Contemporary Theatre (3) (Clowning Lesson)

In this lesson we looked at clowning. Clowning is a type of drama revolving around comic characters - these characters are formed through use of exaggeration, over the top body language and facial expressions, gestures and comic timing. Clowning isn't just to do with circus clowns; clowning includes the old-fashioned silent movies and even some types of children's television characters.

We began this lesson by watching a clip of the CBeebies character Mr Tumble (created and played by Justin Fletcher). As his programmes are for children, the programme is very reliant on his exaggerated facial expressions, body language and friendly voice. He also signs as his character, so death children can understand the narrative too. There is a lot of (child-friendly) slapstick in his programmes (for example, the episode we watched in this lesson involved him struggling to put up a tent), however the slapstick is normally between Mr Tumble and an objects to not promote violence.

After watching Mr Tumble, we watched a clip of Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin (Charles Spencer Chaplin --- 16/04/1889 - 25/12/1977) was an actor, screenwriter, director, composer, producer and editor. He was an English actor who rose during the silent era. He became one of the most important figures in the film industry history. Chaplin's silent movies are very funny due to his exaggerated movements and facial expressions. He used a lot of repetition in his movies and a lot of slapstick comedy. His silent movies obviously had no speaking in them and instead were played with a live orchestra playing to the movie, or simply a piano playing along. Moments where dialogue was essential, they had the speech appear on the screen (like a placard).

We are in the process of creating our own silent movie scene. We began by discussing what we could do. The two ideas we came up with were the typical fight scenes or something set on public transport. To make our piece modern, we decided to set our piece on public transport. We eventually decided that we were going to set our piece on a train as it opened up more opportunities. A bus is a bit too typical, a taxi would be too limiting (as we wouldn't be able to move around), and a plane would be difficult to show in a silent movie (also it could be restrictive as you can't have people getting on and off!). After deciding we wanted to set our piece on a train, we discussed what sort of characters you would find and what could happen. We mentioned the inevitable crying child, the loud person on their phone, someone playing their music really loud through their headphones, someone rustling a newspaper constantly, and someone trying to dodge the ticket warden. We thought we should definitely include someone trying to dodge the ticket warden as this would allow a lot of movement in the piece - Rhiannon shall play this role, whilst Oliver will play the ticket warden). We wanted to have someone talking loudly on the phone, as this could be a business person, and so we could show a larger range of characters (rather than looking like a group of teenagers on a day out) - James will play this role. I shall play a middle-aged lady and Charlie will play a really aggravating person who keeps leaning on my character and going to sleep. My character gets progressively more annoyed at Charlie's character and gets more violent towards him. We ran out of time this lesson to finish making our scene, so we shall continue with it at the beginning of next lesson and we will perform it to the rest of the class (who weren't there this lesson due to illnesses).