Clownpoints: Using Clowning and Viewpoints Technique Together to Enhance Your Work

Viewpoints is a technique originally developed by Choreographer Mary Overlee and then adapted for stage acting by Directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau.  At its heart, Viewpoints is a vocabulary and organization system for a lot of theatre ideas that we understand consciously or unconsciously but don't necessarily stop to explore in such direct ways.

Clown means different things to different people.  In my work with clown, I focus on play and relationship (to audience, to other performers, to objects, to space).  You can be funny, tragic, mysterious, magical, but for the work to really pop, it needs play and relationship.

In this workshop, we will start by focusing on viewpoints and clown individually.   And by the end of the workshop, we will be exploring the two techniques simultaneously in terms of how they can strengthen our performing, our writing, and our directing.

Facilitator's Bio: 

Toph Enany (he/they) is an international performer and director originally from Connellsville, PA.  In the past year, he has worked as a creative collaborator on Paulina Lenoir’s Edinburgh hit, Puella Eterna and co-created and performed in the Dentities, a show commissioned for the 2024 Ziguzajg Festival in Malta.  Currently, he is directing a run of Jasper's En Haut (Up Up Up Up Up), which Toph also co-created, in Australia, as well as developing and performing his solo show, Wo.  He has an active pedagogy practice and facilitated workshops on five continents in 2024, including as an invited instructor for the 2024 JTC Festival in Tunis.

Toph trained for two years with Philippe Gaulier.  He holds an MFA in Advanced Devising Practice from arthaus.berlin.  He has also trained with Anne Bogart and SITI Company, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, Spymonkey, Larry Moss, Audrey Francis, Kimberly Senior, Roberta Carreri, Bill Irwin, De Castro, Paola Coletto, Peta Lily, Phil Burgers, and Shakespeare & Company.