Four Clowns: Noah & Jonah (Blog #4 by Jamie Ann Hultgren)

Living in LA can be a real goat rodeo. 

Maintaining a (functional) life as a performing artist here means a constant juggle of day jobs and family responsibilities while carving out the time and space in your head/heart to expand instead of holing up in bed after an epic car battle on the 405. I suppose every career and geographic choice poses its challenges, but coming from the MidWest several years ago, I find myself having to work much harder to stay sane and grow.

I’ve been very fortunate to find an artistic home in the Four Clowns company and the associated Clown School (where many of us train). When I first moved to LA I tried a slew of different acting classes and found most of them to be a bunch of networky bull. So almost defiantly, I decided to delve into clown work and found a sanctuary where the work I was first drawn to as a performer (emotional, physical, spiritual, et all) was getting done. The work of the clown is being ever present, ever true- and if you avoid the work, you are slaughtered by the searing wit of an instructor or colleague. So in an effort to not get slaughtered, you prepare and scare yourself silly, making a complete fool of yourself while exposing your vulnerabilities on a regular basis. And at the end of the day, you're relieved because you’ve been through the good, the bad and the ugly- you’re no longer carrying it with you.

But Four Clowns has the challenges of any young theater troupe- securing rehearsal space, funding, and selling enough tickets to keep the company alive are near constant concerns. So having the opportunity to be in residence at Annenberg for the summer is a really a dream for us, because the support of the City of Santa Monica and The Annenberg Foundation takes so much of the drudgery out of the equation, allowing us to focus more on the work itself- and not only that, but it is an awesome excuse to get out to the beach everyday.

So many company members keep saying what a relief being at the Beach House is. Exiting off the 10, heading through the tunnel onto the PCH, the ocean comes into view and suddenly my anxieties dissolve and brain expands, the frustrating jungle of LA ceasing to exist, only sun and water now. At last, I am free- to play and be a part of a community. Every care disappears and the creative work just sort of happens.

Both of our shows, Noah & Jonah, obviously have strong water themes, and performing against the facade of the Marion Davies Guest House, I don’t have to imagine all that hard to find myself in the shoes of the characters we play. I just look out on the ocean, already in awe of its beauty, power, and magnitude, swiftly delivered to a frame of mind where reflections on humanity and our place relative to all creation is uniquely available- thoughts that can feel so far from my little head when I’m squeezed into my Corolla on the 101.

Jamie Ann Hultgren

Performer, Noah & Jonah

Company Manager, Four Clowns

Four Clowns: Noah & Jonah (Blog #3 by Courtney Buchan)

Rehearsals for Noah & Jonah are now in full swing! David Bridel has a solid skeleton structure of what the scripts will look like, which means our next step has been to fill in the holes. This past week, we specifically were focusing on how each scene might play out. We know what key elements the scene needs to contain, but we still need to discover who these characters are and what their relationships look like. For example, we know that God put Noah through a test before he was told to build the ark. What we get to fill in and explore through improvisation scenes, is what those tests might look like, Noah's relationship with God, and how successful Noah actually was at completing God's instructions. It's been incredibly fun this past week to explore within our skeleton structure the limitless possibilities we have in telling these stories.

As a director, improvisation has been amazingly helpful for me in this process. The amount of incredible, hysterical ideas our ensemble of 7+ company members have developed, far outshines anything I could have come up with on my own. Creating a piece from the ground up as ensemble, makes for a rich well of ideas to pull from. We spent this past week working on creating substance- improvising scenes that David had roughly structured, and then we'll see which idea gems want to make their way into the final script. By the end of the week we had filled in almost all of the gaps that David had wanted to fill, and we had some amazing comic bits that I hope we can find a way to incorporate in the production.

Now that we've had our week of intense improv, David will go back through all of the videos we've taken, notes we've written, and jokes he couldn't forget if he tried, and start creating dialogue and plugging in ideas. On Tuesday, we'll have a read-thru of the script, and then start working with it. The next step in the process will be to play within the confines of a scripted piece, and see what we can find. It's been such a fun process so far, and the amazing location that we get to work in just adds to everyone's enthusiasm. There's nothing like creating two shows that deal with the ocean, and having the ocean RIGHT THERE. Everyone is exhausted on arriving to rehearsals- exhausted from traffic, from work, receiving a bad haircut, etc. But once everyone has arrived and we take a moment to look at the ocean, breath in the salty air, and play a silly school yard game, we are all ready and exited to work. That's the amazing thing about theatre, by its very nature it brings people together, and forms community instantly. This is good for my soul. I'm excited to get crackin' on this new script David will have! Scripts ahoy!


Courtney Buchan
Co-Director- Noah and Jonah

Four Clowns: Noah & Jonah (Blog #2 by David Bridel)

The process of building our script has well and truly begun.

On Saturday May 17th, our troupe of clowns spent the day at the Annenberg Beach House developing improvisations around the Jonah and the Whale story. I'm not inclined to give too much away, but audiences can expect a delicious contemporary twist on this classic tale of a man and a whale! (Actually, it's a fish that swallows Jonah whole. Not sure when or how the whale pushed her way into it...)

At this stage rehearsals follow a fairly simple pattern. After a warm-up that energizes the group, we choose small sections of our source material - this past rehearsal, I simply read verses aloud from my iPad, an Old Testament King James version app (!) - and then divide the cohort into groups of 3 or 4, who each spend about 15 minutes cooking up scenes that tell the story of that particular section. Our clowns, well-skilled at interpreting texts in uniquely creative ways, then demonstrate what they have come up with to the rest of the group in a kind of "show and tell" moment. Usually I find a way to record these demos - either by filming them or by rapidly scratching down bits of dialogue and action, even while they are happening - and then we briefly discuss the pros and cons of what we have seen, before moving on to the next section. It's often fast, sometimes furious, and always fun.

Later, at home or on an airplane (I just flew long-haul to Shanghai and back), I will mull over the various opportunities that the improvs have created, and start to figure out what works best with what, pulling disparate pieces together and imagining them into a tighter structure. At the time of writing, I have a reasonably organized "skeleton", pieced together from many rehearsals; when we return to rehearsal next week, the improvs will continue, but in a more targeted fashion.

This is my favorite way of working on making plays. It's not conventional authorship, nor is it exactly groupthink - it's a wonderful amalgam of ideas funneled into a rough vision, which I hope is both cohesive and expansive by the time it reaches its creative form.

It sure beats sitting in a room.

David Bridel
Writer, Co-Director, Noah & Jonah
Associate Director, Four Clowns

Four Clowns: Noah & Jonah (Blog #1 by Jeremy Aluma)

The journey of bringing adaptations of Noah & Jonah with our company Four Clowns to the Annenberg Beach Community House started many years ago. As a young Jewish boy, I was taught the Old Testament as a book of lessons or parables. They were guiding stories of humanity and man's relationship to God. What I appreciated most about them is the same kernel of wisdom scholars love about Shakespeare; no one is purely good or purely evil, and the key to a person's character is their motivation. I've been struck by these types of stories my whole life, stories of good people making hard choices, or stories of what makes us perceive people as evil. 

As a theater director, I've been wanting to work on these stories for over a decade, they've been rolling around in my head waiting to come to fruition. About 6 years ago, I started discussing it with another theater company I founded in Long Beach, but we felt we weren't ready for the undertaking. Then about 2 years ago, one of the members of Four Clowns made the suggestion of doing the stories with our company. I actually hadn't previously thought of them as ripe for clowning, I thought they were too epic and too sacred for the shenanigans of our company.

But when I brought it up with the rest of our company, and specifically David Bridel, we realized what a fantastic creation it could be. What better way to tell the earliest stories of humanity than through the heart of a clown. A clown is in touch with exactly how he is feeling, but is free to share it with the audience. A clown is not bogged down in philosophy, she is reactionary. And a clown can make anything funny.

So about 1.5 years ago, David Bridel and I started working with our company on stories from the Old Testament. About twice a month we would get the company together and just play with the stories. It was some of the funniest and poignant material we ever worked on. We continued to play with it for about a year and then felt ready to start pitching it to programs around the country.

The Annenberg Beach Community House seemed a perfect fit for two of the stories we most enjoyed dabbling in, Noah & Jonah. They both have such a strong relationship to the ocean, and both are such full and vivid tales. This is the first opportunity we have to present our adaptations of the Old Testament but future collaborations include going to Brazil to work on Abraham & Isaac at the Stanislavsky Institute, and we're waiting to hear back from a few more applications.

We couldn't be more proud and excited to offer these first two stories in what will ultimately be a many yeared journey for our company.
- Jeremy Aluma
Four Clowns Artistic Director
Co-Director of Jonah

 

Four Clowns surveying their new domain....

Fresh from a stint at New York's La Mama theater, Four Clowns is creating original adaptations of the stories of "Jonah & the Whale" and "Noah's Ark" for the Beach House site. As our summer Theater Company in Residence, they'll be working from May 27 through July 18th, so if you see them rehearsing stop by and check them out! Free public performances in the afternoons of July 9-11 & 16-18, with reservations posted in June at annenbergbeachhouse.com/beachculture.

Noah, inveterate dreamer and eternal optimist, is faced with the most fantastic of tasks as the floods begin to rise. Despite the warnings of his oh-so-practical wife, he begins to build - and build - and build... Meanwhile Jonah - lazy, fitful, argumentative Jonah - is charged with a mission he doesn’t want, and escapes as a stowaway on a boat bound for nowhere. Before he knows it, he is deep in the belly of a sea monster, and in big trouble!

Four Clowns is a Los Angeles based nationally touring clown troupe. Dedicated to entertaining all ages and experimenting with the relationship between actors and audience, they create new works that utilize physical theater to shine a light on our shared humanity. fourclowns.org

Farewell to Helen Lessick - next up, Four Clowns!

What a thought-provoking and enjoyable time we had with writer Helen Lessick these past ten weeks! Helen opened up great new avenues of dialogue about place and creative incubation both here at the Beach House and in general. We especially enjoyed her concluding talk with architect Frederick Fisher and LA River activist Lewis MacAdams on March 11, 2014!

Helen addressing workshop participants, February 2014

We have a few weeks break now through May and then we invite you to come by the Beach House and see clowns in action... our summer Theater Ensemble Residency begins May 27 with the physical theater company Four Clowns. Stay tuned for updates and some teaser info on their upcoming show (free outdoor performances in mid-July).

Sand and Stones

Beach culture is a complex thing. There is sand of course but stones and seaweed within the sand.

The recent rainstorms have revealed a rainbow-colored treasure of stones at low tide. These stones that will, in millennia, make the sand.

My morning walk took me by two fishermen, standing in the surf, side by side. I asked them what they were fishing for. Halibut the one man answered. They were friendly, so I asked what they caught. Smelt.

We may come to the ocean’s edge with one goal in mind but end with unexpected gains.

The fishermen were done for the day, but would come back and try again, the persistence of beach culture.

-Helen Lessick