
I began this blog post with a pretty simple premise, but it evolved into a reflective learning exercise for me that kept adding new thoughts, perspectives, and verbiage. To minimize your seat time and maximize your attention span, I’ve broken it up into four installments: an overview, followed by three in-depth looks at my ‘lessons learned this summer.’ Put a nice pot of green tea on, relax, and come along for a retrospective ride through Buster’s summer. A big red nose thanks in advance for your time here on my blog! As always, I appreciate your comments and reactions. Buster]
Summer’s over and school has started. It’s an exciting time for kids (and parents!) – a time to reconnect with old friends, make new ones, and shake off the summer brain cobwebs. One of the first writing assignments is generally a take on “What I Did this Summer.”
With a busy summer season now over, I’ve been thinking about the same thing. After all, this summer was my first full-time immersion into clowning after 33 years as a part-time clown and a career in public education. In that spirit I’ve given this blog entry a reflective spin, looking
beyond what I did to what I learned.
Summer 2013 actually started last September (2012) at a showcase attended by hundreds of librarians from Oregon and SW Washington who
present young audience performances. A five-minute performance led to an invitation to perform at 15 library branches in Washington County(suburbs and towns west of Portland) this summer. Wow! The opportunity and the challenge still stun me. The bar was set pretty high.
Serious (OK, clowningly serious) planning, preparation, working out and getting in shape, routining bits, and rehearsal started right after the first of the year. July 9 was circled on the calendar as the first scheduled performance. I hoped to have the whole show put together by June 1 – script, individual bits, props, music, and show logistics – so I could spend a solid month in rehearsal. Nice plan, but it didn’t factor in a little health blip late March.
A suddenly irregular heartbeat led to a pacemaker implant and a four-week recovery period. But, the heart itself was strong; just a misfiring electrical system. My ‘choice’ was to deal with it and move on. It meant some catch up in conditioning, so I put in the time on the bike and in the studio space I had cleared in the garage, and by mid-May, the rehearsal schedule was back on track. Physically, I felt better than ever.
There were many opportunities to learn from this summer. Just staging and performing a solo 45-minute themed show was HUGE. Audiences ranged in size from 60 to 350 people, and the demographics were a mix of suburban, rural, Latinos, preschoolers, school ages 5 to 18, daycares, and families. Venues were indoors and outdoors – some were nicely air-conditioned multipurpose spaces in the libraries, others were outdoors and off-site in public parks in the blazing sun and humidity (this just happened to be the warmest summer I can remember in my 38 years in Oregon, with no rain at all for a 45-day stretch from late June to August).
Now, with 17 summer reading program library shows under my belt – two more were added at the last minute – and with a shrinking waist line, I’ve learned and grown as a clown performing artist. Some readers, especially those of you who are more seasoned veterans of clowning and performing, are probably going to be thinking, “Ha! You rookie!! Welcome to Big Boy Clowning!!!” as you read through this post. That’s OK; I kind of felt like a rookie and made some rookie mistakes at times this summer.
I may have known many of these things before. But I hadn’t really learned them to the point that I actually DID them until now. Here are the nine lessons I learned this summer:
1. There’s routine and rigor and play to good rehearsal.
2. A show is a guided journey.
3. Know the show.
4. Listen to the audience.
5. Know the venue.
6. Don’t assume anything.
7. Learn from every performance.
8. Have a support system.
9. There is no ‘off-season,’ just different seasons.
So, this is a story about how Buster went to clown performing arts reality school this summer and got schooled. In the next installment of this blog post, I’ll explain and reflect on the first three lessons learned at the Summer School of Clown Knocks. Look for it in a couple of days.
Peace through belly laughs,
Mike “Buster” Bednarek