Being a Clown and The Expressive Arts

Isabelle Schenkel

Description

The clown's artistry offers key insights into how practitioners in guidance & support can unlock their own capacity for the mental and physical flexibility needed in their work with clients. The clown is a master of improvisation and humour. Being a clown is a breath of fresh air, a pause for thought; it invites us to converse with complexity. Giving and receiving with respect and sensitivity is the essence of this key player in our human repertoire. All roads are open with the clown.

Sujets

• Beaux arts
• Théâtre

Informations

• Publié par: L'Harmattan
• Date de parution: 13 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782336847047
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Backcover
Collection Arts : thérapie

Collection Arts : thérapie Dirigée par Henri Saigre

La collection veut contribuer au large débat qui traverse les différentes orientations de l’art-thérapie et de l’art transformationnel. Elle s’intéresse, sans dogmatisme, à leur histoire ainsi qu’à l’expression des fondamentaux de leurs différentes écoles de pensée, à l’écoute des pratiques singulières, à la relation des colloques et des congrès où se brassent les idées, à leur dimension sociopolitique. Elle souhaite également, en publiant des monographies, continuer à questionner les rapports entre l’art et la folie.
Déjà parus
Jimi B. Vialaret, L’art-thérapie. D’un lien art et médecine. Volume VI : Musica Mundia, 2. 2 e partie : langage et divination, animaux et curiosités musicothérapeutiques , 2018.
Christine Lopez et Michel Arnaud, Art-thérapie et autisme. Du geste à la parole. Récits d’atelier et réflexions cliniques , 2016.
Henri Saigre, Les éphémères , 2014. Roseline Hurion, Divagations , 2014.
Renate Perrion-Klee et Didier Antoine, Musique pour tous ! Quand le handicap n’est plus un obstacle , 2014. Henri Faivre, Survivre. Mythes et transgressions en art-thérapie , 2013.
Nicole Derda et Yves Lefebvre (ouvrage collectif), Art-thérapeute en écriture , 2013.
Bela Mitricova-Middelbos, Schizophrénie et création artistique , 2013.
Isabelle Schenkel, Le Clown thérapeute , 2013.
Title

Isabelle S CHENKEL







Being a Clown and The Expressive Arts



Preface by Stephen K. Levine
Copyright



























© L’Harmattan, 2018 5-7, rue de l’Ecole-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris
http://www.editions-harmattan.fr
EAN Epub : 978-2-336-84704-7
Exergue
Enfin, de son vil échafaud,
Le clown sauta si haut, si haut,
Qu’il creva le plafond de toile
Au son du cor et du tambour,
Et, le cœur dévoré d’amour,
Alla rouler dans les étoiles.
Odes funambulesques
Finally, the clown jumped so high, so high
From his worthless scaffold,
That he pierced through the canvas roof,
To the sound of the horn and the drum,
And, with his heart devoured by love,
Rose to mingle with the stars.
Funambulesque Odes
Table of contens
Cover
Backcover
Collection Arts : thérapie
Title
Copyright
Exergue
Preface
Introduction by Stephen K. Levine
1. The Art of the Clown
2. The Fundamental Aspects of the Approach to Clowning
3. A Corporeal and Sensitive Presence
4. The Intention of Clown
5. Irreverence and Freedom
6. Putting into Practice
7. Improvisation
8. The Other, a Partner in Play
9. The Art of the Clown for the Practice of Support in the Expressive Arts
10. From the Role of the Change Agent to the Character of the Player
11. Support the Imagination with a View to Unfolding a Metaphorical Reality
12. Make It or Let It Unfold
13. Meeting, Presence, Relevancy
14. From the role of the change agent to the character of the player
To Work
Research
Bibliography
Adresse
An invitation to play became a fascinating adventure and a definite part of my life. I am grateful to Stephen and Ellen Levine for having helped me discover the art of being a clown, and, to my great surprise, I loved it. I thank them for their support and the constant renewal of their confidence in me. I thank Jacques Stitelmann for offering me a stimulating framework within which to work and who welcomed me as a clown with open arms into his training Institute.
I thank Jean-Bernard Bonange for his valuable teaching about clowning. I thank Pierre Byland and Serge Martin for their perceptive, immense knowledge of the nature of clowning. Thanks also to the artists who revealed to me with impressive sincerity the fragility of their daily lives and experiences. I thank Eric Boekholt for having opened the doors of the Auguste Association and introduced me to so many magnificent clowns.
Thanks also to my co-clowns of Octoclowns, all being such exceptional partners in clowning. I thank Florence Godoy for her illustrations.
Finally, my thanks to Irene Gernsheim and Evelyn Gustafson for their assiduous proofreading and editing, and also to my darling husband for his infinite patience and to all my friends and family for their repeated support.
Preface
Isabelle Schenkel is my daughter – that is, she is my clown daughter. I will explain. Each summer at the end of the courses in expressive arts at The European Graduate School in Switzerland, Ellen Levine and I offer a clown show to the graduating students. The show is meant as a celebration of the completion of their studies, but it also gives us an opportunity to make fun of the school and of ourselves. We have been doing this for almost twenty years, sometimes two different shows, one for each summer session. The performances include student volunteers, and we usually involve them in the play, even those who have never done anything like this before.
The shows have a basic structure that gives us a frame within which to improvise. I play Max, an old Jewish man with a bent-over body and a Yiddish accent. Ellen is Sadie, his wife, who is full of energy and bigger than life. They love each other but are also often in conflict, particularly over Max’s tendency to flirt with the beautiful students in the audience. When Sadie catches Max doing this, she hits him with her pocket-book, something that hurts not only the character but the actor as well! But somehow, they remember that in spite of everything, they do love each other very much and end by embracing fervently.
The show sometimes begins with Max and Sadie coming to this unusual school located high up in the alps to meet their grand-daughter who they haven’t seen in years. Who will play the grand-daughter? Isabelle was a student in our courses, and we recognized at once that she completely fit the bill: beautiful, playful and open to improvisation in her thinking as well as in play. And so, our little family was born. We played together for several years when Isabelle was a student, and then even after she graduated, we would often invite her back to participate.
After all, she was our only daughter and we were always so happy to see her again, even when it turned out that she had chosen a completely inappropriate person (sometimes male, sometimes female, but always ridiculous) to be her future mate.
Of course, Isabelle was not only our daughter; she was also one of the brightest students in our classes. With her background as a dancer as well as a therapist and coach, she took to the training in expressive arts work like, as they say, a duck to water. And she swam in it.
Her dissertation on clown as an artistic practice analogous to other modes of being a change agent revealed the principles and practice of therapy and coaching from a totally new perspective. This book is the distillation of many years of training and experience, both on stage and in the consulting room. In addition, the sensitivity and intelligence of her thinking shine through each page.
But what does clown have to do with being a change agent in her role of helping another with their life and work? Is this not a serious business in contradistinction to the foolishness of the clown? The therapist, for example, is not there to fool around. She often faces wounds and other obstacles that have tormented their clients and thrown them into chaos, both internal and external. What has this to do with the world of the clown? And yet Isabelle was able to see that many of the qualities of the clown – her ability to be present, to play with whatever appears and inhabit an imaginary world with another, the innocence and love which she greets the audience and her clown partner, the way she gives up her agenda and follows the play wherever it goes – all these as well as others described in the book, are also at the basis of effective guidance and support for a person in distress.
Above all, the clown shows us that our wish to know what we are doing and to control the outcome is a total illusion. Knowledge and control are indeed the characteristics which have enabled the human species to survive in the most dangerous and inhabitable milieux. Yet in spite of all this, we often end up in a mess. For example, our technological knowledge has given us immense power, yet the result is now environmental catastrophe which may even lead to our extinction. It seems whenever we confront a situation and try to master it, rather than letting go into an encounter with the other which may surprise and transform us, we end up in disaster. This is something a clown knows very well; after all, the typical experience of the clown is that she tries to pursue an objective and then, Voila – she flops! But not only does she fail at her task, she also often fails at being a clown, at doing something funny and amusing the audience. This is the moment referred to as “dying on stage.” Shame invades the clown-player, leading to a wish to escape, to try something else, anything that