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Teaching mime with Open Air Circus 8/5/2005 6:29:36 AM
It has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog entry, in part because of my constant activity and in part because of the way I have traditionally written my blog for years: first composing a draft on Lambda MOO, an online community on which I have not spent as much time as of late, and then reprinting it here on my www.authorsden.com/ianthal pages. I am currently also publishing my blog at http://people.tribe.net/ianthal?r=10509 where one can make comments. When I had left off in my blogging activity, I was still recounting my last stint with Bread & Puppet Theatre, and while I still have many notes from those two weeks in November that need transcription, so much has happened since.
Almost immediately after Bread & Puppet, I scored a gig with a commedia dell’arte troupe. For a few weeks, I played Pulcinella, Il Dottore Prognostro, and an unnamed madman. It was a terribly fun project in which to take part, but is currently on hiatus.
In January, largely based on a recommendation given by a compatriot from the commedia gig, I was hired to teach mime at an after school program run by Open Air Circus, a Somerville based organization that teaches circus arts to children, so from January to June, every Thursday at 3:30pm, I arrived at the Prospect Hill Academy Charter School in Union Square.
The kids ranged from second graders to fifth graders of all sizes and shapes. It was a new challenge, having never taught mime to kids so young. Just as I would have done with adult students, I began my first lesson by introducing them Decroux’ corporeal mime scale, and then taught them their first illusion: the wall.
I led them out of the classroom and into the hallway, and had them place their hands on the very real concrete walls and let them feel it in their palms and fingers: its flatness, its verticality, its hardness, its friction. I asked them to see where their eyes focused. Then, I asked them to go through the scales I had just taught them, and experience what happened as they moved their heads, their necks, their chests, waists, pelvises, and legs. Soon they were ready to play with imaginary walls and quite on their own discovered tables, ceilings and boxes.
Over the next few months, we explored many concepts in this manner: rope pulling-- creating mime tug-o-war games; rowing boats; creating different sorts of characters, etc. These being elementary school kids, this sometimes led us into the realm of gross humor, like the pulling of the twenty foot nose hair.
The kids were especially fascinated by the causality exercise of “the machine” in which each mime plays the role of a single unit in a large machine, each one linked to the next in their imagination and so, starting in April, we began to develop a skit from that exercise.
Over a period of two months the kids and I rehearsed, starting with the basic gag of a chain of machines in an assembly line, speeding up and slowing down in sequence, each time adding new elements: sometimes from ideas that sprung to my mind, and sometimes appropriations of the kids goofing off using the very same technique that I had taught them.
On the day of the recital, I showed up, taped lines on the stage, made sure all the kids and my adult helpers had masks, changed into my costume before beginning final rehearsals. I realized that I had learned a great deal from watching Peter Schumann direct rehearsals as I did a walk and talk through of the scene before a full dress rehearsal of our skit. It was our best rehearsal yet.
The girls crowded around me as I began applying my make-up. After six months working together, the kids had never seen me made up. First came the white face power, next came the grease paint, next: another layer of powder. I showed the girls a photograph of my stage persona as I began drawing around my eyes with my black eyeliner, but it was only when I began to put on my bright red lipstick did I hear hysterical squeals: “Ian’s wearing lipstick! Aieeee!”
As the families began to file in, I got into character, shifting back and forth between rapid movements and still poses. The younger children who had been in the clowning class were fascinated by my appearance and seemed magnetically attracted towards me. My kids were older and otherwise occupied with the stilt walking and juggling skits.
I just did my best to provide a preshow show-- like I had seen circus clowns -- and realized that we were the circus, just a smaller one.
The show began with a stilt walking act on the stage, followed by an introduction by their teacher, Peter Jehlen. Peter has been one of the primary organizers of Open Air Circus as well as the teacher of several classes both during the school year and summer programs. He then brought more kids back out for a scarf juggling skit.
Sophie, the clowning teacher, brought her students out for a series of classic clown gags. The little ones were adorable in their motley outfits and almost scribbled on makeup as they sat on popping balloons, and played pranks like pouring water over each other’s head.
After some set up, the little ones returned with a cardboard box puppet theater in which sock puppets and paper flats danced about to a surreal story that they had created together.
At the end of the puppet skit, I led my students to the backstage area and lined them up in first position. They put on their masks-- so-called “neutral masks” that they had had the option of decorating themselves. At my cue, they began their “robot walk” and entered the auditorium, making repetitive mechanical noises, following the tape I had laid out on the floor. When they reached their spots on the stage they faced the audience and took first position. They had only entered and received their first round of applause.
I followed, curiously investigating this grand machine that had just marched on and assembled itself on the stage, finally reaching stage left, I discovered the lever that set all into motion. First, unit one began her activity, then two, on and on, until unit nine began to whir on stage right, again, the audience applauded, not realizing that this was but the beginning. I mimed manipulating other dials and knobs, speeding up or slowing down the machine, changing the volume of the machine’s noises, each alteration beginning with unit one and moving on to unit nine.
As I brought the machine to a stop, the audience applauded again as if it was the end of the skit, but there was more to come. They held themselves in long immobilities. Walking about my mimes, I began altering their stances, adjusting their arms and their heads. Then, I ran back to the controls and pulled the lever: again they were set into motion, but this time a different set of motions with a different set of noises, and as I altered their speed, their legs began to quake unexpectedly and soon, one by one their upper bodies fell limp hanging forward over their hips.
The audience again thought that this was the end of the skit and applauded loudly, but instead I went to each unit, one by one, attempting to make them stand upright again, lifting heads, arms, torsos, but each wilted. Having broken the machine, I hid behind the units using the descending staircase illusion. The students then stood erect and took bows to great applause, but this was another false ending: Just as they began to seemingly march off stage with a robotic walk, revealing me cowering behind them, they turned about and turned on me. I crab-walked backwards until they had surrounded me and the audience could see my arms and legs extend quivering every few seconds from between the robot bodies. After a few moments they lifted me to my feet and dragged my fearful character off stage. Again came a round of applause. After a few seconds we emerged again, returning to the stage, this time, I was the last robot in the line and we took two bows, the first with masks, the second without masks.
My kids had surpassed the expectations of their parents, and indeed their own, and had given me one of my proudest moments as a teacher and an artist. Six months of hard work had paid off. I regret that there was no way of keeping the group together after this, because I would have confidently placed them on the same stage with any adult comedy group in the area with full confidence that they would have held their own.
This summer, I am teaching with Open Air Circus again, but alas I have my new kids for only six weeks. The skit we’re working on involves a food fight with spaghetti.
