Lunatics! Monday Night Clown

Red Nose Fundamentals

November 6 – 27, 2023

These are the foundationss! Stillness, silence, tension, status, and the articulation of your ridiculous human Self. We’ll play with simple gags, iner-Clown relationships, loops, and destroying that pesky Fourth Wall. Simple red noses will be provided for an (extremely) nominal fee, and more custom noses will be available for purchase. Experience with improvisation will be extremely useful, but is not a prerequisite. The fundamentals are always worth revisiting! It’s easy to get distracted from the core techniques, so repeating this monthly bloc is good practice. Repeat students will also be given more advanced assignments.

Cost: $150

A weekly workout in theatrical Eccentricity and Ridiculousness

Nick Trotter teaches various styles of Mask-based Clown, for Actors, Circus & Cabaret Performers, Improvisers, Comedians, and… Clowns! (you know who you are…)

This is a weekly workout in bite-sized programs. Each month features a different style: Red Nose basics, Commedia dell’Arte, Physical Comedy, Street and Circus Styles,Vaudeville, and Bouffon. The Basics course will be repeated at least three times per year, and is essential for foundational skills.

Scroll down this page for the monthly schedule and descriptions of each style.

All cultures, languages, bodies, and abilities welcome! The classes will mostly be conducted in English, but the fundamental language of Clown is silence and physicality, not anything verbal (because it has always been used as communication between cultures.) Also, the physical nature of the work in no way excludes bodies with atypical ranges of motion or ability. The joy of engaging the Human Being that we presently have is everything, here!

Ages 18 and up only.

IMPORTANT! To participate in any given month, it is mandatory that you attend the first class of the month to acquire the foundational skills for that style.

Performance opportunities will arise in street shows in downtown Denver and Boulder, and potentially at other venues if demand and commitment are high.

6:30 – 9:30 p.m., at The People’s Building, 9995 E. Colfax Ave, Aurora

Cost: $150/Month; this is non-refundable, but credit will be given for other classes or products. (the May 2023 Vaudeville class will remain at $125.)

Please contact Nick here with questions or for more information.

Schedule for 2023 (subject to change according to demand)

January 2023: off

February: Commedia dell’Arte

March: Red Nose Foundations (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

April: Red Nose 2: Street and Circus style (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

May: Vaudeville and Cabaret

June: Bouffon

July: Red Nose Foundations (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

August: Red Nose 2: Street and Circus style (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

September: Commedia dell’Arte (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

October: Bouffon (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

November: Vaudeville and Cabaret

December: (we’ll take December off, unless demand is high)

January 2023: Red Nose Foundations (repeat students will be given advanced assignments)

Monthly Style Descriptions

Red Nose Fundamentals: These are the foundationss! Stillness, silence, tension, status, and the articulation of your ridiculous human Self. We’ll play with simple gags, iner-Clown relationships, loops, and destroying that pesky Fourth Wall. Simple red noses will be provided for an (extremely) nominal fee, and more custom noses will be available for purchase. Experience with improvisation will be extremely useful, but is not a prerequisite. The fundamentals are always worth revisiting! It’s easy to get distracted from the core techniques, so repeating this monthly bloc is good practice. Repeat students will also be given more advanced assignments.

Red Nose 2: Street and Circus: The basics, blown up to arena scale — commanding the attention of a public space, playing large, and designing costumes and routines for maximum comedic impact. We will begin to explore circus skills like juggling and acrobatics, and how to turn them into theater. These skills apply to any large theatrical style like musical theater, Shakespeare, and even professional Wrestling! The month will culminate with a separately-scheduled performance on the 16th Street Mall or other public venue.

Physical Comedy: SLAPSTICK! Slips, trips and falls; the maskwork of reaction; the extreme loss of status; and advanced loops. This is the athletic and hyper-physicalized storytelling of masters like Lucille Ball, Buster Keaton, and even contemporary artists like Amy Sedaris and Sam Raimi, and it touches on seemingly disparate forms like Professional Wrestling. This work is riskier, and requires some real cardio fitness, flexibility and strength.

Commedia dell’Arte: an introduction to Italian Renaissance masked comedy, which was the home of Clown in Europe for two hundred years, and which is still the basis for most Eurocentric Clown characters and costumes. This is a crash course in maskwork and character archetypes, lazzi (routines and skills) and the playwriting and sketch writing that are at the core of the style. Experience with improv and sketch are handy here, too!

Bouffon: These are the grotesque, satirical Clowns with roots in Medieval Europe; deformed, almost supernatural beings who embody and celebrate human folly (it’s not always comfortable for the humans!). Razor-sharp wit, extreme parody and absurd physicality are the hallmarks of this style—a critical aspect of modern social and political comedy. This is the basic style of Circo de Nada’s improv shows.

Vaudeville: This form was the heart of American popular entertainment for the century before radio and television took over. The emphasis is on individual personality and eccentricity. Any skills (music, circus, standup, sketch or literally whatever) can be fashioned into short, entertaining routines that confound and delight. There is a lot of crossover here with Cabaret styles like burlesque, so those skills are certainly welcome!

A note on geography and culture: Clown exist across all lands and cultures, and while these classes are part of the living traditions of European performance, they are certainly NOT the only way to be funny onstage, and there is nothing fundamentally essential about the Eurocentric perspective. My goal is that these workouts will be a place of dialogue between cultures, using Eurocentric languages, forms, and styles as simply an anchor that helps articulate the mass culture that surrounds us here in Denver. The end goal, of course, is to transform that “American” culture to something more polyglot, more inclusive, and more universally human.