#111 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 11

#110 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 10

I’ve found the last golden ticket. Hurrah! That would be so cool, wouldn’t it. Well anyways, I’ll finish here for now.

#109 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 9

There are no golden tickets left. What will happen now? Where is the last golden ticket? will someone find it? Will there be another part to the cartoon? Will I write something funny? To find out the answers to these questions, come back tomorrow. I’ll finish here for tonight.

#108 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 8

Miss Loca has returned. Also the last ticket was a fake. I may still win a golden ticket. To find out, come back tomorrow. I’ll finish here for now.

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Today’s interview spotlights a special guest of mine, Jim Dixon or Soapy, as he is known in the clowning world. To take a quote from his own webpage:

“Soapy has been providing entertainment for the Wichita and surrounding area for 18 years. His number of performances is now in the range of 1800, and the education of other clowns is the next step.”

Clowning is not simply painting on a big smiley face, donning some goofy clothes, and running around, tripping and falling for comic relief.

Clowning truly is an art form, and it should be appreciated as such. It incorporates so many different disciplines: face painting, makeup, storytelling, skits, gags, balloons, balancing, juggling, slapstick comedy, costumes, and more.

Now, let’s talk to Jim and learn a little more about the industry from an insider perspective.

Tell me Jim, how did you get started in your career as a clown?

“The answer to that probably isn’t what most people would like to hear; but the truth is I got into it as a ‘for profit’ job, because I saw the potential after having taken a class at a local rec center. I took the class for stress relief, because I was going through a really terrible period in my life; and the instructor said that I was good and he would pay me $65 a birthday party to do it for him; and after a while I decided to break off and do my own. For probably a decade, I was a ‘for profit’ clown. I did not love clowning as a craft, I loved the income that it could provide. It wasn’t until Master Clown, Jim Howell paid me one of the most amazing compliments ever that I realized that, “Hey, I actually do love this”.

Another factor that made me realize how much I love clowning was that I started working at night and realized that I physically couldn’t do working at night, working during the day, and clowning on weekends. So I decided to retire and it took about two weeks before I realized I couldn’t give it up, I actually liked doing it.” 

Jim, what factor has helped you the most in your current success as a performing clown?

“I would say it’s my mild autism. I didn’t know I had it until I was diagnosed  with it at 40 years old, and suddenly everything started making sense. As far as how it helps me with bein a clown, I become obsessed with things that I like doing. I become obsessed, and because of that I’ve taken my clowning past what most people would have stopped at. Also, I see patterns. Because I see patterns, I think  it helps me in both skits, balloons, and comedy magic.  I see patterns of behavior in people, so I can anticipate better and when I anticipate better I can prepare better.” 

Makes good sense, the better prepared you are, the better you will think on your feet (so to speak).

Okay, if you could attain any goal with your clowning, what would you hope to attain?

“The answer is: I want to see the industry completely improved. I want to see the industry, as a whole, develop a sense of pride and quality that would make it less scary to people.

I would want to see the industry, as a whole, become something that everybody wants to do, instead of everybody wanting to make fun of it and make fun of it in a bad way, not the way it should be made fun of.

It’s the industry that I want to see improve. So if I could attain a goal for myself, it would be to be a good teacher, where I would make a difference in the success of clowning, because the problem with clowning right now is that anybody can pretty much do it. There is no restrictions on anything. Its an industry where you can throw on a little makeup and some pajamas, call yourself a clown, and start doing birthdays, and what that does is it kills the industry. My goal that I would love to see is to have education or at least help with the education of new clowns.” 

Learn more about Jim “Soapy” Dixon through his website: http://sillysoapy.com/

You can also learn more about the art of clowning at:

Clowns of America, International

Mooseburger Camp

#107 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 7

I was the one millionth customer and I got a FREE Wonka bar. Great! Mmmmm chocolate. Then I go home and find out that the last ticket has been found. That’s not so great. To find out what happens next, come back tomorrow. Anyways, I’m going to watch the movie ParaNorman on DVD. I’ll finish here for now.

#106 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 6

I was taking a walk outside and I found some money. Now I can buy another Wonka bar. Will it have the fith golden ticket? Find out tomorrow. I’ll finish here for tonight. I’m going to bed now. Zzzzzzzzzz

#105 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 5

The four of the five golden tickets have been found by Louis in France, Angelica from Sweden, Dudley from Albania and Dieter from Germany. Who will win the fifth ticket? What do you mean you already know? Because the title is Funny One And The Chocolate Factory. Ok, To see if I win it then you can return to my blog. Well anyways I’ll finish here for tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow.

At the beginning of September, I auditioned for my school’s mainstage shows—the big productions, Chicago, The Piano Lesson, Stop the World I Want to Get Off!, Dance Ensemble and The Diary of Anne Frank. And amazingly, I was cast—I’m a clown in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off! The director noticed during the audition that my special skills included tarot reading and was intrigued. For those unfamiliar with the musical, the show is set in a circus and the director decided that a circus needs entertainers. He created a group of performers, henceforth known as the Universal Life Circus Troupe, whose mission is to entertain the audience, like with tarot reading. We had a meeting at the end of last semester to discuss the show’s concept and we were given the task of spending the break between then and when we returned to school focused on creating our characters.

Some requirements for our characters:

• The show is set in a circus and we are clowns. The theatre is going to be transformed into a circus. Think bright colors and spotlights!
• Still, we are keeping the (dated) references to it’s post-World War II time period and keeping it British and Cockney. So that’s two more accents I’ll have under my belt (plus, I’m learning Irish right now as well, although that has absolutely nothing to do with the show).
• Tarot reading. We all have to come up with our own special act, a talent or skill we possess. The director decided though, that he wanted me to do tarot as my act.
• Aside from our act, members of the Universal Life Circus Troupe will be responsible for creating their own costume and makeup, further developing our character creation.

With a month off from school and before rehearsals began, I turned to the internet for ideas. Pinterest is probably my most-frequented website (Thanks Mom…just what I needed, another internet addiction) but actually is really useful when creating a character: I was able to save makeup ideas, costume possibilities, pictures from the original Stop the World production. As we got closer to rehearsals and the designers began to finalize their ideas, my concept has both narrowed down and gotten new inspiration. I went through my wardrobe to come up with a costume and we’ve all been brushing up on our Cockney.

photo credit: pinterest

Once the cast for the ULCT came together to start rehearsals, inspiration really started to strike. We were sharing our skills and ideas: we’ve got a juggling nun, a trapeze artist, clowns galore…and me, the circus’ resident fortune-teller. During our rehearsals, I’ve been practicing my skills in palmistry, astrology and tarot reading galore. While the rest of the ULCT has a set act with jokes and acrobatics, I am solely doing audience improv while everything else is going on. Talk about leaving the comfort zone! Luckily, the cast has been really great about picking cards for me to practice with.

I haven’t had the opportunity to develop a character this much since high school (but hopefully with much more depth than I was capable of then) and never with improv or audience participation! So, this is what I’ve been working on since my last blog post. What do you think? What are your way of creating a character from scratch? Have you had the opportunity?

#104 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 4

Have you ever seen a man balance on a rolling chair and use a stepladder as a crutch? Have you ever hung upside down while trying to style your hair? Have you ever seen The Dramatic Fool do all these things and more?

No?

Okay, so you work in an office. And maybe you and your coworkers don’t have open access to a nearby stepladder. And clearly you’re busy—far too busy, in fact, to afford time to experiment with something so trivial as your hair. “Cut me a break,” you might say, “I’m tired. This is my third cup of coffee and I still have to send a morning’s worth of emails and pump out these memos so my colleagues can fill their spreadsheets.” Suddenly, the printer breaks down, the fax machine short circuits, your cell phone won’t make calls and you fed all your dimes to the meter after lunch.

While Walt Theo Fewl has never (yet) stood on a chair or combed his locks upside down, he has been here before. The lead character in Drew “The Dramatic Fool” Richardson’s latest comic exploit What the Fool?!?, played by the Athens native himself, has had his fill of the white collar working world and decided he wants to get out more. Fortunately for him, there is a lovely little vaudeville show slated for the evening of Sunday, March 17, 2013 at our very own ARTS/West. On a grail quest for inspiration and renewed vitality, Walt makes the journey to the modest arts center, unaware that in order to find his fortune he himself must become the night’s entertainment.

The Dramatic Fool’s show begins with a video, created exclusively for an Athens audience, of our protagonist bumbling into the venue in silent comedy style. Setting off his car alarm multiple times—assuaging its distress with tender strokes—rappelling downhill with a rubber hose, and catching his pop-up umbrella in the stair railing, he proves fodder for laughter with each move he makes.

The video itself, altered to feel like a 1920s silent film, brings to mind Richardon’s enthusiasm for that seminal film tradition. According to the actor audiences today are “spoonfed” by high-budget movies overfilled with cut-to-cut action and digital effects. Inspired by genre greats like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Richadson revitalizes the silent film in order to broaden the arena for comic stunts and creative spoofery. In turn, this more grounded version of Hollywood comedy gives the audience space to focus more, relate more, and laugh more with their beloved fool.

This introduction further contributes to the play’s being venue specific—meaning that every performance of What the Fool?!? is slightly different based on where it’s held. Part of this, Richardson admits, is a result of practical planning. Almost all of the props the show requires (stepladders, programs, clothing racks, etc.) are things that could be found in virtually any theater at performance time; the logic goes that if one creates a play using only these objects, then he or she could easily perform in any space without the need to transport a large-scale set. What this means is that every rendition is conditioned by the potentials—and limitations—that a particular theater’s props, size, and shape provides. But while some productions would inevitably be crippled by these limitations, The Dramatic Fool uses each venue’s intrinsic flair to his advantage (in interview, he gave me an example of himself catching his foot, perhaps, in a small nook that exists between steps and the bottom of the ARTS/West stage). Nowhere is this more apparent than in his playful opening sequence.

The Dramatic Fool’s habit of experimenting with his surroundings is a celebration of potentials, an emphasis on the personality a given venue provides. Because of our ever more-routinized lives, even theater buffs will often find themselves traveling around with their “blinders on,” as Richardson puts it. More precisely, we have a tendency to streamline our vision to see only that which we deem most important; on the occasion of going to a show, for instance, this means we solely see our path through the ticket office, hear the steps we take to reach our seats, and view the show on stage as something like a potentially enriching creative expression contained in a pocket of space. What the Fool?!? aims to remove the creative act from this supposed vacuum. In utilizing a venue’s idiosyncrasies, The Dramatic Fool demonstrates the possibilities that exist in things—such as the shape of a stage—that often get overlooked. Ultimately, he hopes to make the audience’s experience of the environment—including that tragically impersonal journey from ticket counter to chair—more real, and to encourage them to see that space in an entirely new way.

Of course, extracting (I might say “exhuming”) the creative act from the vacuum is no one-way conversation. Like any good magician, Richardson relies almost as much on audience cues as he does on scripted action to make his act enjoyable. From his initial stumbling over observers in the search for a seat to his hilarious responses to louder-than-intended comments from children, The Dramatic Fool makes the audience just as much a part of the show as he is.

Therefore, enlisting both the audience and the ARTS/West venue itself in his fun-loving troupe of would-be jesters, Walt enters the auditorium as an observer in a stiff suit and thinning comb-over and leaves a veritable vaudeville everyman. Organizing itself as a series of problems—brilliantly occurring one after another as if by accident—the show sees Walt using leather belts as bridges, fashioning rope into a suspender for his falling slacks, and using gravity’s aid to produce the perfect hairdo. Each solution he conjures marks the stages by which he morphs from office flunky into big top hero.

Each solution—as well as its respective problem—is also decidedly somewhat silly. From silencing his car alarm via petting to taping paper to his shoe soles to legitimize walking on a stage that carries signs reading “No Street Shoes,” Walt must continually think outside the box to restore order to his world. He makes his first big mistake when he, shuffling exasperatedly through the pews (ARTS/West’s performance space was a sanctuary in days past), unwittingly launches his pop-open umbrella onto the stage. What follows is a circus act of hilarious proportions, as Walt must finagle some way of reaching it while emulating a classic children’s game of hot lava in a foolhardy attempt to avoid offense. Of course, nobody of feeling off-put, and he only prompts more laughter every time he hisses “sorry!” for the disturbance.

One would imagine that The Dramatic Fool, despite his brazen disregard for Broadway’s conventions and a magician’s contrivances, has thus charmed his audience. Though it takes its cues from the silent film and vaudeville traditions of old, his performance style is surprisingly fresh. This is in part because, while Richardson is certainly an actor with striking self-animation and a penchant for shocking an audience, What the Fool?!? is much less about talent than it is about folly. The show draws much of its inspiration from Richardson’s Think Foolishly blog and his video series “How to Think Like a Fool.” And while much of the actor’s thinking herein is merely jest, there is something to be said for its emphasis on the irrational when it comes to creativity. According to his creator, Walt Theo Fewl, can’t even seem to strut into a theater without running into all sorts of unorthodox problems, can only hope to solve them all if he begins to “think like a fool.”

Ultimately, one may see this breed of showmanship as a parody of our waking lives, and all parody is nothing more than a subversive, vulgarized, and yet eye-opening version of the truth. The eye-opening part, in this case, is the notion that if we hope to navigate the accumulating problems in our lives, we may do well to shirk the authorities of the rational experts and their big date—for a time—and do a little foolish brainstorming.

So while I sit here and pick apart The Dramatic Fool’s act in an effort to analyze (and sanitize) it for the rational mind, Walt Theo Fewl has probably moved on to solving another of life’s problems through the most creative and nonsensical of means. Although there is doubtless enough here to congeal some sort of overarching message—something like the rescue of creativity, ransomed by the objective world—What the Fool?!? is ultimately something entirely different. It is a playful and new take on visual comedy that loves nothing more than poking fun at all of our conventions and preconceptions in theater. And if there is anything to take away from the show, other than a big, hearty laugh, it is, as The Dramatic Fool himself puts it, to “play more.” Because to have fun—to explore one’s world and heed the creative impulse—is both a personal and political act. It is to give rise to the notion that all we consider to be “rational” and “grown-up,” while certainly useful in our day-to-day lives, is perhaps not the sum total of what we need to be human.

#103 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 3

The first golden ticket has ben found by Louis in Paris, France. There are still four more tickets. I may still win one yet.

#102 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 2

So I didn’t win this time, but I still have my chocolate. Mmmmm chocolate. I don’t know why but right now I would really like to have a glass of red wine and some french fries. That would be great! Well anyways, I’ll finish here for now.

Natasha Bergg, one of our glamorous Alto 1s, went to a Clowning For Musicians workshop last week and has written up a lovely report about it. Over to you Natasha!

Freddie: supercharged energy (Picture courtesy of Queen Productions)

You’re on stage with your rock band in front of thousands of people, about to sing yet another song in a gruellingly long set. Do you:

a) have a little rest

b) smash something up

c) engage the crowd in a vocally challenging, operatic-style call and response exercise

Well c), obviously, if you’re Freddie Mercury.

I think I’m safe in saying that this is fairly unusual though.

Last weekend, Rebecca and I, both Alto 1s in The Pop-Up Choir, took part in a ‘Clowning for Musicians’ workshop with the excellent All In Theatre, who run regular clowning-themed workshops, musical and otherwise, across London and beyond.

If juggling and red noses immediately come to mind, I’m not surprised, but this was something different. A very simple form of clowning, as workshopped by All In and heavily influenced by directors such as Philippe Gaulier and John Wright, is sometimes about being funny – but also about getting your body and brain into a certain state to connect playfully, openly and honestly with an audience.

I’ve already found clowning useful in the drama-led workshops I run with young people – in terms of quickly building up a rapport and connection with participants – and I was interested to see how I could transpose that into singing with a choir or as a solo singer. For me, performing as a singer, violinist and pianist has always been about adopting a persona and, as a result, I’m not as relaxed, natural or confident as I could be.

After warm-ups to release tension and work around building trust within the group, helping us to feel able to be vulnerable in front of everyone else (and, shock horror, enjoy it) and establishing and maintaining a connection with an audience without ‘trying to be funny’ or adopting a character, the final exercise of the day saw Rebecca and me running into a space in front of our audience, wordlessly deciding who would sing first and then each performing a song in short bursts, going from frantic whispering to singing.

Yes, it was a bit weird. But here’s the magic behind it: Stephen Sobal, All In’s Founder and workshop director, wanted us to use the same supercharged, playful energy in our singing that we had built up during exercises we’d worked on during the day and that we had brought to running on to the stage. I think my favourite moment of the workshop came when Rebecca and I ran into the space and stood, looking at each other, smiling and playing in the space that had been created by no-one knowing what would happen next. Simple, but magic.

So the question for me is, can I bring that fresh energy, brought about by a ‘no-one knows what’s going to happen next’ feeling, to songs I’ve sung with the same people many times before and deliver a supercharged performance?

I think I know what Freddie would say…

#101 Funny One And The Chocolate Factory Part 1

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