clown performer, teacher and researcher
info@jondavison.net
+44 7796 155 546
+34 617 003 312
jon davison
Jon Davison has been a clown, teacher, director, actor and writer for the last 26 years, most of the last 16 in Barcelona.
In 1993 he began working together with Clara Cenoz, performing as Companyia d’Idiotes at festivals, theatres, tents, streets and bars throughout Europe – London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Sicily, Russia...
He taught clown, impro, and acting at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona from 1996-2006, as well as working regularly at the Col.legi del Teatre, El Timbal, Co and Co., etc. Since 2007 he has been co-director o studies at the Escola de Clown de Barcelona. He is currently a research fellow at Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
www.escoladeclown.eu
info@escoladeclown.eu
tel. +34 872 004 898
+34 622 110 537
From a weekend to a two-month fulltime study program, the Escola de Clown offers courses with a wide range of teachers The Escola is a Project Partner in the International Clown Research Project
news
We have now come to the end of the first term of the last year of this project. Thanks to all of you who have contributed, I think it has been the term where I have learned most so far.
I’d now like to propose something a bit more focused. I would like to spend more time working on the clown numbers we have been experimenting with, and get them into performable shape, then perform them at a variety of venues: cabarets, streets, theatre bars, pubs, theatres or wherever. In doing so I’d like us to build on what we’ve learned about how to perform texts as clowns. I’d like to see how far we can go in two directions: improvisation and highly rehearsed performance. I’d like us to practise how we remain clowns (being ridiculous in one’s own personal way, and making an audience laugh just by being oneself) whilst we perform these mini-dramas that seem to work on the same principles as any piece of dramatic theatre, with its roles and conflicts of objectives and desires. I’d like us to be able to perform classic clowning in a convincing way that completely side-steps any questions about what is “traditional” or “contemporary”, and that pleases both kinds of audience: those who think clowns are funny people, and those who think they are artists.
Money is tight. I didn’t receive the major funding I was applying for from the AHRC, but I have some funds from Central and I am applying for three other grants (two internally at Central and one from the Arts Council). So that means that probably for the next term there won’t be anything to pay people for their time in rehearsals or performance (apart from any bits of income from shows).
Hopefully things will look better financially in the spring and summer, when plans are for a 7-Clown full-length show, co-produced with Stratford Circus , and a mini-tour of seaside piers, perhaps taking in Brighton Festival and Edinburgh Fringe along the way.
Well, those are some of the ideas. It’s an ambitious year and I hope you will be inspired to join in.
All the best,
Jon
upcoming...
This year’s workshops have expanded: from January to March 2010, I have rehearsal space available from Tuesday to Friday. The timetable is: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays 5-7pm; Thursdays 6-10pm, beginning on Wednesday 13th January. We can arrange some pre-rehearsal meetings at some time in the week beginning 4th January.
So, please let me know if you want to be involved, and what your availability is.
past workshops...
October-December 2009
We concentrated on preparing short numbers, both devised and already existing texts from Tristan Rémy's Entrées Clownesques, using what we had discovered in the first two years of the project, which means maintaining the clown whilst devising. The real exploration is about how we put all this knowledge together to make convincing clown performance. See here for full report.
September 2009
Sept 24th-26th "An Encyclopaedia of Clown" at CSSD was a performance designed to test, compare and demonstrate the wide variety of forms and structures in clown performance using the long list of ways of devising we have worked on in workshops this year to create between 25 and 50 short gags.
I also presented a paper "The Dramaturgy of Clown", illustrating the theoretical underpinning of this year's work on "What Clowns Do".
July 2009
Workshop at CSSD, 21st-24th July.
We concentrated on clarifying the elements or categories of how clown works. At the moment we have some 55 ways of devising clown, each way with 20 or so examples and video clips illustrating the principles. This will form the basis for the show "An Encyclopaedia of Clown", to be premiered in Sptember 2009.
Devising Clown Workshop, or "1001 ways to create clown numbers", at Escola de Clown de Barcelona, 12th-18th July.
Have you begun to discover clown and want to start making your own material? Have you been working on numbers for a while, but would like to improve your creative process? Do you want to create clown material that works, for you and your audience? Do you want to perform rehearsed numbers without losing the freshness of clown?
We looked at “1001 ways” to devise gags and numbers. As sources of inspiration we drew on the knowledge of gag construction that we have inherited from past and present masters of clowning.
Clown Workshop at Escola de Clown de Barcelona, 6th-11th July.
How can we get to the clown-state in the most direct way possible? This course used radically simple exercises to experience clown at an honest, immediate and gut level.
January - March 2009
Monday 16th - Friday 20th February 2009, 10am-1pm, workshop at CSSD, London. "What do clowns do?" We spent a week looking at a whole range of ways of creating clown material, the external work of form, structure, composition, and how it relates to the internal work of presence-through-failure. I wanted to see if we could usefully create work by drawing inspiration from Chaplin, Tati, Rowan Atkinson, Steve Martin and others. Full report will be online soon...
July - September 2008
September: workshops at Escola de Clown de Barcelona. We began to ponder how our new-found freshness in being present as clowns would hold up in the face of having to perform prepared numbers. Full report online soon...
July: workshops in London. We revisited the exercises we had found useful throughout the year, moulding them into a form that we could perform in front of a live audience, leading to group and solo performances at Chisenhale Dance in July, and at the Festival Of Emergent Art at CSSD in September. See performance videos here...
April - June 2008
May: Workshops in London; Mondays and Wednesdays 6.30-8.30pm; Central School of Speech and Drama. We plunged headlong into vertiginous play, in an attempt to generate a kind of play-energy that would be appropriate to clowning, i.e. one that doesn't involve rules. Report coming soon...
January - March 2008
26th-30th March: Workshops at Escola de Clown de Barcelona. What kind of preparation could we use for clowning if we dispense with rule-bound games?
4th-27th Feb: Workshops in London; Mondays and Wednesdays 6.30-8.30pm; Central School of Speech and Drama. We worked on the paradox of emotional expression, i.e. how can it be that in clowning both real and fake emotions are interesting?
October - December 2007
26th Oct-21st Nov: Workshops in London; Mondays and Wednesdays 6.30-8.30pm; Central School of Speech and Drama - Studio 1 What exercises are truly useful in order to feel, understand and learn the basic state of clown? We revisited some familiar territory but with a critical eye.
12th-16th Dec: Workshops at Escola de Clown de Barcelona. Are there only a handful of truly clown exercises? What do they say about clown as a technique in itself, rather than as a function of theatrre, mask or improvisation?
Coming soon... A selection of books, images and other resources.
Where to find information and resources on clown:
Blogs:
Clownalley.net - Pat Cashin's blog, bursting with info, photos, videos and knowledge.
Circo Méliès - full of well-researched articles on cinema and clown, circus and vaudeville, with some excellent video links.
My Nose is Blogged - regularly updated news from Gladys Tonsils, India's first therapeutic clown - and first female clown.
Clownlink - a wide variety of news from the world of clown from a North American perspective.
Clown Brasil - informative clown news from Brazil.
All Fall Down - John Towsen's (author of "Clowns") recently revived blog, with some interesting source material.
Videos
Baks - a truly outstanding collection of films of clowns (several full-length): Yengibarov, Popov, Beby, Karandash, Grock, etc. (in Russian).
A few favourite videos...
international clown research project
In October 2007 the International Clown Research Project got under way. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Creative Fellowship at Central School of Speech and Drama (London University), with the Escola de Clown de Barcelona as the Project Partner. This is a three-year investigation into clown and clown teaching, involving workshops, performances and presentations in London, Barcelona and elsewhere.
articles, discussions, reviews and more...
The research is practical, but also produces tangible documentation in the form of videos, images and articles and other writings.....
PLease consult the ClownBlog for the latest articles...
Clown Workshop at Shakespeare's Globe
Clown Workshops: how do they work?
Clown Research Workshops, Year 3 (nos. 1-100)
The Dramaturgy of Clown, or what do clowns do?
The Contemporary Clown
Application to AHRC Fellowship Scheme, April 2007
This project begins by asking an age-old question in a new context. The question concerns how an actor is to be convincing. It has vexed and provoked actor training since at least Stanislavsky, and has been around since at least Diderot. The new context is that of clown training and performance. While the celebrated actor-trainer, Jacques Lecoq, was partly concerned with the same question, the project planned here will take the investigation into new territory and aim to produce recommendations for the clown actor of the future. The overarching question, then, is: How is a clown convincing? (continue reading...)
Failure
Draft Documentation, October-December 2007
In this introduction I shall give an overview of the organisation of the project and its first term, as well as discussing some of the issues that have arisen, particularly in relation to the legacy of Lecoq. I then go on to describe the workshops in detail. Lastly, I give a summary of the work that is imminent. The project got under way unofficially in September through canvassing for participants. (continue reading...)
Jon Davison interviewed by Demian Reis, PhD clown student
June 2008
parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Complete interview (audio only)
Improvisation and Clown
Post-Performance Discussion, July 2008
The introduction to a discussion, led by Chris Johnston, between audience and improvisers, held after "Present and Incorrect", a showing of a range of improvised performance, at Chisenhale Dance.
The Phenomenology of Clown
Conference Paper, September 2008
I am a research fellow at CSSD, funded for three years by the AHRC to research the contemporary clown. I would like to take this opportunity to present some of the principle findings so far, one year into this project... ...By the end of this year I have arrived at a vision (or rather, a feeling) of clown that is highly personal, in the sense that it depends on seeing (or rather, on feeling) things at a personal level. This “what clown feels like” is what, in retrospect, I have spent the last year searching for. We might call this “the phenomenology of clown”.
What does it feel like to clown? What does it depend on? A loss of ego? An acceptance of failure? High self-esteem? Contradictory behaviour? A sense of difference? Feeling like when you fall in love? This is what we could call “being clown”, and is what I have also attempted to demonstrate in my new solo performance, “from jontxu…to be”. In this performance I set myself the task of simply being with the chair, rather than looking to improvise actions that might follow clown rules. My focus was thus on feeling what it’s like to be clown. I found that it is entirely possible to entertain an audience in this manner, at least for ten minutes. (continue reading...)
Feeling
Draft Documentation, January-September 2008
..coming soon...
How can we talk about clown? These reviews of performances are intended to introduce into the world of performance criticism some criteria based on clown. So they mainly prioritise clown matters over and above general performance issues, my aim being to contribute to the quality of clowning and clown debate generally. For full texts, please go to the
ClownBlog
Serious Play (written by Louise Peacock, Intellect Books 2009)
As a specialist in the field of clown (as a practitioner and an academic), I was excited when I recently learned of this book's imminent publication. There are so few rigorously written studies of clown that I was ready to welcome any contributions to the serious study of this complex art form. Having read the book, I am astounded and appalled that such a shoddy piece of work could get past the publisher's checks...
El Pallasso i el Führer (2007, directed by Eduard Cortés)
I confess to only having seen a little less than an hour of this film. Firstly, I chanced upon it on TV last night, so missed the beginning, and secondly, tedium got the better of me and I switched off before it finished dragging itself towards the end. In my view, that doesn’t disqualify me from reviewing the film, however...
Pierre Pilatte, “Dans ma philosophie” (Antic Teatre, Barcelona, 31st January 2009)
Like all great absurdists, Pierre Pilatte’s starting point is the mundane, that most ordinary kind of reality that we encounter in semi-private every day of our lives, and that seems to be the basis for our inner worlds, and hence our contact with the outer world of objects and the people that surround us. Pilatte is an expert exponent of what we might call “clown du quotidien”...
La Cleta i la Mandarina (Teatre Riereta, Barcelona, 2nd March 2009)
This is a little gem of a kids’ show that manages to bring together some lovely clowning and some very neat magic. Magicians have a tendency to be clever folk, as the skill of misdirecting the audience’s attention is usually allied to a well-developed intellect. And that doesn’t bode well for clowning, which as we all know relies on a well-developed stupidity. However, La Cleta achieves a marvellous unification of her two brain hemishperes, remaining utterly silly whilst completely foxing her audience...
Licedei, "The Family" (Semianyki) (Hackney Empire, London, 27th September 2008)
Licedei are still notable for being a company that has a relatively large number of clowns onstage, compared with most exponents of clowning. “The Family” is performed by 6 performers. I have two main problems with this, despite enjoying the show immensely. The first problem is that it is rare that clowns can remain being clowns in the company of so many...
other research
Clown Theory
In 2006 at the Escola de Clown de Barcelona we began developing a course of studies entitled "Clown Theory, Analysis and History", forming an integral part of the full-time course, and also open to outside students to attend. As far as I know, it is the only programme of its kind in the world.
Clown theory falls into several distinct areas:
Firstly, there is the thought that we may address to performing as clowns, whether our own or others' work. This talks about how clown works, what criteria we can judge clown performance by, and so on. There are many overlaps with dramatic theory, critical theory and performance theory here, but there are many criteria unique to clown. This is a field that remains relatively unmapped until now.
Secondly, there is the social role and function of clowning. This covers the role of clown doctors, clown humanitarian expeditions. Underlying this sociology of clowning is the social history of the art, which investigates the postion of clowning across periods and cultures.
Thirdly, there is the question of clown philosophy. Many are taking up clown thought or the clown mind as a way of addressing situations in other fields. In fact, the possibilities here are endless. At ECB we have had a biology teacher researching the clown-teacher. This new kind of teacher would not appear to be clownish, but to be informed by the criteria of the clown mind. The use of play in the corporate world is now well-known, but clowning goes several steps further, and some make claims that it is capable of solving the most pressing questions of all: water shortage, war, religious collapse, etc. The World Parliament of Clowns has set its sights on altering the mindset of our politicians.
I have always mixed performing, rehearsing, teaching, researching and living without worrying much about the frontiers between them, but began to formalise my research by taking an MA Practice as Research at Kent University in 2006. The thesis can be found here:
"Clown Prosthetics and Amputations"
for pdf version: Clown Prosthetics and Amputations.pdf
Aside from my present research into clown teaching, I am interested in the following fields: Naturalism and Supernaturalism; Clown History. I am also preparing to edit a Clown Reader, my own book entitled "Clown Theory", and a translation into English of Tristan Rémy's "Les Clowns"
