With the help of a grant from Arts Council England’s
Emergency Response Fund, I am exploring new and innovative online possibilities
in clown teaching, by testing online options for clown teaching at London Clown
School. Somewhat fortuitously, I came into our current situation having had
some experience in the design and delivery of online teaching materials for
clowning with the first Clown Studies Course (History, Theory and Analysis) in January
of this year.
My main focus has begun with adapting the syllabus from the
former weekly ‘Devising for Clown Performance’ classes, which I have offered in
London for a number of years. Through experimental sessions with interested performers,
teachers, and students I began by testing some possibilities and limitations of
online study in the area of creating clown performance. This area of clown
training, with a large component of creation which occurs previous to the live
performance, seems like it might lend itself more easily to online education. As
a result, I am now at the stage of running a number of six-week series of
classes.
The next phase will be to test the teaching of those aspects
of live clown performance which normally assume or demand the physical presence
of performers and spectators in the same space, which presents greater
obstacles in translating to online media.
This process, at the moment, looks to respond to urgent
current circumstances, but then will come questions in addressing the unknown
of whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in in the near future. We don’t
know how much demand for online learning will be sustained. Perhaps it will
maintain itself at the current level, perhaps it will increase, or perhaps it
will drop off if circumstances change. Current responses to my own initial
plans from both professionals and students suggest that especially those with
difficult access to performer and arts training will continue to engage online
after lockdown.
I hope that these innovations may have some useful impact on
teachers and students in my field and play some role in the development of
clown teaching and performance globally, which has always been of prime
importance to me.
So, instead of asking, ‘when will we return to like it was
before with live audiences and workshops?’ we can ask ‘how do we do this now?’
(whether we return or not). Our unique new historical circumstances may lay the
foundation for an exciting new way of understanding our artform. My hope is to
be able to develop, innovate, and support the world network of clowns and
clowning for the future.
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