For the last month I’ve been exploring a character. I initially called them a character. It was sort of based on my instinct toward the feral, toward interacting with the environment in an abstract way. But it wasn’t a character the way my clown/sketch characters are usually characters. It was a lot more of a straight-up reveal. Like my Pure Clown Self. Or just a pure showing of my soft underbelly. I think that’s often the goal with me in clown, to find the soft underbelly—-show it or accidentally show it—-get laughed at or offend with it—-react to the laughs or responses—-use the response to feed myself.
So this character wasn’t really a character, it was a lot more of a stripped-down self. I don’t usually use white face paint or a lot of extra makeup. When I build a character, I like to have light washes of nudging toward something but a feeling of incomplete-ness about them. I don’t do full on masculinizing makeup for my Victorian Gentleman character or my Medieval Prince—though I’m thinking of adding sideburns and only sideburns to the Victorian Gent. And I don’t go over the top with looking like a freckled cute doll when I play my Little Kid By The Seaside. I really like just light washes of color and shade that push toward the look. I never want to lose myself under the makeup. But a bit of makeup sometimes helps me risk something. And so for the past month I’ve been using a wash of white foundation and rusty red mouth and eyes. It isn’t stark black-and-white. It is rusty earthy red and sort-of-white-sort-of-my-skin. I like how dark the rust is on the mouth, I use my mouth a lot to find speech, to kiss my hand, to wonder at the world. And I think the mouth has, since back when I built a Bride of Frankenstein performance years ago, a place from which my characters attempt to lurch themselves into existence. How do I talk? How do I hold my mouth? How do I make sound come out?
Yeah so the makeup this past month has been more than I usually wear for characters but also kind of revealing of me: a creature, a monster. Not some high and finished concept, just a mirror for questions. This character asks questions. This character knows nothing. And in that way, I think they are not a character at all. They are just me: a really confused child, trying to gather data about How to Be A Person. How do you kiss? How do you love? What do you say when…? These are the questions I’ve asked of my small audiences. And I want to know. Me, Athena, I really want to know. How do people love? What is their answer? I think the thing I love the most about crowd work (and by extension, soliloquy when I get to do Shakespeare) is how much I need the audience. My approach is never to entertain from an audience, it is TO SEEK! I seek something from them. Advice, information, validation. With this more pure clown I’ve been doing in my vaguely The Crow-like face and vaguely Gollum-like posture —-I really need them to tell me how to be a person, to be like them. I want to mirror them and I mirror them in whatever way I can—-kind of in the body of a monster or a child. I’ve learned so much over the past month of performing like this. I’ve given up so much control and expectation about how a performance should go.
And I’m slowly going toward constructing a show starring one of my most charming and extroverted and “in control” characters. We’re doing an hour long show! Of John Newspaper! An entrepreneur! An Inventor! A charmer! And I am so glad I reverted to my primordial form this month as a monster baby. Because it has taught me how to break down again. I’ve really needed to break down again, I need to break down regularly in front of an audience, to be a broken heart and a tired soul and to look people in the eyes and see that maybe they feel that, too. And of course they do! We’re all hurting. None of our pain is unique, really, just like or joy and love are not unique. And that’s a good thing—-that we share all of that. So I’m really happy I have given these more broken open performances this month so that I can find the moments to break apart as my more Put Together characters. I’d been missing that for a long time. I think I created my more put-together characters—-strong knights and charming inventors—-so that I could feel strong. And it worked. I spent about a year finding these powerful stances, these people-so-confident-they’re-stupid personas. Reveling in the “I don’t know how stupid I am! I am going at this with supreme confidence!” Like—-DIGNITY—-having so much dignity and self-importance that it’s hilarious. And then sometimes getting OFFENDED at audiences who do not comply or who laugh at me. I love that dignity position. I love those characters——I think they’re a blast.
But now I’ve gotten back to my roots. And my roots really are in the most delicate and vulnerable kinds of characters. Characters with such wounded places that they might be dangerous. There’s a danger in being the crab with the soft meats and the big claws and the indirect way of navigating space. Something about having my legs out while I’ve done this character has become important to me. I have had a lot of insecurity about the way I walk in my life. My confident characters have mindful over correction of my medically unique inturned hips—-and reverting back to my basics means—-a kind of shyness that can come from an inturned set of legs. And the legs being unstable. Being unstable in front of people physically, emotionally—-daring to need them deeply and not hiding the need. And I see now that all of my characters are soft crabs but their claws are different impressive shapes, their shells are painted distractions. The soft meats are just as soft as ever on the inside.