Vogue part 1: Buster Keaton

Ok ducklings, let's talk about frame for a tick.

In any performance arena, you have to be aware of the space, space designated for the performance, space designated for the audience, how easy it is to move back and forth between the two, etc. So if you're on a good ol proscenium stage, there's the stage up above the audience, maybe an apron of stage jutting out a little beyond the arch, the audience facing the stage on one side, probably some room on the floor used by the audience as an aisle, and maybe some stairs to and from the stage. The audience has expectations about what the performers will do, how close the performers will come to them, and how they can do their part to react politely by applauding and laughing at the appropriate times.

If you're in a circus ring, you're dealing with an audience in the round, the audience is sitting right next to the partition dividing the performance space and the seats, and the audience has a very difference expectation of what the performers might do and how much they the audience might be involved.

This is of course just dealing with live performance and doesn't take into account outdoor shows, site specific shows, street performance, or anything of that. These are just the areas I plan to focus on here.

But let's consider film, too. In a film you can change the setting in each shot and deal with any sort of depth and scale you'd like. But no matter how many different shots you have and how many different depths and set ups and all that, the filmmaker is always confined to the frame of the screen.

SO, having said all that, for a clown in any space it's her job to redefine the space she occupies. If she appears in a space, you don't want to see her treating it how it's meant to be treated, you want to see her do things that no ordinary person will do with it. If the piano is on the other side of the room from the bench, you move the piano to the bench (Grock, 1880-1959). So in any frame, the clown should defy the audience's expectations, occupy space not meant to be occupied by the performer, treat audience members in a way they don't expect, so forth.

But how they choose to redefine the space is what makes each performer memorable and unique. Let's look at one of my faves, Buster Keaton.

Probably the biggest difference between Keaton and Chaplin, because it's sort of hard to talk about one without the other, is that while Chaplin was a strange man in a normal world, Keaton was a normal guy in a crazy bizarre world. Both were directors and so were responsible for the looks of many of their films and the construction of their film worlds. Buster tended to place himself next to giant machines or mammoth landscapes to emphasize his lil size and he largely drew his comedy from the geometry of each shot. Anything that's not in the shot doesn't exist in that moment. Often there's a lot of perfectly symmetrical shots, representing order, and then along comes Keaton who can't help but disrupt such mathematical perfection. Observe:

The Garage, 1920

The Haunted House, 1921

Neighbors, 1920

That particular movie deals with a forbidden romance so this shot bisected with the fence happens a lot. This shot has a nice unbalance happening as Keaton tries to get things to be as they should.

And a super classic fave...

Before

and After! Steamboat Bill Jr, 1928

Fun fact! They only ever did one take of this shot because it was so freakin dangerous. They got it done that one time and despite Keaton's nerves of steel (he proudly boasted that he broke every bone in his body at some point in his life) he didn't feel the need to do it again.

Nothing is accidental in any Keaton shot. And in such a geometrically constructed world, Keaton's acrobatics are all the more emphasized and celebrated.

I mean seriously, check this out:

Thanks Dr. Moon Rat for that lovely tribute.

Let's not forget people, the kid did all his own stunts.

If you're interested in a further discussion of this, check out The Body in Hollywood Slapstick by Alex Clayton. He does a whole chapter on this subject. (I realize I've mentioned this book before in a less flattering context, but don't read that chapter. Just read the one about Keaton.)

I couldn't find the food I liked

One of my favorite Kafka stories is A Hunger Artist. I say "favorite" but really I mean one that I can sort of wrap my head around and speculate about what that particular allegory might mean, plus it's also a fun conversation with artists about the nature of performance and what not. In the story, the narrator talks about how the standard duration of a fast for a hunger artist is 40 days.

DID YOU KNOW that David Blaine, weird magician illusionist fellow, lived in a glass box suspended over the thames with no food and only water for 44 days? Cuz he DID. He says of that particular stunt that it was one of the hardest things he's ever done but one of the most beautiful.

I mention this for a few reasons.

1) While he probably wasn't doing it to live out a Kafka story (next he'll wake up a bug!) I think it's pretty cool to see something Kafka wrote about actually happen to a certain degree.

2) I just watched D-Blaine's TED talk where he mainly discusses preparing for his 17 minute breath holding extravaganza and he's totally a cool guy. He's super low key and talks about his life, like purging your body of CO2 and freezing yourself in a block of ice, like its no big thing. I kind of just want to be his bud.

3) A Hunger Artist really holds a special place in my heart. This past summer I had the kids in my acting class act out the story anywhere on camp except the theater and their performances were incredibly brilliant for totally different reasons. Like the one group that had the performer and the audiance cram into a tiny hallway and while we were inches away from the performer, the director would be behind everyone shoving us forward. Love it.

Anyhoo, cool tricks.

I need more hellos

One of my most favorite things about creating art is the process of going from the source of inspiration to the finished product. Lately I've been harnessing a lot of inspiration in a lot of places and even if I don't get to follow through with performing/executing the thing I want to create, even getting an idea from somewhere and fleshing it out into a piece on paper with little stick people is enough of a push for me to keep going.

I'm a big fan of parody and satire and since such an enormous part of that is the original source, the inspiration is...I mean, it's pretty obvious. There are few things I like better than a good parody, a really solid recontextualization of a thing that makes us re-examine everything. Thank you nerd-dom.

Here's one of my faves.

What's Opera, Doc? - Click here for more amazing videos

The classic and somewhat archaic music coupled with a hip trickster like Bugs Bunny, plus some exaggerated art deco-y settings and creative lighting/focusing just warms the soul. And the fact that they don't try and make it so cartoon-y that it takes away from the opera-ness of it; Bugs and Elmer are very sincerely doing this opera the way they would do it. When Bush Jr. first declared war, all I could hear was him going "kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit..."

On a different note, I spend most of time with people making their living on acting jobs, which is an incredible opportunity for me to get a lot of insight into the business while avoiding bodily harm or getting screwed out of money or any other unpleasantries. But at the same time, it's the first time I'm dealing with theater and acting as a business more than an artform and that's the fastest way to suck the life and passion out of a guy. So imagine my delight when today, despite being totally exhausted and gross-feeling, I got to encounter some kids to whom I taught exciting things like performance art and physical theater and awareness of human behavior and they, in return, were excited to hear that they could do more of it next summer with me. I mean it's always a nice ego boost to hear that someone likes you and wants to work with you, but it was totally something I needed to hear. As I continue to say, theater is nothing if not a conversation, so now I can go beyond drawing little stick figures for myself and actually do some art with people that want to and maybe inspire them to do their own arty loveliness. And now I've got all kinds of exciting plans for the summer, including some secret immersion theater...

and while we're talking about cartoons and goodness, here are some other ones I like a lot.

happy janus day! ....month!

So Janus is the Roman god of transitions, new beginnings and what not. He was most often worshipped at celebrations like births, weddings, harvests, anything that marked a major change. He's depicted with 2 heads looking in opposite directions, originally with one face bearded and the other clean shaven to represent the sun and the moon, and those faces appeared on early Roman coins. Unfortunately not a lot is written about his cult of followers, except that it was said that when Romulus and his men kidnapped the women of the Sabines, Janus saved the day by making a hot spring appear stopping the men in their tracks. So in times of war the doors of his temple were left open so that he could intervene again. The doors stayed closed during times of peace. However his most lasting impression is the month that carries his name, January, as its the transition into the new year. Fun facts.

The thing I really dig about Janus though is when he's called the god of doorways. It makes me think of that liminal space, not quite in and not quite out, and as one who often gets made fun of for lurking in doorways I was just pretty excited that doorways would get their own God.

But more importantly, that liminal space is just where the clown type of fella fits in. Always perched precariously between acceptibility and ridiculousness. So I have to wonder why there aren't more nerdy clown types paying homage or working Janus in some how. And by "have to wonder" I mean it's not the least bit surprising. But should still be a thing that happens.

This sort of thing, as was the last thing I wrote about, isn't so much a profound observation of the world or performance or clowning or anything, or even some exciting new statement of never-before-thought-of ideas, but it makes me very happy to put these interests of mine into a sort of context, since these ideas of liminal space and performance and what not repeat themselves over and over throughout our lives, and find connections in very unlikely places. Warms the tummy.