It's a knick-knack, patty black, give the frog a loan.

I love love love shaggy dog stories. Those would be the jokes with very long set-ups that result in a terrible pun or otherwise anti-climactic ending. So I don't have anything profound to say right now, I just wanted to share this one. Cuz I likes it. It's definitely long but totes worth it.

Once upon a time, a young man went to the circus. He was very excited, as he lived in western Manitoba, the kind of town where you shave and the trolley stops, and had never seen a circus before. Anyway, as the circus days drew near, the young man grew ever more excited. He arrived before dawn to get the best seat in the house, and was seated hours before the first trapeze act. Finally, the trapeze artists gave an awe-inspiring performance, the elephants danced, and the lion tamer tamed.

At last, the clowns came out in full regalia and green hair. They rode around by the gross in a purple Volkswagen. The volksie pulled up to the center of the ring, and an overweight clown with orange hair, acne, and a purple nose advanced to the podium: "Will the person in section A, row Y, seat 42 please stand up?"

The young man looked at his ticket, and to his surprise, he was sitting in that very seat. The young man stood up. Clown sez, "Wellllll, there's the horse's ass, now where's the rest of the horse?"

The man, dumbfounded, stood for a moment, then made his way quickly through the crowd and out of the tent. Returning home, the man wept for days, and mourned the loss of dignity and honor. Eventually reason overcame his grief and the man grew determined. "I'm not going to get mad, I'm going to get even, and avenge the honor of myself, my family, and this town," exclaimed the man.

He picked up the curriculum guide for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) correspondence courses and started to read. Eventually his eyes came to rest on an advertisement for a class in "Quick Wit Retorts." "Learn how to use those snappy comebacks to your advantage, now!" So the man sent in his $19.95 and soon received the course materials. In a few weeks, the man mastered the materials, and sent the final back to UNLV. Much to his surprise, a registered letter arrived from the president of UNLV. It read: Dear Sir: We are utterly flabbergasted at your performance in Quick Wit Retorts 101. We would be most gratified if you could come to UNLV to complete your degree with our fine academic institution. Here's a check to cover your expenses.

To make a long story short, the man made straight A's in the QWR program. He was awarded numerous distinctions and honors, and when he graduated, the graduation speaker Ed Meese awarded the man the Presidential Medal of Outstanding Quick Wit Retorts, signed by Bill himself!

Some days afterward, Harvard University sent a Lear Jet to pick the man up for an interview. The graduate admissions officer didn't mince words. "If you complete our masters/doctoral tenured track program in QWR, you will never have to worry about money again," said he.

Needless to say, the man promptly moved to Cambridge. In 5 years, the man had finished his doctorate. By this time, the man was known throughout the world as the leading expert in Quick Wit Retorts. Word had even reached western Manitoba, which made his mother very proud. Everyone from the Pentagon pundits to Beltway bandits consulted the man on technical questions of QWR.

One day, while sitting at his desk reading his hometown newspaper, the man noticed that the circus was coming to his hometown again. An evil smile crossed the man's face. "Siegfried," cried the man to his assistant, "We must be away to Manitoba. Ready the jet!" As the plane crossed the downlands of Michigan, the man savored the moment of victory that was to be his.

The man arrived at the circus tent very early, making sure to get the seat in section A, row Y, seat 42. Finally, the trapeze artists gave an awe-inspiring performance, the elephants danced, and the lion tamer tamed.

At last, the clowns came out in full regalia and green hair. They rode around by the gross in a purple Volkswagen. The volksie pulled up to the center of the ring, and an overweight clown with orange hair, acne, and a purple nose advanced to the podium: "Will the person in section A, row Y, seat 42 please stand up?" The man glanced at his ticket. This time he was ready. Clown sez, "Wellllll, there's the horse's ass, now where's the rest of the horse?"

The man rose to his feet, full of confidence. He thrust out his chest and said in the loudest voice you can imagine: "FUCK YOU, CLOWN!!!!"

Shall we go? Yes let's.

So Waiting for Godot is a tricky piece. Much analyzed and thought over and done to death, really. But there's no denying that it redefined modern drama as we conceive of it. Plus I got to see it on Broadway with Bill Irwin, Nathan Lane, John Goodman and John Glover. So nyeh.

The thing I like and continue to find intriguing is how to use Godot as template with clown duos and performance in general. Vladimir and Estragon were written as clownish types so it's not hard to make the connection, but I'm more interested in bringing Didi and Gogo-ness to clowns rather than bringing clowniness to Didi and Gogo; making that existentialist absurdism more accessible I guess. Last spring I directed a children's show called Noodle Doodle Box that was described as Waiting for Godot meets Spongebob. I was extremely proud of that.

There are a million examples of comic duos, the whiteface and auguste, that have excellent dynamics but I'm more interested in how we can take this simple and very well-known structure and mix it up to show people something new and thought-provoking. Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about.

This is a Jan Svankmajer piece called "Breakfast" Svankmajer is a Czech surrealist filmmaker who is all around awesome. I might just post a bunch of things he did without any commentary from me to show you how awesome he is. I showed my NDBox cast this to illustrate repitition, routine and to show the comical and weird relationships possible between two people when the body is redefined. Plus it's awesome.

Here's another one, Mummenschantz on the Muppet show. I'm hugely in love with them for the way they integrate mask, movement and puppetry (sidebar, I taught a class this summer called just that) in a simple way that still conveys a lot of nuance and character. Here's a story not just with two masked characters, but their faces are their characters and as their relationships between themselves and their faces change, so do their relationships with each other.

I don't know that you would call either of these pieces 'clown pieces,' but I would say that they're comic performances. You could argue that the Svankmajer piece isn't comic, but then I'd argue that you have no sense of humor.

I really like that both of these pieces play with personal space. One guy is all up in another guy's face, pulling and pushing it to change what he looks like and change his status, one guy is reaching in another guy's mouth, sticking his fingers in his ears, eyes, chest cavity, what have you. I've been really interested in playing with bodies in space as relationship; not just what gestures or expressions a person does to define their character but the physical space they take up. It's like what I was saying before about Buster Keaton vs. Charlie Chaplin, Keaton's lines and shapes defined his world and character, not just his faces and gestures. Guess I'll keep trying stuff out.

Vogue part 2: Sesame Street

I am so proud and impressed that a show like Sesame Street has lasted as long as it has. With the changing trends and needs in child-rearing this one show has managed to stay relevant and necessary. Granted there have been major changes in its 40 year career, but it's still around biddies. Oh yes. I haven't sat down and watched an episode recently, but I have seen some of the important sketches that make these current seasons as important as the old ones.

Like Cookie Monster, for instance. All I was hearing was that he was becoming Veggie Monster, giving up cookies and wearing birkenstocks. or something. I, like the many folks who grew up with this show, were crushed to hear this news. But then I actually watched the sketches where they address Cookie's new diet, and it's done with the same humor and frankness as any other issue they address. There's one sketch where Cookie encounters a bowl of fruit and gets all excited to eat it. Matt Lauer appears from nowhere grilling Cookie on the fact that he's about to eat FRUIT?!? Cookie handles it like a pro and says, "You members of media blow story WAAY out of proportion. Me still like cookies. Me Cookie Monster." And there you have it.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about, I want to continue our discussion of frame. One of the things that makes Sesame Street so great is the way they parody other tv shows, movies, theater, what have you, and part of that means parodying their camera work, so there are way too many different ways in which they use frame to generalize and say that there's one way that SS uses frame.

Instead I would like to focus on one sketch in particular, one called Fat Cat Sat Hat.

First of all, I love how this is done like a beat poem with the individual words coming slowly then a big explosion of sound and rhyme. And you immediately establish character and relationship with unique voices and text that has nothing to do with any of them (by which I mean text that directly addresses who they are or what they want). But the smooth shapes of the Anything Muppets (the green, blue and purple fellas) next to the wild and unkempt energy and look of Bip Bippadotta (the Mahna Mahna Muppet whose name was later changed) suggest a conflict between order and disorder just by looking at them. And all this for teaching word families.

So frame. It's my feeling that a lot of shows with puppets keep a very two-dimensional look to everything given that the puppets are restricted by their real life puppeteer. They can move left and right, down but not too far up without some serious rearranging and the occasional near and far (just ask Grover). But here we have them all over the place creating this liminal empty space that's not a room or a street corner, it's just a place. I'm continuing with the vision of this sketch as a beat performance on a standard proscenium stage. So the Anythings try to keep things going left and right, as if they are walking on and off stage, and then from the back here comes Bip Bippadotta. But when they all leave to start a new round of words, they go in all directions, defying the bounds of a conventional stage. They even use status techniques of having the Anythings tower above Bip when they want him gone adding levels that further define relationships and take up more of the frame that we haven't seen used yet.

Perhaps my favorite part though, other than when Bip yells "Hey y'all!" would be when the three Anythings are right in front of the camera looking at Bip and we only see the tops of their heads. They're standing in our position creating a visible audience for Bip and totally redefining their roles as performers, if we keep up with my vision of them on a stage. They're no longer looking left and right, they are in our space where we have not seen them before. And to finish things off, they throw Bip right offstage out into the audience with us, straight into the camera.

I think the great thing about this sketch is how much they managed to pack in there and the sheer simplicity of it all. It's like a visual and artistic vitamin, getting everything you need in one dose. I don't know that I'm trying to make a grand point, other than that Sesame Street has a good eye for putting sketchs together and we could all learn a little something from them.

And now, in the vein of Sesame Street parodying things, here's the opening to Follow That Bird, one of my faves.