Photo Courtesy: Happenstance Theater

Serious Clowning at The Brick

The third annual New York Clown Theater Festival is in full swing with theater performances having started this past weekend. But if you’re thinking Bozo hair and unicycle riding, think again. These clowns are serious. Serious actors that is. And they put on serious shows.

Audrey Crabtree, a co-organizer of the festival, said most of the clowns in the festival have some sort of official acting training and the performances are very much like theater. “People often have the white face/red nose image, but it’s not always like that,” said Ms. Crabtree “Theatrical clowning has an amount of emotion that is present in theater, [but] it is more performative and less realistic. It is outside of theater, where normal theater wouldn’t go.”

“Manifesto!” which premiered at the Brick Theater Tuesday, September 9 is as significant as it is funny. The play, produced by members of the Happenstance Theater company, combines excerpts from important manifestos of the 19th and 20th centuries with singing, dancing, slow-motion fighting, a foreign fortune teller, and many other laugh-out-loud moments bordering on the Avant-Garde. The play is set in café Revoltaire during the early 1900s. As the waiter (Mark Jaster) prepares to open, a new girl (Sabrina Mandell) comes to the café late for her first day of work. They are soon joined by the boss (Maia DeSanti) and a jaded bar tender (Scott Burgess). After the energetic “sun’s” victory over the languid “moon,” played out by the waiter and the new girl, a visionary (Matthew Pauli) enters reading the Futurist Manifesto, calling for movement, dynamic change, and better clothes. But then a slow motion fight ensues, ending with everyone dead on the floor. Communism and Capitalism read their opposing manifestos, but decide to go for a drink instead of battling it out. From all this, a nonsense art movement, Dada, is born, culminating in a big party. Except no one can explain exactly what is going, so they just go on partying and absurdity triumphs. Then it’s closing time. The new girl made it through the day and is told to come back. The waiter takes a bow and turns out the light.

Inspired by the recent flurry of Dada art exhibits around Washington DC, “Manifesto!” is chock-full of references to important art figures and realities of the time. Dadaists Jean Arp and Marcel Duchamp make an appearance, as well as Surrealist Rene Magritte. There is even an allusion to Cubism. The slow motion fight represents World War I which gives momentum to the Dada movement, since the conflict, which brought on the worst destruction to date, yet no one knew exactly why it happened. Dada tried to explain it by calling attention to the absurdity of existence.

Thus, a lesson in history, politics, art, and culture, performed with the silliness of clowns, yet with all the seriousness of the reality portrayed.

Manifesto! is performed tonight, September 10 at 7 p.m., and tomorrow night September 11 at 9 p.m., Tickets are $15; Tickets are available by calling Theatermania at 212-352-3101 (or toll-free at 1-866-811-4111) or on line at http://www.theatermania.com/. For more details on the festival, visit www.bricktheater.com.

The Brick Theater
575 Metropolitan Avenue
(718) 907-6189