Snap Dramaturgy: Contemporary Mystery Performance @ Edfringe 2017

Following its Fringe debut in 2016, SNAP! Returns to the Assembly, George Square Theatre from August 3rd to 28th at 3pm-4pm daily (except August 14th, 21st).

 This enormously entertaining magic show boasts a cast of Korea’s greatest illusion artists in an enchanting, engaging and hilarious show like no other. 

A contemporary mystery magical show, SNAP is a multi-faceted, ingenious show combining moments of classic comedy theatre with a unique stage language, magic and illusion. 

The cast of eight award-winning performers – huge stars in their own country and masters of their craft – bring to life characters such as The Alchemist, The Time Traveller, The Dreamer, The Trickster and a host of others to stage a fabulous fantasy experience to Fringe audiences. 

The show opens with the performers discovering a locked door; once they open it, they find themselves entering a series of different realities which include origami windmills that seem to appear from nowhere, illusions created by clever lighting, lightning costume changes and shadow puppets.

1. What was the inspiration for this performance?

Since I was a child, I had a strong admiration, a sort of longing, for a surrealistic worldview. I always believed that magic is the remnant of such a world often unseen on Earth.  From Salvadore Dali to Vladimir Kush, the unconscious and visionary worldview rooted in surrealism has become a major source of inspiration our show, SNAP. We emphasize fairy tales that are not dominated by reason, and concentrate on reproducing, in Goethe’s words, “realistic fantasies,” on stage.

2. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

Performance art is like an incubator in the arts & humanities, where you can experiment with various stage languages in the hypothetical world one has created with an intent. Nowadays in contemporary art, the boundaries between genres have collapsed.  This enables us to take on more socio-political issues in our work than we used to. We also expect that there will be more opportunities to extend our ideas to the public through the expansion of systems like NT Live or other social media platforms.

3. How did you become interested in making performance?

I’ve gone through the ridiculously demanding education system in Korea and had an intense desire to interact with the world of fantasies and daydream as an act of resistance. In this phase of “rebellion” against the Korean social norms and institutions, I became immersed in the highly realistic world of fantasies provided by novels, plays, films, and magic.  After working alongside as a magic director for musicals, a professor in the magic entertainment department, a performance consultant, and producer of magic festivals, my colleagues and I decided to make a full-scale production to share the real secret magic (Not a trick part) that we realized during our working years.

4. Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

We have a very strong foundation as every member of our team is an artist who are constantly exploring and researching their own ways to express their imaginations. Since we began, we opened up to each other a lot about our individual artistic worldviews and resources, which allowed us to develop a more unified vision for our performance.  Then, we analyzed why the public might find magic rather boring (or even, outright dislike it) to really get to the fantasy world that had existed in the innocence of their childhood. We are constantly brainstorming for various stage effects and phenomenon to really materialize this world for them.

5. Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Most magic shows marry the magical method (the trick) and showmanship to put the magician in the limelight. Around 2012 and 2015 when Korean magic swept the podium in the most prestigious magic competition (FISM World Championships), our production also followed that basic formula.  However, SNAP is quite distinct. Using organic stage language and characters, we create a surreal scene for the audience so they can purely enter a dreamlike, fantastical world for the duration of the show.

6. What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Generally, family shows are catered to entertaining the children. SNAP can deeply move and enthrall anyone regardless of age, gender, culture, or language. By putting the doubt, the suspicion aside from the secret, we hope that every member of our audience can purely enjoy the fantasy world we envisioned and created for them.  The moon and sun in the sky, our natural environment, and even us ourselves, we are all part of the magic that surrounds daily, which becomes apparent when we use a more careful and loving eye to observe our extraordinary world. In a way, SNAP is an homage to the era of entertainment where the goal was purely to comfort, to console, to connect us.

7. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We eliminated the talk, mental magic, and illusion that is employed in a typical magic show. Using cheerful characters that are easy to understand, we intertwined the curiosity-filled world view and creative magic acts through a narrative structure.  You’ll witness that our show is cleverly edited and spans an array of genres as well as stage languages. It’s truly a performance that can engage every individual—come and see the show yourself!

Sex Dramaturgy Saves The World: Betty Grumble @ Edfringe 2016

Grumble: Sex Clown Saves the World

4th - 28th Aug 2016

Grotesque and gorgeous surreal showgirl and world-famous performer Betty Grumble arrives in Edinburgh with the underground show of the festival. 

Experience the queen of the obscene in an odyssey of deep disco dissent. Witness her rage, her desire and her internal organs in a shamanic striptease that is 'part theatre, part comedy, part dance, part sordid burlesque and a whole lot of social commentary'

What was the inspiration for this performance?

My inspiration for GRUMBLE: Sex Clown Saves The World comes from a desire to push back against a world that tells us there is only one way of being. I am inspired by nature’s harmony and solidarities, magic and fertile theatres. I am also spurred on by histories of queer and feminist performance art and my coming out as an ecosexual.

Is theatre still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?  

I believe that live performance spaces are sacred places for congregation and connection. I believe in storytelling as as ancient gathering around a primal fire. 

Live shared experience can transgress, expose, activate and enlighten. Theatre can divide and galvanise, invent and inspire bodies to move outside their 'normal' selves. To quote Cesar A. Cruz (sic) It can disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

Making performance interested me as an exhibitionist and sucker for a party. The world of drag, burlesque and cabaret was

comforting and motivated me to challenge my own identity and burgeoning politics . It allowed me to experiment and fail tremendously, to feed my wild woman energy and meet like-minded spirits. It was also a survival mechanism and un-suicide note.

Was your process (for creating GRUMBLE) typical of the way that you make a performance?

GRUMBLE is kind of a collage of new work and work that I have been playing with for a few years. The show is a genre-smash, I move in between mediums and strategies and rummaging through a physicalised 'Glamour-Trash Spell'. I have always been influenced heavily by music and text. 

I approached this full length work as a chance to assemble past and present Grumblings into a format that united my history of Betty Grumble with a new way of existing on stage. Simply by playing with duration I am allowing my performativity to extend beyond the parameters previously expressed through shorter works. For Betty to do a whole one-woman work is a subversion in itself.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience will experience solidarity, a brain, heart and spirit massage, laughs, grumps and Grumblings. The work is about putting ourselves in a state of flux, of open nerves and sensation, of connection and magic.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I consider the work autobiographical. As much as Betty Grumble exists as an avatar she is a window into my lived experience. Here the hyper-real is used to describe the real world and I have engaged with the grotesque and earnest, sincerity and spectacle in order to create a world where everyone can GRUMBLE.

Penis Dramaturgy: Penelope Solomon @ Edfringe 2016

Edinburgh Fringe 2016, THE STAND COMEDY CLUB 16^th - 28^th August at 4.05 pm

Laffa Jaffa Productions Ltd presents:  

Penelope Solomon: I was a penis at the Royal Festival Hall

Penelope first performed at EdFringe as a sheep and returns as a penis!  

Comedian, actor, singer/song-writer and TV critic

Penelope Solomon brings her brand new solo show I was a penis at the Royal Festival Hall to Edinburgh.  Penelope made her fringe debut as a sheep, sponsored by Pringle.  

Now, 9 years and 3 babies later, she returns as a penis… armed with wigs, jokes and gherkins.

Join her in this autobiographical romp as she blends stand-up, character comedy and a sprinkling of her own songs to explore the highs and lows of a life on stage and screen, her Jewish identity and parenting.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

A radio producer I had been pitching to ‘passed’ on my comedy sketches but said why don't you try writing a 15 minute monologue. 'Write real' he said, 'write the truth'.  Then I had a meeting with a BBC radio producer who I’d worked with on my ‘Tower of Bagel’ script a ‘few’ years ago.  He wasn’t very excited about the sketches either, so I said ‘Maybe I should write about my failed acting career?’ I was expecting him to say What are you talking about? It hasn’t failed, you’re just resting (literally lying down) after the kids. But he didn’t, he just said ‘Yes that’s a good idea’. GULP. And thus began the blend of stand-up with different characters as I began to tell my story, including my Jewish journey and the transition into parenthood.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

My piece is a solo stand-up/character comedy show, so I just had to gather myself, my wigs and a jar of gherkins. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

I trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq School in Paris . We studied Mime, Movement and Theatre and learnt how to improvise on a daily basis. We had to do everything from generating ideas for a piece, to staging it, performing, collaborating with others and most of all we learnt how to 'play' which is I believe the essence of any great performance.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

Not really no - I started from the monologue and then used that as the basis to create the work - I'd bring in characters from previous sketches, added jokes about my husband and children and created a brand new character, my mother! This time it was very eclectic but always at the centre was the truth and my journey both my Jewish journey and my performing journey.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

A sense of fun, a freedom and liberty as they watch me fall and get back up again - not literally. I hope they will recognise that we all have dreams and sometimes we achieve them, but more often than not we don't and that’s okay. I hope that they will feel a sense of relief, that it is okay to just be who you are and that as long as you are being yourself and are not being silenced or oppressed by others then that is in itself a great thing. I hope the audience will experience a feeling of joy and that they will have lots of fun.   

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I don’t really have a strategy, I am telling a story about real events. As I write comedy, the punch-line is kind of important. If there are no jokes then the audience won’t laugh and then perhaps they won’t have as much fun during my show. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

Clown 

The Rules of Dramaturgy: @ Edfringe 2016

Balloons Theatre presents

The Rules of Inflation

August 15th-20th

23:20 (50 mins)

theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall (Venue 53)

Born from the idea of creating a political piece of art by exploring the most basic rules and questioning the pathological patterns of our society, The Rules of Inflation is an immersive piece of performance art theatre that aims to make even the most comfortable uncomfortable. 

Find the connection between a

right wing political leader, your teacher, a bully and a hybrid drag queen clown. For there is plenty.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Our original impetus for making The Rules of Inflation came from finding a popped balloon on the street. From there we worked as a collective using Robert Lepage's scoring system. Lepage believes that every singe object can push you to create a story. By exploring the many possible stories and themes behind balloons, we ended up creating an immersive political theatre piece that is essentially taking place during a children's party, although it is a children's party gone wrong. There is the clown who is in charge of everything and four colours Yellow, Pink, Green and Blue who are all entertained and controlled by him.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

We all went to the same drama school in which we were lucky enough to have had a chance to gain theatre making skills during the devising module. From then on we all agreed that we wanted to keep devising and creating work that is a bit “off beat” and this is how Balloons Theatre was born!

How did you become interested in making performance?

The times when actors simply waited for their agents to call them and get them an audition are long gone, we believe creating your own work is what really matters these days. As a collective we also agree that we live in the midst of a very interesting political time and we recognise the fact that we ought to create work that reflects on the society we live in.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

This depends a lot on what kind of performance you are making. Our rehearsal method is shaped by us not only as a collective but also as individuals. We are all very different both as people and as creators and we like to celebrate these differences in the rehearsal room. Yet the type of work we are making requires a certain atmosphere in the room. The Rules of Inflation consists of many children's games, we never actually just decided which games we are going to play in the performance, we simply spent hours playing in the rehearsal room and then organically created a performance. We play, we rest, we push ourselves and we play, this is probably the best way of summarising our process.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

We want our audiences to be constantly challenged by what they are seeing. At the beginning of the piece they are invited to a children's party and perhaps this is what they are expecting, but we as performers want them to be puzzled by the weirdness and certain spookiness with the ambience of the piece. There is a lot of uncomfortable moments in The Rules of Inflation which relate to sexuality, abuse and politics, it was really interesting to see the audiences become awkward and uncomfortable in those moments, especially since we live in a very over-sexualised society, but once you put that sexuality into the context of a children's party, well things get a lot more complicated.

What we are mostly after from our audiences is engagement, we want them to feel free to react to the things they are seeing and we love the fact that we created a piece that is quite open to interpretation and raises plenty of questions.

To put it in one sentence, we hope we created a piece that is not easy to forget.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

Working without a director was quite tricky for us, hence half way through our rehearsal process we asked a dramaturg to come and watch our work, an eye opening experience which allowed us to understand what it is that an audience want from an immersive experience.

Looking at the nature of The Rules of Inflation we always knew that we had to draw the line somewhere simply because we wanted our audiences to have a choice of saying “yes” or “no” to our offers. If someone wants us to give them a piece of cake (we have a cake!!!) then they are more than welcome, but we won't make them feel bad if they refuse it!

Making political theatre is all about relevance, the literal political references in our piece change constantly for the purpose of making our piece up to date and fresh.

There came a point in our rehearsal process when we realised we had to stop making the piece so dark and to make it enjoyable for the audience we have to use more of the lightness and playfulness that happens within a party.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

The Rules of Inflation is a piece that is on the verge of being called performance art rather than theatre, but we wouldn't necessarily limit ourselves by calling ourselves “performance artists”. We take inspiration from a lot of theatre practitioners that come from different genres and backgrounds. We work a lot with Lepage's scoring system, but like Shunt, for example, we like to create immersive theatre. 

The Invisible Dramaturgy: Luke Rollason @ Edfringe 2016

THE INVISIBLE MAN

C NOVA 14th-19th August @ 1pm

'In a town this crooked, it sure helps to blend in with the crowd...'

Blabbermouth Theatre is proud to present its finger-clicking, film-noir-styled revamp of the classic HG Wells novel in collaboration with C venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016. Meet The Man Who Really Wasn’t There in a fast-paced film-noir physical comedy set in a shady downtown bar in 1950s Chicago.

This newly devised production uses empty-clothes puppetry, a live jazz soundtrack and heavy poetic license to retell this story as an entertaining pulp narrative of dames and invisible private eyes. 

The Victorian ‘first-person account’ narrative meets its reincarnation in the gritty narrative voice of the gumshoe detective, as made famous by writers like Raymond Chandler and films such as Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity.

What was the inspiration for this performance?


I've been experimenting with puppetry as a performer for years. Earlier this year, I directed a production of Blackout for the National Theatre Connections Festival. There was a scene involving a magical memory of the protagonist's Grandfather - and I knew a puppet was the right way to explore this memory. If the memory had to feel magical, then it had to be told through a kind of magic. And that is how I feel about puppetry - that it represents the best of what theatre can achieve, in



terms of manifesting a shared imaginative world between performers and an audience.

We worked with Rich Rusk (Night Light Theatre, Gecko) on this moment, creating a puppet out of the clothes we thought the Grandfather might wear. I wanted to explore this idea further, creating a more sustained character in the same way. By creating slits in the coat we were able to give the character hands - wearing white gloves. This led to thinking about cartoons and cartoon movement - for which hands are extremely important, in terms of making a cartoon 100% expressive.

Furthermore, once we had found our Invisible Man, we had to find a style which suited him - literally. We knew that the choice of costume for the puppet would communicate a great deal about our production - and so we settled on the fedora and trenchcoat of the Film Noir detective. Thus 'The Invisible Man' became like the title of a Raymond Chandler crime novel.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?


The cast was selected from a group of students who attended a series of research and development workshops, exploring a variety of disciplines - clowning, puppetry, laban efforts...

How did you become interested in making performance?


During my time as a director I have been more and more interested in making theatre, rather than just making theatre happen. If theatre is watching what happens between a group of people in a room (and that including what happens between those onstage and those off, live) then devising seemed like an exciting opportunity to create a performance through a living rehearsal process - always changing, developing as we become more familiar with the material and with the methods we are using to explore it. It is really allowing us to tap into emergent creativity.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?


My work has become more and more physical, and whilst the rehearsal process for The Invisible Man isn't typical for how I have directed shows in the past, it owes a lot to the understanding of processes and creativity that I have developed in my work as a clown.






I think this is a reverse of the way I was raised to make work - which was to make decisions about a narrative and then physicalise those decisions. In this kind of work, we use our physicality to create games and physical improvisations that help us to discover the meaning of a scene. Our rehearsals are largely unplanned, as they enable us to respond to the moment, to make discoveries and engage with each other's work.






What do you hope that the audience will experience?


I hope that the audience will have a magical experience, after which they will leave the theatre looking at the world with more inventive and irreverent eyes.





What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I believe that often, great physical theatre is akin to extraordinary observational comedy - as an audience member you share an imaginative world with a performer, and they make you re-recognise the world. Again, puppetry is almost a kind of magic here - we know that something is 'just' a hat and coat, but our imagination can help us believe it is alive. And it is this very childlike, creative way of looking at the world that we want to engage with. To jolt us out of our everyday modes of thought.





Do you see your work within any particular tradition?


Certainly. I think our work, through a kind of Chinese Whispers of influence, via companies such as Gecko and Complicite, and practitioners such as David Glass, Berkoff and clowns, probably derives from the work of Lecoq. These are certainly the influences that have shaped my theatrical tastes the most - influences that I have been exposed to through the Edinburgh Fringe. So here I have come full circle!

Blabbermouth Theatre was formed by director Luke Rollason to create highly physical and irreverent work from his experience of clowning and devising with individuals such as David Glass (Lecoq), Eric Davis (Gaulier, Red Bastard) and Complicite. It takes silliness extremely seriously, in order to create shared imaginative worlds with an audience and see the eccentric in the everyday. Blabbermouth Theatre is currently in residence at Bloxham School, where it will be developing its devised production of The Invisible Man.

One Day Dramturgy: Tim Carlsen @ Edfringe 2016

One Day Moko

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) ​ 15:45 Aug 3-14, 16-21, 23-29

Life's never a dull moment when you live one day at a time spend some time with him. Inspired by real encounters with people living on the streets, One Day Moko investigates how rebellion, opportunity and routine shape our everyday lives. One performer builds a city from a suitcase of worldly possessions. Take a tour and discover Moko's haunts and secret places. Wake up and smell the baked beans.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

It all started back in 2008. My mum sent me a newspaper article that she thought I'd be interested in, it was accompanied by a small note that read, 'Hope you're having a lovely day. Here's something that made my heart swell'. It was a story about a homeless man, 'Moko' who would travel to Auckland City (New Zealand) everyday by pushbike and spend all day busking on his clarinet. 

He built a custom made bike carrier for his dog, 'Mana' to travel with him for company. He would do this every day, rain hail or shine. The photo that accompanied the article had him posing with his dog and clarinet - grinning from ear to ear. I was playing the trumpet at the time so this really resonated with me. 

I’ve always been curious about those who live on the fringe of society and ended up on the streets. Did they choose to live this way? How do they see the world around them? Do they have a daily routine? And more importantly, how do they survive?

With a mind full of questions, a newspaper article buried into my brain and some very 'green' ideas of homelessness I started to develop a solo show as part of my final year year of actor training at Toi Whakaari the New Zealand Drama School in 2009. Initial research for the show included working as a volunteer at organisations such as the Catacombs Drop-in (Wellington City) and the Compassion Soup Kitchen (Auckland City Mission). From homeless football games to participating in the mission drama group, I was able to get an insight into the New Zealand homeless lifestyle and develop ties with a range of homeless clients. 

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

The show has been supported by a number of theatre practitioners since the shows first draft performance in 2009. I'm always asking myself, 'What does this show need and who can help deliver this?' This has been the basis of who I approach to get onboard. The current director, Leo Gene Peters was someone I'd meet through drama school. We discovered we had similar values around making work and what we like to see on stage. 

Our producer, Louise Gallagher saw the show two years ago and was moved by what she experienced. Louise approached me and offered to support the producing side of the show, as well as becoming my mentor. Louise’s dedicated and enduring support is rare. All the show’s marketing design that you see on the Portable Union social accounts and website is thanks to my brother, Danny Carlsen. Finally, my partner Tai Berdinner-Blades is covering many different roles from girlfriend to stage manger to all-round 'go to' person. We met when the show toured to Wellington and she came along with a bunch of her friends, I guess you could say Moko made an impression on her and the rest is history. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

My time at drama school opened my mind to the possibilities of making theatre. Drama school had a huge ethos around 'making your own work' and these values were offered to us through our brilliant tutors. I guess it was the first time I could express and unleash my 'taste' in what I wanted to see onstage and this has empowered me to graduate drama school and hone my skill in making theatre. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

One Day Moko has been developed and presented numerous times since I finished drama school in 2009. The show has gone through two major 'versions' during this time, starting out as a linear narrative that relied heavily on audio visual elements (AV), to a work that is very much non-linear, has no AV and is highly interactive with the audience. The thing that has remained constant is Moko, the work has always been about him. This is Portable Union's premier work so every step in the process included huge learning curves and many pitfalls. I started this process by asking myself "What am I curious about in the world right now?" and "What excites me in this moment?" I used such questions to kick-start my making process alongside any ideas or inspiration I might already have brewing (such as the newspaper article my mum had given me back in 2008). 

Research played a huge part of my process from talking to people to watching films and reading books that might relate to the territory I'm interested in. I was researching not only 'homelessness' but also other areas to inform the design, performance style and tone of the show; from Spaghetti Western Films to local TV presenters to Karaoke clubs in Auckland's infamous red light district, 'K Rd'. 

I originally dabbled a lot with lo-fi technology such as video to support the storytelling of the show. I was inspired a lot by the work of the Wooster Group - a New york based theatre company who experiment with video and other sources of technology alongside performance. I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of months with them during an internship that was part of my final year at drama school. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience will experience a journey of self-reflection on what it is to be human. This is not a show that is trying to resolve or preach about a social issue. Being human can be hard, awkward, joyful, painful, pleasurable, confusing; the problem is I don't think we often get to tell ourselves that it's "okay" to go through these multitudes of emotions without feeling like we want to give up. The show has become less about 'homeless' as a concept and rather about a man with a mission to shine light on humanity. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We wanted to create the feeling that this show is a conversation between Moko (the protagonist)  and the audience. Moko interacts with the audience throughout the show, through games and play. This gives him the ability to check-in with the audience, to get a gauge on where they're at and how it's all landing with them. 

We recognise that audience interaction can be awkward, scary and hard at first, often mirroring the experience of how we relate to those living on the streets. The participation that we ask from our audience members is not about alienation or making them feel like a fool, but asking them to engage in a conversation, a game and overall an event that will hopefully make them feel more human by the time they leave the theatre. 


Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

Through making One Day Moko we've drawn from traditional theatre forms such as clown and bouffon. 

Laugh? I almost had a revelation of truth.

Dramaturgy gets Scratchy: Ruxy Cantir @ BOUFFON SCRATCHINGS

BOUFFON SCRATCHINGS

7:30pm, Saturday June 25th 2016

Main Hall, Assembly Roxy Edinburgh, 2 Roxburgh Place EH8 9SU

Tickets £7.00

The team behind Clown Cabaret Scratch Night gleefully present BOUFFON SCRATCHINGS, our first bouffon scratch night: a cabaret style den of iniquity and hilariously sharp moral musings from a variety of Scotland’s finest up and coming performers.

Plutôt la Vie, CloWnStePPing and Melanie Jordan welcome you to a feast of dark delights as our hideously charming Bouffons invite you into a netherworld of insidious pleasure... 

Featuring: Calum MacAskill, Lucy Amsden, Ruxy Cantir, Beth Frieden, Charlotte Hastings, Ronan McMahon, Sita Pieraccini, Dylan Read, Max Scratchmann, and Andrew Simpson.

You've enjoyed our clowns, now welcome to the dark side…

Bouffon Scratchings is directed and produced by Tim Licata, Artistic Director of Plutôt la Vie, Fringe First award winner Melanie Jordan and Sarás Feijoó, Creative Director of CloWnStePPinG. Bouffon Scratchings is self-funded with support from Plutôt la Vie and the Assembly Roxy.

Clown Cabaret Scratch Night has produced five

extremely successful nights since 2014 and has been invited to participate in Conflux's Surge Festival in July 2016. CCSN Special Edition will be presented at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow on Sat. July 30th 2016 as part of Surge - Scotland's annual festival of street arts, physical theatre and circus produced by Conflux in partnership with Merchant City Festival in Glasgow.

 What was the inspiration for this performance?

Sita Pieraccini and I (Ruxy Cantir) are collaborating on making a short bouffon piece entitled I am are ART. In it, an unearthly duo use a sorry homeless person as their subject matter for a new piece of live art for an eager, intellectually acute audience. I am are ART is a commentary on our inability as people to ever deal with the reality of our world in any capacity.

Sita and I were both interested in working with each other and when we started brainstorming about the things that make us laugh and tick, we naturally gravitated toward a common experience – volunteering at a festival. We both had stories that were fresh at the time, so we just went ahead with it, especially since the subject matter concerned us, as artists, as well.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

Sita and I had talked about creating and performing something together before, and this seemed like the perfect performance opportunity – a scratch night during the summer in a form that we both enjoy.

How did you become interested in making performance?

You mean in creating and devising my own work? My first courses in physical theatre in London are responsible for that. I was a decent actor, but misfit lots of roles, especially as a woman who doesn't have a dewy-eyed sensitive demeanour. In my first Neutral Mask and Clown classes, all of a sudden, I could do the thing that was aching to get out and hadn't had an outlet in drama class before. This is, of course, a much longer story, but this is a nice and concise start to it.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

More or less, yah. We began with an image and the character duo, and went from there. The first rehearsal was creating a mask for the characters and try to get through what happens in the piece, in very large brush strokes, with bouts of improvisation. 

And after that, lots of detail work-age and building the relationship between the two characters. The form of Bouffon allows space for directed improvisation, so we've allowed ourselves that, especially when we perform on June 25th – responding to each other and to the audience in time and space.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Laughter and mystery. That laughter that comes from an unknown place within you that bubbles out in a sound that is unfamiliar to you.

I mention Mystery because the Bouffon characters that we will bring to life are of a different world – a ferociously grotesque one that spawned terrible, yet intelligent entities. You wouldn't recognize this world, but you won't be able to take your eyes off because they remind you of something you used to know before.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

Character development and relationship building, first of all. Secondly, we are playing a lot of with contradictions – pushing one side only to reveal the other.

Black is never far from white, and so we ride that thin line that is disturbingly delicious. We'll sing you a beautiful-sounding song but with disgusting lyrics, or we'll dedicate a graceful dance to the problem of homelessness right after stretching our legs on the homeless person lying right next to us. Or something else equally as terrible, but just as true.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

Well, I define myself as a physical theatre artist and actor-creator. I have trained and formed my perspective (which continues to evolve) in a physical theatre devising programme (Dell'Arte International) so I'd say I come from that tradition, for sure. This, of course, means very many different things for different people. 

I normally try to clarify and say that when I say Physical Theatre, I mean using the body as a highly transformative instrument and in-dweller of the Other (character). And so, my work will include: physical comedy, eccentric characterization, Movement theatre, Mask work, among others. 

With a series of stellar evenings under their belt, the Clown Cabaret Scratch Night team throws caution to the wind and takes another leap of faith to present Bouffon Scratchings, Scotland's first evening of Bouffon Cabaret.  

Bouffon Scratchings offers an opportunity for emerging and established performers to explore the theatrical territory and tradition of Bouffon; a style of performance was explored and re-invigorated by Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier at Lecoq's famed theatre school in Paris.

Bouffons are the lowest of the low.  They have nothing to lose, so are completely Free.  Their Freedom is a huge power.  Their weapons are their enormous laughter, intelligent eyes and biting parody. 

Social misfits, soothsayers, outcasts, shunned and feared... Bouffons embrace their ugliness and bless their hideous form for saving them from the hypocrisy of ‘God’s beautiful children…’.  Their performance is a vicious parody of our ‘great and good’ society.  Remember... we're all in it together...!

Their only fear is to be killed before their parody has hit home…