In defence of the Comic Actor

Donald O'Connor in a classic scene from Singing In The Rain a great all singing, all talking Showman. Great physical comedy

The Task of Art

Borges.

"I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors."

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was a truly great writer. His short stories are masterworks of imagination and structure. They cleverly twist and morph our ideas of what literature and story is and can be. He expresses the beautiful cyclic connection between reality and fiction by reminding us of the "character of unreality in all literature." In this way he is relevant for the Illuminated Showman, for the nature of literature is also the nature of the Carnival; make-believe more real than reality itself.
Literature and Carnival Arts are human creations, made by man for man so per definition; artificial.
What Borges shows with exceptional beauty through his work is how this artificiality isn't something to be shunned or explained away but rather something to be playfully enjoyed and explored.

At the end of his life, now completely blind, he saw more clearly than ever the task of art and he sums it up beautifully and poignant what the art's role in the world is.

"The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours. Your are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer, is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward."

If you don't know much about Borges you could start by checking out this documentary about him called The Mirror Man.

(Thanks to Open Culture for finding this.)

Clown Instructions

Colombaioni's Clown Seminar, 1968 

Some nice visual tips on slapstick, pratfalls and so forth.
Who is the teacher?
Carlo Colombaioni is an Italian clown who worked with Fellini in several movies.

From his website.
He was born in Ancona on Novembre 30th 1933. His family was big, he had five brothers and three sisters He grow up in the world of art, full immersed with jugglers, funambulists, acrobats and clowns. Then he started with the curtain-raiser, placing side by side with the most important Italian actors, like for example Antonio De Curtis, alias Totò, until he meets the great movie director Federico Fellini, and he took part to the famous movies “La Strada(the Street)”, “I clown”, “Amarcord”, “Roma” and “Casanova”. Carlo has been a great actor and he shared his talent with persons like Dario Fo, Federico Fellini and Jerzy Grotowsky. Later he went abroad, and he started his teatral career, becoming so famous in couple with his cousin Alberto Vitali.
The duet reach the top of the success, and they start to propose their shows all over the world, in the most important theaters.
Master Carlo passed on May 15th 2008, when he was 74 years old. He had already scheduled another show in Florence on to weeks later.

Houdini's Quest for Mystery

 A Crowd can feel spiritually restored after a great show. It has all the ingredients; deep group connection and a charismatic leader standing elevated before the crowd, guiding them through mysteries and good times. It is religion, it is showbiz, it is Life.

The Crowd has witnessed magic, they have glimpsed mystery. The showman knows just how much they all long for someone to tell them, and demonstrate, with ‘undeniable proof,’ that mind reading, contacting the dead, or any other supernatural feat, is indeed possible.

As the curtains come down and the lights come up the Crowd feels closer to the Truth, whilst the Showman sometimes feel further from truth and community than ever. If you are the one giving guidance and answers, who guides you?

Eric Weisz.

Erik Weiszwas born in Budapest, Hungary on March 24, 1874. His family was Jewish and he loved his mother very much. As a young boy he read Robert-Houdin, the French father of modern magic's, autobiography. In it the aging conjuror recounts the tale of how he was sent to Africa to represent his country in a standoff between the two nation's greatest magicians.

"In 1856, the Marabouts, who controlled the will of the tribesmen by dazzling them with feats of magic, had all of Algeria on the brink of revolt. In a wise decision the colonial administration decided to try to beat the Marabouts at their own game and sent for Robert-Houdin, who had been entertaining the courts of Europe and had gained a reputation as the greatest magician in all the continent."

 (Read the full story here.)

Robert Houdin.

Robert-Houdin won the challenge in a clever use of technology. With electromagnetism and electric shocks he left the Marabouts awestruck. This chapter in Robert-Houdin's book made the young Eric Weisz decide that he wanted to become a magician. With unparallelled tenacity he set out to become the greatest magician of all time. But one can't conquer the world with a name like Eric Weiz, and like so many showmen before him he transformed himself into a Showman. Erik Weisz became Harry Houdini,who went on to become so famous his name can now be found the dictionary.

Although he started as a magician, the King of Cards,  and did a brief stint as a wildman, it was his escapes which would make him the King for which he is remembered: The King of Escapes.

Houdini as a young magician.

Houdini was very attached to his mother. This connection was so strong, Houdini feared that his mother's eventual death might drive him insane. As strange as this might sound it started a cascade of events which led our hero onto the next phase of his career; a debunker of spiritists and mediums. But where did this antagonism for spiritism come from?

The tools and demonstrations of the spiritist movement are Real Magic, meaning secular magic, the type that pulls rabbits out of hats. Effects such as tables levitating, ESP, spoon bending, and strange knocking on tables in the dark with messages from beyond, are all the domain of a branch of Real Magic called mentalism. This subdivision of magicians deal with telepathy, telekinesis, and so forth. So why did he attack fellow Craftsmen? Hasn’t a magician sworn not to divulge the secrets of magic to the Crowd?

'My two sweathearts'
 Houdini, Wife and Mother.

Houdini loved magic. He fastidiously researched the magic arts. Part of his study was a fervent collecting of any book, article, or mention of magic of any kind. He purchased several private collections and with his considerable wealth, wide acclaim and wide travel, he soon amassed perhaps the world's greatest library of magic; occult, alchemical and otherwise. But with each subsequent initiation of secular magic for the ever inquisitive, if not down right obsessive Houdini, the boundaries of supernatural magic was pushed before him.

Houdini in his famed library.

Houdini’s fear of madness hovered in the back of his mind. He began visiting asylums and graves of famous magician's and mystics. Eventually he met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the archdeacon of Spiritualism. 

In the late 1800’s this was a great obsession of the western world. It was not presented as stage magic, this was the foundation stones for a spiritual movement. It was like a religion grown from late night magic shows in carnivals. Tricks and illusions performed in the dark, whilst the participants held hands around a table, ghostly spirit-like lights would appear, ectoplasm, a ghostly manifestation, spewed forth from the spirit's mouth and onto the table, it was a great night out. 

People would be able to talk to their loved ones who had passed on. Unsaid things and unfinished business could come to final resolution. It was beautiful and heartfelt and much needed by the Crowd, but what was the story of the the presenters of these strange shows? The Showmen who created these very peculiar shows, what did they think they were doing?

Did they believe what they did was real? Were they just fraudsters making a quick buck when the popular imagination swung into their field of expertise? And finally: Did their intent make the Crowd's experience of the seance any less real?

Then his mother died. He had worried himself sick over this and then it happened. He was grief stricken. But since he didn't immediately descend into madness, at least not so that he has to be locked up in an Asylum, Houdini dug deeper and deeper into the spiritualist movement to find one real medium amongst the fraudsters and showmen. But there was none. Each new con-man pretending to be the voice of his departed mother added to his grief.

Perhaps this is where we find why Houdini, the magician, could debunk his fellow magicians, something a magician swears not to do. Of course he was angry and disappointed, but there was more to it than that. He picked up on a subtle difference between the mediums and mentalists.

The mediums claimed not to be magicians and used their knowledge of the magic Craft to make them spiritual gurus. This is nothing new, it's been done since the dawn of time, but they abused the Showman's Craft. This made them fair game. Houdini could as a magician debunk the mediums with good conscience. 
(The very fine line of spiritual guidance using the power of tricks to move Crowds gave birth to the Shaman, Showman and perhaps religion itself.) 

Houdini also debunked spiritualists, shown here 
demonstrating how illusions could be used to make it 
seem as if he is mollifying the vengeful ghost of Abraham
Lincoln with a book on modern rail splitting techniques.

"Houdini said that no medium had convinced him of his or her genuineness, as much as he would like to believe that spiritualism is a possibility. He gave instances of media who had admitted being frauds. Many, he said, are “plain crazy.” 

New York Times, 19/5-1924

Every tale and every lead brought before him by spiritualists, Yogis or esoteric wizards would crumble before the showman’s knowledge. He sought a different magic and thought he had found it in the spiritist movement. Perhaps this is not so strange since his friend Conan Doyle was the one spinning the tricks and illusions of the séance mediums into story. I have myself been under this man's spell in his world of Sherlock Holmes. Who would not be swayed by the story telling prowess of Conan Doyle? Houdini wanted to believe, but couldn't.

There was no proof of any supernatural events having occurred that were not immediately explainable by the Craft. He really wanted to know. He wanted to discover supernatural magic so bad it increased the fervor of his search for a way to communicate with his mother on the other side. His disappointment with each successive medium began to infuriate him and turned him against the many charlatans praying on those weakened by grief and without knowledge of Real Magic. He now made himself the champion of these uninitiated people and took to the stage claiming that he would recreate any trick of any medium immediately right there on stage to prove them charlatans and cheaters.

Until the untimely end of his life Houdini never found even the tiniest shred of evidence that there was any other magic than the one that he, so spectacularly, had mastered.

 “During his life, Houdini, never escaped intogenuine magical tradition, though not for a lack of trying: a man inspired, he was also a man who never identified his inspiration. His psychic struggle that ran through his life like a ghostly parallel to his physical efforts was directed towards plumbing a great mystery.”

The Death and Resurrection Show, by Rogan Tylor.

If Houdini couldn’t find any so-called supernatural magic, if the king of magicians can’t find it, who can? Who would be better qualified to separate charlatans from the real deal? Without the knowledge of the Showman’s arts, how could anyone expect to know secular magic from miracles or supernatural events?

The truth Houdini discovered was perhaps the most terrible of all: the core of mystery is like the onion, empty but for the layers surrounding it. Peeling them back stings the eyes, tears will blind you, but if you persist to the core you will find a sweet nothing. (How Zen.) And this sweet nothing must be filled by us. We must live our lives fully aware of this absurdity. We want and crave inherent meaning in things, but upon inspection the architects of this meaning turns out to be ourselves.

This is the fate of the showman. The one who knows all the tricks of the Craft has ‘proofs’ of the impossible for the Crowd, but not for himself. He must stand alone and find a different kind of solace. 

Houdini was schooled, better than most, in the Craft. He found that the spiritists were but mirror images of himself. Where he had expected and hoped to find something more he found nothing but his own Craft. The snake bites its tale. It is perfect.

He glimpsed a truth from the Way of the Showman: there is sacrifice necessary for the good of others and this sacrifice creates real meaning for both the ones who give and those who receive. Meaning made by Man for Man, so it is artificial, but real non-the-less.

“Houdini could see from the reaction of his audiences that they expected and received much more than mere entertainment from his performances. Like him, they wanted answers to big questions; release from the doubts that plagued them; escape from the physical boundaries that imprisoned them. And they loved and worshipped him for the stupendous efforts he made on their behalf. Such a life certainly proves one thing: Showbiz, whether it likes it or even knows it, is bound by unbreakable chains to the shaman’s enduring magic. Even Harry Houdini could not escape from that.”

The Death and Resurrection Show, by Rogan Tylor.

John Cleese on Creativity

The master of Silly Walks delivers a lecture on creativity. This is not a comedy skit. He is being serious, although in a pretty funny way.
In our business of Showmanship creativity is of utmost importance and pondering the fundamentals of the process is an important part of our toolkit. Cleese outlines some very practical things to improve your chances for creating good work. Not as much things to do as a setting and a particular mindset.

I found this lecture on the brilliant blog Open Culture and then found that Maria Popova over on her superbly curated site, Brain Pickings. Both of these sites are very worthy of following.

From Brain Pickings:

In this excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John Cleese offers a recipe for creativity, delivered with his signature blend of cultural insight and comedic genius. Specifically, Cleese outlines “the 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative”:

1. Space (“You can’t become playful, and therefore creative, if you’re under your usual pressures.”)
2. Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.”)
3. Time (“Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original,” and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision.)
4. Confidence (“Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”)
5. Humor (“The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.”)

Now that you have a fair idea of what his main points are hear it from the man himself.

The Regard of Flight

The Regard of Flight aired as part of PBS's GREAT PERFORMANCES series in 1983. It was a 45 minute comedy play with three performers: Bill Irwin, Michael O'Connor, and Doug Skinner. They performed The Regard of Flight on and off Broadway, throughout the United States and Australia. On this tour the show also included Bill Irwins solo piece, Clown Bagatelles. The show was also remounted and reworked into a full evenings show with the same cast in 2004. This production was called The Regard Evening.

Bill Irwin in flight.

Bill Irwin received his MacArthur Fellowship in November, 1984 for his work in theater. More specifically, he is a delightful zany, thinking man's clown who continues to produce work of original comic genius. Here he dances, floats, skips, and trips. His body is rubber, his wit is steel. Offering much more than pratfalls and tomfoolery, The Regard of Flight wittily critiques the "new theater." Irwin awakes in pajamas to an actor's nightmare. A heckling critic (Michael O'Connor) challenges and chases the pretentious theatrical artist. The stage manager (Doug Skinner, pianist and composer of the show's music) offers hilarious commentary on modernist theater. In one corner a sinister suction force repeatedly captures and draws Irwin feet-first off the stage. He may fight being sucked into the theater but he is, we are, and we love it. (Library Media)

 

Free Association segment

 

First Homesickness Song

 The Actor as Poet

Clown Bagatelles: the Waiter and the Swinger.

via Doug Skinner

Clown Apocalypse

"Put simply, physical comedy is the art of revealing what is vulnerable, imperfect, and laughable about man — not through argument, not through discourse, but through the body, through the picture that is worth a thousand laughs."

Looking deep into the history (actually the first post) of John Towsen's great blog We All Fall Down I found this this brilliant article which brings our attention to the inherent folly in human endevours. How we can't escape, we will never be in full control, for that, life is to grand and intricately complicated. We know that those that say they know what's going on are misinformed. He begins with Murphy's Law a perfect point of origin for the philosophy of Clown, and takes it to Illuminated heights.

Some of you might recognize the name of this author from his authoritarian history of Clowns: A Panoramic History of Fools and Jesters, Medieval Mimes, Jongeleurs and Minstrels, Pueblo Indian Delight Makers and Cheyenne Contraries, Harlequins and Pierrots, Theatrical Buffoons and Zanies, Circus Tramps, Whitefaces, and Augustes. A great, detailed history of the Craft of Elegant Chaos. For those that aren't familiar with either his book or blog. I recommend you peruse them at first opportunity.
As a kick start here is a superb article by Towsen which might just wet your appetite for his musings.
The following excerpts are from the article Zen and the Heart of Physical Comedy: The Revenge of Murphy's Law.   (The article in full below.)

“That the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment is a fact against which belief rebels,”

Those of you who remember some of the details of what happened that faithful day in Ukraine when the Chernobyl power plant exploded you will appreciate the accuracy of the details in the following excerpt.

"This Russian two-reeler is full of laughs as our Fiercely determined technicians, Laurelovitch and Hardyofsky, end perfectly good reasons to turn off the emergency cooling system, remove all but a few control rods while leaving the reactor operating, and disengage all safety systems designed to implement automatic shutdown.
When Mrs. Hardyofsky — in this version played by a Soviet nuclear expert — returns home, she is shocked beyond belief to learn that the menfolk have deliberately disabled so many safety and warning systems, then run the reactor in a very unstable condition. But they did, and our little tragi-comedy ends with the prospect of millions of people, even the unborn (politely referred to as third- and fourth party victims), paying the price in sequels yet unfilmed."

"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong in a big way. Who could better tell this simple truth about ourselves than the clown? The clown revels in the mundane, celebrating the ever-recurring awkwardnesses inherent in our daily struggle to maintain equilibrium. The clown’s world of naivete is but a microcosm of our complex universe."

"By nature a physical comedian, the clown catalogs and insists on re staging man’s inevitable mishaps and miscalculations, and then really rubs it in by irreverently depicting the ego’s involvement in the struggle: not just the pride that goeth before destruction and the haughty spirit that precedes a fall that Solomon First warned us about, but also the terrible embarrassment that follows, and the noble attempts at cover-up.We trip on the sidewalk. In a revealing moment of truth, our eyes blink, our cheeks blush, our breath shortens, our muscles tense, our stomach churns. Furtive sideways glances check the scene for eyewitnesses. We attempt a quick return to normalcy. Denial, denial, denial.
But while we are taught to hide error and above all maintain our cool, the clown is humanity’s lie detector test and safety valve. The clown shows us that precise moment of cover-up, the instant when one’s self-assurance is stripped away. “It really isn’t the trip itself that’s funny,” explains Bill Irwin. “It’s the gestures and motions afterwards, the looking back at the spot, the trying to make an excuse for having tripped.”

Read the full Article here or right here:
Zen & the Heart of Physical Comedy

Grock - The King of Clowns

 Grock (January 10, 1880 – July 14, 1959), born Charles (Karl) Adrien Wettach, was a Swiss clown, composer and musician. Called "the king of clowns" and "the greatest of Europe's clowns", Grock was once the most highly paid entertainer in the world.

Grock described his secret of clowning as follows: "The genius of clowning is transforming the little, everyday annoyances, not only overcoming, but actually transforming them into something strange and terrific… it is the power to extract mirth for millions out of nothing and less than nothing."  (Wiki)



In 1903, Wettach took the stage name "Grock," under which he became one of the most famous clowns in Europe. "My birth name doesn't mean anything. I am Grock. The first is the name of the dark years," he said. As a clown, his life became a quest for perfecting the synthesis of the man, with his hidden human face, and the clown, the mask occluding the man beneath the greasepaint. This synthesis was "Grock," a figure intended to entertain while remaining forever mysterious, a beloved figure who never could be fully understood by the audience, hidden as he was by his mask, hidden as the man Karl was by the mask Grock. (imdb)

During the turbulent years of fascist Italy and World War II, Grock never let his mask slip, never overtly dabbled in politics. Though he attracted the admiration of leading Italian fascists, the King of Italy, European royalty and even Hitler, all of whom claimed to be a friend of his, he never publicly confirmed those bonds. The man behind the mask of Grock never declared any allegiance to anyone or anything but his art. (imdb)

The clip below is a full clown show, an evening with Grock. The film is a French production from 1931. It starts slow with quite a bit of French talking. If you don't understand French skip ahead it is worth sitting through.

At around 27 minutes he does a routine with a violin borrowed from one of the musicians in the orchestra pit. The superb physical comedy, pushing his legs and changing his postures with the violin bow, with its fantastic prat fall finale is gorgeous. 

"Wave upon wave of applause filled a circus tent in Hamburg last week as a preposterous, shambling clown, his baggy pants secured by a huge safety pin, his crudely gloved hands the essence of misplaced elegance, finished his turn. Friends and fans had come from as far away as Italy and England to see his act. They stood on their chairs, stomping and cheering. Long after the clown himself had shuffled off, wiping a tear from his dead-white face with a floppy sleeve, the cheers ran on, until at last a loudspeaker blared: "Please, ladies and gentlemen, do not applaud any longer. Grock is not coming back. Grock is never coming back."

The audience of 3,000 found it hard to believe that The Great Grock would ever give up the limelight and the sawdust, but the fact was that at 74, Europe's greatest clown was tired."

 from Win Some Revenge

For a very thorough discussion on Grock and his gags check this link out.
Friends of Grock Foundation.

Villa Grock, where the tire clown retired.

the Grock d'Or.

The One Who Faces The Other Way

The faithful readers of this web publication will know that lately I have been taking an interest in who the showman is? Our role; what is it, and where did it come from? Not an unreasonable question for those of us who have made the showman's Craft our Vocation. Without a firm foundation even the acrobats fall down.
In this article I will take a deeper look at - The One Who Faces the Other Way - (Described in our manifesto.)

Sociality

Picasso: Circus Family, 1905.

We are a social species, we need others to thrive, both for our well-being and our survival. Because this is so important, nature guides us towards it with rewards of good feelings. We feel good in others' company. Song and dance rouse our emotions, like nothing else, the production of opiates to bring about states of elation and euphoria.
Our biology guides us with pleasure. Sex feels real good because it is so important. Making the important things pleasurable and enjoyable so you will want to do it is nature's guide. It is where we learn whats important. Human rights are based on human need. The rewarding feelings we have when we share each other's company is your body telling you it's good for you, and therefor an important subject for attention.

Attention
An important part of what makes us human and what helped forge our social bonds is our ability to direct attention. Sharing attention by giving and taking mental focus is key to the social process. We crave getting and giving attention. It is as important as oxygen and nutrition for us. In this process we humans far surpass any other animal in our desire and ability to maintain focused attention for very long periods of time. By sharing attention we transmit meaning, tell story, laugh, and fall in love, all our most human aspects. 

When we share attention we face each other. We direct our gaze towards those we engage with.
Face to face. One sharing thoughts, ideas and emotions with the other. From each other's faces we can easily read and unconsciously interpret so much subtle information.

Harlequin’s Family With an Ape (1905)

Directing attention can be done in many ways, with hand gestures or simply with the eyes. The ability to use our eyes has been so important that evolution has shaped the way our eyes look to make them better suited to the task. The iris and pupil being dark against the white of our eyes makes it very easy to spot exactly what the person is looking at. This kind of adaption is to be expected since we are such a visually oriented species. Apes are also social but the fact that our eyes changed since we split off on our journey towards becoming a separate species, gives us a clue to the further importance sociability had for us.
We are the species with the most complex and advanced sociality. Other species like bees, ants, sheep, chimpanzees and praerie dogs all show different aspects of social behavior, but none are as varied and, most importantly, as adaptable as us. Some biologists calls us an "ultrasocial species".

Primatologist Michael Chance recognized that subordinates pay disproportionate attention to dominants, glancing at them far more than the dominants at the subordinates, and proposed that the social organization of attention has been a crucial factor in human evolution. He observed that hierarchy establishes itself rapidly among children, whose status can be ranked accurately according to the frequency with which they are looked at by three other children simultaneously.

A chimpanzee uncertain that it can gain rank through force or threat can often improve its status by other attention-getting devices - doing tricks and 'showing off.' Children do the same thing, often accompanied by cries of 'look at me.' But children also soon learn about others' emotional resistance to the undeserved usurpation of attention, and our consequent dislike of showoffs or bores.

From Brian Boyd's excellent book Origin of Stories.

Within the preceding paragraphs I believe we see the very process that drove the development of our Craft. People want attention, but people only willingly give it if you deserve to get it and keep it. Our ancestors would learn how to get attention but also needed to learn and develop how to be worthy of keeping it. They explored human nature and psychology as they investigated what was worthy of attention and how to present those things in the most interesting way.

Showman
From the word Showman we get all the information we need in regards to who he is and what his role and purpose is.
First I would like to propose that the term 'man' in Showman is to be understood as the 'man' in human. Not a gender specific ending. With this the term changes meaning from one man to Mankind. It describes a particular kind of person, not in terms of sex but of vocation.
The vocation or calling of the Showman is to show things to others in an interesting and joyful way. Like musicians shape and refine sounds, we have refined the process of 'sharing by showing'.
For me the best way to describe what our fundamental role is: "One Who Faces The Other Way."

A Showman is One Who Faces the Other Way.
One that has walked with the crowd
then turned around to face the others.
He cries for attention
and has something to Show
when he gets it.
(an Illuminated Showman's Manifesto)

One who get other's attention and knows how to make it worthwhile. One who has understood the power which lies in this and the importance of the Material being worth sharing.
A good Showman will pay attention to his Crowd's reaction and shape his presentation to suit them. Tuning and teasing a biological system of reward meant to guide us to what's important for our existence and well being.
One interpretation of the term would be: one which is pleasurable or interesting to watch. This seems simple but because of its primacy the feeling of shared attention is very fundamental and deeply rewarding. By getting and holding attention and skillfully directing it, the Showman engages and gives his Crowd a good time. This is a very meaningful and joyful social interaction. Something which strengthens the Showman's position in the group.

When one person faces the others to tell a thrilling tale of today's hunt, and tells it in a way that transports the Crowd right into in the midst of hooves kicking and blood running, a Crowd experiences great pleasure.

Our Tradition
We modern Showmen are the latest in a tradition of shapers of the special relationship that exists between people, ie sociability. This trait might well have been the fundamental characteristic setting us on our path to become human. The Shamen and story tellers of the cavemen and early hunter gatherer tribes all grasped and practiced the things we do. Their repertoire, routines and material were different, but the tool of showmanship, our illustrious Craft, was the same.

From tomb 15 in Beni Hassan, - 4000 years old.

Whenever someone belittles your Craft as 'just entertainment,' maybe as opposed to art, know that your vocation has a deeper and richer history than the written plays and theatrical productions of the rich and powerful. We Showmen were engaging, educating and healing Crowds tens of thousands of years before the invention of writing. The Art they speak of is a Johnny-come-lately to the unique powers of Those Who Faces The Other Way. Their Art is but a particular aspect of our Craft.
Whilst the rich and intelligent gathered in theaters and operas, our kind were on every street corner and wherever people gathered. We are from the people, for the people.
What we do, in circuses, pubs and cabarets, we do because people like it. Like how the sexual preference of the pea hen shaped and created the peacock's formidable and encumbering tail, Crowds have shaped the Showman's material. What we find in carnivals is the sum of what thrills, pleases, and fascinates humankind.

The Crowd and their attention is what gives purpose to the showman's vocation. He is a bringer of joy and insight to others. This is his responsibility, to leave the Crowd Illuminated through sheer joy, arousal or through intellect. The Showman enjoys getting the attention and because of his skill in holding and shaping it the Crowds loves giving it. It is a win win situation.

Lauging Matters with Rowan Atkinson

Rowan Atkinson's great TV program Laughing Matters about physical comedy. As funny as it is instructive.
For some reason I can't embed the full show. The only thing I can embed is this clip above which is kind of part two of the below. But follow this link and you'll find a link to a playlist of almost the full show here.

Here are links to the individual parts: part one of five, two of five, three of five, Five of five
Part four seems to have slipped the cracks. I have chosen to post this even in the state it is, because its really worth a look. If you know of a better link I would love to know it.

the Fool, His Social and Literary History

The Showman is a person of many guises. His aspects are many and varied today we will take a closer look at one of them: the Fool.
To do so the Illuminated Showman managed to order a great out-of-print book from alibris. After seven weeks of waiting it finally arrived and has been read with much vigour. The book is called The Fool, His Social and Literary History (1966). The woman who wrote it, Enid Welsford has many great insights about the foolish side of our many faceted Showman. By thinking more thoroughly about our vocational character's rich and deep tradition in both real life and in the popular imagination we build for ourselves a firmer ground to stand on. It adds weight and gravity to our noble Craft.
We thought the best way of sharing her keen scholarship was to present the key points of her thesis through a carefully selected and ordered number of quotes, to let you get it in her own words.
Hope Welsford's thoughts help illuminate this aspect of the Showman for you all.

The fool is a man who falls below the average human standard, but whose defects have been transformed into a source of delight, a mainspring of comedy, which has always been one of the great recreations of mankind and paricularly of civilized mankind. The nature of this transformation of folly into happiness is surely worthy of scrutiny. Does comedy act on the spiritual system as a vitamin or as a narcotic? Does the enjoyment of it involve deeper insight, keener criticism or deliberate evasion of reality? I suggest we should go to the fool for an answer to these not unimportant questions, just as we examine the tragic hero not to enlarge our understanding not only of tragedy, but even of the ultimate mysteries of life.

A clown is not quite comparable, for instance, to a violinist or even to a tragic actor. The violinist is Paganini, master of techique, the tragic actor is Kemble, famous interpreter of Hamlet and other roles; but Grock and Charlie Chaplin do not express other men's thoughts, they are the creators of their own alter egos which, even outside the walls of the theatre, cling to them like shadows - at any rate in the popular imagination.

A bird's-eye view of the history of fools suggest s that they fall into three main grades or groups. St Chrysostom formulated the most comprehensive and fundamental definition when he described the Fool as 'He Who Gets Slapped'.
But if the fool is 'He Who Gets Slapped', the most successful fool is 'He Who Is None The Worse For Slapping', and this introduces a new and more interesting factor into the comic situation. THe fool is now no longer a mere safety valve for the supressed instincts of a bully, he provides a subtler balm for the fears and wounds of those afflicted with the inferiority complex, hte greater part of humanity if we may elieve our psychologists. It is all very well to laugh at the buffeted simpleton; we too are subject to the blows of fate, and of perople stronger and wiser than ourselves, in fact we are the silly Clown, the helpless Fool.

The fact is that the Fool can count upon almost every member of his audience holding two beliefs: firstly, that mankind is divided into the sheep and the goats; secondly, that he himself belongs to the party of the Injured Innocents. Even dictators and supermen introduce an occasional note of pathos into their eloquence, and find it expedient to make a subtle appeal to piry as well as to identify himself with the Fool, as he turns the tables on his chastisers, defeat the powerful, outwits the wise and assumes the most effective of all roles, the role of David against Goliath, the role of the pariah triumphant, who can ask his so called superiors with a grin: 'Who then does the slapping after all?'

'What do slaps matter to me, since I can render them not only innocuous but lucrative and funny?' For the genius of the Fool is manifested by his power of deluding us into the belief that he can draw the sting of pain; by hi  power of surroinding us with an atmosphere of make-believe, in which nothing is serious, nothing is solid, nothing has abiding consequences.

Fundamentally the clown depends, not upon the external conflict of hostile groups, but upon a certain inner contradiction in the soul of every man. In the first place we are creatures of the earth, propagating our species like other animals in need of food, clothing and shelter and of the money that procures them. Yet if we need money, are we so wholly creatures of the earth? If we need  to cover our nakedness by material clothes or spiritual ideals, are we so like the other animals? This incongruity is exploited by the Fol. the Fool is an unabashed glutton and coward and knave, he is - as we say a natural; we laugh at him and enjoy a pleasant sense of superiority; he looks at us oddly and we suspect that he is our alter ego; he winks at us and we are delighted at the discovery that we also are gluttons and cowards and knaves. the rogue has freed us from shame. More than that, he has persuaded us that wasted affection, thwarted ambition, latent guilt are mere delusions to be laughed away. For how can we feel spiritual pain, if we are only animals? But even the primitive joke about the human body has its complexity. We laugh to find that we are as natural as the fool, but we laugh also because we are normal enough to know how very unnatural it is to be as natural as all that.

Therefor, whenever the clown baffles the policeman, whenever the fool makes the sage look silly, whenever the acrobat defeats the machine, there is a sudden sense of pressure relieved, of a birth of new joy and freedom.

An here it is that one begins to discern a possibility that belief in the relationship between the poet, the seer and the fool may be more than an antiquated superstition due to out-moded ideas about Djinns, Madmen's Wisps, and Wells of Inspiration. On the contrary, these errors may rather be mistaken attempts to formulate the results of genuine experience as available in the twentieth century as in the so-called Dark Ages - the experience, namely, of two kinds of wisdom: the wisdom of the intellect, and that of the spirit.

the Stage-clown therefor is as naturally detached from the play as the Court-fool is detached from social life, and the fool's most fitting place in literature is as hero of episodic narrative, or as the voice speaking from without and not from within the dramatic plot. AN once more, in his capacity as detached commentator upon the action the fool exploits an inner contradiction; the incongruity due to that strange twofold consciousness which makes each one of us realize only too well that he is a mere bubble of temporary existence threatened every moment with extinction, and yet be quite unable to shake off the sensation of being a sable entity existing eternal and invulnarable at the very center of the flux of history, a kind of living punctum indifferens, or point of rest.

...the Fool does not necessarily inhabit a romantic or beautiful world; on the contrary his world may be very well adapted to his nature, which is often greedy, grasping, dirty and heartless. For the source of comic delight is the pleasing delusion that facts are more flexible than they appear to be, and this delusion may be induced as readily through a slapstick farce or a vulgar joke as through a Midsummer Night's Dream. The Fool is a creator not of beauty but of spiritual freedom.

Many of our contemporaries combine Hamlet's idea that the wold is a dungeon with a curious reluctance to unlock the prison door, a reluctance, however, which undoubtedly springs from courage, for it is due to the notion that the prison is coextensive with the universe and that therefor the only possible escape is the unworthy lapse into a drugged sleep.

A real life modern Fool Rumple Jolly Goodfellow.

Tricks: The Showman's Power

Michael Parkes: the Juggler.

Doing tricks seems like a frivolous thing. As someone who has made a life and a living of tricks, acts and routines, I ask myself: Is there more to them than mere entertainment value? What makes them so captivating and fascinating to me and the Crowd? What is their true power?

 
(Note: Here at The Illuminated Showman we believe the shaman to be a proto-showman. Read more here. In the context of these articles, the terms showman and shaman are interchangeable.)

Healing

The shaman is a healer of body, mind and community. Not just healing sickness, but creating and strengthening bonds; between clan members, and between Crowds and the Other World. (The spirit world/world of Imagination).

The vocational calling and necessary abilities of becoming a shaman were often aquired through illness. The person would encounter death but in the delirium of sickness he would miraculously heal himself. Through this experience he was thought to grasp certain truths about the Mystery of Healing, such as the healing power of faith, belief, suggestion, and ecstasy. The power of transformation and the use of altered states  gain insight into the unknowable became very real for the shaman. 
To help others the way he himself had been helped, he would revisit the place or mental state of his encounter with death. But conveying the mysterious was not an exact science. It was a human experience; rich, complicated and full of possible interpretations. It would need a special setting, showing, and telling. Here we find a clue to the origin of the Showman's Craft. The more powerful and gripping the representation of his ordeal was for the clan, the more effective it would be. 
The shaman would tell the story through song, dance, weird animal noises, and, important for us in this article, a whole manner of tricks to sharpen the attention of the Crowd. Tricks like the magic illusions or skills which showmen now use daily to capture and shape the attention of their onlookers. Once the Crowd had been softened by the atmosphere of the dark tent and the shaman's ecstatic dancing in the flickering of fire, he would perform a trick. In this context the trick would lift the crowd into an altered state like a Zen koan. It would stop the normal thought processes and let the participants willingly give themselves over to the extraordinary. Sharing the shaman's journey into another realm in an elevated state of attention, the participants would themselves experience Mystery, its complex nature and potential power.

Perhaps in the end
the nature of Mystery,
the core of a Secret,
Is simply not knowing?

Tricks?
The unexplainable has a palpable, real power on human beings. To such an extent that whether the secret hidden in the mystery is real or not, does not diminish its power. For real truth is not something that is, but something that happens; an individual experience in the beholder. In the moment it is experienced it is true, and that gives the experience its power. The shamans were aware of this in their use of illusions or deception. They knew they were tricks, but that their power was real.

Tricks conceals a double meaning and a double reality. They were vital in displaying the shaman's power, as proof of his extraordinary abilities, but are at their root an illusion.
The state of mind required for healing was a jump into another mode of consciousness which had been experienced by the shaman as he fought for life in the throes of illness. To extend his healing power beyond himself, the shaman needed to create this state of mind in his Crowd without the illness. To do this he used hallucinogenic drugs that would quite literally alter the crowd's mind-sets, or with tricks. From the shaman's almost universal use of tricks, we know that this was an important way of opening the necessary portals of the mind. Of course there is no reason why the shaman couldn't do both, first have his crowd all drink from his potion of psilocybin mushrooms and then do tricks whilst the Crowd was intoxicated. Perhaps this was needed in extreme cases. 
The tricks themselves were lenses for focusing the attention of the Crowd. They were not the point, but a means to an end. They were merely vehicles, the tools, which amplify and focus the real transformative power of the shaman.

It was a circle. Shaman, Tricks, Crowd. Each one enabling the next the ability of transformation. Tricks, in this sense, are tools for opening the mind and the heart of Crowds to create a state where the impossible can happen. Together the showman and the Crowd create something artificial, and therefor uniquely human. By man, for man.

The true healing power of Lies

In a recent Radiolab episode on the placebo effect, Anthropologist Daniel Mormon tells a story of an apprentice Shaman.

A young man of the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia called Kuesalid (?) is a bit of a skeptic and thinks some of the activities of his tribes shaman aren’t real, that they are tricking people. The shaman is a powerful and frightening man, but Kuesalid is not going to let that stop him. He is determined to get to the bottom of the so called magic. 
He manages to get the shaman to take him on as an apprentice and begins to learn the magic songs, dances and rituals of the tribe. Eventually he has proved himself enough to earn their trust and they teach him one of their most important and powerful healing rituals. 
The ritual goes like this. A sick person comes in and, after the appropriate songs and dances have been done, the sacred smokes has cleansed the tent and the people, the shaman places his lips against the afflicted part of the patient and sucks. The shaman would then suck something out of the patient and proceed to cough out small feathers drenched in blood.

The secret Kuesalid learnt was that the feathers were secretly put in the mouth, and as the sucking goes on you bite the inside of your mouth. As you cough out the mixture of feathers and blood the shaman claims the cause of the disease has now left the patient. This was what the skeptical apprentice had suspected all along, but the story does not end there.

As part of the obligation as an apprentice he would tend to the sick of his tribe when called for. That was what happened. An important family asked for his help to cure a sick daughter and, because of his obligation to the tribe as an apprentice, Kuesalid couldn’t say no. So off he went to her sickbed and sang the songs, performed the rituals, and then preceded to perform the feathers and blood suction ritual even though he knew it wasn’t real.

To his great surprise the girl’s illness broke, and the healing was a great success. Kuesalid was still not convince but he performed the feather ritual again and again and found it to be incredibly effective. He was perplexed and confused since he knew the ritual to be a trick of deception, but he also understood its great healing power. In the end Kuesalid finishes his apprenticeship and becomes a healer and realizes, in the words of Daniel Mormon:

“Truth and lies are not as fundamentally different as we think they are.”

The Power of Tricks

Within this story I believe we glimpse the true power of tricks. Today we see the arts of the Showman as mere deception, their shamanistic origins forgotten by Crowds. No wonder, since it has also been largely forgotten by modern showmen. In today's performances we rarely get any hint of the power that once was the main purpose for a trick. I think the difference was the focus on the trick's effect on the observers as a means of transportation or elevation of mind, rather than the trick itself.

It has been suggested by Rogan Taylor in his book ‘the Death and Resurrection Show’ that virtually every trick and discipline of the modern showman has its origin in shamanistic rituals.

Pic from the Skyliners Documentary.

Tightrope walks across deep ravines were performed by Siberian Shamans, rope climbing and trapeze-like feats in Dutch Guiana by Carib shaman apprentices as part of their initiatory rituals. Sword swallowing feats were performed by Zuni Indians in North America. Magic tricks of every imaginable sort: appearances, disappearances, levitations, and so forth, were universal.

In The Death and Resurrection Show, Rogan Taylor tells the story of anthropologist Matilde Stephenson who spent years living with the Zuni Indians. She was shocked and amazed when members of a so-called Sword Swallowing Fraternity swallowed not just one but four swords, swallowed one after the other and retracted simultaneously. She was so amazed by this performance she could hardly believe what she had seen. As a true scientist she began a long and arduous negotiation with the Fraternity to get a private demonstration where she could be more prepared, and therefor more certain, of the veracity of the feats. It turned out that getting a private performance outside of the ritual circumstances was very hard to arrange. The Fraternity did not see any place for the feat without its proper ceremonial setting.

“Only after prolonged efforts, and then purely because the white lady was so well-loved and trusted by the Zuni, one was persuaded to come to her camp. He insisted on strict and absolute secrecy and, even then never felt happy about the whole business. Matilde Stevenson remarked that, “the Indian to this day feels he was guilty of  a great wrong in swallowing the swords without the ceremony which should attend it.” (M. C. Stevenson, The Zuni Indians: Their Mythologies; Esoteric Fraternities and Ceremonies)  

Here we get an insight into what it might have felt like for a shaman to be seen the way we see a showman today; mere entertainment without any deeper meaning or purpose than levity in the moment. To the Zuni sword swallower the trick's potential was now wasted.
The situation and circumstances of rituals were set up to create the right setting for tricks to function like keys to the crowds heart. Once unlocked with the trick's ability to create reverent attention, the shaman could take the observers further, towards healing, unification and insight. 


Today it might seem far-fetched to attribute deep meaning and importance to the tricks of the showman's trade, but in the shaman's tradition these examples of mystery would have been at the center of healing ceremonies at a time when doctor, priest, and showman was the same person. When faith was the strongest remedy in the tool box. Herbal medicine was also in its infancy, but nothing was as powerful as the human rituals.

If the Zuni sword swallower of yesteryear watched a circus today it would might be like watching an orchestra playing but without hearing the music; beautiful and engaging in its choreographed movements but ultimately empty and unfulfilling. Perhaps it is time to bring back the music.

THE EFFECT:You take an ordinary glass, canbe full of liquid or empty and a normal pack of playing cards. Riffling through the cards ask a spectator to say"Stop"As soon as they say stop you remove the card they stopped at, show it front and back then proceed to balance the glass on the thin playing card.Amazing!•One of the coolest free online card tricksYOU WILL NEED:•Double sided sticky tape or glue•An ordinary pack of playing cardsPREPARATION & SECRET:Do you like free online card tricks? then learn the secret... The best cards to use for this effect are the magicians favourite Bicycle brand of playing cards. However if you do not have this type any playing cards will do.Do you like free online card tricks? then learn the secret... The best cards to use for this effect are the magicians favourite Bicycle brand of playing cards. However if you do not have this type any playing cards will do.Take any ordinary playing card and one of the jokers from the pack.Take any ordinary playing card and one of the jokers from the pack.Fold the joker card in two, length ways back to back then place some glue or double sided sticky tape along one side, on the face of the joker. Press the two together exactly.Carefully stick the face of the joker to the back of the regular playing card(See pic 1).From casual holding and showing the card(s) front and back (pinching the card(s) together on the open side) the card(s) looks normal.However at any time you can unfold the back of the joker card to act as a stand for the card to stand up and support an object such as a glass(See pic 2).The glass can be empty but preferably contain liquid. You will have to experiment with different glasses and the amount of liquid to put in as the playing card(s) can only take so much weight. But as you can see from(pic 2)the card(s) can hold quite a lot of weight!To set the trick up place the prepared card into the middle of the deck and get a glass with some coloured liquid in. The liquid in the glass makes the effect that much more impressive as well as adding cover so the spectator can not see the other card through the glass!To force the gaffed double card onto the spectator you can either casually shuffle the deck then look as if you are randomly taking any card from it to perform the trick but in fact choose the prepared card.However if you are a more experienced magician you can use the riffle force to cut to the prepared card. The riffle force basically involves you holding the deck in one hand and riffling though the cards until a spectator saysHowever if you are a more experienced magician you can use the riffle force to cut to the prepared card. The riffle force basically involves you holding the deck in one hand and riffling though the cards until a spectator says"Stop"Because the prepared card is in fact a double card the riffling will naturally stop at that card. All you have to do is time it right, so when the spectator says"Stop", you stop at the prepared card.This does take practice, but is well worth incorporating into the routine if you can master it! (You can learn some alternative card forces by going to card tricks page above this very site for free)