Clowning

“Be a Clown, The Complete Guide to Instant Clowning” by Turk Pipkin!

History

• the Red Nose originated with Albert Fratellini (1896), worn to play an exaggerated Drunken clown (alcoholism causes the blood vessels in your nose to break)

• Clown Types

  • Whiteface: descend from French Pierrot, stern, strict, take-charge type who must play the pompous straight man to the Auguste; stylish and glamourous. (think Oliver Hardy, and Bud Abbot)
  • Auguste: dim-witted jokester with oversized features & a permanent smile. (Think Stan Laurel & Lou Costello; or Ronald McDonald & Bozo)

Philosophy

• “Everyone loves a great clown, but don’t think that you can fool an audience with a clown character that is not an integral part of your own personality.”
• The Bare-Bones Heart of the Clown: Innocence, Guilt, Cunning, and Stupidity – all in their simplest forms.
• “Being a clown means allowing your own nuttiness out into the world”

Clown Rules

1. Don’t act like a Clown, Be a Clown!
2. Give until it Hurts
3. You should feel more comfortable in your costume than you do in your own skin.

“Quik Triks”

• Balance a Ping-Pong Ball on your Nose.
  • add a nickel-sized dab of rubber cement to the tip of your nose, and all over the entire ping-ping ball; bouncing the ball is too quick to stick to the ground, but when it attaches to the cement on your nose it will hold tight! Ham it up like it’s difficult to balance, It’s an amazing trick on it’s own, until you take a bow and the ball doesn’t fall off.
• Five Great Clown Handshakes
  • Gotcha!: go to shake, but when the other person reaches out “hike it back” with a thumbs up and a “Gotcha!”
  • Slide-By: Miss their hand and shake dead space, or the hand of somebody behind them.
  • Tickle the Palm: A normal handshake, but curl your middle finger to shake their palm.
  • Hand-Kiss: Look into their eyes while you miss their hand and kiss your own; ham up the flavor of your hand (good or bad)
  • The Harpo Knee-Shake: subvert their handshake by placing your knee in their hand ala Harpo Marx
• Trick or Treat
  • Hold a thin paper bag, thumb on the outside with index & middle on the inside, snap your fingers (like to music) and the bag visible jumps with a loud sound
  • Catch imaginary object in the bag, and snap as it lands; or have the fleas from your flea circus jump in!
• Flea Circus
  • using your eyes dictate where the flea is; build circus props for your flea to interact with.
• Spring-Loaded Hat (required a hat with a firm brim)
  • curl your middle fingers under the brim and as it’s about to be put atop your head flick it up
  • sew a thick piece of electic across the brim, it pops up on its own!
  • (Not from Turk, but…) attach a thin piece of elastic and tie a loop in the end for your finger to hold onto, you can now yo-yo your hat like Harpo