Send in the Clowns

SEND IN THE CLOWNS INTERVIEW OF TOM MURPHY INTERVIEWED BY B. DESANTI MR. D. BRANDT AMERICA IN THE 20TH CENTURY WORLD FEBRUARY 13, 2008 Table of Contents Official interview form on official St. Andrew’s letterhead i Statement of Purpose 1 Biography 2 Historical Contextualization 4 Interview Transcription 17 Time Indexing Log 62 Interview Analysis 63 Works Cited 69 Statement of Purpose The purpose of this oral history project is to better understand the history of physical comedy in the United States during the twentieth century through an interview of Tom Murphy, who made a living doing physical comedy during the last decades of the twentieth century in both the United States and Europe. The interview provided insight into how physical comedy has become less popular in the United States over the last few decades, so that opportunities to make a living as a physical comedian in the United States are fewer than at the beginning of the twentieth century. Biography Tom Murphy was born on February 27, 1952, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, a small town in a coal mining area of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Pottsville High School, he pursued a double major in Sociology and Physical Education at East Stoudsburg University in Pennsylvania. He graduated from East Stoudsburg in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science Degree. After college, Mr. Murphy moved to Stowe, Vermont to pursue a career as a professional acrobatic skier. After two years as a professional athlete, he and a partner started an acrobatic and juggling act that developed over the course of five years; they were known as Mountain Mime. He continued to work as a physical comedian in the United States, then moved to Paris, where he worked as a street performer during the summers of 1983 and 1984. For the past three decades, Mr. Murphy has been touring primarily in Europe and the United States, where he has made a solid reputation as a theater clown. His work as a physical comedian follows in the tradition of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin. Over the years, he has performed in a wide variety of settings. In 1987, he was awarded Number One Clown at the international circus competition, Cirque de Demain, in Paris. In November 1998, Mr. Murphy performed his solo show on Broadway at the New Victory Theater. It was a 13-show, sold-out engagement that the New York Times called "a sure-fire cure for the blahs." Mr. Murphy has also appeared in film, including Ava's Magical Adventure starring Timothy Bottoms and Patrick Dempsey. Descriptions of his performances include: "Der Chaos Poet," "...a descendant of the great clown, Charlie Rivel," "...tender, warm, compassionate," and "...One of the greats of our time.” Mr. Murphy also has taught at a number of schools. He has been a faculty member at Boston University’s Theater Institute and spent three years teaching at Ringling Brother's Barnum and Bailey Clown College. In Paris, he was a faculty member at the famed Ecole Nationale Du Cirque; he has also been a faculty member at the Arhus Theater Akademy in Denmark and the Theater Haus in Stuttgart, Germany. Mr. Murphy is single and is currently based in Stowe, Vermont. His hobbies include Nordic and alpine skiing, rock climbing, road and mountain biking, swimming, and running. Historical Contextualization Paper Physical comedy can be defined as acting without words that makes someone laugh. Perhaps the word that captures the concept most meaningfully is “clown.” According to Jacques Lecoq (Theatre 115), who studied clowning intensively from the 1960s on, the point of clowning is to “make you laugh.” The reasons why clowns make us laugh seem to be quite basic. One reason is that clowns remind us of our playfulness, which is so enjoyable in childhood but may be left behind by adults. John Wright, who wrote Why Is That So Funny?, emphasizes that “if playfulness is at the heart of our creativity, then for some of us at least, clowning is the key to that playfulness. Clowns play all the time.” (184) Another reason is the subversive nature of clowns. Wright (180) explains that clowns are “anarchic spirits.” According to Lecoq (Theatre 115), clowning involves “overturning a certain order,” which “thus allows one to denounce the recognized order.” Joan Mankin, a clown in the Pickle Family Circus in the 1980s and 1990s, expressed the same thought: “Clowns are anarchistic by nature, and when you’ve got anarchists – clowns – who are forced to go along with the plot, then you’re working against the nature of the clown.” (Schechter 19). Perhaps the most basic reason for laughing at clowns, however, is that we can see ourselves in their predicaments. Jerry Lewis, known for his clowning in movies, said that “the premise of all comedy is a man in trouble.” (Dale 18) We can all see ourselves in the man – or woman – in trouble. To understand the perspective of Tom Murphy, who makes his living doing physical comedy in the U.S. in the early twenty-first century, one must examine the basic history of physical comedy, the influence provided by key historical figures in physical comedy throughout the twentieth century, and the relationship between physical comedy and the venues in which it takes place. The art of physical comedy has an ancient history. Fools and jesters can be found in folktales and even old religious rites of Native American tribes. (Towsen 4-8) From the 1400s through the 1700s, the Commedia dell’Arte was a comedy troupe that traveled throughout Europe using broad physical gestures to communicate the stories they were telling, because their audiences spoke many different languages. Word and gesture occurred simultaneously. (Lecoq Theatre 100-102) In the United States, circuses were an important venue for physical comedy. In 1870, two men who formerly had operated traveling “mud shows” (so-called because they traveled through mud tracks) throughout the frontier region persuaded P.T. Barnum to join them in the circus business. (Ashby 74) Barnum’s organizational skills turned his circus into “a traveling company town.” (Ashby 75) He took advantage of the ongoing technological advances in the United States in transportation and communication, especially involving railroads, electricity, and print. (Ashby 74) During the “golden age” of the traveling circus – roughly 1870 through 1914 (Ashby 74), more Americans had the chance to see clowns than previously was the case. The clowns fulfilled their traditional role as “subversives” in these circuses: [W]hile circuses cultivated an image as family entertainment, they continually transgressed the lines of ‘normality,’ predictability, and socially defined distinctions. Clowns used vulgar language and then, as the size of shows grew, employed slapstick to mock authority and acceptable behavior; often acting like children, they were disruptive pranksters who functioned outside conventional rules and relished a simpler, pre-industrial world. (Ashby 78) At this time, the entertainment of clowns must have helped people who were feeling more and more like automatons as the industrial age progressed. The industrial age could stifle people’s individuality and spirit by offering only jobs that required people to work long hours, day after day, at repetitive jobs at machines. Seeing clowns who “mocked authority” and acted like children must have given the people in those types of jobs some relief from the drudgery of their lives. Ashby (119) reports that “[b]y the turn of the century, vaudeville had become the most popular entertainment form in the United States.” (Ashby, 119) Railroads moved vaudeville troops around the country, just as they did circuses. Electric lights illuminated vaudeville theaters. Thus, the same technological advances that supported the growth of circuses also supported the growth of vaudeville. (Ashby, 132) Vaudeville showcased physical comedy, along with other forms of entertainment. Ashby (123) notes that “[t]ypically, vaudeville comedy was also rough physically, featuring pratfalls, eye jabbing, and other forms of slapstick. Audiences could laugh when the ‘nut act’ of Duffy and Sweeney took turns slapping each other because no one was actually injured.” For these physical comedians, vaudeville was often the only means of work, but it may have been very restricting to their acts. For example, words such as son of a gun, devil, sucker, hell, spit, and cockroach would not be tolerated in the least. (Ashby 120) Interestingly, Ashby explains (122), vaudevillians “came overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds; many were recent immigrants or the sons and daughters of newly arrived families . [who were] typically also social outsiders and representatives of marginalized groups.” Ashby (132) describes vaudeville as “push[ing] against the boundaries of respectability, disrupting what was supposed to be an orderly, well- mannered world.” In that sense, vaudeville must have played the same role as circuses, allowing people to escape from being chained to machines into a world where they could imagine themselves being the one who was slapping a boss when one performer slapped another. Since vaudeville employed many recent immigrants, vaudeville shows also must have provided some sense of comfort to newly arrived immigrants struggling to cope in a foreign land. With its emphasis on physical comedy, vaudeville would be easy for them to understand without understanding English. Although vaudeville became more popular by the beginning of the 1900s, circuses continued to be successful until the Great Depression, when most circuses were forced to fold, and even the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus ended up in bankruptcy. (Ashby 221) Nonetheless, circuses still had an important role to play. During World War II, Ashby reports (264), “[t]he Office of Defense Transportation . allowed circus trains to operate because circuses were crucial to ‘morale on the home front.’” Just as physical comedy moved from circuses to vaudeville, physical comedy next moved to a newly emerging form of entertainment: silent films.

Load more