An excerpt from my book, a brief summation from a performance I saw at the Glastonbury Fest.
"Abner the eccentric.
He's a mime/ clown and while us mime/ clowns are used from time to time to disparagingly represent everything that is twee and pathetic and self indulgent and irrelevant, I have one thing to say in our defense.
Suck pus asshole.
It's only because its so hard to do well and looks so simple when done well (and also because its the refuge of a lot of twee, pathetic, self indulgent, irrelevant, govt subsidized pseudo intellectuals who mistake unpopularity with genius) But anyway all a good mime has to do in my opinion is to stop you thinking about what you were thinking and instead follow his thought processes for as long as he can keep you and if also a clown then laughter every couple of minutes doesn't hurt.
Abners show lasts an hour and a half, he plays with props, ideas and the audience collectively and sometimes individually, he's in his fifties and has a confident playfulness that's reinforced by his many years of experience. Its a gentle show with its own understated power as he takes a couple of hundred people on a journey into his world where nothing works like it should but he triumphs anyway, absurd, charming, skillful and beautiful, he fails, succeeds, gets angry, sad, frustrated, celebrates and shares it all with an audience of all ages who are spellbound. "
"Abner the eccentric.
He's a mime/ clown and while us mime/ clowns are used from time to time to disparagingly represent everything that is twee and pathetic and self indulgent and irrelevant, I have one thing to say in our defense.
Suck pus asshole.
It's only because its so hard to do well and looks so simple when done well (and also because its the refuge of a lot of twee, pathetic, self indulgent, irrelevant, govt subsidized pseudo intellectuals who mistake unpopularity with genius) But anyway all a good mime has to do in my opinion is to stop you thinking about what you were thinking and instead follow his thought processes for as long as he can keep you and if also a clown then laughter every couple of minutes doesn't hurt.
Abners show lasts an hour and a half, he plays with props, ideas and the audience collectively and sometimes individually, he's in his fifties and has a confident playfulness that's reinforced by his many years of experience. Its a gentle show with its own understated power as he takes a couple of hundred people on a journey into his world where nothing works like it should but he triumphs anyway, absurd, charming, skillful and beautiful, he fails, succeeds, gets angry, sad, frustrated, celebrates and shares it all with an audience of all ages who are spellbound. "
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