stephen daytime

Character Development, Chorus Play, Somatic Devising & Mockery
~Modern Bouffon Clowning with Stephen Daytime~

When:
5 Saturdays - 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
March 14, 21, 28, April 4, 11
20 hours total

Optional Performance Workshop (+6 hours):
Saturday April 18 - 10:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
For all ye who wants to end it with a semi-public performance. Generate and polish bits together, and share it at a semi-public matinee for invited friends at approximately 3 p.m.

Where:
La Porte Rouge, Montréal, 750 Rue Mistral (Métro Jarry)

Cost:
New students: $240 (20 hours) / $280 (26 hours with performance workshop)
Returning students: $200 (20 hours) / $250 (26 hours with performance workshop)

(Payment plans possible)
Partial participation or drop-in classes may be possible at the teacher’s discretion.
14 students maximum

To register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdLu5spb-V8K1vNH9rtKchKt29XTmmZgImRVLiNh9fRm8HfCQ/viewform?usp=header

More info: mr.steveday@gmail.com

 

Meet your anger as a muse! Mock the assholes and yourself, asshole!

The bouffons watch everything. With corkscrewing eyes, they consume and mock everything joyfully and viciously: from war and dating, to home ownership and landlords, to Taylor Swift and Jordan Peterson… to the provincialism of the fashionable Mile-End yoga studio.

In this workshop, participants will be guided in developing their bouffons: seductive, accusatory, ridiculous, vulgar, prim, manic, suave, ravenous, disgusting. The work unfolds through a dynamic mix of solo and ensemble exploration, moving fluidly between collective play and individual investigation. We will flock, mimic, amplify, and gleefully mock — sometimes as a chorus, sometimes alone — discovering how those same impulses live in the body whether surrounded by others or standing by yourself.

We work through voice, mask, eyes, hands, body, breath, and rhythm — tuning these instruments individually and collectively — generating ridiculous, and precise satirical material. We will build also build and use simple costumes-- like physical masks-- to emphasize and distort the body into bouffon form.

Distinct from the pressurized pedagogy of acting studios and conventional clown workshops — where one person alone is often left to face the void — the friendly ensemble devising that is a core part of this workshop is freeing and easeful for our artistic egos, nervous bodies, and writerly brains, and exciting and nutritious for our bodies.

Bouffon theatre emerged through the teachings of Jacques Lecoq (1921–1999) and was later developed by Philippe Gaulier and others. We laugh at naïve clowns; with bouffons, we laugh at ourselves — our identities, our smallnesses, our hubris — exposed in scandalous and exhilarating ways.

This course draws primarily on the pedagogy of Giovanni Fusetti, whose work carries forward the Lecoq lineage with a somatic approach. Bouffon here is practiced as collective, ecstatic mockery: the body leads before the intellect, in groups and alone, allowing absurd and provocative scenes to emerge from shared play.