Take yourself on a short trip into the wonderful world of clown and physical comedy with one of Australia’s most experienced practitioners, Clare Bartholomew.

The workshop runs over two days, starting on Saturday 25 May, 2pm - 6pm and resuming on Sunday 26 May 10am - 4pm. Participants must attend both days.

We will explore exercises, tasks and scenarios for solos, duos and small groups, where participants can practise expressing their own joy, vulnerability, playfulness, inner-idiot and showing their pleasure of 'being seen’ in front of a supportive audience. The aim for the workshop is to be as practical as possible, to assist one’s ongoing artistic practice, and to seriously experiment with being ridiculously silly on stage!

'I don't think I've ever laughed so hard while learning so much. It's a great time.' - Matt Kelly (The Listies)

This workshop will focus on:
- Developing your solo presence
- Investigating your own relationship with clown
- Delving into ensemble playfulness and complicité
- Exploring classic physical comedy scenarios, improvisations, games
- Interrogating and deconstructing formulas of physical comedy

The workshop structure will hopefully inform existing live performances, and devising of new work when artists need to draw upon physical comedy and clowning skills. Being able to easily express a sense of playfulness and having strong complicitè with your fellow performers, as well as the audience, informs any theatrical work - be it a physical comedy farce, a pure clown show, stand-up, or even a dramatic play. Clare draws heavily from her own experience of performance and devising works for over twenty five years as well as studying with numerous teachers around the world (such as John Bolton, Sophie Gazel, Jos Heuben, Angela De Castro, Philippe Gaulier, Sian Newey, & Phil Burgers) to make the workshops as practical as possible.

This workshop is for performers with some performance experience and from all artistic backgrounds: actors; circus performers; dancers; and cabaret artists. It is not necessary to have a history with clown, however, you must be prepared to be silly, take risks and have fun!

ABOUT CLARE:

Clare is a Melbourne based performer, writer, director and producer of new work in Australia, and internationally for over 25. Clare is most well known for being one half of the irreverent pop punk band duo, Otto & Astrid – Die Roten Punkte, alongside Daniel Tobias. This dysfunctional sibling band has toured internationally numerous times to venues such as Joe’s Pub NY, Soho Theatre London and La Botanique in Brussels, plus extensively around Australia.

Clare worked as the guest clown teacher at the esteemed John Bolton Theatre School from 2015- 2019, and as a guest clown specialist lecturer for the Actor and Theatre Maker courses at VCA, NICA, and Collarts.

Clare regularly runs her own independent performance workshops and clown master classes both nationally and internationally. Her intensives have been held in the US, Canada, and Australia (including the Tasmanian and Australian Circus Festivals).

She has served as a Clown Doctor for 24 years and runs performance and audition workshops for the Clown Doctor program nationally. She consults on, performs with, and has directed works for numerous organisations and independent companies, including Circus Oz, Batton & Broadway, circus company Dummies Corp, Barnie Duncan’s Juan Versuvius, comedian Josh Glanc, Hannah Gadsby, multi-award winning Fringe Wives Club’s Glittery Clittery, The Women’s Circus, Finucane and Smith’s The Burlesque Hour, Little Wing Puppets, Rawcus and Bunk Puppets, to name a few.

BOOK NOW, DON’T MISS OUT!