TOM ROOS CLOWN
THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS
Superbia pride
Avaritia greed
Luxuria lust
Invidia envy
Gula gluttony
Ira wrath
Acedia sloth
These sins, these shortcomings of us, humanity, are a wonderful study object for our clown-being.
We will learn to know our clown better, by playing the sins, honestly, directly, without moral judgment; and roll ourselves in sin unpunished.
We discover unknown aspects of our clown.
We draw from an inexhaustible source of play.
Clown with experience rejoin this adventure.
Lots of pleasure.
Tom Roos
THE CLOWN AND HIS EMOTIONS
The clown has a clear direct relation with the audience, here and now. We know he is playing for this audience. We know that what happens, doesn’t really happen.
When the clown is angry, is he really angry? When he dies, is he really dead? When he’s in pain, is that real pain?
The answer is yes, and no, and not yes and not no.
We search for authenticity in the emotion, ànd for a transformation, that moves us to laughter.
During five days, we explore several emotions and moods. Anger, fear, joy, sorrow, love…How do we feel them? How do they position the body? How will we draw them? How will they make us move? How do we transform them?
We will put these emotions next one another, against one another, in one another, on one another.
All this, here and now, in direct contact with the audience, with the fragility of the clown.
This will be a deep research.
I look forward to work together and laugh together.
THE MINIMALISTIC CLOWN
“LESS IS MORE”
We will explore intensely, the essence of the clown play; ten days long, to learn to know our clown, to nurture him, to let him go his way, to jump boundless into the world, together with his fellow clowns, together with the audience.
We start the day with a series of exercises that bring body and mind in a light state of alertness. We listen to our body, our respiration, our sensations, our voice, our emotions… We open our senses in all directions, we become aware of our surrounding, of the others around us… We explore different levels of energy and the different emotions corresponding to them.
Further on we search for a precision and exactness in gesture and movement, for a full engagement of the body in this movement.
To find our clown, we take away what keeps us neat and decent. We remove our façade, our cuirass. What appears is our “Minimalistic clown”: a fragile copy of ourselves, more open and more naïve. We live life here and now, as for the first time. The world is new, without clear line between reality and imagination. We feel a fundamental “Yes” to that world, a fundamental “Yes” to our fellow players, a fundamental “Yes” to the audience, accomplice in our play.
With the characteristics we discover in our minimalistic clown, we construct a personage; we shape his walk, his tics, his talk, his rhythms.
We will learn to construct small sketches, solo or in duo and trio.
These sketches, we will show them to an invited audience on the last day of the workshop.
I look forward to work together with you very intensely and to laugh a lot together.