List of Posts
It is a pleasure and honor to have Mike Funt, artistic director of Four Clowns, join us as a guest contributor. Mike is well-known internationally for his workshops in clown, mask, and circus arts, and for the many physical theatre shows he has directed, including Servant of Two Masters, a stage adaptation of the 1971 film, Cold Turkey, and his own translation and adaptation of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid. Clown training includes work with Philippe Gaulier, Aitor Basauri, Stefan Haves and John Gilkey of Cirque du Soleil, Avner the Eccentric, Aziz Gual, and instructors from Ringling Brothers. He has also studied with play expert Dr. Stuart Brown and trained extensively in Laughter Yoga with Dr. Madan Kataria. Here he shares his longtime interest in the sacred clown, which has led to him teaching a workshop on it this weekend (Dec. 3 & 4) in Los Angeles. Check it out here!
It seems that the world we know is being torn asunder. I speak not of Donald Trump and the wreckage and foul taste of his campaign, though it’s in some ways related. I’m thinking of all the wonderful clown sages we’ve just lost —first Dimitri, and then in the past two days, both Dario Fo and Pierre Etaix. (Which reminds me of U.S. presidents #2 and #3, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, staying friends and pen pals in their later years, and then dying on the same day.)
There are professional clowns today who have never even heard of the great Swiss clown Dimitri, though they owe him a big debt. Dimitri died this week at the age of 80 in the Italian region of Switzerland, where he lived and, since 1975, operated the still-thriving Scuola Teatro Dimitri. But he sure should be remembered, because he played a major role in elevating the status of the clown as a performing artist. And I’ll tell you why…
The harlequinade is the holy grail of physical comedy.
I sortakinda have this sometimes-but-not-always tradition of using major holidays as an excuse to gift you any cartoons related to physical comedy that I’ve come across since the last time. So here I go again. If you like this kind of stuff, links to previous compilations are at the tail end.
As a follow-up to my previous post, here’s the complete text of the 1907 biography of Footit & Chocolat. (Yes, it is in French.) Read it here or download it for free.
Foottit & Chocolat were a legendary clown duo in turn-of-the-century, belle époque Paris, famed for their trailblazing partnership: the first white/black clown duo and first popular clown pairing of white face and auguste. Chocolat, born Rafael Padilla to slaves in Haiti, was to become France’s first black celebrity, long before Josephine Baker.
I’ve been busy with other projects and away from this blog, but one of the projects that’s kept me busy is on display next weekend in Barcelona. If you’re in the neighborhood, come join us, or if you know anyone who is, please spread the word!
Billy Schultz is an actor and director working in physical comedy for stage and screen. He has performed in your friend’s garage, at the Guggenheim museum and at loads of variety shows. His focus is on creating comedy from character and movement. Major sources of inspiration: Amy Schumer as Leslie Knope and ridiculous Vine dance compilations.
In an earlier post I made the argument that physical comedy, far from being dead, is all around us. We just don’t recognize it. Today in part two we look at physical comedy in politics, where it can prove especially embarrassing to those so desperate to control their self-image. The first hilarious example is hot off the wireless, last night’s Republican debate where, with help from ABC, the presidential candidates proved Chaplin’s adage that “good exits and good entrances, that’s all theatre is.”
Dave Carlyon’s memoir, The Education of a Circus Clown, only minimally touches on the world of physical comedy, but it is a book that many of my blog readers should find interesting, especially those who have spent time with Ringling Brothers… thus this review.
If I weren’t in Costa Rica right now I’d be seriously wishing I were in London. Even if you’ve never been and might never go, it’s good to know that the London International Mime Festival is now entering its 40th year. Since its inception in 1977, the festival has gone way beyond mime to encompass circus, clown, physical theatre, mask work, puppetry, and more. In the process, it has not only popularized a lot of deserving movement-oriented work, but has opened eyes outside the already converted. As the NY Times comments this week, “over four decades it has had a significant impact on British theater, disrupting the dominance of scripted plays —something that hasn’t quite happened the same way in the United States.”
When I was setting up The (Very) Physical Comedy Institute in 2014, I heard from a prospective student who said he was a kinetic artist who had been building Rube Goldberg machines for many years and was now trying to integrate human performance into his work —thus his interest in physical comedy. It was Joseph Herscher, a New Zealander living in Brooklyn, and though I didn’t know Joseph personally, I’d actually read about his work (which has millions of hits on YouTube) and had even done a blog post on him way back in 2012.
TRANSLATE THIS PAGE
Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin