WORDS ON PLAYS vol. xxi, no.

Shannon Stockwell Editor

Elizabeth Brodersen Director of Education

Michael Paller Resident Dramaturg

Hailey Shapiro Dramaturgy Fellow

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

Signature Theatre’s Production of

Old Hats

A M E R I C A N CO N S E RVATO RY T H E AT E R

P R E S E N T S

© 2014 AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER, A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Made possible byDeloitte, The Kimball Foundation, National Corporate Theatre Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, The Sato Foundation, and The Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation

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 . . .

COVER Old Hats G. W. Mercier

OPPOSITE Old Hats

Table of Contents

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 TeamMusic and Lyrics by ................................... Shaina TaubSet and Costume Design by ....................... G. W. MercierLighting Design by .................................... Scott ZielinskiSound Design by ........................................ John GromadaProjection Design by .................................. Erik Pearson and Wendall K. HarringtonVideo Production by ................................... Erik PearsonMusicians ................................................... Mike Brun and Jacob Colin CohenFoley Artist ................................................. Mike Dobson

SynopsisMore 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

OPPOSITE Fool Moon

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 LivenessAn 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.

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

Old Hats

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.

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.

Old Hats

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 LossAn 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.

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.

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

OPPOSITE Endgame

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.

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,

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 ToysAn 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.

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

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.

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!

Fool Moon

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.

Old Hats

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.

Fool Moon

Creative ConversationsAn 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 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.

OPPOSITE Old Hats,

A History of the ClownBy 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 all-around 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

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

The Conjurer

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 dim-witted 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 -meter-diameter 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 well-rounded 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

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.

College

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, whiteface and auguste pair Footit and 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-red-nosed 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 extra-long 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.

SOURCES Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey: Discover More,

Federation Mondiale du Cirque The

Pickle Family Circus The Book of

Clowns Here Come the Clowns:

A Cavalcade of Comedy from Antiquity to the Present

Questions to Consider1. How was your experience attending Old Hats, a clown show, different from your experi-ence 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 Tongue Lionsgate. 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.