Street Elite; Pete Mielniczek

This is Peter Mielniczek who remains one of the very funniest people I've ever met.

His ability to structure comedy, improvise and his modern yet timeless clown performance chops are simply a joy.


  Pete Promo Vid 2 from Pete Mielniczek on Vimeo.

Compagnie Ieto - London International Mime Festival 2010 at Southbank Centre

Clown meets Dance

Slava's Snow Show, [1hr] Clown

Best atmospheric clown show I ever saw live. [Thanks Celia for the ticket] Do yourself a favor and go full screen.

Genki Sudo, Clown, Mime, Fighter.

This is Genki Sudo, a Japanese performer, choreographer and director of a modern mime theatre.




I have a clown antenna. It delights me when it picks up a frequency.

There is a certain truth in comedy, it's unspoken and hard to put into words but with clown,  I just know it when I see it and it delights me.

There is a certain truth, a primitive profound energy to be found in martial rituals also. I was marinated in Rugby, growing up in NZ and there's a spirituality to be tapped deep in the clash that the game frames.

So to with men and women who fight. Contesting the moment for dominance is not everyones cup of tea but I'm drawn to it.

Genki Sudo was a fighter, he was exceptionally good,
 [21 pro fights on World stage, won 15, lost 4, drew 2]
 He was so proficient at fighting that he 'played' with it. My antenna hummed when I saw him fight. I was delighted. I thought gleefully to myself,
"This guys a Clown!"

He admitted that he had grown to a point where he saw a fight primarily as a means of self expression and had respect and gratitude towards his opponents for giving him the medium in which to work.

In the world of men who try to beat each other up for a living Genki Sudo was deep.

he wrote essays

The theory of Happiness

How to Marry　The Woman living in　the Valley of the Wind

God is The Tablecloth

Revolution

Genki Sudo, The Bashar

Subconscious Always Talks to You

Catcher In The Octagon

Renaissance Of Love and Revolution

Let's Cat

He rarely lost.
Win or lose he would brandish a large flag representing all the nations of the united nations with the words "We are all one" on it.

Japanese Mixed Martial Arts [MMA] placed theatrical emphasis on fighters entrances to the ring. Genki Sudo, who held a degree in performing arts, constructed elaborate entrances with subtext and layers. He was the master of the theatrical entrance. He had his own theatre group [still does but he doesn't fight any more]



and his fighting? disciplined, unorthodox, playful, dominant.



He retired from hitting people expressively and now creates performance thus..



He's my favorite Buddhist.

A most interesting fellow.

Grock "King of Clowns" [updated]

Grock (January 10, 1880 – July 14, 1959), born Charles 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.

By 1913, Grock's fame had spread, his act having developed into the mixture of pantomime and musical blunders for which he is now remembered. With the outbreak of World War 1, he made Britain his base, remaining there until 1924, when he returned to continental Europe. He performed throughout Europe and in the United States, commanding ever higher fees, and his continuing success enabled him to establish his own circus in 1951, with which he toured until his final performance in Hamburg on October 30, 1954. Grock described the 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."

He retired to the Villa Bianca (now named "Villa Grock"), a 50-room house he had had built in the 1920s in Imperia Italy, where he died in 1959.

Grock was the last pre media clown of the 20th century.  

a quick gag

A full length film 1hr 40
A selection of Grocks work, [and others]


A rainy sunday afternoon, on fullscreen, allowing yourself to drift back in time would be my suggestion.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820394,00.html

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. 

As Adrian Wettach, the son of a Swiss watchmaker, he ran away from home at 14 to try his luck in greasepaint. For 60 years he played in circuses and music halls across the length and breadth of Europe and England. On a continent where clowns are universally rated as the top act in any circus, Grock was acclaimed as the greatest of them all. The Queen of Spain once gave premature birth to a royal heir from laughing too hard at his antics. Winston Churchill once urged him to take out British citizenship so that Britons might claim him as their own. Even Charlie Chaplin was once kind enough to concede that Grock was almost as good as he.

Offstage a solemn and fastidious artist who speaks seven languages and boasts an honorary Ph.D., The Great Grock spent hours and years polishing and perfecting the details of his performance. But he never tampered with its essential ingredients, which were as simple and absurd as life itself: a tiny fiddle produced from a monstrous case, the almost miraculous discovery that it is easier to push a stool toward a piano than it is to push a piano toward a stool, his look of ecstatic appreciation at a single sour musical note produced all by himself. In such endless re-enactment of simple and simple-minded truth, everyman could forget his own absurdity and laugh instead at Crock's.

Last week, soon after the curtain fell for the last time on his act, Grock and his devoted Italian wife headed for retirement and a 50-room villa on the Italian Riviera. He had earned his rest without question, "but who," asked one of the million-odd friends he had left behind, "will ever be able to make us laugh like that again?"


The Villa Grock



Grock  discovered Imperia by chance, during a visit he paid to his parents-in-law spending a holiday there in 1920, and he was so struck by the place that he bought a house surrounded by a large garden, where he originally intended to spend his holidays. .
There he built the Villa that still overlooks the hills of Oneglia and that became the main residence of the clown until his death in 1959. The villa and the garden are evidence of the eclecticism of their owner and still transmit his celebrated melancholic smile.
The Garden
brought back the beauty and the charm of this “enchanted location” of the western Italian Riviera. The garden structures have been carefully repaired and plants and flowers are blooming in their former splendour. Today’s  visitors are surrounded by the same atmosphere Adrien Wettach had imagined, driven by his love/passion for nature.
The park represents a typical example of the historical gardens of the Riviera. The well marked paths invite to take a stroll and all around the spindle-shaped colums, the bold arches, the unique decorations, the fountains and the pond with its little oriental-looking bridge are the completion of an evocative and magic scenery.
The Villa
The originality of this villa is explained by the fact that Grock himself supervised the project by architect Armando Brignole..
The building is a sort of self portrait, the expression of an extraordinarily playful and creative personality. Although the architectural style goes beyond every definition, the influence of Art Nouveau is clearly recognizable especially in the interiors.
The Province of Imperia bought the property in 2002 and the villa is now undergoing restoration work and therefore not open to visits. The project includes the complete renovation  of the building in full compliance with the original plan. Upon completion of the works the Villa is going to become an important cultural centre: it will house exhibitions, meetings and conferences, international events and a permanent exhibition dedicated to the life and art of the artist it is named after.
The restoration is expected to be completed in 2009.

Chinese cultural exchange.

Self Promo

Rumple, the possibly sacred fool.

Rumple, or Rumplestiltskin as he his referred to out of earshot of copyright enforcers, is an international clown. He's worked solo performing streets and street theatre festivals and arts festivals and all number of events, Glastonbury among others and recently enjoyed employ with cirque du soleil and is now not surprisingly, a free artist once more.

Oh how we laughed, we being clowns and street performers with more than a couple of decades experience both in this precarious form of business we've chosen and of Rumple himself, to hear that Cirque had grabbed his talent.

We laughed for the simple fact that Rumple cannot be tamed, never has been, never will and for Cirque to have the audacity [which is one of their qualities] to presume they could direct Rumple in the exacting way his two year contract implied automatically was to presume that some unlucky Cirque arts administrator, if lucky just one and if unlucky a handful, would suffer an aneurism.

I am not a religious man however if ever there was an argument for some spiritual hand that directs from within, giving birth to dreams and impulses that drive an individual brave enough to trust in them that argument would be personified in Rumple.

He is in his own motley way a sacred fool.

He speaks on and off stage in a falsetto. It used to be a cruel game among some to ply him with alcohol, the rumor being if you got him drunk enough he'd drop an octave. I have it on good authority that this is so. He was an innocent and innocents gets taken advantage of. I saw him once at Glastonbury coming in to pick up his check, supported by a person under each arm, unconscious with exhaustion, to sign for a check and have others change his flight to some east European festival and get him on the plane because those were the things he needed doing. Rumble would sit on somebodies floor and exclaim in his high little voice as his eyes roved in wonder.

“Blimey! You've got a nice house/caravan/big tent. I slept in a ditch last night.”

and it of course would be true because to my knowledge Rumple has never lied, his character shuns that level of sophistication.

However Rumple could go where others could not [in, I believe so many ways]. Before the Berlin wall fell Eastern Europe was steadfastly closed for visitors yet Rumple, in the jesters suit and false nose he wore far, far more often than not, would simply walk through checkpoints under armed guard explaining that he'd heard of this castle or that and wanted to go there because he liked castles and burly men would step aside and let him past to walk on towards wherever and I like to think they did it because on some level they recognised he was holy in that pure sense of childish purpose that radiates from him. [Believe me when I tell you I could think of many more cynical reasons and motivations but I choose not to. ]

Originally Australian, Rumple first arrived in Europe into London on a Qantas jet. It was a laughably short visit. He had worn his costume and false nose the entire 20+ hour trip. The wall between performance and backstage was to Rumple a sliding scale with a clown at each end.

Disembarking, he tottered through to Customs. British customs officers being, quite fittingly, the most dour people on the planet, the spectacle of some falsetto-ed Aussie with bells hanging from his jesters hat and long false nose served not to entertain them but further amplify their disgust with the human condition life had subjected them to.

Rumple no doubt would have been smiling and probably said something as uncomplicated as

“Hello there.”

The passport changed hands, an ordinary passport considering, most likely an ordinary photo.

They didn't care. They asked the important questions.

“Do you have any money?”

Rumple's eyes would have sparkled I suspect as he bent down and rustled in his carry-on before standing with a water polo sized bag made from strong cloth tied in a bundle all circular and bulging before exclaiming delightedly.

HAVE I GOT MONEY!

Then plonking down his package which inspection revealed contained multiples of hundreds of dollars in Australian coins. Useless, unexchangable coins that had no value whatsoever in Europe. Banks at the time, and probably still, only change notes.

The customs officers would have looked at him blankly [ while laughing uproariously inside their heads which is what I imagine the most spectacularly dour people do] before sending him to some small bare room with his luggage and within hours he was on his 20+ hour return trip to Australia.

Rumple contains no daunt, he cannot be daunted because like many things he simply refuses to conceive of daunts existence.

Close to 50 hours later Rumple, still with his coins and again a rich man returns to Sydney.

Within two weeks of circulating and telling his story he has paper money and a new airticket and had been persuaded to forgo his costume for the trip. Rumple's not stupid, he learns from experience like anyone else. It's simply that his larger picture is unique. So within short order he had gained entry into Europe and was headed in his fantastically impulsive meanderingly steadfast way towards castles he'd once seen pictures of, behind the iron curtain.

His dauntlessness is legendary among those relative few who know of him. He has, at multiple day festivals with multiple stages, performed shows that have lasted up to 26 hours. He has improvised non stop for more than a day. He would pick up a juggling ball and state.

“I am now going to throw this ball up into the air and catch it 317 times!”

and count each one along with the audience until he dropped one then start again. That's an easy 30 minutes right there but Rumple on many occasions would be given or grab or make a stage at a festival and go until he dropped.

His props were a unicycle, juggling stuff and various very obscure found objects or things he'd made.

He would do his show and people would pay him afterwards and in that way he was like us. [in that he was like anybody]

But he had almost complete disregard for the form he was using, it was more like a vehicle he jumped on and off of in pursuit of his character. There's a now stock piece. I first saw Peter Post use it, where you fail to balance an inflated ball on your finger and after repeated attempts enraged you throw or hit it away over the heads of your audience. The joke comes when invariably at some point shortly afterwards it gets thrown back into the circle and further humor is milked by taking out a knife and stabbing the ball and then throwing it again from the circle. Very very often the tattered ball is again returned, thrown back into the circle and the characters comic humiliation is complete.

I saw Rumple use this on a cobbled courtyard in Villach, Austria , he tried and tried to spin the ball on his finger then threw it away in mock anger and got a laugh and moved onto his next 'trick' for a good couple of minutes by which time his audience had quite forgotten about the ball but he hadn't when he stopped and in his falsetto shouted,

“Where's my ball?”

The audience looked behind itself to see but the ball had vanished, some kid had probably run off with it.

Rumple asked again,

“Where's my ball?”

The audience didn't know so Rumple discarded them, he just walked through them and away, leaving his props scattered in what used to be his stage surrounded with what used to be his audience as he wandered round the very old Town through courtyards and walled pathways asking anyone he met, mostly Austrians,

“Where's my ball?”

He gave up after a couple of hours but he never found his ball and others cleared and stashed his props where he had left them. We were all at the same hotel, it was no trouble.

Rumple put his hand to writing for a year or thereabouts. On performers.net, he would write long stream of consciousness screes. Genius begs comparison and Rumple is beyond that so no-one will ever be able to judge whether Rumples writing is profound. It will take some sort of singularity to finally make sense of him.

I do suspect he himself is profound although that could be seen as an article of faith on my part and as I've said I'm not a religious man.

[Like madness and white noise, patterns form]

http://www.performers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1203&highlight=rumple


AN UPDATE ON RUMPLE, AUG 2011