CLOWN

In this class, we will build up the actor’s physical and mental muscles via exercises, games, and assignments that rediscover uncensored child-like wonder. We will attempt to relax our brains, open up our hearts and move our bodies with great pleasure together, which will cultivate an intrinsic appetite for an open, vulnerable, generous, ferocious, playful, rigorous, surprising and impulsive presence. This state of flow, hopefully, will be able to find its rightful place in any role and in any medium you pursue.

Most of this semester will be spent on exercises in pursuit of your unique individual clowns as we necessarily soften and shed physical and emotional holds by inviting a sense of play and imagination. These exercises will gradually allow your latent clown-within (i.e. your talent / humanity) to show up in the room. Towards the end of this introductory class, we will encounter the smallest mask on earth – the Red Nose! – which not only doesn't mask, but instead draws attention to and magnifies YOU.

We will invite your generous openness, ferocious abandon, insistent honesty and gleeful mischief to make a larger footprint in your work, so the top layer of the iceberg that is your socially-conditioned selves can slowly melt away. You will sweat. You will make songs. You will listen deeper and harder. You will be engaged and relaxed at the same time. You will release some glorious ha-ha’s and emotional wa-wa’s into the ether. This all will be silly. You will make something disastrous and messy. You will confront fears and conjure bravery. You will make something wonderful and surprising – as you unearth the engine behind all that makes you interesting, that which makes you authentic. What makes you YOU. Your clown – the one and only.