More clowning: tasks of speaking
17/07/25
A key realisation this week was the discovery of (the inhibition of) public speech as our core clown mechanic. After all, this is what ties together the three key themes that popped up from our interim sharing (see picture of venn diagram). This brings us into challenging yet exciting territory, seen as the clown historically tends to be a speechless figure.
The task at hand: to figure out what tasks of speech to give our clowns!
We started the day by listing different types of public speech (see picture of notes. After curating these into categories, we took it in turns to enter the room as clowns in duos. Upon entering, one of the clowns would get the task of giving a specific type of public speech, whilst the other clown would be free to respond as they liked. This way, we could not only test our clowns' responses to speech tasks, but also explore interpersonal clown dynamics when text came into play.
Some key takeaways:
We need to discover the satisfying key element of a certain speech type (i.e. proclaiming 'guilty' in court, clinking glasses in a best man speech, or repeating 'The weather! with me, the weather clown. And my assistant, Rainy Day.') and allow the clown to fully savour it - we need to give them something to enjoyIt has to be very clear when the speech task starts and ends; there can be no speech but the speech that is clearly part of the task itself
It has to be very clear when the speech task starts and ends; there can be no speech but the speech that is clearly part of the task itself
Every other time a clown tries to speak, we can exploit the theatre tech to disrupt this: the lights go off, or the radio starts playing
What do the listeners do when another clown speaks? How does the task of listening look for different clowns? In this exercise, some clowns joined in vocally or supported the speech with gestures, whilst others tried to upstage the other clown by yelling or physically pushing them away.
