What to expect
Coming along to a Clowning Around Workshop means spending some time exploring your connection to your playfulness and seeing what happens next!
Clowning can be many different things and these workshops are about relaxing into who you are and playing with what you find there. You will have a go at a kind of improvisation that involves playfully sharing your responses to what's going on around you. This involves things like copying, exaggerating, stillness and eye contact, which can build up to improvised 'scenes'. The clowning you explore here is a practice in playfulness, in a similar way that going to the gym is a practice in fitness, and doesn’t have to be a finished product to share in a formal circus or theatre setting. What emerges can be poignant, engaging, ordinary, and is often extremely funny.
These workshops are for all adults, you do not need a performance background, and will usually be based in Norwich. There will be the chance to wear a red nose and some costume to help to bring out the play but there’s no squirty flowers, big shoes or scripted routines. With a big emphasis on the importance of looking after yourself, there will always be the option to sit out an activity or adapt it to make it comfortable. Group sizes are usually limited to twelve to help enable easy play.
What might happen at a workshop?
A typical clowning around workshop is likely to include the following elements:
To start - Arriving
We usually start with an opening circle, where each person gets to introduce themselves and I tell everyone about what to expect. Then we do some exercises to help us become a bit more familiar with the space and how we’re feeling in it; I usually put some music on and offer some movement exploration suggestions. This starts off with everyone in their own space but it can open out into a bit of a dance where we begin to interact with each other in a small way, such as brief eye contact or copying.
And then - Playing
We move on to playing some simple games in to warm up our play muscles! Maybe we’ll do some copying, mirroring, exaggerating, joint story-telling, or exploring an object as if we’ve never seen it before. We often work in twos or threes for this. I'll encourage you to make eye contact if that’s available to you and to show your emotional experience of what you are doing through facial expressions and sound. I'll also remind everyone – ‘don’t forget to breathe!’.
Up next - Playing for an audience
There is often the opportunity to do a clowning ‘impro’ based on the warm up games we have been playing. There’s a ‘stage’ marked by a blue rope and optional red noses and hats if you want to perform. The impros are just in front of the other people in the workshop and gives you the chance to get a sense of how you feel when you play for an audience. I always give the you space to tell us about your experience of being on stage and you'll get to hear what we enjoyed as an audience.
And finally - Returning
Before goodbyes, I lead an exercise to help you to look back on your experience of the workshop. This could involve chatting about what happened, showing a memory (or that you can't remember!) and/or reflecting on your experiences with paper and colouring pencils.