- Clown Conservatory
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The Clown Conservatory is a private performing arts school in San Francisco, CA. It is the only year-long professional circus and theatrical clown training program in America.
Beginning in 2000 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, to date 101 students have graduated from the program. Many of these graduates are now working professionally in circuses, theaters, and other performing companies around the world, including Cirque du Soleil, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, The New Pickle Circus, Lunatique Fantastique, Circus Monti and Cirque Éloize.
Contents
Curriculum
Training at the Clown Conservatory has two major threads: skilled circus clowning and clowning in community.
Skilled circus clowning
Students develop circus, dance, musical and theatrical skills to a level that they can be used as part of a ‘clown language’ while learning the structures that can contain that language. Clown history has yielded many classic routines that can become cutting edge when inhabited by skilled clowns who have developed unique 'languages'. First year students begin by exploring these classic structures, bringing them to life with authentic, idiosyncratic characters. They then learn to create original material (clown playwriting) and take their acts on the road.
Clowning in community
The program contains an ongoing study of how clowns can make deep contributions to their communities. In the first term, each student researches a clown or clown tradition from another part of the world, expanding our knowledge of how clowns relate within other cultures. In the second term, students partner with a local service organization e.g., San Francisco General Hospital), developing skills in the field to use clowning as a tool for enriching communities.
Advanced Program Ensemble
In 2008-9, the Clown Conservatory's Advanced Program Ensemble spent a year developing and performing a circus adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland under the direction of Jeff Raz and the musical direction of Johannes Mager. The production, titled Wonderland, was developed around the performing skills of an ensemble of nine Conservatory students selected by audition.[1] The show opened on April 18, 2009 at the Julia Morgan Center in Berkeley, California and was shown locally in a tour of San Francisco Bay area community centers. Spectacle magazine wrote: "This highly inventive circus theatre project and its cast of promising new artists are off to an auspicious beginning... Both the Conservatory's 2009 class of clowns and the play Wonderland deserve to be seen more widely."[2]
The 2009-10 Advanced Program Ensemble, again working under the direction of Jeff Raz and Johannes Mager, developed a stage production titled Monkey King, a Circus Adventure, which opened in the spring of 2010.[3]
Circus Center
The Conservatory exists as part of the Circus Center in San Francisco.
A not-for-profit circus organization, Circus Center was created in July 2001, after the San Francisco School of Circus Arts had acquired the New Pickle Circus, two names that embody a rich and much older history. The San Francisco School of Circus Arts was founded by Wendy Parkman and Judy Finelli in 1984, as a project of the Pickle Family Circus, which in turn was founded ten years earlier by Larry Pisoni and Peggy Snider.
The Circus Center offers training for adults and children in recreational, amateur and professional circus arts. It currently offers three professional conservatory programs for people pursuing careers in circus arts. These conservatories focus individually on Clowning, Aerial Arts, and Contortion. The Circus Center also encapsulates the San Francisco Circus and The New Pickle Circus, offering live performances under those imprints.
References
- ^ Through The Looking Glass: a peek behind WONDERLAND. Documentary video by Marco Martinez-Galarce. Sin Zapatos Productions. 2009. Retrieved 18 May 2010.
- ^ Joel Schechter. "Clowns in Wonderland". Spectacle. Summer 2009 (Vol. 12, No. 4), p. 34.
- ^ The Clown Conservatory - Shows. ClownConservatory.org. Retrieved 18 May 2010.
External links
Coordinates: 37°45′57″N 122°27′25″W / 37.76583°N 122.45694°W
Categories:- Circuses
- Circus schools
- Schools of the performing arts in the United States
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