web analytics

Slava Polunin: The Monologue of a Clown – 3: Tradition

Tradition

I feel pity for the good audience that it denies the clownery. Historically, there is a great and magic treasure in this world, and that is the clown. For why, then, do we see a figure or a picture of a clown in almost every house? His image is nearly in every book, and almost every poet has a poem about the clown, but why? It means that there is something magical, something eternal in the clownery. I personally belong to such a powerful tradition that I can actually build upon this base whatever I want. But at the same time I feel a perpetual resistance. I feel it in America, in England, everywhere. They say: “Oh, a clown? Then it is for an infant matinee or a birthday party”. Or: “My, the clownery?! Are you mad? Oh, and you even apply make-up… It’s dull and old-fashioned”. All this is because we haven’t seen the real clowns for ages, since the silent films. The tradition of clownery is completely sophisticated. The number of true things is fantastically small. Perhaps, in Russia there are no such things at all. There were good guys – The Southern Birds, The Unison, The Tales of the East, The Mimicrici, and The Masks-show. Because they were not allowed to grow stronger and stand on their own feet, because of the money situation, all of them shook loose: some broke down, some emigrated, some went for big money and now have a fear to leave this path. So, there were people, but no conditions.

People always make traditions. But perhaps, in order to live long, tradition must die, from time to time? Once commedia del-arte had been all but buried in the sand, then a sudden ‘oops’ – and there came English music hall, Grimaldi circus, then ‘hap’ – all had disappeared again, ‘bang’ – there came French fairs, the pantomimes of the well-known Deburot, the one as whom Jean-Louis Barreau starred in ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’. Later it disappeared as well. Then it was revived in the silent cinema. The silent cinema for me is the top of the top of clownery. There was no decent clown who would not leave the stage for the silent film. Like in the vortex, everyone was absorbed by it. But the sound came and crossed out all of them. Thus, after a long period tradition had come to grief again. Two or three comedians did survive, and Chaplin was the greatest among them. Almost everything I know I took from the silent cinema. If one day people realized what the silent cinema had been in the art history, and began studying it, they would find the main secret of mine. Everything I own has been taken from there: bits of pieces, of personages, of atmosphere… I have a huge collection of silent films, assorted by periods, by genres and by personalities. I am a very reasonable man: I do not settle down till I dig to the truth. At first, I was collecting Chaplin’s films. Having all 92 films, I began watching them a-new and eliminating them. Then I arranged everything that could be proved useful for those interested in clownery. Now they may not watch all Chaplin, for I have assorted the finest of him: the best, the typical, the tricky, the tragic. Of all 120 films of Oliver Hardy I’ve only chosen 16. If one is interested in Hardy, I can demonstrate all his aesthetic principles upon the precise examples. I have all de Funes, more than 40 films. Of those, I have only chosen the tricks and arranged them in 3 hours of killing laughter. I know all these tricks by heart. Same for my son Vanya. It is like the ABC, everyone should know it.

However, everyone should know what the Grimaldi circus, the Deburot’s pantomime, the English music hall, the commedia del-arte, and the psychological theatre were. Not forgetting, as well, about the Eastern theatre, i.e. Chinese, Indian, Japanese, No, Kabuki, Buto theatrical traditions, in which I have had a great interest and which I have studied. And yet even that’s not the end. Many different things blended in me. I brought these goods from everywhere, from all the antics where they were buried in the dust, useless. I brought them from all types of theatre that as yet managed to preserve the decent state. My way in art is the way of studying the avant-garde, of looking for the new expression, for the unexpected form, accompanied by the study of folk tradition, of all that had been before us.

Of course, my term for it – ‘clownery’ – is conditional. In fact, my occupation is the world of plastics, of eccentricity, of abnormal behaviour. Meanwhile, a clown, a mime is a man of abnormal behaviour. He behaves conditionally, and by means of this he changes the style of real life, he makes something different of it. Any plastic art at its top must necessarily be a fantastic and strange stylization, unlike any traditional dramatic theatre.

JD: below is the famous Table Ballet by Charlie Chaplin.

Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova.

 

Slava Polunin: The Monologue of a Clown – 2: Clown

Clown

Clown is the most spontaneous creature on Earth. When you start restraining his freedom, he loses himself and whimpers like a child. Basically, it means that you offended him deeply. Clowns are very special, and they need a special treatmeant. Like the lunatics or, I don’t know, like the drunk or the dogs.

It’s not merely that you see the one like yourself. You sense him, through the means of perception, through certain external moves, the manner of life… All of this is for him only, but absolutely useless for the rest of people. At a glance you notice how unusual he is. Like, when you offer him a seat, he answers: “I will lie down here”. His answer is inadequate, but that is not because he wants to show off, rather it is his normal condition, the only one in which he feels happy. I always use my son as an example. I tell him: “Vanya, bring me a teapot”. Vanya lies on the floor, rolls to the kitchen and comes back with the pot on his head. This is his normal enjoyment of the game. To live as usual would be dull and uninteresting, he feels the emptiness of this life. All his being fights against everyday occurrence, routine, and he seeks the festival and the game.

Freedom is everything to the clown. The only thing I cannot stand is when my freedom is restrained. I cannot imagine the situation when I have no freedom of choice. Generally, I might never need it. But, when signing a contract, I do never agree not to be free, and I always ask to cross this clause out. I am annoyed with the very fact that somebody dictates me something. This is the reason, by the way, why the majority of clowns take to drinking, being unable to regulate their free zone in the society. The clown cannot stand against the violence, just like a child. You swaddle him, yet he is screaming, bastard. He wants to run to THAT bench, he wants to push his head into THAT tube, for the life of you. The child and the clown are quite alike.

The nature of talent is important for the clown, too, but not as much as freedom. When I was creating my troupe for the Licedei (Pagliazzi) theatre, my criterion for the actors was “an electricity-man”. I found some five like this. But there were others – gracious, languid, and tender. Like Robert Gorodetsky, for instance. He has no energy, no aggression. Instead there is depth, subtlety in him, he and Vertinsky are soulmates. Apparently, it is possible not only within the society. There are periods in history that create conditions for the emergence of such clowns. If there were a normal cabaret atmosphere in Russia, we would get a score of perfect melancholic, poetic, metaphysical clowns. But in the revolutionary vortex and cataclysms only the leaders and the monsters can survive.

The biggest question for the clown is his mask; sometimes you search for it all your life. You try different ways, different varieties: once you find a piece of make-up, next time – a piece of costume, then – a psychological detail, the rhythm, the walk. Doing that, you can go back to different things. But first of all you’ve got to ‘catch’ yourself.

There are lots of masks nowadays. Life became diverse, a traditional duo-typical system, to which everyone was used, has disappeared. There are no Red Clown and White Clown, Harlequin and Pierrot, no city fop and country bumpkin, no Quick and Slow or Witty and Silly Clowns, etc. As soon as the archetype of social life has broken down, so did the type of relationship between the clowns and the audience.

Today’s clowns, as before, are reflecting the archetypes of our life, and mould their own system. My idea of choice of the clowns for the Theatre Olympics was to recreate the image of the 20th century through their masks. I chose anarchist, extremist, philosopher, poet, absurdist and metaphysician, – this, I believe, was an ideal choice. The French Dechamp is a true Kharms!

And the Italian Bassi is a fantastic extremist. For nine days I was talking him off an idea to explode a cask of shit at the Duma! That was a real problem to me, for I knew, if it happened, there would be no festivals for me in future. Yet for him it was natural. “The world is a gigantic Coliseum”, he thought, “and I must make people listen to me. But to do so, I need to hear the world: what are its interests, what is topical for it. What is the clown for? – To give joy to people. And what will give more joy to people than if I explode a cask of shit at the Duma?” He is a very logical man, this Leo.

But generally, all clowns are philosophers, in the end.

 

Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova

 

Slava Polunin: The Monologue of a Clown – 1: Context

The internationally acclaimed Snowshow by Slava Polunin has again visited Manchester recently. Unfortunately, as I noticed from the reviews, very little seems to be known about Slava, despite his world-wide fame and unquestionable talent. James Ellaby writing for Entertainment Manchester tries to get to the core of the performance, giving a notice to surrealist and circusesque features. Liz Connolly on The MEN’s Urban Life is more on the “adult” side of the fence, which sees its spectators recommending the show primarily for kids. The two huge problems we are to find here is that, first, Polunin is Russian by origin, but in matters of his art he is the citizen of the world. To describe the Snowshow as ‘Russian surrealism‘ (Ellaby), even partly, is to understate the whole artistic baggage of Polunin, and indeed, of surrealism. And to state that the kids were mesmerised and adults were not is, alas, to prove that ‘your childhood is in the dim and distant past and pragmatism has gripped your soul forever‘ (Connolly). I dare say that Polunin’s show is aimed primarily at adults: a clown is a child, and the child is the one who readily empathises with the clown. The task is to bring an adult to their childhood past, but instead of having the older people to empathise with the performance, the aim is, perhaps, to have them empathise with themselves.

Anyway, back in 2003 when I was engaged as a Russian-to-English translator for The Herald of Europe, the very first text I had to translate was a very long interview with Slava, following the 2001 Theatre Olympics in Moscow. By the time the first edition of The Herald of Europe saw the light of this world in 2004, the article was perhaps quite outdated and somewhat heavy-weight, so it was never published. Thanks to online publishing, though, you can now read it in full, either here, in a series of blog posts with illustrations and YouTube extracts.

And one note on the title of the show, which might just explain a few things. In Russian, it is called ‘сНежное шоу‘, playing on the similarity of the Russian words ‘снежный‘ (snezhny – snowy) and ‘нежный‘ (nezhny – tender). By capitalising the ‘N’, Polunin gives a little hint to the story: on the outer side, it is about snow; on the inside, it explores the tenderness. Unfortunately, this is the kind of a linguistic nuance that inevitably gets lost, and hence the spectators notice the visible snow, but only intuitively guess about the invisible tenderness.

As for myself, I have grown up on Polunin’s clown shows, and there were quite a few really famous ones that he produced. The one turn that he referenced in his interview was called Blue Canari. You can read the English text and watch the Polunin’s theatre group performance below.

Slava Polunin, Natalia Kazmina: A Monologue of the Clown, or A Pie of Ten Layers

Context
Having left for London from Leningrad, he was out of the Russian cultural context for nearly ten years. Once back, he smashed our straight rows and, delivering chaos to the sober landscape of the theatrical Olympus, he opened our eyes on ourselves. After his tender “sNow Show”, after his street theatre performances during the Theatrical Olympics it became clear – we had a lack of him. We had a lack of this man-clown and a festival-man. We laughed and were not afraid to see, how constrained and set apart, false and envious, mean and timid we were. We realized, how difficult it could be to open your heart to a spectator, or a reader, or a friend, or even to the one you love. Some have a fear that people will not understand them, others are afraid they will be mocked, and some just have nothing to say. Yet he fears nothing. He walks into the crowd and cuts it through, like a breakwater. And what is important, he does not dissolve in the crowd. “I have made an attempt to bring to Moscow everything that had driven me mad earlier”, – he said at the press conference. – “I wanted to shift your appreciation of the theatre to a different path. I wanted to broaden your horizon”. You bet he did! We saw that the clownery, these fantastic mimes, rope- and stilt-walkers, people in masks, the buffoons and street musicians are all a completely forgotten part of our culture. It is a lost joy that Polunin wants to revive. He feels dull when enjoying alone.

Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova.

 

error: Sorry, no copying !!