Toward a Female Clown Practice: Transgression, Archetype and Myth
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Plymouth Electronic Archive and Research Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent. 0 Toward a Female Clown Practice: Transgression, Archetype and Myth By Maggie (Margaret) Irving A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of Humanities and Performing Arts Faculty of Arts Date: 26th September 2012 1 Maggie (Margaret) Irving Toward a Female Clown Practice: Transgression, Archetype and Myth Women who learn to clown within Western contemporary theatre and performance training lack recognizably female exemplars of this popular art form. This practice-as- research thesis analyses my past and present clowning experiences in order to create an understanding of a woman-centered clown practice which allows for the expression of material bodies and lived experiences. It offers a feminist perspective on Jacques Lecoq’s pedagogy, which revolves around a notion of an ‘inner clown’ and is prevalent in contemporary UK clown training and practice. The thesis draws on both the avant- garde and numerous clown types and archetypes, in order to understand clowning as a genre revealed through a range of unsocialised behaviours. It does not differentiate necessarily between clowning by men and women but suggests a re-think and reconfiguration to incorporate a wide range of values and thought processes as a means of introduction to a wider audience. Specific concerns with the terms clown and clowning initiate this investigation, resulting in the creation of a ‘clowning continuum’, which offers a practical way of understanding various modes of clowning and various types of clowns. I examine my experiences, including those of ‘failure’, while working with renowned performer trainers, as well my negotiation of gender and sexuality through both my clowning in character and my creation of clowns. The twentieth century avant-garde artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, who inspired me to create ‘Clown Elsa’ and take her to art galleries and onto the street, is identified as a ‘radical female proto-clown’. My practical investigations into the potential interrelatedness of the masquerade of femininity and the mask of the clown are also shaped by discourses of hysteria and the carnivalesque. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concepts of carnival, dialogic practice and heteroglossia, as well as the transgressive potential of classical myth and archetypes for women, this thesis reconfigures clown practice and discourse by both challenging and developing upon Lecoq’s outmoded pedagogic practice. Its goal is to open it up for more types and modes of clown, in particular an ‘inner clown’ that can operate in a number of masks. It culminates in my creation of a feminist clown, Sedusa, who is inspired by Hélène Cixous’s writing on l’écriture feminine, myth and laughter in ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976). Sedusa expands clown models and masks for women by exploiting the ‘masquerade’ of femininity, a term originally coined by Joan Riviere in 2 1929. The thesis includes a performance as Sedusa as an embodiment of my research findings. 3 List of contents Title page 1 Abstract 2-3 List of contents 4-5 Acknowledgements 6 Author's declaration 7-8 Presentations and Conferences attended 6 Word Count 7 Introduction 9 Clowning Women: A Literature Review 17 Research Methodology 25 Chapter Outlines 33 Chapter One: Clown and Clowning 38 The Clown 38 Clowning 41 The Fool and Folly 43 The Postmodern Clown 46 The Trickster 48 The Auguste Clown and the Whiteface Clown 50 The Problems and Opportunities of Lecoq’s Pedagogy 52 Simple, Pathetic, and Tragic Clown 63 Clown Play 65 The Clowning Zone 67 Strategies to Clown 69 Medea Redux 71 Madness 77 The Clowning Continuum 78 Chapter Two: Patriarchal Genealogies and Training Regimes 83 20th c. European clowning 84 The Avant-Garde 86 Becoming a female clown 88 Androgyny 94 The Gentle Art of Idiocy 98 King Kong’s Wife – Training with Philippe Gaulier 103 Chapter Three: Dragging 113 Parody 115 Becoming Falstaff 117 Clowning as Falstaff 123 Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven 128 Women and space 135 Heteroglossia and Dialogism 142 Clown Elsa 147 Clowning on the Street and Elsewhere 159 4 Chapter Four: Creating Sedusa 165 Material Body and Lived Experiences 168 The Laugh of the Medusa 171 Returning to Myth and Archetype: Baubo and Medusa 175 Medusa 178 Becoming Sedusa 183 The Clowning Continuum 190 Devising Clowning 193 The Liminal and Space 195 Process of becoming and l’écriture feminine 199 Conclusion 203 Training 207 Madness and Unsocialisation 211 Mask and Masquerade 214 Myth and Archetype 217 Appendix A 220 DVD Sedusa Medusa Appendix B 220 DVD A Date with Sedusa Bibliography 221 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to my dear mother Joyce, an intelligent rebel, and to Sarah Cooper, a funny and talented and woman who should herself be doing a PhD. I am indebted to the institutions and individuals who have supported my project: Thanks to The Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain (AHRC) and The University of Plymouth. I have had the good fortune and pleasure to be supervised by a most remarkable and inspirational woman Prof Roberta Mock, who has steadfastly supported and encouraged my ludic trips on stage and in academia. I am also indebted to Dr Victor Manuel Ladron de Guevara for his guidance and advice and to Dr Roger Clegg and Terry Enright for their assistance along the way. My thanks to the professional theatre technicians who have collaborated with me: Stuart Billinghurst, Tim Hardy, Patrick Collins and Cyril Squires. I thank my clever fellow interventionist PhD students Dagmar Schwitzgebel and Siobhan McKeown. Their unique creative skills and humour have enhanced my practice and research and their involvement has made the journey thrice as pleasurable. A warm thanks to more imaginative women who created my stunning costumes and properties: Dr Jennie Cousins, Emma Wychwood and Harlot-von-Charlotte. Many thanks to my family for always rooting for me and to my dear father Paul, from whom I inherited the joy of playing. A huge thanks to all my generous close friends– including several skilled proto clowns who have all listened and laughed with me: Carole, Peter, Karen, Sally, Louise, Mark, Paula, Stewart, Janet. Thank you Michael for listening and sharing your love, wit and tasty morsels with me. And lastly, I thank my two fine sons Max and Will whose sense of humour, love, wisdom, strength and kindness have spurred me on. I am delighted and privileged to watch you flourish and grow. 6 DECLARATION At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has the author been registered for any other University award without prior agreement of the Graduate Committee. This study was financed with the aid of a studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Relevant theatre and performance seminars and conferences were regularly attended at which work was often presented. PRESENTATION AND CONFERENCES ATTENDED: ‘Unmasked: The Contemporary Female Clown Explores Entering the Liminal Space’, paper presented at Playing for Laughs: On Comedy in Performance symposium, De Montfort University, Leicester, 7th February 2009. ‘feminism and my clown’, paper presented at The f-word symposium, University of Plymouth, 19th February 2009. ‘King Kong’s Wife? – Socialised to Un-socialised Woman’, paper delivered to the 20th century Performer Training Working Group, TaPRA Conference,University of Plymouth 7th September 2009. ‘Making a Fool of Herself’: Negotiating the Spectator in Everyday Settings’, paper presented at the Playing for Laughs: On Comedy in Performance symposium, De Montfort University, Leicester, 6th February 2010. ‘Interactions and interventions MaGGie MeeTs BarOness eLsa’, practice-as-research performance at Curating Knowledge The Axis Arts Centre, Crewe. 22nd-26th February 2010. ‘Coffee, a phallus and play: surreal moments in female clowning’, paper presented at The f-word symposium, University of Plymouth, 8th March 2010. ‘ssssssSeconds with Sedusa’, practice-as-research performance at PSi Camillo 2.0. Cruising for Art, Utrecht University, Holland, 26th May 2011. ‘Making a spectacle of myself: failure as success in clowning’, paper presented to the Performance, Identity and Community Working Group, TaPRA Conference, Kingston University, 8th September 2011. ‘Sedusa Medusa Revisions Clowning for Women’ paper presented at Performing Monstrosity in the City symposium, Queen Mary, University of London, 1st September 2012. ‘Clown training: preparing for failure’ paper presented to the Popular Performance Working Group, TaPRA Conference University of Kent, 5th September 2012. 7 Word count of main body of thesis: 63,635 Signed Date 26th September 2012 8 Introduction In 2001 I opted to undertake a degree at Plymouth University as a mature student, where a module on ‘Popular Theatre’ sparked my passion for clowning. Throughout my clown training, a range of film and television clowns were used by teachers to develop and ground my understanding and these played a crucial element in shaping my early opinions of this art form; all of these clown exemplars were men.1 They included the magician and clown Tommy Cooper; Charlie Chaplin; the American Marx Brothers and the Italian playwright, theatre director and performer Dario Fo. The stage and court clowns I was taught about were also all male and included Shakespeare’s Launcelot Gobbo from The Merchant of Venice, and Henry VIII’s court jester William ‘Will’ Somers. Over the course of my undergraduate and master’s degrees, I became increasingly concerned with what I perceived to be the lack of women in the histories and discourses of professional clown practices.