|
|
 |
   
GP: Who has influenced his work?
KO: When we watched the old silent film stars together, I could see that Bill was completely analyzing the movement, the setup, the plot, the way it was structured, the innate physicality of whoever was starring in it. He was researching. Bill studied [Charlie] Chaplin, [Buster] Keaton, and [Harold] Lloyd avidly. He watched movies, he analyzed them, read books about their lives. I remember a Buster Keaton festival in San Francisco where we went to every single movie. Buster Keaton was huge in both of our lives.
Keaton more than anyone [else] struck a chord with Bill. There's an economy of movement that Keaton has -- a wonderful physicality that was hilarious not only because of the physicality itself, but because of the brilliant setup in the narrative that allowed him to do those physical things. To be physical, incredibly physical in a theatrical context -- that was wonderfully funny. And that's what Bill wanted to do.
One of Buster Keaton's huge strengths was in developing plot lines where the setups were realized on every level. Bill wanted to have that in his work as well. He would study the story lines, not just the moves. As a dancer, I was interested in the physicality, figuring out how, where, he put his foot and all that. But Bill looked at everything. He wanted to know, How was it set up? Who are the characters? What's the payoff? What makes it funny? He was always analyzing.
We watched all the Fred Astaire movies. Bill does a lot of Astaire -- pseudo-elegant things -- in his dancing. The persona that's involved in that -- the character, the attitude, the physical carriage -- all those things, he studies. You know, he trained as a mime in high school. He has great mimetic senses, great ears and eyes, able to analyze and absorb from the masters. They learn by watching. He's a great mimic. But of course, his strength is that he turns it into his own thing.
GP: How is living with a clown unusual?
KO: Bill always had a great penchant for props. And living with him meant always being surrounded with a lot of stuff. [Laughs.] We had trunks. We had a "clown closet" full of oversized objects -- huge shoes, huge pencils, huge hammers, huge pairs of scissors, plastic lobsters, bags full of plastic bananas. Boxes full of ears and noses and wigs.
I used to see Bill standing in front of the mirror just making faces -- just sort of exercising his facial muscles, trying to get something going. And he used to do that for a long time, trying to figure it out. He was working at it and he was developing. At that time he was really developing Willy the Clown as a character. It was definitely a different persona than Bill the performer. The interesting thing in his work is how he tried to distinguish Willy the Clown, this white-faced clown, from Bill Irwin the performer. That was all happening at the time that we were together.
GP: What was it like to perform with Bill?
KO: Bill and I were performers in the Pickle Family Circus from its inception in 1974. Bill was hired as the clown, one of the clowns, and he cajoled me into being the tap-dancing gorilla in one of the clown acts. I'd never done any kind of comedic, circus work before. I came from a postmodern dance tradition. And suddenly to have to put on a gorilla suit and beat my chest and chase people was a huge challenge for me. [Laughs.] We had a clown act where he was my trainer; he was Hauptman von Clown and I was Ramona Lamona, the tap-dancing gorilla. The whole setup was that he would make me do demeaning tricks like jump on a pogo stick and ride a tricycle, but it turns out that I'm a much superior tap dancer than he is. I show him up in the end.
In Clown College, Bill was thinking about his character; he had been experimenting with the clown persona for a long time in his mind before then. But the Pickles was where Bill blossomed. Willy the Clown became a true character of the Pickle Family Circus. Doing many, many performances for young children, he was able to try out different things, develop. He learned how to perform in front of a very immediate audience. He learned how to create clown acts that were immediately accessible to children and adults.
GP: How else did he benefit from the Pickle Family Circus?
KO: He had wonderful people who could really back him up in a way that was significant. And he had opportunities to develop clown acts and to refine them. Bill is an endless refiner. He takes one idea and works on it for 30 years. It's so fun to see that things I saw 34 years ago are still here -- spaghetti and the trunk and the stairs and the pulling of the curtain. He takes things and re-adapts them and puts them -- it's recycling, it's redeveloping, sometimes it's repeating. It's not always successful, but he doesn't throw a lot of things away that work. Working in the circus where there [were] so many shows -- it's an opportunity to be out there in front of a crowd in a very regular way, where you have to perform all the time and you hone your craft. You figure out what's funny. You figure out what's not funny. You figure out how to work on the timing and to tighten things up. There was a lot accessible to him at the Pickles. He could really develop the craft of being a clown and creating material.
Interview for GREAT PERFORMANCES conducted in June 2004.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
