The Clown Manifesto

P. Nalle Laanela, Stacey Sacks

• Editore: Oberon Books
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781783196180
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Médias et arts de la scène
• Categoria: Interprétation et audition

Part clown manual, part storytelling and part rant – The Clown Manifesto covers the experiences, philosophies and methods of the clown performer/director/teacher Nalleslavski. A book for clowns, physical comedians, actors, musicians, jugglers, puppeteers, magicians, street performers and dancers. Whatever form your clowning takes – theatre, street theatre, comedy, burlesque, magic, circus – the mischievously named Nalleslavski Method gives you practical tools to create comedy material that works universally, across cultural and language barriers.

VI

The Nalleslavski Method

‘There are no bad audiences.’

Nalleslavski

Reflections on Connecting and Playing

Stacey: 'You know there's no such word as awarenesses?'

Nalle: 'There is now.'

To be able to do any of the work of a clown, you have to be able to come on stage, dare to stand still and to connect with an audience. You have to have the courage to play and to be aware within this playing that there is an audience watching you and sharing your experience. The goal of my method is to help performers develop more connected and playful relationships with their audiences.

As a performer I have spent years searching for the universal lowest common denominator of laughter. I have endlessly searched for underlying structures, trying to really understand the architecture of comedy, but every new situation and new audience changed the game just enough so that the structures I had previously built had to change as well. It was not until I started focusing on teaching that I really discovered what I feel is the core of clowning: to CONNECT and PLAY.

All of a sudden I realised the ever-changing game, never twice the same, could be simplified to a rule that not only generated a format to hold on to, but also fostered freedom of creativity. I had found my golden key.

For many years I taught one- to two-week workshops to actors, clowns, circus artists and corporate public speakers and observed that even though the golden key was discovered through my clowning, on a wider scale it was simply about working with live audiences and was, therefore, much more universally applicable than I had previously imagined.

CONNECT

‘Make the audience feel seen.’

Nalleslavski

Since the audience is always the main focus within the creative process, performers should consistently have an awareness of how their audience is being affected. We have to get the audience to lean forward and engage with the show and become immersed with what’s happening on stage. I believe the moment when the audience forgets where they are, ‘the room turns red’. This is a theatrical term used to describe the moment the spectators become fully engaged with the show. Connecting with the audience is for me primarily the art of the dialogue.

When teaching, an exercise called 'the dialogue' is one of the first I usually start with. Students sit in pairs and I ask them to say hello and talk to each other as if they were complete strangers. Afterwards we reflect about what the patterns were and, most frequently, they are similar. Both took time to make sure the other person had a chance to participate. Both mixed taking focus and giving focus. Both had an awareness of whether the other person was engaged or not. If someone talked too long without reconnecting, the other person's interest started to waver. With regards to real communication, the social rule of not suppressing your dialogue partner is crucial, yet for some reason as soon as we stand on stage we often take for granted that it is ok to have a non-connecting monologue. It is easy for the performer to let their awareness of the stage action and their own internal dialogue be more important than their awareness of the audience. If the audience is sufficiently intrigued by the stage action then this is not a problem. If they are not enthralled, however, then you have lost them and they leave, either mentally or physically. The question is: as the performer, are you aware whether the audience is mesmerised or not? Are you connected to them? My teaching dilemma always focuses on how to consistently maintain our awarenesses whilst in dialogue with the audience. How do we do this whilst simultaneously focusing on the story, co-actors, improvisatory moments or seven balls in the air?

The levels of awareness I use are:

•	the audience
•	self (the performer’s breath, energy and emotional levels, the shape and movements of their body)
•	space (including the ‘real’ room, the actual stage as well as the performer’s imaginative space or world)
•	co-performers and volunteers
•	props or objects on stage
•	actions
•	the dramaturgy of the material
•	the audience. I mention them again because they deserve it.

My thinking is that we must both heighten our constant awareness of the audience and their reactions as well as build in 'reconnection bus stops' when we are creating material for our shows. These are breaks in the action where we have planned moments of audience reconnection.

Astute awareness of the audience, and the ability to play with this awareness, is for me a golden key of a brilliant performer. Of all the 'awarenesses', this game between performer and audience is by far the king of the equals. It is the most important element a performer needs to capture and hold their audience.

To expand their awarenesses in all directions, performers need to possess basic stage techniques such as making sure they can be seen and heard. It sounds simple, but it’s crucial to be aware of what the audience is experiencing. The performer must be aware of the different variables that influence their performance. If you have good material but you don’t know where your audience is or where you are in the room, it doesn’t work.

It’s important to be aware of the physical circumstances, such as the architecture of the room: is there a trapdoor, window or faucet which can be incorporated into the performance? With an enlarged awareness of the room, options will be so much more varied since all of these qualities become improvisational opportunities.

There really is a lot to think about when you are on stage, yet that is the very time performers should not be thinking at all. They should be connecting and playing.

The Nalleslavski Cinnamon Bun Dough Analogy

Training awareness reminds me of making cinnamon buns. When you make cinnamon buns, first you make a ball of dough. With a roller, you first roll the dough in one direction. When you change positions to roll in another direction, the first direction will recede, so you have to go back and roll over it again. It’s important to keep on rolling and, the more directions you roll in, the bigger the dough becomes and the more it stays in all directions. And so the dough expands.

For me, this is exactly what we have to do with our awareness when on stage. We have to keep our attention on the audience, the room we’re in and the material we’re performing, all at the same time, whilst simultaneously being open to improvisational possibilities, those unplanned moments brimming with comedy gold. Without training, when we focus on the action we can easily disconnect from the audience, just as when we focus on the audience, it's possible to lose awareness of our co-performers or volunteer. When you go off in one direction, you lose another, but if you train your awareness by consistently going back, giving each level of awareness attention so that the whole can expand, the dough becomes delicious in the end.

CLOWN TOOLS for CONNECTING include:

Eye Contact

By eye contact I don’t mean that blurry look into middle distance which you see so often on theatre stages, I mean using real eye contact. I feel the eyes are the windows to the soul and, when confronting a clown, the audience must truly feel seen.

Listening

It’s also really important to listen for audience reactions, and to respond to these. When creating clown material remember it’s a dialogue with the audience so leave spaces where the audience is supposed to be answering.

Bus Stops

Sometimes when I work with jugglers, I notice they’re so focused on their juggling that they’re not aware of the audience. Alternatively, sometimes they stare blankly at the audience; we can see that behind their eyes they are thinking about their next trick. A way to solve this is to add choreographed beats where they are connecting with the crowd just often enough so the audience feels connected the entire time. Mentally I find this also helps free the mind to really focus on the difficult juggling technique since there is no split focus. Do one, then the other…

Choreograph your Awarenesses

One of the problems with performing is that if you’re not used to it, your focus is usually only in one place at a time. So when I start choreographing numbers I not only add beats which take in the audience but also beats of the other awarenesses like props, room, co-performers. For example, when you first enter a room take time to experience it, then connect your experience with the audience. If you sit in a chair, take time to experience it, then share that experience with the audience. Between each choreographed awareness reconnect with some audience awareness.

Being aware of where your focus is, isn’t a revolutionary concept, but it’s often forgotten. As a comic performer, I can learn to switch between these awarenesses more and more rapidly to humorous effect. Importantly, the performer must also be aware of their ability to steer where the audience is looking by choosing where to focus.

PLAY

'Dedicate yourself to the game, even if the game changes.'

Nalleslavski

Children are masters of play yet for some reason our culture has created a value system which encourages grown-ups to stop playing. Children play, adults do not.

When I ask children in refugee camps if they appreciated our show, one of the strongest comments I am usually given is, 'I have never seen a grown man play'. Serious times crave serious people yet those who study happiness say the opposite. People we perceive as happy are the ones who can stay playful during serious times. I describe playfulness as: dedication to the game, even if the game changes. So to play one must come up with games. Everything can be made into a game and the clearer the game is, the easier it is to dedicate oneself to it.

Clown workshops are generally held in game format where different games are used to train different elements of awareness, patterns or structures. Many students confuse playing the game with winning the game. When they perceive they are losing the game, they become filled with negative feelings.

Some clown pedagogues play on this and push this vulnerability since it too is a game that the audience finds entrancing. My feeling is that i...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Author
• Foreword
• I Prologue
• II History of the Wondermakers
• III Confessions of a War Clown
• IV The Sweet Essence of Clown
• V The Clown Manifesto
• VI The Nalleslavski Method
• VII The Rebel Creator