From the Ground Up

From the Ground Up

From the Ground Up
Clown Jahresgruppe
with Bryce Kasson

January – May 2025
Cologne

THE CLOWN

For me, clowning is a unique, multi-layered and direct theatrical communication with an audience. This connection with the audience is the clowns’ air, connecting her to a world she doesn’t fully understand or fit into. Playfully, with profound optimism and genuine vulnerability, the clown establishes and maintains this connection while inviting the audience in to her unique universe. 

CLOWN TRAINING

A clown puts feelings, inner states and secret desires into action, making them visible to an audience. Therefore, our body and its expressions are the basis of the training. To get our imagination going, we confuse the part of the mind that thinks it already understands everything. We work with rhythm, attention and curiosity. We practice being in the moment, noticing what is and seeing where it can take us. 

Training this way offers many different possibilities to discover and develop new aspects of your clown: their dynamics & energy, problem-solving strategies, internal imaginary universe, emotional responses, and how they relate to failure. As the actor behind the mask, we practice following our impulses and taking risks, developing a space of calm that allows us to have an outside eye on what we are doing onstage, as well as establishing and sustaining trust and complicity with the audience.

THIS COURSE

Clown training brings us moments of surprise and playfulness, it makes us laugh at and with our colleagues, it gives us the great pleasure of being completely ridiculous, and above all of learning to laugh at ourselves. A training of this length, with the same group, is a rare oppurtunity to deepen into the clown state and discover more facets and colors of your clown.

The course will include opportunities for participants to work with partners, solo and in groups, training aspects of clown technique including projection, timing and connection with the audience. We will train the body, voice and imagination. As we add the layers of costume, objects and the mask (the red nose), we will explore how these layers can direct, amplify and even transform the body, voice and imagination.

We will work “from the ground up” with—

  • Play and pleasure!
  • (Re)Discovering your own clown / Find new facets and colors of your clown
  • The creative potential of imbalance  
  • Complicity—with the audience, your clown partner(s), and your clown
  • Failure (or: how to make lemonade when the world gives you lemons)
  • Status (relationships between clowns, hierarchies of power and intelligence)
  • Urgency
  • Increasing the dynamic range of emotional expression
  • Training states of being relaxed and ready at the same time
  • Training in-the-moment perception for expanded choice possibilities
  • Working with the smallest mask (red nose): fixed point / direction of attention
  • Being the clown instead of pretending to be the clown
  • Working on your clown’s costume(s)
  • Training the physical body of the actor.
  • Bringing your unique skills to/through your clown: musical instruments, voice, dance, acrobatics, juggling, or other skills

I teach clown as a theatrical discipline (whether in a theatre, street, circus ring, hospital ward or living room). It has unique demands and possibilities for performative communication. While clown training can uncover great therapeutic insights, it is important for me to say that these are not the aim of this course. I offer my view of clown as a performing art, and then of course you take your insights into your own world and work! 🙂


Who It’s For: This course is open to all, with or without previous experience in clowning. We will be working with a fixed group, and growing into the material together over many hours. This intensive format provides the possibility for continuity, focus and mutual inspiration.

Dates
18/19 January
22/23 Feb.
22/23 March
26/27 April
24/25 May
—Saturdays 10 – 18:30 (2 hour break for lunch + theory talk/videos)
—Sundays 10 – 17:30 (1,5 hours for lunch)
—13 hours total per weekend |  65 hours total

optional Schnuppertag 7. December 13:00 – 17:00
(40 – 60€ sliding scale, fee goes towards total course fee)

Sliding Scale Price:
700 – 1300 – Registration by 1 December
800 – 1300 —Registering by 1 January
900 – 1300 — Registering after 1 january

(Sliding Scale Price: You determine the price you can pay according to a fair self-assessment of your individual means. The lowest amount is intended for students and people with very low income.)

Language: The workshop will be taught in English; some translation into German and/or Spanish will be possible.

Accommodation: let us know if you need help

Info & registration: info@fortwilly.org

Bryce Kasson (DE/USA) 

is a clown, dance improvisor, musician and teacher who started performing at the age of 10. He has studied clown with Lila Monti, Guillermo Angelelli, Gabriel Chame BuendĂ­a, and DarĂ­o Levin. In 2012 he was the assistant director for Cristina MartĂ­ & Marina Barbera’s one-woman clown show ‘Seis’ in Buenos Aires. With his clown company Fort Willy (with Olivia Platzer), he has taught and performed in festivals and theatres in Germany and Austria, as well as facilitating clown jams (improvisation/play practice space for experienced clowns). As a dance improvisor, he has practiced, performed and taught Contact Improvisation and Tuning Scores for over 25 years in festivals and venues in USA, Argentina and Europe. As a musician, he has provided drums, vocals and production for numerous groups and singer / songwriters as well as for his own rap project Better Bizness Bureau. 

His teaching practices are focused on cultivating attention-in-action.