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Final Evaluation of Clowning Performance

So the day of the final performance came along and we were all exited as a box of frogs, all we wanted was to show the audience how hard we had worked on the piece and how the endless amount of rehearsals showed the enhancement in all of our characters and the technique of the group including how we timed different gags and keeping up the storyline. We thrived on having a very decent audience because we knew we had a better opportunity to create more of a buzz and get more laughs because that was the whole point of the piece was to generate comedy and show off our clowning personalities both individually and as a group to show the audience how well we gelled together and how well the gags could bounce off each other and how we as clowns could handle it.

I felt personally because of the constant hard work in rehearsals each of us knew exactly when the timing of the gags would have happened, the contrast between Nadia and Jose worked well just as the contrast between myself and Jose because we all wanted each scene to flow better into each other to keep the comedy and storyline in time so the audience would keep enthralled in what we were doing so for example when one gag received a good reaction from the audience we aimed to get the next scene at the same level to get the same response.

In the mode of performance, as a group we did not rule out the chance of possible mistakes so during the performance, there was a little error of not following the structure of the piece as we mixed up two scenes, but having being experienced in improvisation in a previous module, my performance head immediately thought to devise something to connect the dots back together and not lose the meaning to the performance, improvisation can be difficult for some people especially doing it on the spot but to analyse myself as a improviser, i felt my creative brain developed a sense of coping with situations that could be solved by using improvisation as a element as part of the performance.

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Photos of the final performance in the clowning module. 

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My Clown

Throughout the process of this module, one of the goals we all were asked to achieve was to find our inner clown. But what is your inner clown, it is a combination of elements that comes out of your personality and then to perform them on stage in whatever clown you come across to the audience as. 

One of the first things about finding your clown is to not force it, normally the clown will come naturally just finding that particular moment that shows the audience that you have something here and the only way forward is to develop and make it more funny. 

That is why i realized that forcing yourself to be funny is not the right decision because sometimes trying too hard ultimately just does not go down well with the audience.

I admit in the first couple of months i struggled to find my clown, i decided not to go up front of the audience and act as a clown that i knew i wasn’t, i felt i needed to work at my own pace and to let my clown come to me and ultimately i would have the confidence to perform in front of the others. 

Sometimes when you come across elements that you think that can work for your clown, they don’t always and you would have to think again of a new way to match the elements with your clown personality to see if they work.

When it comes to standing up in front of the audience and you manage to make them laugh, continue feeding of the energy of the audience and try the same action but funnier, if it does not work don’t just give up, think of another action that you can do that might go down well with the audience.

My clown has a mixture of elements that blend in well, take a nervous but happy and rebellious clown, my sort of clown can cope in several situations and environments and is perfect when it comes to interacting with different clowns because of the relationship shown can be very interesting when my clown which has a bit of an attitude comes across a stupid clown you create an interesting dynamic as if my clown was interacting with a friendly clown, it’s you as a clown that controls what happens in front of the audience. 

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This was our tech run through rehearsal, this rehearsal was to give us a feel of running the piece over and over again until we felt extremely comfortable about what we were doing on stage and especially worked on the timings as that was something we were advised to work on, to get it all to flow together.It was also another opportunity for us to clean up parts of the performance we thought we could energize to enhance and freshen up the piece to give the audience something else they might not expect in the piece. We all thought as a group that rehearsals gives us the chance to add new material into the piece not necessarily new segments but to make a specific gag stronger and give it a new look and a new meaning to make sense.      

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James Thiérrée’s work in action

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Clowning Inspiration - James Thiérrée

James Thiérrée is a man who as a kid was always used to growing up in the circus that his mother and father ran. His work i would describe as beguiling and exasperating.

For the research into our gags, as a group we all decided to try and find pieces of work of clowns we have either come across or discussed during our clowning sessions.

I decided to look more into depth about James Thiérrée due to me being really facinated by his clowning piece “The Hand” and how well he gelled with the other clown on stage and noticing the desperation as he tried every single possible way of trying to get out of his predicament but every thought he had was already put in motion by the other clown on stage and you could see his clown get very tired and stressed to try and get away from the other clown. 

I watched him and a partner of his Hervé Lassïnce act out several sight gags including a violin stuck to the fingers and a wayward quiff stuck to the skull.

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Video of Clowning Rehearsal

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Video of Clowning Rehearsal 

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Development of Rehearsal Process

Our group rehearsals were structured in a way that every member of the group made a contribution to select rooms where we would undergo non-stop intense rehearsals to prove the hard working ethic in the group that every member had in their itinerary.

As a group we felt a connection straight away, we all knew we were hard working individuals and that our overall goal was to make the most hard working piece as possible and ultimately agreed at the start of the module the way we were going to do that was to work with the most committed and hard-working people with a good attendance because we wanted to gain trust and rely on people to share the same goals as us.

When it came to our rehearsal process, we always started in a thinking mode more than anything as we structured how we wanted the gags to play out and tried to give a rough estimate to how long we wanted them to play out for as we tried to stick to the time limit that we were given. 

Another reason we thought it was best to start off in a thinking position was because we would have an idea going into rehearsing what we wanted to do, sure we could develop ideas whilst rehearsing if we wanted to add another element to a certain gag to enhance it and make it better. 

One trick we used in rehearsals was not to actually rehearse the whole piece in one, we decided to stick to taking chunks out of the piece and each section in a bunch of different rehearsals so we have the ability to run over it again and again and make it into perfection, once we had practiced all the sections then ultimately we would run the whole piece and if there was any issues we would polish it off straight away and see what has gone wrong and what we can do to fix it.

The thing i loved about these in particular was that we had a change to have a laugh ourselves, we realised in the performance yes it would be really good to just go out there and have some fun and a good time but as a group we mostly take it seriously because we want to entertain the audience to the best of our ability, in the rehearsals there were certain gags that i myself struggled to contain my laughter but rehearsals gives me the opportunity to let that amusement out of me and to get back focusing on the more important things and that’s the work we have.

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Working with Slapstick Comedy Session 2

This session we firstly showed Rick the little routine of all the skills we had learnt over the first session of learning slapstick comedy. Everybody had been given the task by Rick to keep going over the moves time and time again until you had it to perfection, i don’t know about the others but i was determined to take Rick’s words seriously and keep practising, i knew when it came to the next session i would not have been on the same level Rick was on but i knew that there was no harm in attempting to prove that i was going to develop and hopefully achieve in getting to the level that Rick was on.

The order of the routine was just a casual walk then to develop into the front trip and then quickly into the back trip, it sounds complicated right well i’m not going to deny i had a few bumps and bruises in the practising process but i was proud in the sharp twists and turns that makes it more quicker and more believable to the audience, i admit when it came to show and tell it took me about two turns due to slipping up in the first one but Rick told me that he had respect that i did not give up and was determined to get it right because myself as a person i hate getting beaten by things and i need to overcome the obstacles.

Rick then taught us about slapstick stage combat, we learned about how to make headbuts, slaps and punches look really believable on stage and if we wanted to develop it further then we could incorporate it into our performances. I did not find the combat that challenging but i found it enjoyable, i realised that as long as i listened to Rick’s instructions i could do it because of having past experience of working with this type of slapstick before i came to university but i still felt a development in learning new things. Ultimately we all paired up and together created a short and snappy piece but Rick then told us how to incorporate it into a performance

The structure was

1) The cause

2) The action

3) The reaction

We took those steps and then created a funny little sketch using the combat we learnt then to insert them into those 3 steps. 

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Working with Slapstick Comedy Session 1

For two sessions, we focused on working with Slapstick comedy and we had the opportunity to be taught by someone who specialises in it, Rick. This was by far my favourite part of the clowning module and I am going to tell you why.

The first thing that Rick taught us was how to attempt a trip up, we undertook this in several different ways. we could try and front trip up which took some time especially for me to master but i did not give up on it, Rick kept telling me and i still thank him for it to keep trying the same method but taking the pace slowly and then i felt more comfortable doing the routine i could speed up the pace a bit to make it a bit more believable. The method was to walk in a front line and then when the time was right then quickly swipe the other foot across the foot you intend to slip up on and then slightly fall forward and take a couple of steps forward to make the audience believe you have accidentelly tripped up, i wanted to take a different approach by trying this movement in the developing piece for the assessment by making my character look like he has not tied his laces so it distracts the audience into thinking that was the reason that i tripped up. 

Then it came to doing that same movement but backwards, i myself had no fear of falling backwards because Rick had gave us all promise and showed us the different ways we could attempt to stop risking injury to ourselves in case of falling backwards whilst doing the movement, we all lied on the floor and Rick was telling us that the hands were definately an essential to protect us from possible head injury. There was a catch though, we had to make sure that our palms were flat on the floor and not to have them crunched up.

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Second Group Discussion

The second group discussion we had in front of our peers in actual class where we as a group had the opportunity to present our idea onto the field and find out what the audience thought about it. They liked the plotline and setting of the resturaunt and that they three characters we created would fit nice and gel into that type of setting.

They were confident about the gags we had thought about and were exited to know and find out how we were going to experiment with objects such as the door and the tablecloth as well as the vast amount of objects that would be placed in the bag like the brocolli (which could be used as a hairbrush), the Ping Pong ball which i suggested would be a little prop of mine that i could bring in and do some interaction with the audience as a little side to what my character is all about, a friendly, nervous but stupid clown that wants to be in a nice happy friendly environment and to make friends. We told the audience the reason we chose to do a resturaunt scene was because we had the ability to fit in so many gags whether they were reccuring throughout the piece of were just short and sweet gags, plus the objects we had chosen we had the ability to use them in so many ways to show the audience that we have thought of something fresh every single time we have used that particular object. 

My character for the piece was a hot topic to talk about as everyone fairly pointed out some interesting factors that as a group we had to be careful about in particular, the original plan was for me to perform in drag in the piece as a woman opposite Jose’s male character and Nadia’s waiter character, our we realised as a group we did not have enough time to prepare and rehearse as a female character and did not want to risk offending anyone in the audience, although as a group we had no intention of offending anyone in any single way, we thought transitioning me back to a male character would be what is better to work well and to be successful. 

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Working with the red noses

As clowns, red noses are a symbolic element of their look and personality. Outside of class i was very keen to know what the public thought when they see a clown what is the first thing that pops into their head. I managed to ask a few people what they thought and to my bewilderness the answers not as diverse as I thought they would come out to be. People were torn between how a clown always wears a red nose and the other answer was their funny laugh. From my findings the answers were 50-50 when it come to the probability as their were so diverse and predictable answers they could have said. We knew sooner than later we would be working with red noses in our clowning class and when it came to the day we learned we would be wearing them for the duration of the class just to get that feel of playing with them in the different exercises to see if it would work well. 

Myself i enjoyed working with the red noses mostly because for the majority of the class when I get into my clown the feeling that the red nose is there was not there, i was oblivious to the fact that the red nose was still on my face but when it came to doing more exercises behind the screen i found that not knowing the red nose is on my face is better because it gives off the nostaligia that my clown came across much more funnier to the audience because they knew that i did not know that i did not come to the realisation that my red nose was there.

One exercise that we did was for the clown chosen was to sit on the chair and do nothing whilst the audience just watched the facial expressions that that clown did without not having to move just to communicate by looking at the audience, with myself it was interesting because i went in to this exercise not really expecting a reaction but was amused myself when i saw the audience was actually laughing and it did’t cross my mind until i realised that i was still wearing the red nose and it looked and gelled well with the facial expressions i was doing whilst looking at the audience.

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Class Exercise - Upstaging the other Clown

This exercise gave everybody the chance to test their clowns against each other and see how they blend as well to create something funny to the audience with the different clowns. The original exercise we were meant to do was for two clowns to enter on stage from behind the two panels that were set up for us. The two selected or volunteering clowns shared the same objective and that was to try and upstage each other in their own funny way to ultimately see who would get the better reaction. The clowns were allowed to use many different ways to get a reaction from the audience including props, from what I took from this exercise is that the clown I was paired with, everything he did i tried to enhance in a more funny way to make him look like I was obviously trying to upstage him and to provoke him into a challenge to see who could do that in particular gesture better so we both show a clear view of upstaging each other in a physical and mental way.

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Doing Everything That Is Supposed To Be The Right Way And Doing It Wrong, Protecting the Chair exercise

This exercise was one of my favorites to do in the entire module, we firstly were shown an example of how to use a chair the right way, the many forms of using a chair, including sitting on a chair, folding a chair up to take away, offering a chair to someone, standing on a chair, wiping some dirt or food off a chair, as you can see there are many things we can do right with just an ordinary chair, but what we were asked to do is to create a short little sketch of everything wrong we could do with a chair. I and my partner thought of three different moves all intertwined together, sort of like a little showreel, short little snippets of different movements that you would not normally do with a chair, what we didn’t notice, out of all the movements we did kind of created a little story that the audience picked up on, the first movement was off my partner sitting backwards on the chair with his legs tucked in, then using it as a machine gun and then as a guitar, the next task was for each partnership to stop the other person from sitting on the chair, the experience we got from that was a little showcase of me coming across to the audience as a security guard desperate to protect the chair and would go to any measures to protect it while my partner would be desperate to sit on it, I used a recurring hand gesture throughout that scene as a way to show my partner that was the barrier he needed to break down to achieve his goal, I found it extremely believable because there were particular moments that really stood out for me including the way when I wasn’t looking and my partner didn’t notice that the hand gesture was still up even if he didn’t see it.

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First Group Discussion

We recently had our first group discussion about what we intend to showcase in our clowning assessment. As performers we started out at the very bottom and put together a structure and planned out in specific detail what each of us would like to be featured, we thought of different gags that we think could come across funny and a storyline to fit all those gags in, we all agreed to have our storyline set in a restaurant scenery, we decided this because many things can go wrong in that sort of environment and the gags we had fitted perfectly, we discussed our many mistakes we have made and some actually inspired us to set this piece in a restaurant and even considered putting those mistakes and using them to our advantage by performing them in this piece. We agreed to have our characters very colourful and wanted to put them across very strongly to the audience, for my particular character, we imagined to go beyond the possible and to have my character as a drag queen, in the art of clowning this could be funny to the audience it takes me out of my comfort zone as I have never experienced a character like this before but this opportunity enhances me to take advantage of the situation and make it funny and an overall stronger performance, the members of the group have a very strong imagination when it came to the piece, the gags were extremely well thought-out, we had the idea of having a bag full of random items that will be pulled out, there was also the idea of a cigarette and what we could do with that (including shoving it up someone’s nose, the idea of having a wind machine when it came to the lady’s entrance, also having the opportunity to have a member of our group experienced in magic was extremely beneficial having such experience to use in our performance.

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Making Something Funny with Objects Placed On Stage

For this exercise, the whole class once again experimented with the screens but this time with another element added to give us more of a challenge. The task we were given is for two members of the class to step outside the classroom so they would have no idea what to expect when they came back in, the remaining members of the class would decide on a couple of objects there was no limits on how many there were, but to be placed in the space and the class would figure and decide a routine in which to use those objects and the best part was that the people outside would not have a clue on what to do and that is when the beauty of clowning comes in because when I participated in the exercise it really puts you on the spot and you have to have quick thinking which results in doing extraordinary things with the objects as in my mind it became very frustrating to actually find out what they had wanted us to do, throughout the process the audience were sublime to give us hints when we were going in the right or wrong direction with the objects, kind of like the typical is it hot or is it cold to actually get us to perform what the stigma the audience decided in the first place.