Clowning Around With Jon Davidson

Wednesday 1st February- Colourphobia Theatre Company had the absolute honour of having a private workshop with the one and only Clown legend, Jon Davison. 

Jon Davison had taught us a short lesson on the art of clowning a few years back; and I think it is fair to say it was this introduction to clowning that has in fact inspired our company to form and create the work that we are hoping to create today. 

So the day- freezing cold in a dark studio 2, Colourphobia group are anticipating a very exciting workshop huddled round the one radiator that works. (but that's another story) At precisely 10:30am- Mr Jon Davison enters our room and the sheer giddiness and excitement kicks in. All 3 of us keen to impress him, but also so eager to learn form a true clown. 

First we introduced him to our main project- A critical and cultural exploration of Clowning: through the history of "Blackface in the Minstrel Shows" we intend to explore the power of make-up,Coulrophobia and filmography to devise a performance that will capture the essence of clowning through make-up and movement for a modern day audience.-   to which he got extremely excited about and we all spent a good hour discussing all we knew about black and white minstrel shows, history of clowning, links between clowning and minstrelsy, make-up and it's power, possible ideas for the show....etc etc etc. The discussion just bounced back and forth between us all- secretly I honestly think he was impressed with our knowledge (good old senate house trips) as we even taught him a thing or two about minstrelsy.

Then the true fun began- Jon lead us in a clowning workshop:

FIRST - the chair game- aim of the game is to sit on the empty chair so that the person standing can't. 

THEN- to make the game interesting the person standing was allowed to break the rules.

Literally we were fighting each other, falling over each other, running around with random chairs, pulling, pushing, (Jordan actually became a psycho chair stacker at one point) and laughing so hard al the way through. 

SECOND- the Nosed Clown- Each person would enter the room with a red clown nose on and stand before the audience and try to please/entertain us by just being them.

Sounds simple right- WRONG- I couldn't even breathe in my nose, so the art of just being able to breathe in and out is apparently funny. 

Jon was great, he was able to educate us on the simple techniques and rules of clowning with these two simple games. "Clowns are people who break the silent rules, do the unexpected" 

The BEST thing about the whole workshop was we laughed so hard, played even harder and all with Jon joining in with us! 

Now we have refreshed our clowning skills- its time to start devising our show!!! Yaya!

LOts of exciting things to come guys!

Colourphobia 

For more info on Jon Davison: http://www.jondavison.net/