Stephen Colbert, during a week long promotion of New Zealand recently posed the question. ‘How much of your national economy is based on whimsy?”
Interesting question. Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, are our present whimsical big daddies but it must be noted that they, although huge amplifiers of our quirky, understated, laconic and intelligently self aware humour are just that, amplifiers.The signal itself is and has always been an intrinsic part of New Zealands self expression.
We are cackling church mice giggling in the nook of someone elses cathedral and we like it that way.
There are others, less well known but making an impression internationally nevertheless.
Sam Wills, ‘The Boy With Tape On His Face’ has performed at the Royal Gala in London and has had a multi year residency show in Vegas.
Guy Williams has an international online following with his 'New Zealand Today’ comic reporting of small-town NZ eccentricities.
This month also a New Zealand Clown won the Silver prize at the Saint-Paul-lès-Dax International Circus Performers festival in France.
It’s like the Emmys of circus awards, the oscars being either the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo or the International Circus Festival of Budapest.
However in the world of studied and applied whimsy there are not too many opportunities where Clown is briefly taken seriously and accolades awarded and for a New Zealander to excel is cause for celebration.
What I like to call ‘High end Clown’ is a rarified yet pan culturally accessible medium that discards buffoonery and superficial wit and instead focuses on the creation of shared moments in which usually a solo artist creates a temporary world that entrances, beguiles and stimulates a profoundly palliative quality in which our ability to laugh at ourselves supersedes all else.
That’s quite a trick, to do it without language, solo and by means of a subterranean authority built on a low status clown foundation even more so.
Fraser Hooper lives in Wellington.
His Clown is a kind of downtrodden optimist who needs his audiences help to create a world in which he can find peace.
He ends up creating more than that instead producing a riotous celebration of collaboration within a temporary surreal whimsical bubble that is his show.
He’s measured and subtle and constructively sly and his recognition internationally is no surprise to me and I hope he inspires more New Zealanders in the celebration of our own form of whimsy and for some perhaps, in our increasing dour world, a true rebellious vocation in the creation of more of it.
First part of his country life show
Condensed full show
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