Tag: James Thiérrée
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.
After my post on eccentric dancer George Campo’s incredible chair routine, which came by way of Betsy Baytos, I got a link by way of Ted Shapiro to a chair piece performed by James Thiérrée. Well, sort of a chair piece, because it’s about his near-futile efforts to get his rag-doll body to somehow ooze into a proper seated position on a chair. Turns out all he really needed was for a strong woman to administer a swift kick to the seat of his pants.
As the lights went down at the end of the final performance of James Thiérrée’s Raoul at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this afternoon, the entire audience immediately jumped to its feet to give him a rousing standing ovation. And yet the New York Times review argued that “the charms of Raoul the show quickly wear thin.”
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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