Clowning

Explore the fragile and exhilarating territory of the clown, tapping into a performative world which plays by very different rules than the world we know. This is an adventure into idiocy, virtuosity, absurd logic and comic vulnerability. The clown breaks all the rules of theatre, proposing a new order in which the performer sees the audience, and in which the clown speaks the simple truth that all human beings fail gloriously and often hilariously.

Supplied with little else than a red nose and the body that each performer has inherited, this workshop will facilitate its students to explore their unique way of encountering the world and will uncover the life-affirming absurdity of the human condition on this planet. Take a leap into the unknown territory of your own lunacy.

Quinn Bauriedel is a co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and has performed in nearly all of Pig Iron’s original works. In addition to his teaching work with the company, Quinn also teaches at Swarthmore and at the Headlong Performance Institute.

Pig Iron Theatre Company, forged in 1995 to push the boundaries of what live performance could be, is a multidisciplinary ensemble based in Philadelphia. The company has created over 25 original works over the past 16 years, performed both locally and internationally. The company have been called “one of the few companies taking theatre in new directions” in The New York Times, and has received numerous awards for their work, including 9 Barrymore awards and an OBIE Award (2004-Hell Meets Henry Halfway). In 2010 co-artistic directors Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel, Dan Rothenberg, and Dito van Reigersberg won a Fellow award granted by Unites States Artists.