Clowning in Dystopia
Weekend Workshop with Bim Mason

This is an exploratory workshop for those who have already done some clowning but who want to put it into the context of current global situation. It is less about individualism and more about what we share humans as the world falls apart around us.

This workshop explores clowns as survivors, using their optimism, their invention and imagination to adapt to the incomprehensible changes around them. Like the rest of humanity but more intensely, the clowns are confused, lost, angry, impotent, ridiculous in their denial, despairing and sad as they try to make sense among the dissolving fragments of a past way of life, witnessing disaster and searching for clues.

Cultural reference points are Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, the hurricane sequence in Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill and the Mad Max films.

Exercises:

• Teetering between three different emotions - joy in hope and connection, pain at personal and other’s suffering, and confusion at cruelty and disconnection
• Journeys of survival – being lost, in place, in time, in identity
• Re-creation -using imagination to patch up a semblance of an extinguished world
• Problems with objects and the body

Who's this for?

This course is suitable for those with some clown training, including actors, circus & physical performers. it would suit those who are interested in broadening their repertoire or exploring the political edges of their work.
If you’re not sure if your level of experience would support you to join this workshop, please email [email protected] and we will be happy to help identify if the workshop would be right for you.

How it works

Dates & times:
14 -15 October
10am - 4pm

Venue:
Desperate Studios
Epstein Bldg, Cato St, Easton, Bristol BS5 6JL

Application & investment:
To apply please fill in this form by 1 October 2023:
https://forms.gle/Fi2MLTgZh5vSZYAXA
Once invited; the course investment is:
£175 - Supporter/ High earner
£150 - Full Price
£130 - Concession (low/no income, student)
Payment will be requested via paypal or BACs (refundable up until 9 October)

Apply to take part

About the facilitator

Bim Mason is the co-founder of Circomedia and has been performing popular and provocative work since the mid-1970s. He studied with Jacques Lecoq, who invented the bouffon style, and with Philippe Gaulier, who developed it. Bim’s teaching at Circomedia over 30 years has enabled him to develop a synthesis of the two approaches in combination with his background in popular, accessible arts - clowning, circus and street theatre. His PhD researched these areas and led to the publication of Provocation in Popular Performance (Routledge 2016). He was also asked to write the chapter on Bouffon for the Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq (2018). More recently he has been using his skills as a mask-maker to create living satirical cartoons, which have appeared at festivals and at protests for the G7 meeting in Cornwall and COP26.