The Red Nose Playshop: Finding Your Clown

 It’s been my absolute joy and pleasure to have guided these absolute fools for the last 13 weeks to hone their innate stupidity and find their own unique clown.

Thanks to you all for trusting me and bringing more joy and play to the world.

a gREAT rAW

 

Andy has been working relentlessly to bring this show to life!!!

Presenting....

a gREAT rAW!

A show about war & all its greatness.

In a gREAT rAW, voices of the ancestors come together to question the greatness of World War 1 and uncover the raw intergenerational trauma that was gruesomely brought about.

Set as a debate to uncover some of the hiStories of WW1, a gREAT rAW entails one actor playing seven roles, using clown, bouffon, music & multiple masks.

SPECIAL BONUS PERFORMANCES:

"A Man Says Goodbye To His Mother" written by Peter Schuman of Bread and Puppet Theater

and

Renowned poet & performer Mark Raffills of Golden Bay will perform this evening by popular request
MARK TWAIN's War Prayer.

Inspired by the book "We will not cease" by NZ's own ARCHIBALD BAXTER, conscientious objector & father of poet James K. Baxter.

R16

Koha appreciated

Nelson Musical Theatre

Sunday, May 23, 2021 at 7 PM UTC+12

Stepping into Student Roles

Andy and Jen have been taking the summer months (or winter, depending which hemisphere that you're in) off from teaching to step back into student role.  

Andy just finished up a Theater of the Oppressed facilitator training with Marc Weinblatt at the Mandala Center for Change.  He's incredible, they're incredible, and they work using applied theater, anti-oppression education, grassroots community workshops, mask work, movements arts, ritual and play. 
www.mandalaforchange.com

Then he joined forces with the the maestro Giovanni Fusetti, who was teaching Bouffon and the Ecstasy of Mocking at the Celebration Barn in Maine, USA.  Both Jen and Andy have studied The Red Nose with him, which he introduces as.... "Welcome to a unique adventure, in which poetry meets healing and your personal clown will reveal some aspects of your own crazy wisdom.
A human being, alone in front of the audience, a Red Nose, the smallest mask in the world. 

www.GiovanniFusetti.com

Meanwhile, Jen headed to NYC to work with TOPLAB, taking a Theater of the Oppressed Workshop "Looking at Class Consciousness, Class Struggle and Self-Organizing Using Image Theater" facilitated by Janet Gerson and Marie-Claire Picher.

www.toplab.org

Next week she heads back to Glover, VT, to play in the open field and under the wide sky with Bread and Puppet Theater. Donation run, for over 50 years, Bread and Puppet uses cardboard and cornstarch to create political absurdity and dreamscapes.  According the the founder/orchestrator Peter Schumann, "Puppet theater is the theater of all means. Puppets and masks should be played in the street. They are louder than the traffic. They don’t teach problems, but they scream and dance and display life in its clearest terms. Puppet theater is of action rather than dialogue. The action is reduced to the simplest dance-like and specialized gestures. A puppet may be a hand only, or it may be a complicated body of many heads, hands, rods and fabric. We have two types of puppet shows: good ones and bad ones, but all of them are for good and against evil. ” -Peter Schumann

www.breadandpuppet.org

And she's planning to round out the season with the Manitoulin Clown Conservatory in Canada.

http://www.manitoulinconservatory.com

We're soaking up all the inspiration and insight to bring into our work and out to all of you!