Comic identity of the body basic level

Practical studies about the clown’s art starting from the recognition of the comic related with the own daily gestuality.

SUMMER SEMINAR 5 days – 25 hours 

DATES

From July 28 to August 1 2025

From August 17 to 21 2025

ADDRESSED TO

Actors, theater and dance students, educators, teachers and any person has curiosity to work on their own comedy. Minimum age 17 years.

I’ve started my artistic studies from the classical theatre and soon I’ve got interested on the gestual theatre, body arts and them global and unlimited possibilities and ways of expression. The characters I’ve played in the beginning of my career had already a physical performance and I used to try to find instantly a way to limitate the use of the words, acting the characters intentions from the movements. From this point of view I started observing people during them everyday life nurturing myself from their gestuality, which can usually shows personal stories.

The interest on the non-verbal comic born after, based on the necessity of feeding my art with people’s everyday life gestuality. The clown’s work had a great influence on my pedagogic path and I’ve transposed to the teaching work this need for valuing the students personal identity, leading them to research and believe in their own truth and their own ability of being prompt.

My goal during the pedagogic activity has always been (and still be) to arouse in the student the need of constructing their own body comic story, finding again the simplicity, the tenderness and the strength to be able to be present in scene together with the public. Inducing the students to find their own Body comic identity means recognize in themselves the stupidity, which is a high quality in the comicity for the clown. We don’t turn into a stupid person, we already are. Be stupid means to marvel, to understand the world in a different way instead of not understand it at all; means to use your own eyes, not for photographing and analyzing the society, but for holding the public and answering their necessities. Therefore, that doesn’t means to add, but to extract, to strip yourself from the concepts and shapes, making the act of being transparent in scene, and this is a constant condition, very hard to assume because is unconscious.

I believe that the clown’s work is fundamental to put the actor of our days back in contact with its own fragility, making him/her to find their own expressive strength in this vulnerable situation. It’s not by chance that the study of the clown art has been applied in schools and theatrical institutes, generally at the end of the training course, because the clown brings back to the actors their true identify during the theatrical presentations.

The red nose preserves the words.

When I find myself in front of my little students I often tell them that the clown has the red nose because he is ashamed. That nose makes our body speaks, and honestly it’s not a nose, but an eye that allows us to see the reality using fantasy and liberty. For that reason words are not necessary. Caetano Veloso, in one of his songs, says: “I sing only what I cannot hold back anymore”, consequently his words comes only when they have to express a feeling and not just a simple thought. One of this little students, only 5 years old, told me once: “I’ve understood that the red nose preserves the words”. Therefore he hasn’t just understood that his body was funny. His observation made me understand that the words I create actually are really important and because of this they must be preserved.

SCHEDULE 

First day: from 02:00 p.m. till 07:00 p.m.

From 2nd to 5th day: from 10:00 a.m. till 03:00 p.m.

PARTICIPANTS

Minimum 8, maximum 16 participants

LOCATION

Teatro C’art