ClownZen

Explore being present, and presenting, with an engaged, connected, sense of humor. Explore and develop your sense of humor, your mindfulness, your awareness and connection within at the same time. Create laughter, share laughter, smile from deep inside. Open up your world of ridiculousness, playfulness and absurdity. Let go of your intellectual control center for a day or two. Explore a world where your 'humor' dictates your actions. Explore the depth of the connection between humor and human, and invigorate your sense of joy and wonder.

This is an experiential process, one of simply trying out possibilities, and exploring the ones that you like. This is not something that you can think about or study. This is one of the few world arenas where failure is not only acceptable, but it is embraced as an opportunity to express humor. So you can Only succeed.

What People Say about the workshops:
(from herzogenrath 08 workshop)

“WARNING: This workshop makes a lot of fun.”

“One more week training in listening what is there will give you the skill to hear the grass growing. Acting in bhuto time will brighten up all the colors of your life.”

“Magic moments with concentrating on ourselfs, playing with the group and creating new worlds.”

“Being clown: To discover the smile inside you and to conjure smiles on other’s faces”

“Everyone who longs to be touched in his heart will feel at home in this workshop.”

“I knew my clown superficially, but working with Moshe I discovered her depth in unlimited facets.”

What may well take place during a workshop day, or weekend as time allows:

-Warm-up with Taoist Health Exercises (chi gung style) movement, walking to music, and a touch of voice work.
-Touch on neutrality: what it is to stand, walk and move without any emotional expression.
-Take a simple action such as moving a chair from one place to another. How do you do that when you apply your sense of humor to the action.
-Explore variations on this theme. Explore other people's methods, interpret them as your own.
-Explore what it is like to do this for an audience (the workshop). Is it fun for you? Is it funny?
-Take a simple emotional expression, how does your sense of funny dictate to 'play' that expression using looks, gestures, sounds.
-Apply this expression to an action, maybe the same one as before. What do you discover. Explore variations.
-What happens when you bring this in front of an audience?
-Sharing humor involves a deep sense of listening: to what you are doing, to how the audience is reacting, to partners on stage. Several times a day, the workshop participants become audience for explorations in presenting,connecting, sharing a moment of humor. It may be as simple as come out on stage, look at the audience and leave. Or it may be more complex, a three people improvisation with a task at hand, such as: '3 people come on stage, each holding a bell, with the objective to ring their bells at the same time.

Some workshops have an OD (order of disorder) training component, in which the participants take an excursion in the local streets. These trainings are generally only in longer workshops.
Photos from Herzogenrath to Aachen OD Training, 08

The workshops involves a fair amount of physical activity as the work is based in physical theater. That being said I have worked with people in their 80's as well as young strong bodies; there are no acrobatics or back bends, participants are encouraged to only do what is comfortable. All workshops allow for focused exploration of fun and funny emphasizing your ability to inform it with both your maturity and your innocence. All workshops offer opportunities to explore in a light hearted,safe non-judgmental arena that is often filled with concentrated levity.