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There have been lots of modern movies made in the style of 1920s silents, many of them quite good, but only a smattering of theatre productions attempt to recreate that aesthetic on stage in front of a live audience. In fact, it makes no sense at all, since the time and space constraints of the proscenium preclude many of the crowd-pleasing elements we associate with silent film....

But as Galileo said, "and yet it moves." And, in the case of The Man Who Laughs, a "live silent film for the stage" by New York's Stolen Chair Theatre Company, it moves and works quite well indeed.

The 1928 film

This revival of their well-received 2005 production takes as its source not a silent film comedy, but Victor Hugo's melodramatic novel, The Man Who Laughs (1869), which was in fact made into a silent film in 1909 (France), in 1921 (Germany), and in 1928 (U.S.A.), though the latter did have a synchronized audio track of music and sound effects.  There have been at least three very loosely adapted sound versions, the most recent released a mere two months ago and co-starring tax-evader Gerard Depardieu.

"L'Homme Qui Rit" (2012)

In one long, run-on sentence: it's the story of a boy who has his face violently disfigured into a permanent smile and who ends up touring  the hinterlands in a caravan with a traveling showman (think Anthony Quinn in La Strada, only sweet), where his freakish appearance gets laughs and draws crowds, but what he really wants is be taken seriously and, well, we all know that's not gonna work out in the end, don't we? (Take that, my 6th-grade teacher!) Did I mention it's a melodrama?

Photo by Carrie Leonard

But the story is oddly compelling, which is why there are those six movies. In terms of clowning, it mines the popular image (cliché?) of the clown as a misunderstood soul who yearns to play Hamlet (or in this case, Othello). Indeed, haven't many highly successful comedians been eager to take on ultra-serious acting roles late in their careers? Think Charlie Chaplin (Monsieur Verdoux), Danny Kaye (Skokie), Art Carney (Harry & Tonto), Jackie Gleason (The Hustler), Milton Berle (numerous tv dramas), and Jerry Lewis (King of Comedy)— not to mention Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, and Bill Irwin.

Photo by Carrie Leonard

In terms of physical comedy, the silent acting of course calls for heightened precision and a movement vocabulary that is expressive without being overly stiff. The challenges, I am happy to report, are well met in this production. The performers are up to the task, and Dave Droxler in the title role makes full use of his strong clown background and, in a brilliant marionette sequence, his fluid movement skills.

What I was most struck by, however, was how well all of the elements came together, from the acting, to the musicianship of composer/pianist Eugene Ma, to the spot-on grayscale visual design (sets by Michael Minahan, costumes by Julie Schworm, lighting by Daniel Winters, makeup by Jaclyn Schaefer), to the flowing narrative and witty title cards of playwright Kiran Rikhye, all melded into a convincing whole by director Jon Stancato. Art is in the details, and here attention was devoted to every little moment.

Here's a  Jim Moore video interview with director Jon Stancato and lead actor Dave Droxler, from Jim's fantastic blog, Vaude Visuals:



 And here's a review of the production by Ashley Griffin, our musical theatre guest poster, who first alerted me to the show and brought me along on opening night, thank you very much.

The show plays through February 24th. Click here for ticket information.

Click here to watch the 1928 silent film on youTube in 11 installments. Or rent it from Netflix...

Update:  Click here for the NY Times review.

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Just following up on my previous blog post on the Stolen Chair Theatre Company's "silent film for the stage" production of Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs....

I'm a fan of Hugo but have not read this one, but thought I might like to. Or you would, so here's another entry in my "Complete Book" series, the novel in a downloadable and printable pdf. The first document is in the original French, the second in English translation. (For more complete books, see sidebar.) As always with Scribd, use the controls at the bottom of the window to maximize your viewing pleasure.

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I must admit I feared a let-down might await me last night as I went to see the new Bill Irwin / David Shiner production, Old Hats. Too much talent! Expectations way too high!! Plus weren't these guys turning 63 and 60 this year?

Nellie McKay

Well, yes they are, not that you'd know it from Old Hats. This is an impressive production, full of new, richly textured material, and as physical as anything I've seen them do. They do get a few breathers while a band led by cabaret singer and comedienne Nellie McKay entertains us, but this may have as much to do with elaborate costume changes as it does with stamina.

Old Hats, as directed by Tina Landau, comes across as a loving tribute to vaudeville and in fact takes the form of a traditional variety show, though one with electronic title cards and state-of-the-art video effects. Most of the material is mostly new, but they are clowns, so of course lots of business from their past work surfaces throughout. And there are a couple of old favorites performed intact: Bill does his Italian waiter routine, juggling plates full of "spaghetti," that I first saw him do in the Pickle Family Circus in the 70s. David again directs his silent cowboy movie with a cast of audience volunteers, a feature of their Broadway show, Fool Moon. As for the new stuff, no duds, but these were the highlights for me:

• After an opening of our intrepid duo escaping from a cosmic wormhole (video projected onto the back wall) and the noisy entrance through the audience of the late-arriving band, Irwin and Shiner settle into a classic softshoe routine where they try to outdo each other with fancy footwork and hat tricks even fancier than in previous shows. They are both technically amazing, though no clown and few dancers can match Bill Irwin's fluidity of movement.
• "The Businessman," a solo piece by Bill brilliantly combining movement with technology, beginning with a battle between his iPhone and iPad and ending with his identity being swallowed whole by larger-than-life electronic media. Reminiscent of his work in Largely New York, though much more ambitious and fully realized.
• "The Encounter," in which two doddering old men get on each other's nerves while waiting for a train. Their oversized costumes give them room for all sorts of bodily metamorphoses. A sweet and touching piece that seamlessly blends physical comedy with rich character work.
• A magic act performed by a pair of third-rate artistes. Shiner's magician is a creepy delight, defined perfectly by his own idiosyncratic idea of flashy movement. Irwin is hysterical as his female assistant, ever jealous of the old guy's flirtations with the younger ladies in the first row. And, yes, they do some real magic, including sawing a woman from the audience in half. This kind of parody has been done before, but the interplay of these two characters was absolutely delicious.

A lot of NYC clowns were there last night, and as fate would have it, David Shiner picked our own Missus Clown, aka Kelly Anne Burns, to play the damsel in the Cowboy Movie. Of course she stole the show. (Click to enlarge.)

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I don't know about you, but I still remember as a kid upsetting my parents by trying the old trick of yanking a tablecloth out from underneath some dishes and glasses with, er, mixed results. I've also written about this trick, including an advanced variation, in this blog post.  But now I can offer a more scientific explanation....

First a little background: there's an organization and web site, coursera.org, that distributes free, interactive online classes from major universities. I decided to enroll in "How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Objects" because, well, I'm interested in that kind of stuff. And here's the professor, Louis Bloomfield of the University of Virginia, beginning his very first lecture with — you guessed it — the tablecloth trick.


While Bloomfield makes a distinction between the scientist who shows how things work and the magician who hides things, he is in fact being a bit tricky here himself. For example, he says he's adding a degree of difficulty by pouring wine into the glass. Yes, the spilled wine would make a mess, but of course the added weight makes the glass less likely to tip over in the first place. And removing the wine bottle from the table hardly seems insignificant. Because of its shape and higher center of gravity, the wine bottle is far more likely to be displaced than the plate.

His very next demo is conisderably more interesting and uses a trick I'd never seen:



Drew Richardson is visiting and we were watching this together, leading us to brainstorm on how this could be turned into a clown bit. Hmm... It might be hard to find a reason to be sticking a pencil in a Coke bottle, but what if the pencil were a straw, a straw that somehow you couldn't insert in the usual manner? But wouldn't a straw, because it's so light, be more affected by air currents and be in danger of missing the opening? Maybe you could make your own "straw" out of heavier material. In fact, the object wouldn't have to be hollow so long as there were an opening visible on each end. (3D printer, anyone?) Now for the hoop. You can see why you'd need it rather than, say, a rectangular frame (too much friction), but what would the excuse be for having a hoop handy? A hat band? It would have to be perfectly circular. A spring-form pan?? Well, you get the idea. I'm sure this is how Grock worked.

Anyway, good stuff, and the course just started this week, so if you want to enroll, just go to coursera.org. Did I mention that it's free?

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[Some of you must have noticed that I've neglected the blog big time this year. It's not that I've lost interest in physical comedy. In fact, in New York I've been busy directing physical comedy, and this week I'm in Barcelona teaching it at Jango Edwards' Nouveau Clown Institute. Nope, the problem is that I've gotten involved with other stuff, the main one being learning Spanish! Had been meaning to do it for over 40 years, and now I've thrown much of my spare time into it. But the plan is to get back to the blog, and here's a post to prove it.]

My favorite eccentric dancer, our guest blogger Betsy Baytos, sent me this clip of the comedy dancing duo Jean Larraine and Roy Rognan, who I must admit I had never heard of. It's from the 1942 movie The Fleet's In, whose plot — much like the better-know Stage Door Canteen a year later — involves visiting a USO canteen, a night club catering to World War II soldiers on leave. In other words, an excuse to present variety acts, for which we can be very grateful.

Here's the very funny clip, Larraine & Rognan performing with a bemused Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra. The switching back and forth between sheer elegance and pure cartoon is dazzling and well-nigh perfect.





The duet, who were husband and wife, also appeared in the 1943 musical, Salute for Three, but I haven't been able to locate that, even on VHS. Their career was cut tragically short while on tour in '43 with the USO when their plane carrying 39 people, including 7 entertainers, crashed off the coast of Portugal, killing 14. 

Larraine survived; Rognan did not.

According to this report, "Jean Lorraine, in addition to losing her husband, had seven teeth knocked out, hurt her back, and crushed her right leg.  She had been  a comedy dancer with her husband, but after the tragedy she became a singing comedienne.  She changed her name to Lorraine Rognan to keep her husband's name alive.  She was on crutches for seven and a half months, but she showed the same kind of bravery as the men in her audiences.  She entertained at the Hollywood canteen while still on crutches, then went overseas again a year after the accident to fulfil her contract with the USO.  Her husband's death didn't meet the criteria spelled out in the literature, which said the life insurance was ''valid in case of death from all causes except airplane accident or act of war.'  In what surely must have been one of the cruellest blows of all, Time Magazine reported that Jean's accident cost her fourteen thousand dollars."

I hope she had at least some inkling that her work would live on for future generations.

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After six months with only a handful of posts, this blog is back, and what better way to restart than with something sublimely silly: Japanese Synchronized Walking!

It just so happens that I'm a big fan of snazzy group movement —  Busby Berkeley, marching bands, and massive chase scenes are all A-OK in my book — but this is different. It's... it's.... oh just watch first, then I'll tell you what I've learned.



On one level, it's all so serious, yet a lot of the humor seems intentional, and of course I couldn't help but enjoy the costume change (0:55,) the domino fall (5:04), the character poses (8:00), and all the intersecting patterns.

Here's the background, as provided by Makiko Itoh on the web site quora.com.

It is not a competition at all, but an exhibition put on by the Nippon Sport Science University (NSSU), a university dedicated to physical education. Most of the graduates go on to become PE teachers, trainers and coaches. 

The movement is called "shuudan koudou"（集団行動）or group movement. It's similar to military movement exercises, or synchronized marches by marching bands, but more intricate. Among other things it's supposed to help train the NSSU students to manage large groups in the future. (Japanese schools often have morning exercises and assemblies and such where the entire student body is gathered together. They're expected to line up at equidistant from each other, stand at attention when the principal comes to the podium and that kind of thing.) I'm guessing though that it's just a fun thing to do.

Group movement is a tradition at NSSU along with things like cheerleading. As far as I know it's unique to NSSU. There are no open group movement competitions. 

Most people love the synchonized movement and humor, but some find it uncomfortable to watch since it reminds them of military demonstrations that are similarily synchronized.

I'm thinking maybe the unease with it seeming to be too militaristic (or corporate) is what inspired the comic touches.

You can find some variations here and of course via a YouTube search.

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I was researching something else on Dominique Jando's excellent Circopedia web site (which I highly recommend!) and came across this gem and thought it worth a cross-posting. After all, if I had never seen this it's likely many of you haven't either.

This is Francis Brunn, one of the greatest jugglers ever (you'll see why) making an appearance on the Jack Benny Show back in 1961. Benny was an ex-vaudevillian with a dry wit and real talent as a violinist, but certainly not known as a physical comedian. Here he does get a bit physical, though Dominique assures me that the pratfall was done by a stunt double, though one with a pretty believable physical resemblance.

Click here or on the screen image below to go to Circopedia and see the video, then stick around a bit and browse the site!

The Gaspards

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Yes, right here! I hit the jackpot this past weekend, and of course I'm sharing the wealth with you. Here's the story....

Although I'm partial to the use of physical comedy within a storyline, as in silent film comedy, I've always gotten a big kick out of pure comedy acrobatic acts, especially when they involve eccentric movement, partner work, and some sturdy furniture. I was first exposed to this when performing on the Hubert Castle Circus in the late 70s on the same bill with the Gaspards, whose table acrobatic numéro had many of the same moves you'll see in the vidéos below.

The Gaspards

I've never been able to track down the Gaspards, and just have a few snapshots of them taken at another venue, but about six years ago in London I watched a video clip of what I thought was the sharpest knockabout act I'd ever seen. Of course I wanted a copy, but the collector who had shown it to me promptly disappeared from the face of the earth. Luckily I had written down the name of the act — the Mathurins — and never forgot about it. Then a week or so ago I finally tracked them down to a November 24, 1957 appearance on the British tv variety hour, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, sort of England's Ed Sullivan Show. I got to see the clip for the second time ever on Friday.

I was happy, but then happier still on Saturday when on another episode of the same show I discovered  the Trio Rayros, another excellent comedy acrobatic act, who had twice appeared on Ed Sullivan (5-11-58 and 4-4-59).

And then this morning I woke up to find that my old friend Julia Pearlstein had sent me a link from Carlos Müller to a 1910 film of comic acrobats from the archives of the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique. And guess what? It's really good too!

So let's start with the 1910 anonymous film of three anonymous acrobats. This begins with some standard acrobatics but gets wackier and wackier, and is full of nifty moves, including monkey rolls, pitches to 2-highs, pitches to back sits, eccentric walks, a hat dive, a jump to a thigh stand, the old putt-putt, and some great front fish flops. It's amazing to see so many of these same comic bits in use a half century earlier, yet more evidence that physical comedy vocabulary was transmitted by variety performers directly into early film comedies.




Fast forward to November 24, 1957 and the Mathurins. Many of the same pitches, 2-highs, and partner balances, but more trips, slaps and falls, some ahead-of-its time break dancing, awesome table and chair moves, and the best peanut rolls this side of China... a knockabout encyclopedia!

Orson Welles directing Too Much Johnson in lower Manhattan around 1938.

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Huh? Orson Welles? The guy whose "first film" Citizen Kane made movie history in 1941?

Yep.

It was reported today that an early effort by Welles, Too Much Johnson, has been recovered in Italy and is currently being restored. The 40 minutes of footage shot in 1938 was to be shown as part of a live theatrical performance, an early mixed-media event. The show closed out of town, the editing of the film was never quite completed, and what was thought to be the only copy was lost in a fire. But here's the intriguing part, at least for this blog. According to the NY Times...

Each act of the play... was to begin with a film segment. The first (and most nearly completed in the rediscovered print) was a chase across Lower Manhattan shot in the style of a silent comedy, complete with Keystone Kop-like pursuers, a suffragist parade to barrel through and Cotten tottering on the edge of a skyscraper like Harold Lloyd in “Safety Last.”

We'll have to wait until October for the first screening, but you can read the whole article here.

Johnny Hutch at 15 and receiving his MBE in 1994.

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Johnny Hutch, one of the unsung heroes of physical comedy, would have been 100 years old today. As things turned out, he not only made it past his 93rd birthday, but remained active as an acrobatic performer until age 69, and as a teacher and choreographer late into life, last working as a stunt coordinator for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the age of 87. He was also married to the same woman, Jane Phillips, for 66 years, passing away — probably not coincidentally — months after she did in 2006.

Hutch had a long and illustrious career as a comedy acrobat with such troupes as the Seven Hindustans, the Seven Volants, the Herculeans, and the Half-Wits, appearing more than any other artist ever at the London Palladium, and sharing the stage with such stars as Grock, Louis Armstrong, and Bob Hope. However, he probably gained greatest recognition as Benny Hill's bald, elderly sidekick in the last two seasons of Hill's BBC comedy show.

More significant to today's performers (youse guys) is that Johnny Hutch deserves huge praise for generously sharing his knowledge with others, in the process becoming a key transitional figure between the circus/variety world of the mid-20th century and the alternative theatre world of the past fifty years. He created the Johnny Hutch School of Professional Acrobatics and Stagecraft —"Producers of High Class Specialty Acts. Knockabout and Fight Sequences. Traditional Trap Routines" and coached Robert Downey, Jr. for the title role in the movie Chaplin. He not only worked for established institutions such as the RSC, but also assisted fringier enterprises such asPeople Show and The Kosh, and helped establish Zippos Circus. So giving and dedicated was he to transmitting his skills  that he was awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth for "service to young people of the theatrical profession."

Johnny Hutch as a clown.

As usual, you can learn more about Johnny Hutch on the excellent Circopedia site or by reading his memoir of his early days, Somersaults and Some Aren't, published as a special edition (no. 165) of King Pole, the British circus magazine.

Here are a few video clips, followed by some remembrances by two huge fans, and finally a chronology of Hutch's life taken from his memoir.


Click here to see Johnny and The Seven Volants on the Circopedia site. This is from 1965.

The Half-Wits

And in 1977, the Half-Wits on the Cliff Richard Seaside Special, filmed at Deauville, France. That's him second from left  in the photo.

This routine, by the way, reminds me of one Victor Gaona taught at Ringling's Clown College back in 1973, and that has been seen in some form in that circus many times.





A skit from the Benny Hill Show. Recognize anyone?




In the months that followed, as Johnny bullied and encouraged me through some punishing training sessions, I grew to love and respect him. He was a little gentleman entertainer who always wore a suit and bow tie to work, and who, with a twinkle in his eye, a story on his lips ("When I was on the bill with Judy Garland ..."), and with his feet constantly sliding into a soft-shoe shuffle, led me to a world I did not know but found enchanting - the world of circus, music hall and variety.





But I always think that one of Johnny's most daunting challenges in his later life was to try and turn an out-of-condition actor like me into a superman. As well as making me look good in Tamburlaine, he created some thrilling moments in our 1997 RSC production of Cyrano de Bergerac.


Don Stacey writes: Looking back on his 80-year career in show business, Hutch said, "You had to be versatile to survive in music hall. I became Britain's finest tumbler. It sounds big-headed but there was nobody to beat me." He had started work with the Seven Royal Hindustans aged 13 as top mounter in their pyramid - at only 5ft, he was too small to get a job in the local mills. In 1928 he made his first appearance at the London Palladium on a bill topped by Gracie Fields, making her London debut.


Hutch continued to arrange knockabout comedy and trapdoor routines in Palladium pantomimes, although he retired from performing them in his 70s.

And a fond remembrance by our own guest blogger, eccentric dancer and eccentric dance historian Betsy Baytos:

I had the immense pleasure of not only spending time, but filming an extraordinary interview with the great Johnny Hutch back in 1994, for my ‘Funny Feet’ Documentary. Minute and adorable, enthusiastic and funny, energetic, passionate and knowledgeable, it was Johnny, as one of my early interviews and my first in England, who cracked open the door of the Eccentric Dancer’s reach throughout Europe and its strong visual comedic roots. 

The two hours on camera were pure delight and he clearly was one of my favorite interviews and greatest inspirations, and we remained in touch for years after. His demonstrations of ‘moonwalking’ and his spontaneous eccentric dance moves to deliver a point he was making, were nothing short of amazing. 

He was generous of time and spirit, driving home the importance of having a certain ‘kind of body’ as a necessity in becoming an eccentric dancer. He was also the first to make me aware of how eccentric dance evolved from early pantomine and commedia, and how the French Music Hall had incorporated dance, which led to eccentric. We talked of so many great physical comics and dancers, but a favorite to us both was Grock, which he felt as one of the supreme visual comedians, led to the Eccentric’s character. 

He spoke of working with Robert Downey Jr. and how much he enjoyed the experience of passing along Chaplin’s routines. He spoke of when Richard Attenborough called him to first request his assistance and how deflated Attenborough sounded when saying it was a shame no one remembered Chaplin’s routines. But Johnny piped in, “ I know ALL his routines! I used to watch him as a kid!” And he shared with me the incredible outtakes of his working with Downey on the set.  I recall asking who might have inspired Chaplin, when he mentioned  ‘Fred Kitchen’, whom I must research when back in the UK. 

There is so much more, and I cannot wait to transfer his interview when archived, so it will be accessible to all of you! Happy Birthday Johnny! Love, Betsy


Thank you all! It is never too late to celebrate a life well lived.

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Parkour and physical comedy have a lot in common: a similar technical vocabulary, creativity interacting with real-world physical structures, and many of the same heroes — Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, Georges Hébert. I've already written extensively about all that in this earlier post, one of my personal favorites, so today I just want to alert you to this NY Times article:



An excerpt:
Parkour gyms have opened across the country, from Los Angeles to Rochester, featuring juice bars, private classes and children’s birthday parties that cost $450 (cake not included). Specialized apparel companies sell tailored gloves for $34.50 and shoes for $60. An international organization offers special parkour insurance policies and charges $295 for teacher certification courses.

Needless to say, this is controversial. Click here to read the whole article (and the reader comments!), see a slide show, and view a pretty good 3-minute video. (If the video is no longer there, it will be archived here.)

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Jerry Lewis' over-the-top clowning doesn't appeal to everyone, but in his prime he was an excellent physical comedian, not to mention being a skilled filmmaker with quite a few technical innovations to his credit. Lewis directed and starred in over twenty films, but one from 1972— The Day the Clown Cried— was intentionally never finished.

Why?

The story centered around a clown arrested by the Nazis and forced to merrily lead children to the gas chamber. Admittedly, pulling this off is no easy task, though Robert Benigni did something similar with Life is Beautiful (1997) and won an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. But Lewis freely admits his effort simply didn't work: “It was bad, and it was bad because I lost the magic. You will never see it. No one will ever see it, because I’m embarrassed at the poor work.”

Of course if something is unattainable, everyone wants it, so the mystery has grown over the years. And now there is a 7-minute behind-the-scenes clip that comes to us by way of Caroline Simonds, thank you very much! There's nothing gruesome about this segment, nor is it super illuminating, but it does provide an interesting enough look at Lewis on the set playing with various comic bits.

Photo © Peter Angelo Simon

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Karen Gersch (NYC)

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I thought these were pretty funny! They're from one of my favorite web sites, instructables.com, and each one comes with more photos and detailed instructions on how to build them.

Upcoming Workshops:  Vienna, Oct. 29–Nov. 1  •  Cork, Nov. 12–15  •  Tralee Circus Festival, Nov. 16–17  •  Dublin, Nov. 18–19.  I'm also in Paris through this Friday (Oct. 25), in Budapest on Saturday, and in Barcelona from Nov. 2 through 9. If you're in any of these places and have recommendations for stuff to see, or if you want to have a beer, just drop me a line!  (johntowsen@gmail.com)

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Carlo Mazzone-Clementi gives his support to Dimitri and Dimitri's wife Gunda Photo by Lou Campbell.

In the summer of 1974, America was knee-deep in the Watergate Hearings; the World’s Fair was in Spokane, Washington; and John Denver was serenading us over the airwaves with “Sunshine on My Shoulder.” Amidst all of this, at a small Wisconsin college along the Mississippi River, there was a gathering of some 500 mime performers, teachers, students, news hounds, and townspeople: the International Mime Institute and Festival.

It was America’s first mime festival. Held on the campus of Viterbo College in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the event ran from July 20th to August 10th. Directed by Dr. Lou Campbell, the head of the theater department at the college, with the help of Program Coordinator Bari Rolfe, it set out to be a smorgasbord of experience in master classes and lecture-demonstrations, as well as a film series rounding out the mainstage festival performances. The festival was documented by articles in newspapers around the world, and also by a ten-page article in the January 1975 issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Top row: Lou Campbell, Hovey Burgess, William Burdick, and Laura Campbell. Bottom row: Judy Burgess with Lisa & Lucette Campbell. From the author's collection.

For $3.00 ($2.50 if you bought between six and twenty tickets) you could have seen the work of Dimitri from Switzerland; Menagerie Mime Theatre from San Francisco; Mamako from Tokyo; Noel Parenti from San Francisco; Peter Franklin-White with members of the Elmhurst Ballet School from Surrey, England; Ladislav Fialka and his Theatre on the Balustrade from Prague; Carlo Mazzone-Clementi from California; Antonin Hodek also from California; Lotte Goslar and her Pantomime Circus from New York; Robert Shields and Lorene Yarnell from San Francisco; the Charles Weidman Dance Company from New York; Yass Hakoshima from Japan; Ctibor Turba from Prague; Samuel Avital from Israel and Colorado; Mummenschanz from Switzerland; Geoffrey Buckley from England; The Friends Roadshow from Michigan; and Pierre Byland and Philippe Gaulier, from Switzerland and France.

The dormitory at Viterbo College.  Photo by Mike Evans.

Dr. Lou (Lou Campbell) and his staff created a “big tent” approach not only to the performances, but also to the workshops, lecture demonstrations, and master classes offered.  You could have attended classes on such topics as Kabuki, mime, period dance and style, mask, self mask, mime focused for students in junior and senior high school, commedia dell’arte, dance, stage combat, clowning, and circus arts with the performers as well as with:  William Burdick, Bari Rolfe, E. Reid Gilbert, Shozo Sato, Joram Boker, Jewel Walker, Tom Leabhart, Jango Edwards, Gary Parker, Jacques Lecoq, Hovey & Judy Burgess, and Louis Dezseran.

To get the full value of your tuition of $250 (plus room and board at the college dorm and cafeteria of $16.50/week) you could also attend student performances; go on a field trip to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin; attend a Tribute to Etienne Decroux, catch the outdoor performances of the Friends Roadshow; and attend the screenings of films such as Les Enfants du Paradis, Skaterdater, The Mime of Marcel Marceau, Clay Origins, Why Man Creates, Steamboat Bill Jr., Traffic, a Max Linder compendium, a Pierre Etaix compendium, a Dick Van Dyke compendium, Cameos of Comedy, and The Gold Rush.

As you can see, it was a very busy three weeks!  People came from all over the world to perform, to teach, to share, to learn and to experience what the world of mime had to offer.  Here are a few remembrances of the event from the viewpoints of individual teachers, performers and students who were there.

_____________________________________

Dr. Lou Campbellis the Executive Director and creator of Enclave of the Arts in Fort Worth, Texas.  Enclave of the Arts is a professional, Christian-context, non-profit performing arts organization devoted to advancing the arts.  In 1974, Dr. Lou was the Director of the International Mime Institute and Festival and the Chairman of the Theater Arts Department at Viterbo College in La Crosse, Wisconsin.



What was I thinking? I can tell you exactly and concisely what I was thinking. My fundamental reason for doing the festival was my investigation of the gesture. It began back when I finished my master's degree, just an MA.  I’d had all of the typical acting classes and at the master's level, of course, we were challenged and introduced to an understanding of Stanislavsky.

I then took my first job after receiving my Master's degree.  I went to Emporia, Kansas, to what was then Kansas State Teachers College.  I was hired as a designer/tech director, which was fine. As I was also wrestling with issues about performance I asked for and received permission to have a special projects, or independent study kind of thing on human body movement:  stage movement.  This was in 1967.

So at the beginning of the semester, I said to my students, “We’re going to go over to the library, and I want you to find any books that deal with human body movement that aren’t about technique: not tap dance, not ballet, not technique.” So we went, and it was surprising that they came back with books on anatomy and kinesiology. Our question we pursued was, “What is it about the human body that you need to know in order to perform?” Through our experiments and research in that class, I came up with:  alignment, posture, movement and efficiency of movement. That was interesting. I pursued that for the two years I was there, and then I resigned, to go off for my doctorate.

Gunda and Dimitri with Lou & Laura Campbell

So I moved to Minnesota to pursue my doctorate in 1969. I had a teaching post at the University of Minnesota. That year the theater convention was in Detroit. I was already a member of what was then called the Stage Movement and Dance Project of the old American Educational Theater Association.  By not being at the meeting in Detroit, I got elected chair of the Project.  I got the news in Minnesota, and I also got a file cabinet of stuff from the Project.

Now, early on in Minnesota, I get a call from Sheila Livingston at the Guthrie Theater. She said, “Mr. Guthrie would like to meet with you.” We set up an appointment and I went over to the Guthrie, and Ms. Livingston met me at the stage door, and took me to the green room, and in comes this massive man. He slouched onto one of the sofas there and said, “We have a problem. We’ve just started the McKnight Fellowship. None of the students involved have a consistent vocabulary in their work. “Can you develop a program on human body movement in which all the McKnight candidates would be required to participate?” I told him that I could develop such a program but due to my other commitments, I could not actually teach it. I created that program, then passed it over to the voice teacher who was hired at the Guthrie and she managed it very well. That was one of the first physical movement programs in which I was involved. Later on, when I asked Sheila how she came to get my name, she told me that when Mr. Guthrie told her to find somebody who could do this, she called the American Theater Association and they said, “Good news!  The chairman of the Stage Movement and Dance Project has just moved to Minneapolis. Here’s his number!”
While talking with Mr. Guthrie one day, we began a conversation of Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and Biomechanics.  In that conversation I asked Mr. Guthrie, “What then is essential to an actor? In fact, what is it about the actor that is the most compelling, in terms of creating character?” Guthrie replied quite simply, “The gesture.” After hearing this from Guthrie, I then pursued that idea while finishing my coursework.

After I received my A.B.D Certificate, I was seeking the opportunity to do research on my dissertation to complete my PhD, so I had to get some work. I sent out a resume and Viterbo College responded.  The priest at Viterbo College, who was the president, invited me down and after an interview we walked out the door and he said, “Let me take you over to where your office will be.” We go out the end of the administration building and across the street is a brand new yet-to-be-occupied building that had seven theaters in it! It was a remarkable building.

He wanted me to develop a classical undergraduate liberal arts theater program. I had no problem with that. Then he said, “We also want you to do something to put the school on the map.” At that point, I imagined the old “Mohammed to the mountain trick” and I replied, “I want to do an international institute and festival of mime and pantomime.” To which he gave me That Startled Look, because as he admitted later, he was hoping I would bring in Robert Goulet and we’d do Promises, Promises.  So you see that indeed my fundamental reason for doing an International Mime Festival and Institute at Viterbo College in 1974 was my investigation of the gesture.

In 1974 I had no established precedent. I was young enough and naive enough and dumb enough to take it on. As it happened, other people flew alongside me. There was no explaining it. It was to be an Institute. The only thing I could guarantee was that every student there would be directly exposed to every master teacher and every performing artist that was there. My preoccupation was to get a videotaped interview with each of the major artists that I was contracting and bringing in.

Hovey Burgess & Lou Campbell, earlier this year.

Now the college and the church had no funds to put on the festival. Yes they had the facility and the infrastructure, and they also provided the dormitory and allowed the food service personnel to work during the festival. To fund the endeavor we had four benefactors who underwrote the program with guarantees of $25,000 each. I thought I could do the festival for $100,000!  That’s how dumb I was.  The entire festival ended up costing more like a quarter of a million, but that was not a problem.  The income from the festival paid for it all.

One of the things I did while raising money was that I wrote a proposal to the National Endowment for Dance. They responded by saying that this was not dance, so they sent the letter over to Theater. The people at the Theater Department said, “This isn’t theater, it is dance.” So what happened was the National Endowment people called the American Theater Association people to clarify the definition of mime. The people at the American Theater Association decided to call the head of Theater Movement and Dance Project, which was me!   So I get a call from one of the underlings trying to get a definition of mime, and I said, “Well, it’s actually both.” So the National Endowment of the Arts created their International Festivals Division. It was magnanimous on their part.  They gave me a $20,000 Treasury Grant, which I had to match. So I got my four benefactors together, and they each wrote a $5,000 check!  That $40,000 was the seed money I used to launch the festival.

Mississippi River pyramid. Bottom: Hovey, Carlo, and Hodek. Top: Fialka, Jewel Walker, and Lou Campbell. The whole thing was sinking into the sand.

When I realized how many people were going to be coming, I intuitively knew that there was not going to be a common language.  People who didn’t speak English were going to be there. So I devised a way to shepherd the attendees around the festival by dividing them into four groups.  Everyone wore a dog tag on a leather thong. The dog tag was made by a friend who had a business in town making VIN medallions for vehicles. He made five different kinds for the festival: a gold tag with black lettering for the teachers and performers; and four silver tags, each with different colored lettering — red, green, black and blue. Everybody had a dog tag. The color was arbitrary. That was their I.D. That was all they needed. Each morning the first meeting of the day was in the lobby of the main theater. I had four of my students each carry a different colored flag.  All I did was stand up and point to the dog tag, and point to the flag and they’d all go! So we didn’t need a program of where the workshops were.

I traded the making of the dog tags for advertising at the festival. I did that with the leather thongs also.   They were made by the guy who had a shop called the La Crosse Glove and Leather Company. While I was in there he said that he’d always had an idea for an acrobat slipper. So he had me place my feet on a piece of paper, and he drew the outline of each foot.  He said, “I’m going to make you a pair of acrobatic slippers.” He called me later and gave me my two pairs of slippers: a pair of black and a pair of white ones. I still have them! I still use them. Dimitri went down there and got shoes. Hovey went down there and had him make a high-top version, too! That guy certainly earned his money back.

Another item I got a local factory to donate was good Wisconsin cheese. In lieu of a coffee break each morning, we had a cheese break for 500 people. We had a caterers’ kitchen in the lobby, and set it up with the cheese and some fruit, and all the people who had their dog tags could go there and pick up what they wanted.  We did it every day for three weeks.  Of course a lot of people also went down to the factory and bought cheese after tasting the sample at the festival. The cheese makers got good press from the international papers on their donation. They even got an article in the New York Times.

Most of the artists were there for the full three weeks. We got a lot of very interesting people together who knew about each other, but they’d never met each other. They’d never seen each other perform.  Thankfully the environment during the three weeks just happened to be not your typical big egos.  Putting together the mime festival the way we did had directly to do with that.

For me, the bottom line was all the students who came. The fact is that prior to the festival I had students who were astonished that they were going to be able to meet and work with these well-known international performers and instructors. This particular group of students was devoted to the craft.  Some of them already were clowns, like this one Air Force captain out of North Dakota. He rode a unicycle.  He got time off and came as a student. None of the students there needed to know “why,” they just wanted to be mimes.

Every major network was there. Every major newspaper was there. In fact the ten major newspapers in the world were there! People were coming from all over the place. Everybody was on the campus.  Everybody ate together. By default I gave the college what they wanted. Holding the International Mime Festival and Institute on campus did put Viterbo College on the map.

Mummenschanz press photo, 1974. From the collection of the author.

Floriana Frassettois the co-inventor of the repertoire of the contemporary Swiss mask theater troupe, Mummenschanz, and she still plays in each performance. In 1974. she and her partners Bernie Schurch and Andres Bossard were into their third year performing together as Mummenschanz when they appeared at the festival.

I remember that we were on our second tour of America. We were handled by Arthur Shafman back then.  Lou (Dr. Lou Campbell) was so brave. He wrote to Shafman and requested that we perform at his festival in La Crosse. Even now, I applaud his desire to blend so many disciplines into one festival.

So we were on a small tour that summer. Viterbo was the first performance, and then we were on to California. We rented a car. We had toilet paper and masks and everything packed into the car. Our time in Viterbo was extraordinary. It was like a little touch of Europe in North America, with a great audience. They appreciated our non-verbal, non-musical approach to theater.

It was so much fun because we knew many of the other performers like Ctibor (Ctibor Turba) and Pierre (Pierre Byland). We enjoyed being part of a wonderful melting pot of American, European, and Asian artists who spoke from the heart.  Lou really did open the eyes of many to many different styles!

Robert Shields & Lorene Yarnell press  photo, 1974. From the collection of the author'

Robert Shieldsis a jeweler, sculptor, painter, and comedy writer who resides in Sedona, Arizona, with his wife and cat. In 1974 he attended the festival as one half of what would become the world famous mime duo, Robert Shields & Lorene Yarnell.

Oh my God! You mean in Wisconsin? Oh, that was really wild! That was an amazing festival. We had no name there at all. We were being introduced. We didn’t really know when we did our show that we would be such a hit.

Remember, we were a new generation coming up. We reflected the wants of our generation, so our work moved faster and was more relevant to the young people at the festival. I did the “Monkey,” where I peel a banana and then jump out of the cage and go into the audience. I did the “Marionette.”  We did a piece called “Life” which was a life cycle as a man and a woman. It was really funny.  Lorene (Lorene Yarnell) tapped. Then I did the “Biker” routine and we did the “Princess and the Frog.” It was all laced with comedy. Then and now, that’s the most important thing to me: making people laugh. Now, in Viterbo that was the first time anyone ever saw the robot. We closed the show with “Robots Eating Breakfast.” Now look at it, it’s a classic.

Carlo basing Lorene Yarnell. Photo by Lou Campbell.

That festival was in the summer of 1974, and in 1975 we moved to L.A., where we were on the Sonny & Cher Show.  Bingo! We won the Ted Mack Amateur Contest. Out of 3,000 people, we won! Then there was a Burt Reynolds Talent Contest, and we came in second. After that Merv Griffin discovered us, and Mike Douglas. Then all of a sudden we got our show on Carson. By 1977, we had our own TV series.

Now at the festival, some of the older mimes hated what we did. They couldn’t stand it, but the younger people loved it. You see what I mean. We were doing a new kind of mime. I was flippin’ the bird onstage. I was doing stuff that was contemporary. I was imitating bikers and zipping up zippers and stuff. We were doing very funny stuff. It was still mime, but it was a whole new way of looking at it. I remember Carlo Mazzone-Clementi saying to me, “Robert, why do you have to do this kind of mime? It is not good for the art. It is not good. It needs to be mature.”

Remember, our work moved faster, and was more relevant to the younger people in the audience.  You see, Carlo didn’t understand that I consider myself an entertainer and a mime, so that’s why we ended up playing Vegas and Reno and on TV on the Sonny & Cher Show. We were just not his cup of tea.

At that festival it was fantastic to be with people of like minds who were all together. It was such a wonderful group. I really liked hanging out with the other mimes. There wasn’t any competition going on. I was very impressed with Fialka (Ladislav Fialka). He did a great chicken, and I remember how clean and perfect it was. It was so amazing. His energy was so great. I loved that strangeness and that tightness. Lecoq was like that also: strange and clean.

We came away from Viterbo with a name. We were the new discovery. We were doing stuff that was different from Dimitri and Mummenschanz, but all of us made it. We were all unique, and we had something that people wanted to see. Look what happened. We made it immediately into the mainstream of commercial television!

Dimitri press photo. 1974. From the collection of the author.

Mike Evans is a video artist who specializes in videotaping the dance workshops and performances of dancer Katie Duck (formerly Katie Berger).  In 1974 he attended the festival as the technician for the Salt Lake Mime Troupe, a company centered in and around the university in Salt Lake City.

I was a long-haired art student who fell into videotaping dance. I thought this mime and dance stuff was pretty cool. I was a theater tech, a driver. I was not a performer, so you’re getting this from an outsider.  I was seeing everything through those eyes.

All of the other members of the Mime Troupe (The Salt Lake Mime Troupe) were already in Lacrosse. I drove my VW Bug to Viterbo. I came in on the first weekend. I came in after Dimitri’s first performance. When I got there, I was in absolute wonderment. I’d had about a year of working with dancers, so I knew a little bit about what was going on, but the dedication, the knowledge of the human body, the intense curiosity, and the evangelical desire upon everybody’s part to share what they knew was amazing. These were some of the most outgoing people I’d ever come in touch with.

Lou’s staff was great! We were all staying in the dorms, and they brought food there! There were a lot of hungry people there, and the staff made sure that there was enough food so that everyone who came to that festival stayed healthy and in good shape. It was great. It meant a lot.

Joan Merwyn. Sketch by Mike Evans.

The greatest workshop at Viterbo was Hovey Burgess’s ongoing juggling workshop. There was nothing like that. It was effective. It was beautiful, and everybody learned from it. It went on all day, so when you had a moment to kill, you’d just go out on the lawn and there were always at least a dozen people out there, and you’d start juggling. Hovey had equipment for everybody:  clubs, rings, and balls.  So you’d go out there and you’d start learning about something.

Out on the lawn there were also people doing Tai Chi, so you’d learn about Tai Chi while you were juggling. Sometimes people would rehearse out there, and get each other’s opinions on ideas. We’d turn our attention, and they’d show us what they were working on. Being as we were all peers, the responses would be all over the map from, “Wow, that’s great!” to “You should work on this aspect a little more.” Even if it stunk, someone would offer a positive idea.

One morning Robert Shields was on the lawn doing his morning workout, and a group of students were doing a similar workout nearby. He just stepped up to them and they got to talking and he ended up doing a “falling” workshop. It was good: great for when you were performing on the street or anywhere! That, too, was part of Hovey’s ongoing juggling workshop. It was definitely the best of all the classes there.

Hovey teaching the Campbell girls. Photo by Lou Campbell.

The shows I remember the most? Well, Robert’s show (Shields & Yarnell) was good. So was  Mamako’s (Mamako Yoneyama), as well as Mummenschanz’s, Dimitri’s and Byland & Gaulier (Pierre Byland and Philippe Gaulier).  Mummenschanz was brilliant. It was magical. After their first piece with the ball, they could do no wrong. They did a two-sided creature, where you couldn’t tell the front from the back, and I kept being really amazed. Their piece with the plastique masks was truly profound, and they closed the show with the masks of toilet paper. Their pieces still stick in my mind.

Fialka (Ladislav Fialka) was superb. He was great! I’d seen a couple of his films, and onstage he was wonderful. I loved it. His stage work was not much different from the films. It looked like a film on stage. He had eight to ten people onstage at any one time. It was like modern dance in that way. I’ve never seen group mime like that, never. Lecoq’s workshops: The Personal Clown and The Neutral Mask, they were like an earthquake. They were an earthquake that caused fissures and cracks throughout the whole United States. Jacques Lecoq was the epicenter of by far the biggest and most profound change of what I thought about mime.

Program coordinator Bari Rolfe

Personally I came away with a whole new list of things to learn about, good friends, and good contacts.  The best thing for the mime troupe, the thing that happened for all of us, was an invitation to the Festival of Fools.  You see, we had the entire band and all the dancers from the mime troupe. So I wanted us to perform there. I got a place for us to perform. Bari Rolfe shielded us a bit, and we were able to pull it off. After that performance, some of the members of the Friends Roadshow came up and said it would do very well in Europe. Their leader, Jango Edwards, who hadn’t seen it, came up and said, “I’ve heard great things about your show.” Right then and there he booked us. He invited us to the Festival of Fools, and he arranged it. He kept his word, too. That performance resulted in an epic change in the career of the mime troupe and in my own life.



Samuel Avitalis an artist, performer, teacher, mentor, creative consultant, coach, and author. His peers and students praise him for his innovative approach to personal and professional creativity. He studied mime, dance and theatre in Paris with Etienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau. He toured solo in Scandinavia, Europe, North and South America, before settling in Boulder, Colorado in 1971. He continues to perform and teach extensively. In 1974 he attended the festival as a performer.

I was there for the whole three weeks. I had been teaching my workshops in Colorado, and when I went to Viterbo College, some of my students came also to participate.

I thank Lou (Lou Campbell) for doing it. It was the first time we all ever got together. The atmosphere was very good. I remember that. It wasn’t just mime, but also all of the other disciplines.

Samuel Avital, 1974.  Photo by Bill Ray.

There were so many of us there. The artists that came, many were my friends. Pierre Byland and Phillipe Gaulier were there from France. Mummenschanz was there from Switzerland. I remember that Noel Parenti was there. Reid Gilbert was there from the Valley Studio, and Yass Hakoshima. Joram Boker was there, and Jewel Walker. I knew them from when I was in New York. Dimitri was there.  He was wonderful! I became a good friend with Mamako Yoneyama. She is a fantastic woman! Since I came from Europe, I already knew the mimes from there: Jacques Lecoq, Fialka (Ladislav Fialka) and Turba (Ctibor Turba). I got very friendly and crazy with Carlo (Carlo Mazzone-Clementi). Whenever I was with him it was non-stop. I remember that Shields and Yarnell were very energetic also. All these people were from all over. It was so good to see them again.

I liked the performances. They were all so very different. I performed at the festival and enjoyed it very much. The lecture-demonstrations were very exciting. Each was different and reminded me of the festival in Avignon. It was the same atmosphere.

Most of the artists and students stayed together in the dormitory and most of the meetings happened in the dining hall. So I remember everyone being very friendly. In the dining room, in the evenings, in the performances — all of the other artists were very accessible.  The schedule was quite rigorous, but we found time to talk.

After the festival, several students who came to the festival came to my studio to study with me.  One of my students later went to tour with Mummenschanz in Europe. I think it was good for the mime field.  Lou ought to be proud of what he accomplished. It was good that we all were together.

Mamako.  From the sketchbook of Mike Evans.

Bob Francesconiis the Assistant Dean of the School of Drama at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC. He specializes in teaching Acting, Movement, and Masks.  In 1974 Bob was one half of the Menagerie Mime Theater with James Donlon. They performed and taught at the festival.

Looking back, it was such a pleasure to be in LaCrosse with Jim Donlon. I remember that we tried to see everything that we could, and we did. We saw a lot of stuff, actually. We thought we had something, and we did to a degree, but it was eye-opening that other people had it too. One of the things that impressed us both was how advanced the material was from the Europeans; especially from what was then the Communist Bloc. The work had a far greater edge. That was something that appealed to both Jim and me. It was a direction that we wanted to go into. Although both of us now are on very separate paths, that kind of material appeals to us to this day and it has certainly influenced who I am as a teacher and director. I think it opened my eyes to a kind of theatricality that goes beyond naturalism and a kind of theatricality that probes the human condition.

Shozo Sato. Photo by Lou Campbell.

I was relatively new and inexperienced when I went to Viterbo College for the festival, and I can remember thinking, “A new world is opening up.” I’m thinking of Byland and Gaulier (Pierre Byland & Philippe Gaulier). When I saw them break those 200 dishes onstage I was fascinated by it. It brought me in touch with the silent clown element. When I saw Turba (Ctibor Turba) it was much the same thing. You know, watching the manner in which Dimitri worked influenced me, in that there was an openness and an availability to his work. Almost every one of the performances in some fashion opened my eyes to a possible new direction. The group that really was seminal, at least for me, would be the original Mummenschanz group. I remember talking with them about their work. The manner in which they used the mask opened new possibilities for me.

As a teacher there, I thought for the most part that the students were very hungry, and wanted to be there. They were very open. If I recall, there were two types of students: there was a teacher symposium and then the more traditional students attending the mime festival who were actually students. So there were people who had been out in the world and younger people. I taught a week-long workshop in improvisation, both verbal and non-verbal, for the teacher symposium as well as teaching workshops with Jim in our specialty of mime and physical stuff for the other students at the festival. Each day was a whirlwind. Because people were very interested in what we were doing, everyone was exhilarated at the end of the day.

You have to remember that in the seventies there was a real effort by people in Europe and in the United States to make mime respectable. Lou Campbell really had a huge influence on trying to bring people together to make the work more known. So the mime festival was the beginning of making things known. It was the right thing to happen at that time.

The mime festival also demonstrated that the field of mime and pantomime no longer needed to be insular. It demonstrated that, if given the proper amount of time, these artists would begin to expand their art form. It seemed like the events at La Crosse gave us permission to make physical theater a means in itself, whereas I’m not certain it was codified before that. Physical theater — mime, pantomime, and clowning — was given a badge of honor.  With that badge of honor, people like myself felt, “Well, maybe there’s a future here!”


Jyl Hewstonis a freelance stage director & production consultant. Since retiring from the Humboldt State University Department of Theatre, Film & Dance in July of 2010, she’s been invited to direct productions at the Redwood Curtain Theatre as well as back at Humboldt State. She worked for several years with the mime and movement troupe, Plexus.  In 1974 she attended the Mime Institute and Festival at Viterbo College as a student, having just completed her work for her bachelor’s degree.

I hadn’t originally thought I was going to go up to the mime festival at Viterbo, but it kind of all fell together. That was the summer after I graduated from Humboldt State:1974. I was down in San Francisco studying with James Donlon again and some friends of mine were planning to go to the mime festival in Viterbo, so all of a sudden I had transportation and friends that were going.

Looking back at my notes and remembering the work, I am amazed at how many things we were exposed to. There was such a diversity of different styles, cultures, and personalities: many things that I had never experienced. It was so overwhelming. There were performers like Mamako Yoneyama and Mummenschanz. I’d never heard of them! There were people from Europe, and people from Japan, and people from America I didn’t know. Everyone had huge followings of students or members of the ensemble. The energy and all the new ideas made your head explode.

It was an exciting time of life for me also. I was just getting out into the world, so that put the whole festival into an interesting context. Besides giving me a lot of exposure to new ideas and cultures and things going on in the world of theater that I had no idea about, it simultaneously gave me a lot of confidence. I hadn’t realized previously how good the training was that I’d had back in that little college behind the redwood curtain (Humboldt State University).

Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t intimidated by the opportunity to study with all of those amazing people. It was just invigorating and exciting. It was incredible to have the world come to us! How would I ever have become exposed to Jacques Lecoq or Ctibor Turba, or Dimitri, or Mummenschanz and Mamako all in one intense experience? Where else could I have Hovey Burgess as the person who taught me to juggle? You know, it also spoiled me because I expected stuff like that to happen more! You know there were more mime and movement festivals after that, but none of them quite compared to that one at Viterbo College in 1974.

There was such a mixture of the way things were presented. We had workshops, master classes, films, performances, and field trips. It was just nonstop. One Saturday we all boarded busses and went on a field trip to the Circus Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin! Interspersed with all of the formal activities were student performances. Also, Hovey Burgess and others would meet on the lawn outside the arts center and share what they did.

You see, each day Hovey Burgess would bring all the juggling equipment out onto the lawn and it would just be available for anyone to use. That’s basically where I learned to juggle. I was struggling with it. I remember one day there were people juggling all over the lawn, and I finally was able to get the two balls going in one hand and Hovey, who has this uncanny ability to actually watch everyone working, just kind of appeared out of nowhere over my shoulder and said, “That’s very good. Can you do it with the other hand?”

The ever-going, ever-growing juggling workshop at La Crosse — rank beginners and experts all learning from Hovey. From the sketchbook of Mike Evans.

One day there was a Decroux Tribute where they showed a lot of films:  Decroux at home, talking; him performing all those pieces like Love Duet,  The Carpenter, The Washerwoman, The Passage of Men on Earth, The Trees, and The Factory. It was the first time for me, and I bet for a lot of others, seeing any of that. I noted in my journal that after the films that night, there was some lively discussion about corporeal mime and its place in the world of performing. So the festival was a place where we not only were exposed to the work, but we also analyzed it in context with the work of others.

Although I hadn’t yet decided how I’d use the work in performing, I knew that since I was going on to get my master's degree I’d be doing a lot of teaching. So I took a lot of notes during the classes.
Looking back at my notes from the festival I’m surprised at how much stuff that I have been using all these years, in terms of exercises and class activities, originally came from teachers there. I’m totally stunned! For instance, I so enjoyed studying with Louis Dezseran that I bought his book, The Student Actor’s Handbook. I’ve used his work in Acting I classes for years! Also I had several classes with Gary Parker. Some of his exercises I continue to use. I’m glad to realize now where it was I got them.  Man, I still use a lot of Jango Edwards warm-up stuff. He taught a delightful workshop. I love these exercises!

What did I “get” from being at the festival? For one thing, I think I and many others discovered that there was a mime field. We got exposed to each other with the opportunity to see who was out there and what they were doing, and who we might want to have more exposure to: who we’d like to study with some more.

I also think the festival was good for the field by defining and uniting it. It gave people a chance to fight about stuff, too. I think it began a real serious exchange of ideas. I hadn’t even thought about some performances and performers being similarly trained and related. We saw a bunch of Dick Van Dyke mime shorts. Before that I would never have thought of Dick Van Dyke or Red Skelton and those people as being mimes. Enjoying the exposure to all of these people broadened the context of how I viewed the work. In so many ways, with so many talented performers, I saw and appreciated more the talent and work of the folks in TV and film media as well as those from around the world.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there were still some of the old masters with the attitude of “my way or the highway,” but it was also the place where another teacher said, “My technique might be different from somebody else you’ve studied with. That doesn’t make either of us right or wrong. But when you’re in my class, I want you to try the way I do it so you can make a decision later about what you are going to make yours and what you are going to throw away.”

Overall, I am flabbergasted at how many things we were exposed to. It was an amazing event. That whole festival was a game changer for everybody.



James Donloncurrently is an Associate Professor on the Performance Faculty with an emphasis on movement at Southern Oregon University. In 1974 he performed and taught at the International Mime Festival and Institute as one half of San Francisco’s Menagerie Mime Theatre.

I think you have to remember that we were all very young then. We were open to anything. Bob (Bob Francesconi) and I were maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. We had been performing together as a duet, as Menagerie Mime Theater, for at least two or two and a half years before that festival. So we were excited and ready to perform at the festival.

James Donlon, 1974. Photo by Bill Ray.

You’ve got to give Lou (Lou Campbell) his credit because Viterbo was his brainchild. He felt the times and realized that here was this beautiful art form that no one was aware of, so he created this event so all of us from other parts of the world and the USA could come together, see what was there, and be amazed by the artistry and the magic and the discipline and the contrast in styles. I mean, every conceivable style was there! In my mind, the International Mime Festival and Institute held that summer in La Crosse is historically the most important event in the United States for the arts of mime and clown.

How did we get there? We connected with Lou at the American Theater Association Convention in Chicago in 1972. At that time, there was no internet. There was no email. One of the ways for artists to be visible on a larger scale beyond your home region was to perform at conferences. Now this one might have been in ’71 or ’72. The conference was in Chicago, and we had a workshop/performance: sort of a lecture demonstration program. It was in one of the ballrooms at the hotel. I remember that the room where we were originally scheduled to do the workshop was too small to accommodate all the people who showed up to see us, and we had to lead everybody down the hall to a larger ballroom. At that time mime was very new to the USA, so a lot of people were interested in it. We were very successful there. That was the first time we met Lou Campbell. I can’t remember if Lou was one of the organizers, but he liked our material, and that was how we eventually got the invitation to perform at Viterbo.

Charles Weidman Dance Company. Photo by Lou Campbell.

As a young artist it was an amazing time. It was a golden time and a golden age for sharing and discovery. Whether you were at the mime festival as an artist or a student, your eyes were opened to the possibilities of what gestural physical theater could do. Like Noel Parenti: he was so far ahead of his time that people were confused by his performance, and even shocked and negative about it. I think his performance with a guy wearing cowboy boots, long johns and a ten gallon hat playing the jazz saxophone and doing these crazy moves was a precursor to music videos! Then you had Mamako (Mamako Yoneyama), who was drawing her work from Japanese culture with her struggle to tame the bull. You had Fialka and his troupe (Ladislav Fialka and Theatre on the Balustrade), with his love/hate relationship with the Marceau image. He seemed to be trying to escape the Marceau stamp, while at the same time imitating Marceau’s style. Charles Weidman was there: a pioneer modern dancer! You had Lotte Goslar. You had anybody who was anybody with the exception of Marceau and Decroux, although he was sort of represented by Tom Leabhart. My point is that this whole body of movement work was suddenly there in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It had never happened before. Nothing since then has matched the timing and scope of that festival.  I feel lucky to have been there.

James Donlon. From the sketchbook of Mike Evans.

Also I really was inspired by some of the foreign artists that I saw there. They influenced me and my work. The work that stands out for me was Mummenschanz, Dimitri, and Ctibor Turba.  I would say that Mummenschanz introduced a kind of abstraction. Mask work hadn’t been seen much before that time, so the way they used time and space and the rhythms that they used amazed us. Dimitri was just pure human soul with really skilled physical work. He was the first clown I ever saw, other than at Ringling Brothers. Dimitri was the classic European clown with a magical personality. Turba influenced me because of his ideas. Those three had the greatest influence on me at that time. Each had their own shade, but all had something to contribute.

It was great because at the festival of course you had the formal performances and workshops.  That wasn’t all though, because since everyone lived and ate on campus, you could run into all sorts of people in all sorts of situations. For example: you had Hovey and Judy (Hovey & Judy Burgess) teaching juggling out on the grass. I might be out there also sharing my basic techniques with interested people. We would just have these jam sessions out on the lawn. It was Wisconsin in the summer, so it was about 85 degrees and you were under the trees with the cicadas chirping. In those lazy summer days you could explore what people had to offer. In Viterbo, everyone was very generous.

I remember Robert (Robert Shields) and me improvising in a studio one day. We just started improvising together, and it became sort of like a duel. There were lots of workshop students watching us, and they found that a good experience. Because the students were just a little younger than us, there was a generational connection happening. This too was a part of the times.

Not only was Dimitri very influential to me as a performer, but after seeing Menagerie’s performance, a year later he invited us to come to Switzerland! Now Bob wasn’t able to go. So I went alone to Europe. I was under the wing of Dimitri and his wife. He set up a tour for me of Switzerland. I was able to do that for three years running! What a great gift for me that during my first trip to another country I was taken care of by this amazing artist. It was a grand thing for me.

Later on, Ctibor Turba saw a script that I did called Truck Dog.  His students invited me to go to Prague to direct this piece in the Czech language. So that link also went back all the way to 1974!

In actor training today Lecoq work, circus skills, things like Suzuki and Viewpoints are all the rage.I’d say that all of those elements were in some way present at Viterbo, and look how mainstream they all appear now. It just occurred to me that this event could have been the birthplace of all of this new direction of actor training. That is something to think about.

An early version of this article appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of the Newsletter of the Association of Movement Theatre Educators.
In putting this together, I am indebted to all those who shared not only their stories, but also their memorabilia and archival material from the festival, including: Marlys Ray, Jyl Hewston, Daniel Entin, Bob Francesconi, Mike Evans, and Samuel Avital.  I thank you all very much! — Jef Lambdin

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There are a lot of books on comedy out there that try to explain how and why things are funny. Everything from how-to manuals to Freud and Bergson. I've shied away from them, especially the latter, which tend to be dry, over-intellectual and, well, not funny. (I dare you to read "Theories of Humor" on Wikipedia!) But I was eager to read Steve Kaplan's book because I knew Steve back in the 80s when he ran the Manhattan Punchline Theatre. I took a workshop he led at our NYC rehearsal loft and he directed one short piece that had come out of one of my physical comedy classes.

Not only did I like Steve's work then, but some of his ideas passed the test of time, actually sticking with me for three decades. Shortly after that period, Steve moved to L.A., where he has made quite a name for himself as a comedy teacher and script consultant. His former students/clients comprise a who's-who list of the best television and film comedy. His web site of course does not neglect to list these impressive credentials.

I am happy to report that Steve's book, The Hidden Tools of Comedy, is quite an entertaining read, but above all a very useful tool indeed. If I had to summarize Steve's approach in a paragraph, I'd highlight the crucial distinction he makes between being funny and creating comedy. While any joke or physical bit can be "funny" in and of itself, schtick for no reason can prove anti-productive. What he is going after is telling the story of a character stuck in a situation. In his comedy formula, "comedy is about an ordinary guy or gal struggling against insurmountable odds without many of the required skills and tools to win yet never giving up hope." Anything that distracts from that, including jokes for the sake of jokes or slapstick for the sake of slapstick, works against the comedy.


Just as he did in his workshop almost 30 years ago, Steve starts the book by asking which of these is the funniest:

A)  Man slipping on a banana peel.
B)  Man wearing a top hat slipping on a banana peel.
C)  Man slipping on a banana peel after kicking a dog.
D)  Man slipping on a banana peel after losing his job.
E)  Blind man slipping on a banana peel.
F)  Blind man's dog slipping on a banana peel.
G)  Man slipping on a banana peel and dying.

You'll have to buy the book for the (6-page) answer, but it's worth it!

Unlike other art forms, comedy is the only one that requires a specific physiological reaction (e.g., laughter) from a large number of strangers — not once or twice, but eighty, ninety, one hundred times over the course of a couple of hours or it's thought to be a failure. No other art form requires that kind of uniform response. Drama? You wouldn't expect to see a thousand people sitting watching "A Streetcar Named Desire" to all reach into their pocket and pull out a hankie and cry simultaneously at the end of the play. That would be weird. It would be comic, in fact. You wouldn't expect a hundred people walking into the Louvre to se "La Pietà" to all say "Ah!" and have the same astonished look of awe all at the same time. Yet if a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand people don't share the same physiological response sixty or seventy or eighty times in an evening, then that comedy is said to be a failure. And that requires an immense amount of focus. — SK
You can buy the book here.
You can learn about Steve's seminars here.

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This really happened, but it could have come right out of the Marx Brothers or Borat, a variation on the old false translation bit. In this case it would be funnier if it weren't quite so despicable.

Somehow — and it's still hard to fathom exactly how — this guy, who literally could not sign his way out of a paper bag, gets himself hired to do sign language for the deaf at the Nelson Mandela memorial service, standing beside and "interpreting" for several high-octane speakers, including President Obama. Apparently he's done it before (for the money??), but his attempt to take his "act" to the big stage backfired when several deaf people took to Twitter to expose him.


Video below, full story here.


Supposedly we live in a more visual culture these days, but I'm not so sure. Those hand gestures fooled people?

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January 6–12, 2014

Dean Evans as "Honeybuns"

For more information and videos on the shows and master classes, go here.  (The classes are listed under the programming tab.) The panel discussions and less physical workshops are being coordinated by Circus Now, an advocacy group whose national director is Duncan Wall, author of The Ordinary Acrobat, and can be found here.

And if I might allow myself a shameless plug (of course I can!), I am teaching a three-day physical comedy workshop there:

Physical Comedy
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — January 8, 9, 10 
9:00am – 11:45am 
Aloft Loft (2000 W. Fulton Street ~ Suite F 319~ Chicago, IL ~ 60612)
Each session covers different material. Students may sign up for one, two, or all three sessions.
A crash course in physical comedy vocabulary and its application for clowns, circus artists, and anyone else wanting to bring physicality to their comedy or comedy to their physicality. You will be introduced to a wide variety of skills, including pratfalls, theatrical acrobatics, and slapstick as you work with partners and the physical world of objects. You will have the opportunity to integrate these techniques with character, gag structure, and story. Each session will cover different skills and explore a different comic formula so that the sessions will reinforce one another but it will also be possible to take just one or two.
Prerequisites: Some performance experience and a reasonably sound body highly recommended, but all ages, body types, and levels of experience welcome.
Students should wear loose-fitting clothing they don’t mind rolling around in (e.g., sweat pants; gym shorts, etc.)
Price: $50 for one session; $90 for two; $125 for all three. Full payment via PayPal reserves your place.

And on Thursday at 3:30 I will also be on a panel, "Fail Better: The State of Creative Clowning," with Eric Prath, Adrian Danzig, Molly Plunk, Noel Williams, Alex Suha, and Halena Kays.

Hope to see some of you in Chicago!

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