Old Hats - American Conservatory Theater

A M E R I C A N C O N S E R VAT O R Y T H E AT E R
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PRESENTS
Signature Theatre’s Production of
Old Hats
Created by Bill Irwin and David Shiner
Directed by Tina Landau
Music & Lyrics by and Featuring Shaina Taub
The Geary Theater
September 10–October 5, 2014
WORDS ON PLAYS
vol. xxi, no. Shannon Stockwell
Editor
Elizabeth Brodersen
Director of Education
Michael Paller
Resident Dramaturg
Hailey Shapiro
Dramaturgy Fellow
Made possible by
Deloitte, The Kimball Foundation, National Corporate Theatre
Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, The Sato Foundation, and
The Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation
© 2014 AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER, A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Table of Contents
Overview of Old Hats
A Heavy Dose of Liveness
An Interview with Director Tina Landau
by Shannon Stockwell
Laughter and Loss
An Interview with Actor Bill Irwin
by Michael Paller
The Island of Misfit Toys
An Interview with Actor David Shiner
by Shannon Stockwell
Creative Conversations
An Interview with Musician Shaina Taub
by Hailey Shapiro
The History of the Clown
by Emily Means
Questions to Consider / For Further Information . . .
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G. W. Mercier
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Overview of Old Hats
Old Hats was created by Bill Irwin and David Shiner and directed by Tina Landau
for New York City’s Signature Theatre in . A.C.T.’s production is the West Coast
premiere of Old Hats.
Creative Team
Music and Lyrics by ................................... Shaina Taub
Set and Costume Design by ....................... G. W. Mercier
Lighting Design by .................................... Scott Zielinski
Sound Design by ........................................ John Gromada
Projection Design by .................................. Erik Pearson and Wendall K. Harrington
Video Production by ................................... Erik Pearson
Musicians ................................................... Mike Brun and Jacob Colin Cohen
Foley Artist ................................................. Mike Dobson
Synopsis
More than years after their Tony Award–winning clown show Fool Moon, Bill Irwin
and David Shiner have reunited to create a new show, exploring what it’s like to grow
older in a clown’s body. With musical interludes by musician Shaina Taub, the clowns
compete, argue, and seek recognition through a series of sketches and several different
characters, all comedic and tragic in their own way.
The Debate
Two Political Opponents each want to win a debate at any cost, and failure is not an
option for either of them. Their satisfaction ratings are the means to survival, and each
will do anything to keep his numbers up and the other guy’s down. It becomes clear that
the debate is not about politics but about Americanisms, testosterone, and dirty tricks.
Mr. Business
A Businessman who lives and dies by his technological devices finds that he is in less
control of them than he thought when he discovers a smaller, devilish version of himself
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living inside of these machines. The Digital Businessman antagonizes the Businessman,
and the two fight for control.
Hobo Puppet Waltz
A desperately lonely, depressed Hobo sits on a bench. He is looking for some kind of
relationship anywhere and everywhere, including in the trashcan next to him. After
several pathetic and failed attempts at connection, the Hobo creates a woman out of
trash.
The Magic Act
A couple with an unhealthy, antagonistic relationship performs a tired magic act, which
consists of classic magic tricks that other, more talented magicians have done a million
times before.
The Encounter
Two crabby Old Men in big pants carrying umbrellas and newspapers wait for a train. At
first they argue with each other, but find mutual ground once they start commiserating
over their various ailments and sharing treatments.
A New Voice
At the encouragement of the Musician, the Clowns try their hand at singing and talking,
but it gets out of control. The three of them decide it’s best for the Clowns to stick to
traditional bits and let the Musician take care of the vocals.
The Waiter
A Chef attempts, with classic flair, to plate spaghetti from a large pot, but the sticky
pasta has a mind of its own.
Cowboy Cinema
After casting a few audience members as the stars in an old western film in which two
cowboys duel over the love of a young ingénue in a bar, a Director struggles to get his
new actors to cooperate with his vision.
Rhythm Competition
The Clowns compete for the Musician’s affections by showing off, but eventually they all
recognize the fun of working together. They finally come together as a trio.
A Heavy Dose of Liveness
An Interview with Director Tina Landau
By Shannon Stockwell
“The Coolest Project Ever” was the subject line of the email Tina Landau received
from her agent, asking her if she would be interested in working with Bill Irwin and
David Shiner on their new project at Signature Theatre. Landau, who had seen Irwin
and Shiner in Fool Moon about twenty years earlier and was a huge fan of their work,
jumped at the opportunity.
Landau’s directorial work includes Chuck Mee’s Iphigenia (Signature Theatre),
Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas (New York Theatre Workshop), Tarell Alvin
McCraney’s Wig Out! (Vineyard Theatre) and In the Red and Brown Water (The Public),
Antony and Cleopatra (Hartford Stage), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (McCarter
Theatre, Papermill Playhouse), as well as Bells Are Ringing and Tracy Letts’s Superior
Donuts on Broadway. Landau is also a company member of Steppenwolf Theatre in
Chicago and has directed numerous shows there. Most recently at A.C.T., Landau
directed The Time of Your Life, by William Saroyan, in .
Although Old Hats is unlike anything Landau had ever worked on before, she was
particularly well-suited to direct this physical show, as she coauthored The Viewpoints
Book with Anne Bogart. Viewpoints is a method of theatrical composition that heavily
focuses on physicality, movement, and gesture. “I feel very comfortable in Bill and
David’s world, because I always think of my theater work in a physical way,” Landau
says. “It surpasses the verbal.”
What is it like directing two clowns?
Bill and David had never worked with an official director on one of their projects
together, and I think they were a little skeptical about the notion, because what they had
figured out in the past had worked for them. I think Jim [Houghton, artistic director at
Signature] or someone convinced them: “Maybe a director would be a good idea! Why
don’t we spend a week together in a room and just see what happens?” At the end of that
time, they would see how they felt, and I would see how I felt. So I agreed to a one-week
workshop, and for the first three or four days, I went home thinking, “Wow. They’re
amazing. I could be a fly on the wall forever watching them work, but they do not need
me in the room.” But I also very intentionally didn’t go in thinking of “directing” the
way I usually do. I just wanted to observe and see what their process was and see if I
thought I could be helpful. I think it was actually good that I held back a little, because it
allowed them to feel comfortable with me. Before I knew it, they started saying, “What
do you think about that? What does that look like?” Very slowly, we realized that it was
a wonderful match and I should continue with the project.
Did you do any kind of preparation before rehearsals?
The whole process has been radically different from the way I normally work. The
preparation I did before going into that week was just to learn a little more about them.
I had seen Fool Moon and was a huge fan, so I had a sense of who they were. I did
preparation for the design work, because one of the main things I did on the project
was create a physical world within which their work could live. But compared to what
I normally do for a show, when I collect hundreds if not thousands of images and listen
to music and do historical research—I did none of that. I didn’t need to prepare a lot
because what I had most to offer was a skill set that I have, which is knowing how to
write a light cue and create a button on a number and figure out a transition.
However, by being inspired by them, just by being in the room, I found myself going
home and reading about comedy and the history of clowns. But that was not to prepare
for, but from being inspired by.
I’ve worked a lot on being an outside eye, on concocting the overall production of
the show and on the structure and flow of the evening. I worked closely with Nellie
[McKay] and now with Shaina [Taub] on musical choices. I try to keep my eye on the
whole evening and how it needs to function as a piece of music would, with fast sections
and slow sections and repeats, in lieu of a traditional plot.
Nellie McKay was the musician for the run at Signature Theatre. How did Shaina
Taub come to be involved with the project?
We searched high and low for Nellie’s replacement, because we didn’t want a replica of
Nellie. We wanted to find someone equally original, equally appropriate for the clowns,
but also create a situation in which we wouldn’t feel like we were trying to recreate
what once was. So I searched on any and every indie music website you can imagine for
singer/songwriters and young cabaret stars, and I checked out all the acts in New York
at Joe’s Pub and Below, and we called agents and had auditions.
When we realized Nellie couldn’t do it, I was the one who thought, “Oh, this is going
to be no problem! We’ll find someone.” It actually took months and months of really
hard work to find someone, because we knew it had to be a very special someone. Also,
in the music world, you get people who aren’t used to or interested in doing eight shows
a week for four or five weeks, so there were some people who just wouldn’t consider it.
Yet, at the same time, we didn’t want to cast a musical theater performer to “play” Nellie.
We really needed someone who was a hybrid, and Shaina is exactly that.
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How would you describe Shaina’s style?
I’d call it witty and soulful contemporary music, mixing a blend of theatricality with
pop, rock, and blues. She’s a synthesis of a lot of different elements. Whereas Nellie
veered toward nostalgia and a retro feel, Shaina is definitely a young, hip performer,
and she is going to bring a very youthful and contemporary quality to the show. Nellie
has something both cutting-edge and old-fashioned about her; Shaina lives more in the
what-is-happening-now world. The show is centered around themes of youth versus age
and new versus old and technology versus natural organic devices. With both musicians,
the clowns have been offered a counterpoint to their age and their sensibility; that ends
up being wonderful, because they play off of it, they try to learn from it.
David and Bill have said that they have very different but complementary clowning
styles. Do you agree with that? What do you see as their clowning styles?
How did they describe their clowning styles?
David says he is more aggressive; Bill is more poetic.
Interesting! As far as their stage personas, I was introduced to them through Fool Moon.
I definitely thought of them as being the “good clown/bad clown”—that Bill’s clown is
a sweeter, more happy-go-lucky guy, and David’s clown is a little more brooding and
mean-spirited. But David’s clown has a heart of gold, and Bill’s clown has an edge.
David and Bill also have very different working styles. They’re both perfectionists
and they are both diligent to the extreme. Again, I feel like it has been my lucky gift to
get to work with them, because I learned so much merely by observing two great artists
work on their craft. But their styles in rehearsals—what they like to do and when they
like to do it and the speed with which they like to do it—are very different. A big part
of my role in the room was to guide what we were doing and when, to find a happy
balance between the two of them. David can more easily get distracted by something
else he wants to work on and is rife with new ideas all the time. Bill tends to sit in one
spot, and wants to get something just right and really examine that single point. They’re
both a little bit crazy, but in the most wonderful way.
They seem to click so well, and it’s interesting to hear about what that dynamic is
from an outside perspective.
Until the piece is fully formed and set, but even then, rehearsal consists of a lot of “What
if?” And the “what ifs” aren’t talked about: Bill and David are on their feet improvising,
and before you know it, they will be off floating along some river you never knew existed,
and you’re trying desperately to get them back to shore. They could create ten shows
from the material that came out of our time in the room. It ultimately becomes a process
of editing.
Was there an audience in the room during rehearsal?
For certain moments in the show—“The Magic Act” in act one and “Cowboy Cinema”
in act two—we brought staff members in during the final week or two of rehearsals. We
would do special little sessions on those two pieces that involved the audience. What’s
wonderful about the show is that there are parts and moments that are rigorously set
and perfected and performed with a precise repetition each night, and there are parts
that are completely open and anything can happen inside of them. David and Bill have
a great intuitive sense of how to balance those two styles when they’re performing. They
always want long preview periods because they feel that their partner for the whole show
is the audience.
So the show changes a lot once it opens up to an audience?
I wouldn’t say it changed from the foundation up, or structurally, but moment by
moment there were hundreds of things that we finessed or corrected or said, “If you wait
a beat before that bit you might get a bigger laugh. Let’s try it tonight.” That work went
on not only through previews, but through the whole run, which was several months.
When I was in town, I came back at least once a week to check in, make sure no one
had wandered too far off, and they were continuing to work on their bits, as all great
clowns and artists do.
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How would you describe a clown’s relationship to the audience, compared to that of a
more traditional actor?
I think ultimately the goal is the same, which is to connect and to engender feeling, and
thereby ask us to take a new look at our own lives or help us find a moment of solace.
The goals of a clown are very similar to the goals of performers in general, but the means
are different: a clown uses primarily laughter. Clowns are quite clear on the fact that
people laugh at misfortune and failed attempts and mistakes, so they elicit what ends
up being a very joyful evening through moments that are filled with human foible and
error and sadness. There has to be some pain in the comedy. That’s what it is born out of.
From what I understand, there are many depictions of failure in the show. For
example, David mentioned the tramp scene a lot.
And “The Magic Act” shows a number of failed attempts, and it’s also about a
relationship that has its problems. The basic dynamic between them boils down to a
competition, where they are trying harder or more than their scene partner. I think that’s
true of “The Hat Trick,” “The Debate,” and the scene we call “The Encounter,” and in
their vying for attention from the singer, as well. There are a number of competitions
between the two that run throughout the piece, and because of that, one of them is
always failing at any given time.
When the audience laughs at the clowns’ competition and failures, do you think it
comes from a place of laughing at them or with them?
Definitely with them. I would venture a guess that percent of the audience’s reactions
are born out of recognition, not judgment.
What effect do the nonverbal elements of the show have on the audience?
When we hear words, a part of our brain engages that only allows us to hear what is
being said, but not necessarily how it’s being said. We glom onto meaning, and the
meaning is very prescribed by how we understand that word. A picture is worth a
thousand words. It leaves the individual audience member open to access a part of the
mind that is more associative than literal.
How much laughter is there in the rehearsal room?
Oh, my gosh. Tons! We laugh all the time. They crack themselves up, they crack each
other up, I guffaw. And they respond. If a stage manager laughs or I laugh, they’ll
respond. Laughter is a very potent ingredient in the room.
It feels like laughter is the ultimate goal, so when it happens it must be really exciting.
What’s beautiful about how Bill and David work is that they’re not thinking, “What will
be funny?” or “How do I make this funny?” They just play like kids, and you respond to
what’s happening based on your own reaction to it, what kind of feelings of giddiness
or surprise it brings up. It’s a lot of playing, so it often feels like being at camp or in a
playground.
What was your favorite part of working on Old Hats?
Two things come to mind. One is getting to know Bill and David, who are two
extraordinary, complex, hilarious, large-hearted humans, and I adore them. That is a
gift I’ve been given.
And the other thing that I’ve enjoyed most is being in the audience when they’re
performing. Often as a director, at some point in previews, I start getting tired or bored
or scared of my own work, and I often find an inability to see it afresh. I never for an
instant feel that with these guys. I could watch them every night of a long run and know
that something is actually happening in this theater tonight that did not happen last
night and won’t happen again tomorrow. And I get to be there for it! That’s the kind
of theater experience I think we all long for: a real, strong, heavy dose of what I’d call
“liveness.” That has been one of the things that I treasure most about this experience
so far.
Laughter and Loss
An Interview with Actor Bill Irwin
By Michael Paller
Bill Irwin has been variously described by critics as “America’s clown prince,” “this
generation’s most purely physical comic,” and “a clown by whom future clowning will
be benchmarked.” His diverse performance background is reflected in the amalgam
of styles and references at play in his work, which simultaneously pokes fun at the
conventions of traditional theater while triggering a cultural memory of clowns from the
golden era of American vaudeville.
Irwin acquired a lifelong love for making people laugh with physical comedy as a
child, avidly watching his earliest role models—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and
Danny Kaye—on television. In the early s, he immersed himself in avant-garde
theater as a member of Herbert Blau’s experimental KRAKEN ensemble and developed
his soft-shoe dance skills with San Francisco’s ODC. Torn between the refined art of the
stage and the free spirit of the circus, Irwin took to San Francisco’s streets, entertaining
sidewalk audiences around town with fire eating, pantomime, and comedic monologues.
In , after an eight-week course with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Clown
College, Irwin answered an ad for performers in a San Francisco newspaper and found
himself at the door of Larry Pisoni and Peggy Snider, cofounders of San Francisco’s
now-celebrated Pickle Family Circus. Short on circus experience but long on talent,
Irwin became the Pickle’s first white-faced clown and toured with the one-ring show
for the next five years. The Pickle Family’s chaotic blend of vaudeville, theater, modern
dance, and silent-screen slapstick comedy was the perfect environment for Irwin’s own
budding eclecticism.
When he left the circus in and began creating original work for the stage, Irwin’s
experimental impulses and love of popular entertainment united in surrealistic pieces of
physical and verbal comedy such as The Regard of Flight, in which his graceful clown
battles a pretentious critic and, in his signature comic dilemma, the forces of an invisible
vacuum that threatens to suck him offstage. Critics lauded Irwin’s physical grace and
uncanny ability to perform old-fashioned routines with a modern sense of irony. In he was awarded a five-year MacArthur “genius grant,” the first to go to a performing
artist.
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After collaborating with fellow clown David Shiner on
Sam Shepard’s film Silent Tongue, the two, along with
the Red Clay Ramblers, created the Tony Award–winning
Fool Moon. In addition to his work as a clown, Irwin has
had an accomplished career as an actor in straight theater,
winning a Tony Award for his performance as George
in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in . As an A.C.T.
associate artist, Bill Irwin has most recently appeared on the
Geary stage in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame in , and in
, he played the title role Molière’s Scapin, which he also
adapted and directed.
While he took his dog for a walk, we spoke to him about
his upcoming performance with A.C.T. His energy and
positivity were palpable. “I’m very, very excited,” he said.
“I’m also scared to death. We’re embarking on new things:
time constraints, money constraints, old age constraints. But
we have a good starting place, and we’re really excited about
seeing what it will amount to.”
First thing’s first. How did Old Hats come about?
There’s no way I can sufficiently thank and credit Signature Theatre. Jim Houghton,
the artistic director, was tenacious about saying, “You and David should try doing
something.” So David and I were in a room together in what I recall was September
of for the first of five workshops. It’s not like mounting a moon expedition, but
just putting two people in a room together, and then eventually three and four people
in a room with stage managers, takes some doing on a theater’s part. So, five times he
convened us, and by the last two we had a show beginning to take shape. The first three
were kind of flailing about. We like to think it’s a meeting of a lot of different stories.
It’s a reflection on the world by two guys who are no longer young.
Hence the name.
Hence the name! Exactly.
When you start from nothing, what direction do you go in? How do you know what
you’re building or what you have?
Different ideas come to different individuals. I thought, Okay, we’re talking about Fool
Moon revisited. But other voices, including Jim’s, kept saying, “I don’t think you want
to do Fool Moon revisited.” I’m not sure whether I agreed or not, but I took it under
advisement. Also, we were looking for different ways to work with music than we had
in Fool Moon.
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And now you have the wonderful musician Shaina Taub. What do you think she’ll
bring to the show?
She just has a presence with an audience that works. When she sings, you’re just plugged
into Shaina. She just finished doing The Tempest, codirected by Teller of Penn and Teller
[at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. Shaina and a band
performed all the songs, so she knows how to do this at her ripe young age. The clowns
will come and go in the course of our show, but the band and Shaina, they’re with the
audience the whole time.
I understand there’s a bit in the show with an iPad, and I was wondering if that stems
from the bit in your show Largely New York, in which you got sucked into a TV
monitor.
Yes! It is a weird and unlikely continuation of my media/clown interface. It’s weird and
unlikely because I’m a guy who’s really dependent on my laptop, but I do not own an
iPad, and I do not own a smart phone. I’m talking on a flip phone to you now. But the
devices we now hold in our hands, we used to lug them around with great effort when
I first started interacting with my own image onstage. They’re such a huge part of our
lives now. It strikes a chord. And we’re endeavoring not to call it “The iPad Piece,” which
we have been now for years, because it no longer uses an iPad. It uses a tablet made by
a different company.
I’ll refer to it, then, as “The Tablet Bit.”
“The Tablet Piece” or “The Media Piece.” We also call it “Mr. Business.” This segment is
probably going to be the most different of any of the pieces we do in the San Francisco
version of Old Hats. With the help of A.C.T.’s production department, we’ve reshot the
onstage footage that goes into the creating of this piece.
Back in , when you were doing Largely New York, did you have any inkling that
technology would devour us the way it has?
I like to think about broad cultural questions, but no, I don’t think I had a clue that we’d
be holding these things in our hands and that actual human posture would be changing
in our lifetimes because of the digital pictures we’re all now fixated on. There’s a section
that we call “The Zombie Walk.” For a moment, my character goes into that “I’m locked
into the screen in front of me, and I’m still walking forward but I could walk in front
of a car” mode.
You can walk down any street and see three or four people in a crosswalk, all with their
heads down, looking at their phone.
It’s true! And because of my age, I’m still sort of naïve. Out of the corner of my eye,
I’ll see somebody sitting on a bench and think, “Oh, that person’s sitting very still and
contemplating, thinking.” But of course he’s deleting items from his phone. [Laughs.]
Since I gather there’s no spoken text in the new show, I was wondering, why is
nonverbal language so central to clown work?
I listened to NPR today about the dangers of sitting. This one zealous doctor was saying
it’s killing us, that it’s much harder on us than smoking or drinking or other habits. But
even as we sedate ourselves into a kind of constant coma with our technological devices,
we still respond to really physical storytelling. David Shiner is the first to say that people
laugh in a different way at things they see that don’t depend on words. It’s a deeper kind
of response.
When we developed Fool Moon, I was convinced—and I was vocal on the subject—
that we had to talk, otherwise we’d be ridiculed and dismissed as a mime show. So, we
had all this dialogue at the top, and I just insisted that it had to be there. We did it for
one preview, and it was disastrous. The next night, we threw out all the words and it was
pure; it just belonged to itself more. In Old Hats, though, the clowns do touch upon the
human voice in the course of the evening. I’ll leave it at that.
We’ll see how it turns out! It seems as though audiences have to pay attention in a
different way when there’s no spoken text.
It’s true. Even really talky plays, great plays, are at some level physical plays. In Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? there’s a physical confrontation in the middle of the second act
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that’s at the center of the whole play. If you didn’t have that, you wouldn’t have the play.
And I think that’s true of every great play: Hamlet, King Lear.
It’s also true of the Beckett work that you’ve done, which is such a combination of text
and silence.
In Waiting for Godot [Irwin played Lucky at Lincoln Center in and Vladimir on
Broadway in ], there are acts of violence, and they happen toward the middle of the
play; they are central to it. So even our talkiest theater is physical theater, is pantomime
on some level.
The last time we saw you here, which was in Endgame, you sat in a chair for the whole
minutes. Do you ever sit down in Old Hats?
Briefly, to change shoes.
I’m so grateful to A.C.T., and to A.C.T. audiences, for being part of the first
go-around that I had with Endgame, but I need to get at it again. In that story, where’s
the physical underpinning that we were just talking about? What’s the equivalent of the
fight at the middle of Virginia Woolf? The violence in the middle of the second act of
Godot, or the violence of Vanya coming in with a gun in Uncle Vanya? Where do you find
that in Endgame? I badly need a second go-around, or a second and third go-around, with
that play.
Going back to clowning, why is the relationship between clown and audience so
central? It’s different than it is, say, for Virginia Woolf, or any traditional play.
I’m not sure that you can necessarily boil it down to just this, but people say that in a
clown show you acknowledge the audience; in a play you tell the story, you offer it up
to the audience, but you don’t include them in it. Sometimes, we performers get our
instincts mixed up, so we can be doing a Beckett play, or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
and we’ll hear a great sneeze out in the fifth row, and you just know that if Shiner was
onstage he would react to that sneeze, he’d offer the guy a handkerchief, and you’d go
from there. But the job in a traditional play is to not acknowledge that, to tell the story in
spite of that. With clowns, the audience is always in the same room. All the way through
Old Hats, and all the way through all the work Shiner and I have done together, we’re
vying for the audience’s attention. Sometimes at a semiconscious level, but sometimes it’s
completely overt: “Look at this! Watch this! Don’t look at him, look at me!”
Fool Moon was a show that people could bring families to. Is that true of Old Hats?
It is! It may be a portrait of the years between Fool Moon and Old Hats that with the
first show we might have said, “Ooh, yeah, that’s a good comic idea, but is it good for
families?” Now there doesn’t seem to be much question. In fact, kids are often leading
the “getting of the jokes.” Shiner and I always say that our favorite nights with Fool Moon
and now with Old Hats are when we get laughter from an audience of many generations.
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During Fool Moon, we met some people afterwards. “We loved you guys! This is my
mother”—she seemed really ancient, she was probably my age now—“And this is our
son, he loved it.” And the boy says, “I never see my dad laugh like that.” [Laughs.] And
the time that a little girl said, “Yeah, my mom peed!” [Laughs.] It makes it seem like
we’ve done a good job.
I imagine it must be a whole different show when there are a lot of kids in the house.
Yes, and we always tell presenters there’s a crucial threshold where as soon as it’s percent kids, the show will not work very well. There’s a tipping point, and I’m not
Malcolm Gladwell to define what the tipping point is, but it’s really crucial: as soon as
it belongs to kids, it’s not entirely their métier. But with the kids there with the adults,
there’s a wonderful feeling that they have been brought into the adult world.
When you did a Words on Plays interview for Fool Moon in , you mentioned
that, at that point, you had developed a burning interest in spoken language. Since
then, you’ve done a lot of television and plays. Has that work had any effect on your
clowning, or has your clowning had any effect on your acting?
It absolutely has. One thing you can say about human wiring: the grass is always greener.
So when you’re immersed in some huge talking role, you sometimes think, “Wouldn’t
it be fun to just do a baggy pants piece and walk across a stage and connect with the
audience without saying a word?” And then, in the midst of a -week run of Old Hats,
sometimes it’s, “Oof, I’d like to be doing Vanya!” So the grass is always greener, but yes,
they do play off each other. I’ve done two Edward Albee plays [Virginia Woolf and The
Goat, or Who is Sylvia? on Broadway in ], where there were many moments when
I was absolutely still thinking, “Wow! This audience is really laughing. This is hot
laughter, and I’m not running around, I’m not falling down, I’m just saying what I’m
saying to Sally Field with as much focus as I can, and now I have to hold for a long,
hot laugh. That’s interesting. We used to drop our trousers and fall down three times to
get that kind of response!” So, that’s been feeding into my thoughts on clowning, and
vice versa.
Since the show is called Old Hats, I just have to ask, are those hats that used to
hang in your old apartment still around?
[Laughter.] A couple of those hats may still be in the mix. The further you get into it,
life is about downsizing. It’s also about loss. One of my pet theorems in talking to acting
students is that our job is to tell the story of loss. It’s really dangerous, because you can
go wrong, you can misinterpret that real easily. But I think it is. People say, “What about
gain? What about celebration?” Yes, and yet those kind of take care of themselves in
life. So what we do has a lot to do with telling the story of loss, and that’s true in clown
stuff—where we’re hoping for maximum laughter—as much as it is in Greek tragedy.
When Carey [Perloff ] and Olympia [Dukakis] do Elektra, there are ways in which the
mission statement is the same as Old Hats’s. That might sound misleading. It might
dampen ticket sales. [Laughs.] But it is kind of true.
Even if the audience experiences something with a tinge of loss to it, in the end, if all
goes according to everybody’s hopes, we gain something from this experience of loss.
Hope is not conceivable without some kind of apprehension of loss. Part of life now is
the fact that the pie shrinks. You realize that you’re no longer planning for the future—
this is the future. I’m just giving away a lot of costume stuff. We had a big yard sale at
our house a few weeks ago.
That must have been something to see—the Bill Irwin garage sale.
Some local magicians got word that we were having it and came over, and it was really
thrilling. But it’s painful, too, like those hats. The hat collection was growing at the time
you were thinking of. It got all out of hand and had to be downsized big time a couple
of years ago, and there’s still downsizing going on. And then, of course, you don’t have
the thing you want when you want it.
Right, of course. And you haven’t wanted it for years until you’ve gotten rid of it.
[Laughs.] Exactly! It’s the same story.
The Island of Misfit Toys
An Interview with Actor David Shiner
By Shannon Stockwell
Boston-born David Shiner began his career years ago in Boulder, Colorado, after
seeing Samuel Avital’s Boulder Mime Troupe perform. In a moment of inspiration and
bravery, Shiner put on makeup and took to the streets—and ended up making more
money than he had at his day job as a carpenter. After his initial exposure to mime, he
heard from some jugglers passing through town that the street performance scene in
Paris was vibrant—so, he packed up his bags and moved. “In those days, there were a lot
of street artists,” Shiner says. “It was a very fervent time; the police didn’t bother you and
the audiences were great. It was a very romantic, adventurous lifestyle.”
After working in Paris, Shiner went on to join Germany’s Circus Roncalli and
Sweden’s Circus Knie. “I didn’t know that much about the circus,” Shiner says. “Even
as a boy growing up, we never went to the circus, but not because my father didn’t want
to take us; it just never seemed to come through the towns we were living in.” Total
immersion in the world of the circus allowed Shiner to hone his craft, and he caught the
attention of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil.
In , while touring the United States with Cirque’s Nouvelle Experience, Shiner
met Bill Irwin for the first time. Shiner had seen Irwin perform in The Regard of Flight
in and was immediately attracted to his style. “When I saw him, I thought, ‘That’s
what I want to be doing. That guy is the best I’ve ever seen,’” remembers Shiner. “It was
a beautiful thing to watch. The way he moved and danced and everything—I just loved
it.” As he discovered when they met nearly ten years later, the feeling was mutual.
As fate would have it, the two were cast in Sam Shepard’s film Silent Tongue as
a couple of medicine show clowns, along with the band the Red Clay Ramblers. Their
improvisations were so effortless and seamless that when Lincoln Center contacted
Shiner and asked him to participate in their Serious Fun! festival, he agreed—and
brought Irwin and the Red Clay Ramblers along.
The show they created for the festival was the beginning of Fool Moon, which
went on to tour the United States and Europe over the next decade (including two
overwhelmingly popular runs at A.C.T., in and ) and won a Tony Award
for Unique Theatrical Experience. Twenty years after the two clowns first met, James
Houghton, artistic director of Signature Theatre in New York, suggested that Irwin
and Shiner team up again, and Old Hats was
the result. Although working together was,
as usual, a great time—“I have the most fun
working with Bill,” Shiner says—the process
was not without fear, as he explained to us
from his home in Munich, Germany.
“We were both terrified of not being able
to come up with anything,” Shiner admits.
“We’re getting older, and we were definitely
asking, ‘Do we have anymore stuff in us?’ And
the answer, thank god, was yes!”
Both you and Bill have said that you have
different but complementary clowning
styles. How you would describe your style
and his in comparison to each other?
I think Bill is more poetic. He reminds me a
lot of Buster Keaton. He’s very openhearted,
and he has a very sweet character. Bill is
softer; I’m just aggressive. I play the devil to Bill’s . . . I wouldn’t call him an angel. I’m
sure he’d hate it if I said that, because he can also be a devil. But I think what makes
us work so well together is this very difference, this yin and yang, this dark and light. I
tend to fly off the handle, and he has to calm me down. I have fun showing anger and
aggression, the darker side of the clown. I’d say we’re both good separately, but together
we’re just fantastic.
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What was the process for creating Old Hats?
We both thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do this?” and “I’ve always wanted to do this.”
I’ve always wanted to do a magic number and have Bill play my wife, a couple of real
losers from Reno. I’ve always wanted to do a hobo character. We also took some older
routines from Fool Moon and refurbished them, made them different.
Which scenes?
The two guys waiting for a train: now they’re two old guys, still waiting for the train.
So now they have a lot of ailments, a lot of aches and pains, two hypochondriacs. But
they’re still trying to hang in there. I’m doing the cinema number, but this time it’s the
Old West. I just changed the setting. It’s a combination of new stuff and older stuff
that’s been redone.
It’s hard to talk about how you create a show. You go in each day and you try stuff.
You bring in a lot of props and costumes and hats and whatever else. You’re jamming:
“Oh, wouldn’t this be funny!” or “What about this idea? What about that idea?” You
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discard a lot. Then you start to pursue it more seriously. And then, of course, you get
in front of an audience, and you really find out if something’s working or not—because
you can’t tell in the rehearsal room. Even if you have people watching, it’s just not the
same. Once you get up in front of an audience, then the real work begins. Some stuff you
thought would be funny is not funny, or the timing is completely off. You continually
need to fine tune it until it starts to work, and it’s very, very hard work.
Compared to the first performance, was Old Hats drastically different at the end of
the Signature run?
Well, not drastically different, but it was tight, it was working. Of course it changes.
Everything falls into place. Also you’ll have challenging parts of the show that are very
problematic, that you struggle with. That could last for weeks on end until you figure it
out. All you’re focused on the whole time is, How can we make this show really good?
At the end of the day, you just hope that it works. There’s no magic involved.
Would you say that a clown show facilitates a different kind of relationship with the
audience from other kinds of theater?
It’s still theater; they’re just different characters. You’re playing a clown. You’ll definitely
have more contact with the audience—that’s just the nature of clowning. With most
clown shows, there’s not really a fourth wall, so it’s very immediate. I wouldn’t say it’s
different, I would just say it has its own challenges. Of course, making people laugh
without speaking is a whole different ball game, because you’re relying on the timing of
your body and the slapstick and the structure of the sketches. It’s much more difficult to
do than stand-up comedy. With stand-up comedy, you can sit down and write a lot of
funny ideas out; you write it so you can go up in front of a microphone and talk about
it. Silent comedy is all physical. It’s a different beast altogether.
Fool Moon initially had dialogue that you later cut. Did you know from the start that
Old Hats would be silent?
Yes—there are some spots where we speak, but it’s basically a silent show. We knew
that’s our strength. I think the beauty of Fool Moon and working with the Red Clay
Ramblers was that we didn’t say a word the whole night, and everybody understood
exactly what we were doing. It was a very magical evening.
So you do speak in Old Hats?
Yes, there’s a scene where we’re allowed to talk, but, of course, the deeper we get into the
act of speaking, the more we realize how much we’re failing at it.
Where did that idea come from? Do you remember?
Heck no. You get so many ideas going, you can’t remember. It’s just, one day: “Oh,
wouldn’t be interesting if we did this? If we were going to talk, how would we structure
it?” The clowns are “allowed to talk” in this section, and then they get carried away with
themselves and it gets really embarrassing for everybody.
What is the clown’s relationship with the onstage musicians?
Part of the reason they are there is so we can rest between sketches, because we’re old!
But you want a musical presence. It adds so much color to the show, as does having
a musical personality, someone who’s writing original tunes. The Red Clay Ramblers
were their own world. Nellie McKay was her own world. Shaina Taub is the same. At
times we’ll play with each other, and at times she’s just doing her thing and we’re doing
our thing. She’s will also accompany certain sketches musically, which is very, very
important. You need music.
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Do you have any favorite scenes or moments in Old Hats?
No, not really. At the end of the day, you want the entire two hours to be great. I prefer
working with Bill, I can say that much. When I’m alone doing my stuff, it’s fun, but I
just love working with Bill. I love when he’s there onstage with me, because we crack
each other up. It’s fun.
I have this character, the hobo character, whom I like playing a lot because it’s very
new and I’m still trying to find my way with him. I’m kind of attached to that right now
because I’m trying something very, very different from what I’m used to doing. It’s more
of a tragic character.
But there’s comedy in the tragedy.
And that’s the challenge, to balance both, to make it funny and tragic at the same time.
It’s a lot of fun, because it’s a big challenge to pull that off. When you can pull it off, it’s
wonderful. People are laughing, and they’re thinking, “I’m not supposed to be laughing,
but I am! This is so tragic, but I’m laughing.” And then it becomes even more serious.
Will rehearsals for the San Francisco production mostly involve integrating Shaina’s
new music?
Yes, mostly. And of course, remembering what the hell we did a year ago!
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What role has Tina Landau, the director, played in creating Old Hats?
She’s really a third eye. Tina knows a lot about theater. She has a great eye. She’s easy to
work with and is very gracious. She’s been a tremendous support in making sure we get
what we want and making sure what we’re doing is working. Bill and I come up with
sketches, but she makes sure it comes together and works properly.
Obviously the music is going to be different, but will the clowning be different?
No, I don’t see that happening. It’s still going to be the same clown sketches. Hopefully,
they’ll be better! We’ve had a long time to rest.
Have you been thinking about Old Hats a lot since it was at Signature? Has it been
running around in your mind, or do you like to let things breathe?
Oh yeah, I like to let things breathe a lot. I added a new prop to “The Magic Act” that
I’ll bring with me. I had that idea while I was home, but Bill and I really need to be in
the same room together, and then things happen very quickly.
What makes something funny?
Oh god, please don’t ask me that question. What makes something funny? I mean,
everyone has a different sense of what funny is.
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But for you, personally?
For me, it’s when we’re able to laugh at the parts of ourselves that we hate the most, or
fear the most. I think the most satisfying laughter is when it heals, when the clown is
able to reveal human weakness or human failings in a very comic light. In essence, we’re
laughing at parts of ourselves that we find embarrassing, and those things are what make
us feel wonderfully human.
At the end of the day, I think laughter is something that heals. It’s vitally important.
Life’s not easy. It’s a struggle for everyone; no matter who you are, no matter how much
money you have, no matter how successful you are—it’s always a struggle, and the
clown’s role is to bring that struggle to light in whatever way a clown chooses to present
those problems.
But, as we observe the clown trying to solve those problems, solve those conflicts,
that’s where the comedy comes in, because the clown is playing the fool. You’re doing
the best that you can and being the most idiotic you can possibly be, a complete idiot,
someone who can’t do anything right.
We’re all misfits, whether we admit to it or not. I like to think of it as the Island of
Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer—we’re all on that island, whether we
admit it or not. We all feel like misfits, or like we don’t belong, or like outcasts. Nobody’s
perfect. The clown brings those imperfections to light, and we can laugh at them. That’s
a very healing thing.
Creative Conversations
An Interview with Musician Shaina Taub
By Hailey Shapiro
Shaina Taub is a Vermont-raised, New York–based performer and songwriter whom
the New Statesman calls “a powerhouse of quiet emotion.” Taub developed a trio with
musicians Mike Brun and Jacob Colin Cohen, fusing three-part soul harmonies and
acoustic jazz-influenced arrangements with an ear for inventive, laid-back grooves and
a passion for evocative songwriting. The Shaina Taub Trio plays regularly in New York,
and her concert at Joe’s Pub in was featured on New York’s National Public Radio
station’s “The Year’s Best Gigs” list.
An accomplished singer/songwriter and pianist, Taub is no stranger to the stage,
harboring a love for theater since childhood. She played the role of Princess Mary in
the critically acclaimed premiere of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet
of , for which she received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination. In the spring of
, she appeared in The Tempest at the American Repertory Theater, for which she
performed and arranged songs by Tom Waits. Ars Nova’s composer-in-residence
and the recipient of the Jonathan Larson Grant, Taub is currently writing the
scores for two new musicals: There’s a House, commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival, and Robin, commissioned by Ars Nova. “Shaina Taub’s infectious music is
a playful blend of Billy Joel’s piano-driven pop, Aretha’s soul, and Regina Spektor’s
whimsy,” WNYC’s Monika Fabian wrote in . “Taub’s imaginative lyricism is all her
own though. . . . [She] has creativity in spades.”
When we spoke to Taub, rehearsals for Old Hats in San Francisco had not yet started,
but she was brimming with enthusiasm about working with Tina Landau, Bill Irwin,
and David Shiner. “Their great reputations as artists precede them,” Taub says. “I’m
looking forward to working at A.C.T. I’ve heard a lot about the theater, and it clearly
seems like a happening place to work.”
What is your preferred musical style?
I don’t associate my songs with any one genre, as my influences are very eclectic. Growing
up, I spent as much time listening to Lauryn Hill as I did the Guys and Dolls cast album,
so I cull from a wide array of inspiration when I sit down to write music. My biggest
artistic idols are Carole King, Laura Nyro, Joni
Mitchell, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Stevie
Wonder, and Stephen Sondheim.
How long have you been making music and
theater?
I played a pirate in Peter Pan when I was four
years old and was hooked immediately. I’ve
been playing piano since second grade, and
started writing songs in college.
You studied at New York University/
Tisch School of the Arts. What has been
most useful to you professionally from your
experiences there?
My peers. The people I met at Tisch are
still among my closest creative friends and
collaborators. In my last two years at school,
I studied at the Experimental Theater Wing,
and the teachers there highly encourage the AVOW\OBOcP^V]b]PgAOaVO/`cbgc\]dO
acting students to create original work. My
main trigger for becoming a songwriter was their support in challenging me to find my
own voice.
What was your most recent project with Mike Brun and Jacob Colin Cohen, your
band?
We released a single of my song “Harvest” earlier this year. I’m thrilled they are both
joining me for Old Hats, as we’ve never had a chance to play together every night of the
week, which will be a blast, and artistically productive for us as an ensemble.
You are currently composing two different musicals: There’s a House for the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival and Robin for Ars Nova. What do you enjoy the most about
working on musicals?
I love working with playwrights! I’m very lucky to have wildly talented collaborators
who inspire me regularly. I always learn so much about songwriting by hearing my songs
interpreted by amazing performers, and writing for theater is a thrilling forum for that.
I’m also passionate about writing great roles for women to sing onstage.
You were recently in The Tempest at the American Repertory Theater. What was that
experience like?
I was very fortunate to work with one of Tom Waits’s own collaborators, a drummer
named Kenny Wolleson, who literally invented a whole bunch of unique instruments
that create an eerie and unusual aural landscape to the songs that echoes and honors
the esoteric percussion that permeates many of Waits’s records. In addition to all those
sounds, I arranged the songs for accordion, vibraphone, upright bass, and trumpet
and featured a duet of powerful female vocals. I’m honored to have worked with three
extraordinary musicians on the project—Miche Braden, Mike Brun, and Nate Tucker.
What other projects have you worked on recently?
I was in a show last year in New York called Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of ,
written by Dave Malloy and directed by Rachel Chavkin. I was passionate about the
project’s uniquely gorgeous score and my incredibly talented and loving cast, so the run
was a total joy.
How do you prepare for a new project?
My preparation varies project to project, depending on whether I’m writing or
performing, or both. Across the board, a big part of my process is cultivating an ongoing,
daily practice with writing and singing. I really believe in the ritual and discipline of
sitting down and working on some music each day no matter what. Twyla Tharp wrote
an excellent book called The Creative Habit that opened my mind to the importance of
routine to craft.
Have you worked with clowns before?
Nope! The closest thing I’ve done to playing music for clowns was working as a
pianist for this really wonderful arts education company called Story Pirates. They take
stories written by elementary school kids and perform them as musical sketch comedy,
accompanied by live piano underscoring. I imagine the lessons I learned in finding a
musical hammock for the enormous humor and physical energy of Story Pirates will be
helpful to me when working with the clowns.
What do you like the most about what you do?
Collaboration. I love creating and performing with others. Singing in harmony is the
most spiritual experience I’ve ever had.
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A History of the Clown
By Emily Means
“I’m never sure whether as clowns we’re trying to get to new places or trying to
get back to old places.”
—Master clown and A.C.T. associate artist Bill Irwin
The Early Clown
The tradition of comedy in Western theater began with the Greek deikelistai, the
itinerant acrobat-clowns of the seventh century BCE, who staged short, improvisational
farces—mimos or “mimes”—in country marketplaces and city centers. Plots were basic
and frequently recycled, and the use of stock characters ensured that even the folks in
the back of the biggest crowds could understand the story being told. Audiences easily
recognized character types by the exaggerated masks the actors often wore and by
the distinct costumes and props they paraded. A braggart soldier customarily played
an “imposter” outwitted by an “ironic,” whose self-deprecating nature fooled other
characters. There was the tricky slave, the coward, the show-off, the penny-pincher, and
the old man who was always chasing a much younger woman. The deikelistai tradition of
improvising skits that lampooned public, domestic, and religious life thrived as phlyakes
comedy in southern Italy in the third and fourth centuries BCE, and, later, Atellan farce
in Rome in the first century CE. Dramatists like Epicharmus of Kos (– BCE)
and Menander (/– BCE) capitalized on this comedic tradition by scripting
plays based on the mimos; Roman playwright Plautus (– BCE) used many of the
same archetypes in his comedies.
Comedies grew increasingly lewd even as Christianity spread; by the fifth century
BCE, religious officials had banned most theater. Some entertainers were able to find
permanent patronage as court jesters, but the majority worked as disenfranchised
street artists or nomadic players. By necessity, vagabond actors evolved into allaround performers—combining aspects of comedy, magic, music, and acrobatics—
and sought audiences wherever they could find them. Some became mountebanks,
fraudulent “doctors” who peddled relief for common ailments at medicine shows, often
accompanied by zanni, disruptive assistants who drew crowds with offbeat commentary.
Usually audiences knew the act was nothing but quackery, but they gladly purchased the
vials of magic elixirs, miracle tonics, and other so-called remedies the duo hawked to
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show appreciation for their comedy. The zanni, characterized as a servant-buffoon and
usually dressed as a country bumpkin, easily earned the sympathy of audience members
who championed him for his innocence and good-natured spirit.
By the sixteenth century CE, the English word clown was in use. The origins of
this word are uncertain, possibly from various Scandinavian words such as the klunni,
Icelandic for clumsy, boorish fellow; kluns, Swedish for a hard knob, a clumsy fellow;
and the Danish klunt, meaning a log or block. A less likely origin is the Latin colonus,
meaning farmer or rustic. No matter the origins, clown was used to describe the array
of nomadic entertainers wandering the countryside, performing spontaneous skits
in marketplaces while avoiding trouble from the censors. Clowns shied away from
providing public commentary, their acts mainly poking harmless, if exaggerated, fun at
human naïvety, much like the zanni who preceded them. In England, these bumbling
characters began showing up even in Church-sanctioned mystery and morality plays:
they characterized simpleton nativity shepherds and “sin,” embodied in the character
of Vice.
In Italy and France, small secular companies of professional actors banded together
to elevate the comic tradition of the zanni. The troupes called their work commedia
dell’arte—literally, comedy of skill—and set themselves apart from less-organized
amateur performers as they toured across Europe by performing on makeshift stages
in city marketplaces. Embracing the spirit of improvisation, commedia dell’arte shows
made use of three types of stock characters: masters, servants, and lovers. Roles were so
specialized, and the half-masks, costumes, and props that accompanied them so specific,
that a performer who had perfected one character would play it for the rest of his career.
Commedia was unscripted, but variations on the same familiar plots ensured that a few
standard personalities could be used to tell every story: they almost always revolved
around the attempts of Pantalone (the old, miserly master) to thwart the romance
between a pair of lovers. Comedy was instigated by a servant character—still called
zanni—whom Pantalone enlisted to help keep the couple apart, but who, betraying his
master, often helped bring the lovers together. Most famous of the commedia characters
was Arlecchino (or Harlequin), the mischievous, acrobatic clown dressed in diamond
patches, who always won over the audience with his antics even if he was not originally
very smart. As commedia dell’arte evolved, servant characters like Harlequin frequently
worked in pairs: a clever first zanni paired with a screwball second, echoing the dynamic
of the mountebank-zanni teams who had come before.
Throughout the eighteenth century, harassment from authorities in England and
France drove many comedic performers to silent pantomime, which, lacking offensive
language, suffered less censorship. Physical action became increasingly important to
clowns, and scenes teeming with practical jokes, acrobatics, animal impersonations,
violent slapstick, quick changes, and trapdoor tricks became the new norm. Theatrical
pantomimes became enormously popular in England, most famous of which was the
Harlequinade spectacle. Harlequinades often closed out a night of other more serious
performances, aiming to dazzle and delight audiences with stage magic and physical
comedy. These fast-paced productions aligned popular British characters—those of
nursery rhymes, holiday tales, and well-known literature—with commedia’s stock roles.
Joseph Grimaldi (–), a superstar of the British pantomime stage, seized this
opportunity to reinvent Clown, the Harlequinade’s buffoon character. Like other dimwitted zanni, Clown was always getting tricked or tripped, but he lacked the redeeming
qualities that had endeared his predecessors to crowds in the Middle Ages. Grimaldi,
who debuted in the Harlequinade at an early age, knew what was expected of Clown, but
when he was old enough to perform the part, he diverged from the formula. Grimaldi
gave the otherwise motley character a quick wit, a wily spirit, and a satirical edge that
made him the creative life-force of pantomime for years to come.
Clowns today are often called joeys in deference to the man whose Harlequinade
character began a legacy that extended beyond British pantomime and transcended the
stage itself. Clown characters had been dressing up as country yokels and painting on
ruddy cheeks since commedia dell’arte and its masks fell out of fashion, but Grimaldi was
the first to consistently appear in white face paint, usually with two red, tilted triangles
decorating his cheeks. He was known for having total command of his body and face
in physicalizing and projecting emotion; his trademark makeup further emphasized his
expressive eyes, while his brightly colored costume gave him deep pockets for props.
Grimaldi, who is hailed as the father of modern clowning, created a comic identity that
established, for perhaps the first time, the dignity and seriousness of the art of comedy.
The Circus Clown
While Grimaldi and others like him earned fame on the theatrical stages of London, a
new type of popular entertainment boomed on the outskirts of the city. In , Sergeant
Major Philip Astley, a trick-riding enthusiast, started staging equestrian shows in Surrey
County’s Halfpenny Hatch, riding in a circle so as to centralize the focus of his audience
and generate the centripetal force necessary for stunts. His shows were successful
enough, but Astley was eager to bring more diverse entertainment to the -meterdiameter ring he called “the circle.” He enlisted a drummer-boy to provide punctuation
to the horsemanship tricks, and gradually he added conjuring, tumbling, juggling, and
strong-man and comedy acts to break up the equine action. The program’s first clown
sketch, “The Tailor’s Ride to Brentford,” featured Astley as the bumbling tailor Billy
Button, who, late to vote in an election in Brentford, struggles to get his trusty steed
to cooperate. Theatricalizing a piece of local gossip circulating at the time, the act first
depicted Billy Button unable to mount his horse; then he could not get it to move.
Finally, the animal would gallop off, throwing Button from the saddle and eventually
chasing him around the ring to everyone’s amusement—except, perhaps, the real-life
Billy Button of Brentford. As equestrian shows grew increasingly popular, Astley’s clown
act became a standard across the country. He had not only created the first circus, but
the first circus clown act.
After leaving Astley’s show in , trick rider Charles Hughes produced his own
horse-centric spectacle: the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic, thus giving
the modern circus its name (circus coming from the Roman circenses, for chariot race).
A few years later, John Bill Ricketts, a Scottish trick rider from the Royal Circus,
moved to Philadelphia and opened a riding school that staged public performances
a few times a week. Like the showmen before him, Ricketts recognized the value of
providing entertainment between equestrian stunts, and he added a clown to the troupe.
British pantomime actor Matthew Sully joined Ricketts’s circus as a clown in , soon
followed by celebrated dancer and Pennsylvania native John Durang. Like the wellrounded street performers of the Middle Ages, Sully and Durang succeeded not because
of their mastery of a single specialized skill, but because they managed to do a bit of
everything. What they did not know when they were hired, they learned quickly: both
clowns counted singing, acrobatics, physical comedy, and horsemanship among their
fortes. Sully and Durang were the first to make a living as circus clowns in America—the
forefathers of a long line of talent to come.
In Europe, centralized populations made for larger audience pools, and circuses
were more or less able to stay put. They found permanent homes in major cities,
scrapping their original wooden arenas and bandstands in favor of sprawling complexes,
hippodromes, and fairgrounds. In still-settling America, as the nation spread west, so did
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the circus. At the onset of the th century, circus troupes in the United States traveled
in wagon caravans with a huge variety of performers and exotic animals, depending on
who and what they could round up before setting off. Many circuses began to replace
their stunt riders and thoroughbreds with wild cats and specialty acts, but they were
never without clowns.
Dan Rice, who started his circus career as a strong man, achieved remarkable fame
as one of these early American circus clowns. Most famous for his animal acts, Rice
played the straight man to a series of pigs (always named “Lord Byron”) who answered
questions with a system of grunts. By , Rice’s rapport with audiences secured the
success of his very own traveling circus, Dan Rice’s Great Show. He called himself “the
Great American humorist,” and though he achieved star status as a circus clown, Rice
also managed to cross over into the public’s consciousness as a well-informed patriot and
politician. At the height of his career, Rice earned $, a week—twice the salary of
President Lincoln, whom he often entertained.
As the circus became the leading form of popular entertainment in both Europe
and America, audiences everywhere began to champion the circus clown. Some clown
characters, like Grimaldi’s whiteface, were rooted in the long history of comic tradition;
others were the results of happy accidents or created on the whim of an entertainer.
Competing accounts from circus lore attempt to explain the advent of the auguste clown
character—including a story about the American performer Tom Belling imitating
a circus manager backstage and accidentally tripping into the ring. Defined by gross
stupidity, clumsiness, and ill-fitting formal wear, the auguste came to serve as the butt
of the more traditional whiteface clown’s relentless jokes.
Auguste clowns were often
the poorly paid apprentices of the
whiteface clowns and regarded as
their artistic inferiors. As the augustes
persevered in defining themselves as
capable performers and the whiteface
clowns began to recognize the benefits
of maintaining lasting partnerships,
this clown hierarchy collapsed. By
the turn of the century, the sustained
interaction of the two clown types made
full-length sketches possible. These
comedic narrative “entrées,” sometimes
lasting as long as minutes, elevated
the craft of clowning into a bona fide
and specific art form.
As the entrée took on theatrical
principles and proportions, emphasis
shifted from circus gags to the clowns’
personalities and relationships that
reflected humanity at its silliest
and society at its truest. In France,
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whiteface and auguste pair Footit and AV]e]\3O`bV¶:WP`O`g]T1]\U`Saa
Chocolat effectively demonstrated the
potential inherent in such character
dichotomy. Their slapstick parodies of the world’s harsh social order featured Footit as a
violent authority figure and Chocolat as his hapless, but endearing, victim. Many other
clown duos began developing original material for comic entrées, relying on fast-paced
dialogue and comic puns.
But as clowning became increasingly focused on individual performers, the circus
kept getting bigger and more bureaucratic. In Europe, established city circus companies
launched global tours, seeking greater fame and fortune. In the mid th century,
American entertainment mogul P. T. Barnum, a circus and side-show manager for
over years, partnered with James Anthony Bailey to create what would be billed as
“The Greatest Show on Earth”: The Barnum and Bailey Circus. The spectacle grew as
quickly as its profit margin did, and by the extravaganza sprawled across three rings
surrounded by a hippodrome track outfitted with seating for up to , spectators.
The sheer size of the ordeal was impressive, but it posed problems for the clowns.
Comic entrées were demoted to “filler” status—used only to tide audiences over between
headlining acts—and the huge canvas tents had awful acoustics. The circus clown found
himself silenced.
Clowns in Big Business
While big-top circuses like Barnum and Bailey took to the rails on cross-country
tours, vaudeville shows started to appear in America’s industrial hubs. The bawdy
entertainment that began in music halls and on variety-show stages was first only
suitable for adult men, but in the s, producer and former circus ringmaster Tony
Pastor cleaned up the acts. When he opened the doors of his New York City theaters to
diverse crowds of patrons, the new vaudeville shows featured there boasted a wide range
of acts—from lounge singers and ballet dancers to club jugglers and clowns. Nearly
everyone in vaudeville had some connection to the circus, including Bijou Theater
founders Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward F. Albee, who had both toured with an
early version of P. T. Barnum’s show. When the Bijou opened in , its -hours-a-day
variety show combined high and low elements from the nation’s legitimate and itinerant
entertainments. The bill changed weekly, and as long as it could be called “polite,” almost
any act could get itself slotted (at least for an afternoon).
While many circus performers transferred to the vaudeville stage seeking better
wages and faster fame, the clowns had the most to gain. Because many vaudeville houses
were designed with acoustics in mind, clowns could reincorporate dialogue into their
sketches. For circus comedians who were used to performing mostly silent interludes
between headlining circus numbers, vaudeville meant a chance at an audience’s
undivided attention. The Swiss clown Grock was one of the earliest circus clowns to
confidently break out of the big top and into the big time. His auguste character took
new form on the variety-show stage: he traded coarse stupidity for candid foolishness,
refusing to suffer abuse from the whiteface clowns he worked with. Grock eventually
developed an hour-long one-man show based on a single entrée, which found enduring
success on the vaudeville circuits. When the motion picture was invented in ,
comedians of all types found another outlet for their zany performances and an even
more enticing vehicle for stardom.
The new breed of vaudevillian comics found ample opportunity to reproduce their
stage sketches for Hollywood’s cameras. Charlie Chaplin, born in , had his start in
England’s version of vaudeville, the music halls. He was discovered by the comic film
director Mack Sennett in , and Chaplin was a star by . Often mentioned in
the same breath as Chaplin was Buster Keaton, born in , another brilliant silent
film clown. He was known for his intense acrobatic stunts, all of which were real
and performed by him. Chaplin and Keaton’s silent films paved the way for physical
comedians in talking pictures, such as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and the Marx
Brothers.
Though the circus loaned or lost many of its performers to the stage and screen,
it managed to hold its own in the entertainment industry of the twentieth century. In
fact, Barnum and Bailey’s merger with Ringling Bros. resulted in the largest mobile
amusement venture of its time. Technological advances made shifts between circus
acts quicker, and clown performances grew shorter and more peripheral than ever. As
a result, acts were dumbed down: broad gestures, glittering costumes, oversized props,
loud explosions, and ludicrous chase scenes became the new customs of clowning in the
American ring. Despite this, Emmett Kelly’s hobo, Felix Adler’s “King of Clowns,” Otto
Griebling’s fumbling but persistent tramp, and Lou Jacobs’s egg-headed, rubber-rednosed auguste each developed unique personalities, trademark costumes, and distinct
ways of understanding and interacting with the world.
Though the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus’s clowns became the
model for circus clowning in the United States, the comic tradition in Europe evolved
by means of several smaller circus conglomerates. The Fratellini brothers, who got their
start early in family circus acts, became the darlings of s Paris with their extralong comic entrées, which sometimes lasted as long as minutes. Paul, François, and
Albert performed their act as a trio, adding a second auguste personality to the classic
two-clown format. Other twentieth-century old-world circus clowns, like Coco of
the Bertram Mills Circus and Popov of the Moscow Circus, also ensured that circus
clowning would not always be denigrated as filler.
Due to financial and safety issues, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus
mounted its last tent show in , thereby committing to performing exclusively in
arenas. They remained the premier clowning presence in the United States for almost years, establishing a clown college in that is still graduating clowns by the dozens
every year and aims to “preserve the ancient and honorable art of clowning.” With an
emphasis on costume and prop design, makeup application, and gag development, the
Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus Clown College—and its alumni—can be
credited for the modern American understanding of the clown: standard whiteface, red
nose, wildly mismatched or ill-fitting costumes, hilarious hijinks.
This image of the clown may live most widely in the American consciousness, but
other American clowns came out of the late twentieth century. Encouraged by troupes
like San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus, some American clowns sought companies that
allowed them to perform intelligent material for more intimate audiences—borrowing
classic gags from commedia dell’arte and creating entrées akin to those the Fratellini
brothers had perfected in Europe. The Pickle Family paved the way for other circus
start-ups, notably ’s New York Big Apple Circus and ’s Montreal-based Cirque
du Soleil, and redefined what clowning looked like in North America. In , Pickle
Family Circus members started their own school, the San Francisco School of Circus
Arts. Now home to the Clown Conservatory, students there train in dance, mime,
improvisation, acting, and, of course, circus and stage clowning. Like those who came
before them—and those who will come after them—they are charged with carrying on
a comic tradition nearly as old as civilization itself.
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Questions to Consider
1. How was your experience attending Old Hats, a clown show, different from your experience attending straight plays? Musicals?
2. What connections do you see between the sketches in Old Hats? If you saw Fool Moon
in the s, what connections do you draw between the sketches in that earlier work and
Old Hats?
3. How are sketches with one clown different from sketches with both clowns?
4. What do you think makes something funny?
5. What effect does Shaina Taub and her music have on your experience of Old Hats? How
does her style fit in with the rest of the show?
. What does Old Hats make you think about aging?
For Further Information . . .
Bogart, Anne, and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and
Composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc., .
Irwin, Bill. http://www.bill-irwin.com.
Manucci, Mark, dir. Bill Irwin: Clown Prince. PBS Great Performances, Season , Episode (). http://vimeo.com/.
Shepard, Sam, dir. Silent TongueLionsgate. DVD. .
Speaight, George. The Book of Clowns. London: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., .
Swortzell, Lowell. Here Come the Clowns: A Cavalcade of Comedy from Antiquity to the Present.
New York: The Viking Press, .
Taub, Shaina. http://www.shainataub.com.