Tag: History
Histories of ancient theatre tend to leave the impression that comedy began with Aristophanes, but Greece already had a rich tradition of commedia-style performance — the Dorian mimes (image, above). As I wrote in chapter two of Clowns…
These Dorian clowns— as well as the short plays they performed —came to be known as
mimes (mimos). Today mime is usually equated with pantomime, the art of silent acting, but originally the word meant “to imitate” and referred to the performer’s talent for caricature; the ancient mimes were in fact quite talkative. Much of the dialogue apparently was improvised, and since the actors saw little need to preserve in writing what was said on stage, these comic dramas never became dramatic literature.
Fous et Bouffons: un Etude Physiologique, Psychologique et Historique (Fools & Buffoons: A Physiological, Psychological, and Historical Study)
by Dr. Paul Moreau
It turns out Erasmus is not just the name of a high school in New York City. Apparently before he was a high school — about 500 years before — he was also a famous philosopher.
The standard entry on fools and jesters usually makes mention of Shakespeare’s jester characters, especially the fool in King Lear. It was Robert Armin (c. 1563 – 1615) who first acted the role as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as well as such similar roles as Touchstone in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth Night, Lavatch in All’s Well That Ends Well, and perhaps Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, as well as comic parts in other Elizabethan dramas. In fact, Armin’s joining the company around 1600 is credited by some with Shakespeare’s increased interest in witty jesters.
The blog is nine months old today, so of course it is giving birth to a new feature.
Today I introduce yet another new feature to this blog, a complete book in the form of a pdf file suitable for reading online, downloading, or printing. Because of legal issues, most if not all books presented here will be from the pre-copyright era, roughly a century or more ago, and therefore of a historical nature.
About a month ago I wrote about Jon Davison’s clown research project over in the UK. Today I want to report another such effort, this one here in New York City by Brian A. Bernhard.
The Christmas pantomime is what remains of the old harlequinade, the cauldron for physical comedy in 19th-century England.
Runners have a saying: the older I get, the faster I used to be. Maybe it’s the same for clowns: do our younger selves just keep getting funnier and funnier? Yep, nothing beats nostalgia, which we proved this past September 19th by staging a clown-theatre reunion in my apartment here in New York, bringing together a crowd of people who had worked together back in the day on the NY International Festival of Clown-Theatre (1983, 1985) and other creative projects. I am happy to report that all the women are still strong, all the men still good-looking, and all our children way above average.
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