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I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: physical comedy is everywhere. Not just in silent films and the circus, but in dance and mime, in straight drama and in television commercials, in rodeos and —you can see where I’m going with this— in basketball. Of course I’m referring to the Harlem Globetrotters and to the great Meadowlark Lemon, a five-decade veteran who passed away yesterday at the age of 83.
It’s the third day of Christmas and I have a present for you, my loyal blog readers. No, it’s not three French hens. Even better: a free chapter from my new book. The performing arts chapter, of course!
We’ve had an action hero as governor of California, a professional wrestler as governor of Minnesota, and now a reality tv star as a presidential contender. But Canada has us beat, a prime minister who’s a physical comedian! Yes, the newly elected Justin Trudeau (another JT). And I don’t apply that label the way many a politician is characterized as being a bozo, or the way President Ford was so clumsy that spoofing him helped jumpstart Chevy Chase’s career. Trudeau really can do stuff. For example, “accidentally” falling down stairs is (or at least was) his favorite party trick.
When I taught my first physical comedy workshop more than three decades ago, I called it “theatrical acrobatics,” by which I meant adapting and disguising acrobatic vocabulary in order to make it work believably for a character in a comic situation. Everything had to have cause and effect and look natural, not gymnastic. You could learn a lot from silent film comedy, circus clowning, contact improv, Pilobolus, and stage combat, but precious little of it was written down.
I’m always amazed to find young physical comedians who study and work hard at their craft and yet have only minimal familiarity with the silent films of Buster Keaton.
Yes, the blog is back! I’ve pretty much been away from it for a year as I worked on a new book (see sidebar), but I’ve got plenty of new stuff to share. Well, this post’s new stuff is actually quite old, but I’m sure new to most of you: a tutorial on pratfalls from silent film great Lupino Lane’s out-of-print book, How to Become a Comedian.
If you’re looking for someone to make your music video a hit, Dick Van Dyke’s your man. Eighty-nine years young. Inspiring!
Not too many years ago I was heavily into AfterEffects and taught a course in video visual effects at Bloomfield College. While my students were for the most part more into the sci-fi and gory violence applications, I preferred the comedic possibilities, the more surrealistic the better.
When I did my recent post, Comedy Acrobatics Roundup, I meant to include this wonderfully inventive piece by Walter Dare Wahl and Emmet Oldfield, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. (Senility is a terrible thing.) Luckily Hilary Chaplain recommended it to the NYC Physical Comedy Lab after Audrey Crabtree had led an exercise in creating physical comedy chain reactions, so now here it is!
I was going to call this post “Old-Fart Physical Comedy” but I thought I’d pull in more readers this way. Sexagenarian must have something to do with sex, right? Maybe there’ll even be pictures! No, but while you’re here…
Somehow I missed this when it first happened, but maybe you did too. Really hysterical.
I have yet to find any biographical information on the multi-talented Georges Holmes, but this performance is from the French tv show La Piste aux Etoiles, from the same 1959 broadcast as Les Marcellys in my previous post. Also, his first name is spelled the French way, and the few words he speaks are in French, so let’s assume he’s French. He’s a tap dancer, acrobat, magician, and object manipulator. He’s quite the human smokestack, and also does one of my favorite “stupid human tricks,” the back roll with the cup of water. A variety artist full of variety!
Wow! 400 posts!! (Have you read them all?) Never thought I’d make it this far. But it’s fitting that the big 4–0–0 be about comedy acrobatics. Yeah, my keenest interest is physical comedy happening to real characters in real-life situations, but the truth is I never get tired of comedy acrobatics. By which I mean acrobatic acts that are prone to go wrong because at least one performer is blessed with clown DNA. Or that the act is performed by eccentric movers who are just too damn silly to conform to Standard Acrobatic Form.
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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