Physical Comedy with the Peripatetic Players – June 16

Learn to slip, trip, fall and bounce back on June 16!

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Thumper‘s very good friend, Joan Howard, will lead this Physical Comedy workshop. This workshop was postponed from its original date of March 17.

You’ll learn the basics of physical comedy and knockabout clowning, from solo slapstick to group melees and building comedic bits. You’ll build essential skills like tripping, tumbling, falling, and running into walls. We’ll also cover comic slaps, hair pulls, foot stomps, and head bonks. Finally, we’ll explore comic structure, and you’ll string your skills together to create a short slapstick performance with other workshop participants that will serve to develop character and tell a story.

This workshop is for actors, improvisers, clowns, comedians, and anyone who is excited to develop their physical funny. Open to all skill levels and ages 15 and up. Sign Up Here!

The basics:

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What: Physical Comedy with the Peripatetic Players
When: June 16, 2019, 12pm – 3pm
Where: Port Costa, California

How To Sign Up: Register at this link!

More details:

Cost is just $50, which supports both Idiot String and the Port Costa Conservation Society. Residents of Port Costa, Crockett, or Tormey pay just $10 thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Crockett Community Foundation.

After the workshop, explore the wonderful and tiny town of Port Costa, where you can hike the hills, relax with a book, or discover whimsical artwork and fabulous antiques — making the whole day an invigorating experience.

We are excited to play with you!

What to bring:
  • Snacks and/or a bag lunch
  • Water bottle
  • Notebook or journal and pen(cil)
  • Closed-toe shoes and clothes you can move in
How to sign up:
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Joan Howard is a physical theatre performer and clown. She plays Thumper of the Samuel Peaches Peripatetic Players, and is one-half of the acrobatic clown duo Max & Antoinette, who have appeared at San Francisco Theater Pub and the foolsFURY Factory Parts Festival. Joan teaches the next generation of professional clowns at San Francisco Circus Center’s Clown Conservatory, where she is co-director of a new social clowning program called ClownCorps. Joan also feels particularly fortunate to visit hospitals with the Medical Clown Project. She has performed with We Players and foolsFURY, and has presented original performances at Physical Theatre Salon at Main Street, LEVYSalon, Barbary Coast Amusements, Literary Clown Foolery, The Clown Cabaret, and Ei8ht. In 2010, she co-founded Main Street Theatre in San Francisco’s Excelsior district, an alternative performance venue dedicated to physical theatre and the variety arts. Joan studied clowning and pedagogy with Giovanni Fusetti of Helikos, is a graduate of Flying Actor Studio’s Physical Theatre Conservatory, and holds a BFA in Sculpture/Performance Art from California College of Arts & Crafts. She is co-creator of Idiot String.

Character Profile: Frogs!!!

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Illustration by Sam Bertken

How did this frog get so big? Through her own folly, I’m afraid…

She’s from The Frogs and the Ox, and she’s trying to make herself as big as an ox. It doesn’t turn out well.

In fact, the frogs always seem to be coming up with bad ideas… Like, for instance, in The Frogs Who Wished for a King or The Frog and the Mouse. Unlike the mice, who come up with bad ideas after a lot of thought and deliberation in their mouse councils, the frogs just don’t seem to think things through. Naturally, this leads to plenty of mishaps for the frogs.

The frogs are also scared of everything, perhaps with good reason considering all the misfortune that befalls them. They run for their lives in The Hares and the Frogs and The Boys and the Frogs.

What with all that running in fear and being prone to mishaps, we see some great opportunities for slapstick. That might be why the Frog sections of Aesop Amuck are some of the most hilarious to rehearse.

Here’s a little taste of our rehearsal shenanigans