Dates: from 13th April until 29th
June 2015
Time: Mondays 6.30 – 8.30pm
Cost: £15 per class; or £60 for five classes
paid in advance
How
to register and pay for the course: please send an email to info@jondavison.net indicating your
interest and to know if there are places available.
This
course is suitable for anyone interested in exploring clowning, with or without
experience.
Maximum
number of students: 16
These classes will start by looking at the fundamentals of clowning,
learning to feel and enjoy our own ridiculousness. Converting our habitual fear
of ridicule into the pleasure of laughing at ourselves, we can use it to make
others laugh and experience the freedom of the clown.
We will also look at ways of devising material for performance, forming
and structuring your individual clown idiosyncrasies into clown numbers as well
as learning from the classics.
Most things are ridiculous when you really look: our bodies,
our movements, our ideas, our emotions, our words, our relationships, the
universe. The only aim in clowning is to turn failure into success, fear into
laughter, suffering into joy. We don’t need to change ourselves, just look at
everything from another perspective. It’s a human thing to do, so anyone can do
it. Although only a few will choose to dedicate their lives to it, anyone can
experience the clown.
Jon Davison is a clown
performer, teacher, director, researcher, writer and musician with 30 years
experience. Co-founder in 1993 of Companyia
d’Idiotes, he has toured festivals, theatres, tents, streets and bars throughout
Europe from Sicily to the Arctic. He trained at the École Philippe Gaulier and Fool
Time Circus School (Bristol). As well as performing solo, he is part of the
four-person clown/circus/pantomime company, Stupididity,
currently touring Not A Real Horse.
He was co-founder of the Escola de Clown de Barcelona, one of the
world’s leading centres offering comprehensive clown training programmes
covering both practical and theoretical aspects of the clown arts. He
previously taught clown, impro, and acting at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona from 1996-2006, and was a Research
Fellow investigating clown training at Central
School of Speech and Drama (University of London), where he is now a
visiting lecturer as well as working towards his PhD on clown performance.
He is the author of Clown Readings in Theatre
Practice
published by Palgrave Macmillan, a rich collection of readings offering
a wide-ranging and authoritative survey of clown practices, history and theory,
from the origins of the word clown through to contemporary clowning. His second
book, Clown Training, a practical guide for teachers and students, is
due out later in 2015.
For more information about Jon
Davison and clown courses in London:
