Physical Comedy with John Towsen

• Stand-up Comedy

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February 10th - February 14th, 2020 $500 (or $450 early bird pricing through January 19th) $100 deposit 10:30am-3:30pm Make your skills funnier! Make your comedy more skillfully amazing! A crash course in physical comedy vocabulary and its application for clowns, circus artists, actors, mimes, and vaudeville performers. You will be introduced to a wide variety of skills from Commedia-clown-silent film tradition, all centered around your own physicality, playing with partners, and reinventing the purpose of objects. Yes, plenty of tricks, but our goal will be to integrate these techniques with character, gag structure, and story. It's all about the comedy. Rare archival video footage will be screened, and resources for further exploration of physical comedy will be provided. Spotting techniques and safe working methods are emphasized, and participants are strongly encouraged to work within their limitations. Some performance experience and reasonably sound body highly recommended but all ages, body types, and levels of experience are welcome. JOHN TOWSEN has taught full-length physical comedy courses at Bloomfield College, Princeton University, Ohio University, and Julliard School (the latter two for 6 years each), and workshops throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Lithuania. Former students include Laura Linney, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Andre Braugher, and Michael Stuhlbarg. His once-upon-a-time performance career included seven years of television acting as a child growing up in New York and more than a decade of clowning as an adult, from schools of Long Island to sands of Saudi Arabia, most of it with partner Fred Yockers. He is the author of Clowns (1976) and was Artistic Director for the first two New York International Clown Theatre Festivals (1983, 1985), and of the Very Physical Comedy Institute (2014). In addition to constant teaching, writing, and directing, he created and runs the bi-weekly NYC Physical Comedy Lab, now beginning its sixth year.