances and improvisations in the Jon Davison were a lot less funny than the John Wright workshop, and so if you were to judge clowning on terms of its comedic value and of how funny it actually is, John Wright wins (although it may just be that the performers in his workshops were funnier, rather than the method having an influence on how funny it was). However, I found Jon Davison's methods to be more interesting in relation to my own practice, and particularly, the links I feel are present with my interests in the Failure Project. I found his focus on the use of the performer's real experiences in the moment to generate material for performance pertinent to my own ideas of the Failure Project, in which I have asked:
"Failure can often point to the individuality and uniqueness of the performer (each person has their own unique physical limits and traits) – could a performance be created that fully utilises these aspects? In what ways can a performer make him/herself visible when performing and what does this add to or detract from a performance?"
(My Scheme of Work)
I intend to try and get in contact with Jon Davison so I can discuss these issues with him...watch this space.
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2 comments:
For me, being conscious of, accepting and using the emotions that exist in a given moment is simply a question of dealing with reality. It's an important starting point for clown, which, in my view, is essentially about reality (rather than about imagination or creativity, for example). Once we can be happy with things as they are, then we can see how different that reality is to our images of how we would like things to be. That distance between what we try and convince ourselves to be true, and what in reality we must eventually admit, is what we call failure. And it's not limited to the physical realm, which many erroneously think to be dominant in clowning, but also to emotions, thoughts, and words. (There is nothing inherently physical about clowning, it can take place on any level.) And the greater the difference, the greater the failure, and ultimately the greater the laugh.
It takes time to be comfortable with reality, and one is always having to work on this. It doesn't yield comedy immediately, as many of our defence mechanisms keep intervening. So what you probably saw in the workshop were people beginning to accept and play with their present states and emotions. It's a kind of pre-clowning, that later turns into clowning proper, with a laughter response from the audience.
Wow! Thank you for responding, Jon! I really appreciate it. You also have the honour of being the first (and possibly last, since I am awful at telling people about this blog) person to leave a comment here.
I agree completely that failure is rooted in in the discrepancy between reality and a perceived ideal. As such, I have become increasingly interested in the concept of reality, or honesty in performance (see my post dated 8th July) - I think it's an important thing to consider for any performer, not just clowns, and will have this stringly in mind when creating and developing my piece for the Festival of Emergent Arts this September.
It's also why I found your workshop so interesting - you could see the struggles within the performers, and the new dynamics and qualities of performance that emerge when they began to engage with this method of development. Like you said, it was 'pre-clowning', it was a process and not a finished product.
Due to assessments for my course at Central I couldn't attend the final workshop, but I am interested to know how your performers have developed since I saw them, and how they have or haven't coped with the 'realities' presented to them.
Actually, maybe it would be better to email you, who knows if you will read this blog again!
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