Tag: Not Exactly Physical Comedy
Apparatus such as unicycles and trampolines are built for stunts. They’re cool and all, and excellent comedy has certainly been done with both, but I’ve always been more drawn to physical comedy that uses objects commonly found in the real world — chairs, tables, doors, stairs, etc. Maybe that’s why I also like parkour and flair bartending, living proof of the appeal of circus techniques applied to everyday life.
The typical contortion act — you know, with the platform and the mouthpiece and the 13-year-old girl doing a Marinelli bend — puts me to sleep. And then there’s the snake dance of French performers Janik & Arnaut — Janine Janik (1931 – 1985) & Christian Arnaut (1912 – 2003). This isn’t exactly physical comedy since they’re not going for the laughs, but the partnering work is amazing: not just the unique positions, but the sinuous flow of the snake around the charmer’s body. In most partner acrobatics, the base is muscling a lot of the moves; here, much of it is accomplished with little or no use of Arnaut’s hands, much less his biceps; he guides more than he lifts.
The Venice Biennale is a bi-annual world fair of art, complete with national pavilions, long lines, and manufactured hoopla. The U.S. pavilion went up in 1930 and has usually housed big-name artists, starting with Edward Hopper that initial year. But this time around, instead of sending an established solo artist, our government has chosen to have us represented by two less known collaborative artists who are centered not stateside but rather in Puerto Rico — Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. And for apparently the first time ever, the visual artists are also performance artists. I haven’t seen their work, but what interests me about them is their whimsical humor and physicality, in this case involving a troupe of former Olympic gymnasts in their piece.
I don’t know much about Compagnie Ieto, another product of the French circus school system. I’ve never seen them perform, but based on this video — thank you to Jeff Seal for the link — I like, I like. Strictly speaking this is more nouveau cirque than physical comedy, but there’s a strong kinship in terms of partner acrobatic work, engagement with the material world, and sheer creativity.
I’m a semi-serious runner, so I’ve put in my hours on the treadmill, but I never had this much fun. This is OK Go performing Here It Goes Again (The Treadmill Video).
I’m a big baseball fan, I coached Little League for something like seven years, and I still like to play, though I prefer a game of softball, the kind where you grab a beer as you’re rounding first. For two or three decades there was this one fantasy play that my circus brain always used to dream of. And now here it is, done for real and captured on video! Patience is indeed a virtue.
We live in an age of heat-seeking missiles and biometric surveillance, so when Thai rebel leader Arisman Pongruangrong pulled a Douglas Fairbanks and escaped from a hotel surrounded by Bangkok police by climbing a rope down the side of the building, we had one of our more retro physical comedy moments in recent years. Better yet, the deputy prime minister had just gone on national television to announce that they had their man! Pongruangrong, who’s also a pop singer, was hugged by his adoring supporters before being spirited out of there in a get-away car. Zorro, anyone?
No comedy here, but I like biking and this has the most amazing bike stunts I’ve ever seen — parkour on two wheels!
Joshua Allen Harris is a very clever guy. This may or may not be physical comedy, but I’m guessing you’ll like it.
But it is physical, and it is funny in a joyous laughter kind of way. Two hundred dancers and a whole lot of hidden cameras descend upon the unsuspecting commuters at the majestic Antwerpen Central Station and go wild to the sound of my old girlfriend, Julie Andrews.
So here I go again, launching yet another blog feature that I think will repeat on a regular basis. This is reserved for stuff that’s technically not what I would call physical comedy (and I have a pretty broad definition), but that I think would be of interest to the readers of this blog for one reason or another.
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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