Mask Arts Company Blog

by: Stanley Allan Sherman
© copyright September 18, 2011

Saturday Night September 17, 2011 at the NY Clown Theater Festival at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn NY at Lorimer and Metropolitan; an easy ride on the L or the G NYC Subway lines, except when they are not in service for maintenance which is the case this weekend. With the L and G subways lines being out of service for the weekend both the 8 PM show Morro and Jasp Gone Wild and the 10:00 PM show TiVo La Resistance had excellent supportive houses.

Travel Options to the NY Clown Theater Festival:
Walk
Bicycle (which I did from Manhattan, a nice night ride over the Manhattan Bridge)
Drive
Subway then MTA Bus (walking could be faster)
If you have a travel suggestion on how to get to the festival today please add it.

by: Stanley Allan Sherman
© copyright September 18, 2011

New York Clown Theater Festival
TiVo La Resistance!
Created by Logic LIMITED LTD
Performed by Chris Arruda, Sandi Carroll, and Brad Fraizer
Additional Direction by Matt Steiner and Jane Nichols

Fun show! Loved the opening, which sets up the shows beginning very well. What is wonderful is seeing these three taking whatever they do all the way and then beyond where one expects them to go. The use of four rolling stools is great and original. At least I have not seen stools used like they used them.

Clowns are supposed to take situations beyond the norm and these three do. They use all kind of basic circus and clown skills but the skills are used because they are part of the story and they are needed. Everything blends well. They are not just stuck in. The best example of well-used skill is needing to hang the Resistance flag and standing on each other’s shoulders while walking around with scarred stiff clown Sandi being the lady on top. These three clown performances where excellent. The end of the show feels they did not find their ending to the show, but worth checking out. The audience was laughing from the being to the end of the show. The audience participation – no one felt used but we all felt part of the show and part of their fun Resistance.

Final show at the NYCTF Sun 9/18 @ 3pm

by: Stanley Allan Sherman
© copyright September 18, 2011

NY Clown Theater Festival
Morro and Jasp GONE WILD
Created and Performed by Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee
Directed and Dramaturged by Byron Laviolette

Seeing these two clowns in the 2010 festival, it is nice to see some growth and positive change. The opening uses lots of popular music with the two clowns fighting over which music to listen to while driving a car. Their car made out of two lawn chairs with wheels and a frisbee for a steering wheel. They used their car props very well although many props in their over loaded car where used very little.

They selected excellent music and their sound mix was wonderful. The recorded popular music familiar to many people supported the clowns in the opening as a crutch. They let the music support them – which was disappointing, resulting in very few laughs. Often when music is used like this it limits ones clown work. There was no printed program for this show, unlike the 10 PM show, which had a program. In the very bad tradition of many clown shows and like last year, no credit was give to the many great recording artists who’s music these two performers used.

Morro seemed to be pretending to be her clown, rather than being her clown in the opening, Jasp seemed to be totally there from the beginning. I really like the work of Jasp as what she does reaches many dimensions and she seems to takes more risks. It would be good to see Morro risking more. After they dropped the music Morro’s clown was connected with everything going on. Both of them engage on more levels with each other without the music and they started to receive more laughs. It was funnier. The funniest piece was using two women from the audience, each holding a cucumber between their legs while Jasp successfully put a condom on the cucumber and Morro totally failing to put her condom on her cucumber.

One of the toughest and important moments in theater is the opening and the ending. The opening was OK, the ending did not quite make it. What was good is their story line, which had a nice theatrical build. Credit for this also goes to their director and dramaturge Byron Laviolette, but he also gets credit for weak beginning and weak ending. The show seemed to get lost at the end, as these two clowns were lost on their adventure to the beach. Over all it will be good to see these two push their personal envelopes of clowning and nail their beginnings and endings in the future.

Final show at the NYCTF Sun 9/18 @ 7pm

by: Stanley Allan Sherman
© copyright September 15, 2011

Opening night of the NY Clown Theater Festival hosted by The Leroy Sisters.  It is always wonderful to see The Leroy Sisters dancing, gymnastic, high kicking, stunning dresses/costumes with all of the amazing, “how did they do that” quick changes, that makes the audience go aaa… and ooo…, doing their costume changes in stunning time as they brilliantly introduced the acts and kept the show rolling along.  Not doing too much and not doing to little.   The theatrical substance of their performing is always there. Missed the opening by 15 minutes so I cannot comment on that.

These are promos for the full shows through out the NY Clown Theater Festival and here is the run down.

TiVo la Resistance!  Seems only interesting; then in grew with surprising twists.  Playing on old standard expectations, with twisting comedy.  Well worth checking out, it seems like positive different clowning.

Odessey Schodyssey created and performed by Hew Parham uses a lot of indication mime; a style of mime which many performers seem to use.  It is not clean and clear but one gets the meaning and we are able to follow the story.  This is just 10 or 15 minutes – it will good to see how his show is fully flushed out.

Mark Gindick Wing-Man, it is very much about Marks dancing, character and playing with recorded music.  Mark has a good fan base and I am interested to see how he and his show has grown and changed.  You will be able to catch his on Sept. 24 @ 8 PM and Sept 25 @ 5 PM.

Jeff & Buttons:  If you really like stupid, silly, low level humor, this is your show.  These two push the envelope of how stupid can we make this show.  Yes they are talented and it takes real talent and guts or I just don’t give a &^!% to get as low as these two get.  Sept 24 @ 10 PM, Sept 25 @ 7 PM.

Joel Jeske in I Have Never Done this Before; created and performed by Joel Jeske.  I have seen Joel perform a lot over the years, always funny, always within other things and almost always with his extremely talented performer and now famous blogger ex-wife, Juliet Jeske.  One of the powerful elements of a clown is their venerability and sensitivity.  I have never seen Joel this venerable or sensitive.  Joel started out hitting his clown venerability square on with just a few words.   After opening remarks, paraphrasing, “I am a recently divorce man.  I am a recently discovered I was gay man.”  Playing with the audience a little asking, “How many people here are divorced?” Some people held up their hands.  “How many people are gay?”  Some held up their hands.  “How many are clowns?”  No one held up their hands.  Joel’s comment about this was funny with right on timing.  Loved that he actually played music and sang.  It is such a pleasure not to hear and see a performer that is using someone else’s recorded music as a crutch.   Joel’s 10 to 15 minutes was fresh, alive like I have never seen Joel before.  No more do I see Joel using his great and vast array of very funny clown technique and tricks to fill an evening, but something new and different.  He has really fractured his safety net and now as we like to say in the Commedia dell’Arte, jumping into the void.  This show is performing Sept 22 @ 8 PM and Sept 23 @ 8 PM.  One way to tell if an experienced performer is going all the way is how sweaty they are, Joel was drenched. Get tickets in advance, this should sell out!

Channel One, created and performed by Emily James & Ishah Janssen-faith.  They had a video clip that was interesting.  Based on last year and the fact they have been performing their show together for year it will be great to see these two and how they have grown.  Performing Sept 22 @ 10 PM and Sept 23 @ 10 PM.

Flocked, created by Audrey Cabtree and Gabriela Munoz, directed by Hilary Chaplain, costumes by Valentina Munoz with Adriana Sarada.
It is wonderful to see so many clowns pushing their envelopes of performance and creativity.  Here are two more and this if the fist piece that I know of that Hilary Chaplain has directed.  The 10 to 15 minutes looks like it is a good whole piece of clown-theater created by Audrey and Gabriela.  Both attract and holds everyone’s attention, filling every moment.  One is absorbed watching both of the clowns interplay and reactions to each out.  The costumes are unique and original with both clowns using all the elements of these unique clowns.   The only really bad thing about this show are the dates it will be running as I am forced to miss these show which ran Sept 15, 16, 17 @ 8 PM and Sunday at 7 PM.

In the future where possible it would be good to see shows running throughout the festival rather than all bunched up.  This would give unknown shows a better shot at building an audience and attracting producers that are around NYC through word of mouth.

All shows are at The Brick Theater
575 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn NY 11211
Phone: 718-907-6189 
info@bricktheater.com
www.bricktheater.com/clown