Picture of Gabi Cohen Groendland
The play "Clowns", directed by Julian Chagrin, performed in the Short Theatre Festival, touches delicately but mischievously upon the question: What is theatre? Wonderful acting and exact direction make it a brilliant and precise expression of short theatre.
A visit to the Short Theatre Festival is, in my judgment, an experience. Like a short story, a short play is meant to “contain the maximum in a minimum volume.” The play "Clowns" succeeds in realizing this ambition in an original and thought provoking manner.
"Clowns" is correctly defined by its creator as a comedy of the absurd. Everything here is contradictory. The unexpected is expected, reality is fantasy, the real actors are characters, and the viewing audience in the auditorium is supposedly imaginary.
The play takes place behind the scenes in a theatre, in a dressing room, and it portrays a senior and a supporting actor preparing to go onstage for a performance, and the dresser of the senior actor, who assists him, and him only as he prepares to go onstage.
Virtuosity
The three characters are dressed as clowns, and this, it becomes apparent, is their everyday clothing. During the play they change these clothes to those they will wear in the performance – regular suits, which are the costumes of the characters in the play they are about to perform, before another audience, an imaginary one.
The change of clothes is a feat of virtuosity performed during wonderful acts of clowning executed with great precision and charm by the three actors. This is in fact the real performance that we are viewing. Their real performance, for which they are getting ready, is for us, the audience, imaginary; as that which is taking place for them ‘backstage’ is imaginary for their imaginary audience.
As opposed to the two actors (Gil Alon and by Liron Gillerman) who talk for the length of the play about a specific dramatic event that once occurred to Gil Alon’s character, the character of the dresser (played by Gabi Cohen Groendland) remains mute throughout.
The dresser continually works and labors to remove the clown clothing from the senior actor (Gil Alon) and to dress him in his costume for the performance. He is the only one of the three who actually performs realistic work, but he remains dressed as a clown to the end.
The character of the clown is the reality, while the text, which seemingly tells a real story, is fanciful. On a costume crate the graffiti “Fuck Hamlet” is written, while the dresser holds in his hand a polystyrene wig dummy and mimics the famous “To be or not to be" scene from the classic play.
The polystyrene head is also a parodic metaphor of a real skull: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Toward the end of the play the senior actor returns backstage from the imaginary stage, and the dresser removes from his mouth a long colored ribbon that symbolizes “the accessory of words” that has been used and no longer has any function,
Talented Directing
In this context I must mention here the play’s director, Julian Chagrin, whose talent has already been proven in England, where he was winner of the Berlin Film Festival “Golden Bear” Award and Nominated for the the Oscar for short films that he directed. He has lived here for many years, for all practical purposes language-less, thus for him a kind of virtual world. His real world is located in a place where he can express himself in his own language. And perhaps precisely because of that the theatrical language of "Clowns" is so rich.
It is rare that a play succeeds in reaching the heart of the theatrical experience and the essence of the question “With what is the art of the theatre really involved?” Most frequently theatre here falls into the trap of dealing with the difficult state of our current affairs -- which is our lot in this country, where the theatre chiefly serves the ‘goal’, whether as social or other criticism.
At other times the theatre flees toward escapist plays. "Clowns" is a short, brilliant and precise theatrical expression, with superbly talented direction by Julian Chagrin and virtuoso performances by the actors. Set against the wholly suitable background of the colorful stage design and costumes of Michal Ya’akobi, the play addresses the question “What is Theatre?”, with charm and silliness, in which is reflected, of course the question, “What is life?”
"Clowns" demonstrates that indeed “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Imagination is more authentic than reality, and words are more than “words, words, words.”
"Clowns", by Maor Gillerman, directed by Julian Chagrin, was performed at Miktzaron 2, Short Theatre Festival, at Tzavta, Tel Aviv, December18, 2008. Actors: Gil Alon, Liron Gillerman, Gabi Cohen Groenland.
A visit to the Short Theatre Festival is, in my judgment, an experience. Like a short story, a short play is meant to “contain the maximum in a minimum volume.” The play "Clowns" succeeds in realizing this ambition in an original and thought provoking manner.
"Clowns" is correctly defined by its creator as a comedy of the absurd. Everything here is contradictory. The unexpected is expected, reality is fantasy, the real actors are characters, and the viewing audience in the auditorium is supposedly imaginary.
The play takes place behind the scenes in a theatre, in a dressing room, and it portrays a senior and a supporting actor preparing to go onstage for a performance, and the dresser of the senior actor, who assists him, and him only as he prepares to go onstage.
Virtuosity
The three characters are dressed as clowns, and this, it becomes apparent, is their everyday clothing. During the play they change these clothes to those they will wear in the performance – regular suits, which are the costumes of the characters in the play they are about to perform, before another audience, an imaginary one.
The change of clothes is a feat of virtuosity performed during wonderful acts of clowning executed with great precision and charm by the three actors. This is in fact the real performance that we are viewing. Their real performance, for which they are getting ready, is for us, the audience, imaginary; as that which is taking place for them ‘backstage’ is imaginary for their imaginary audience.
As opposed to the two actors (Gil Alon and by Liron Gillerman) who talk for the length of the play about a specific dramatic event that once occurred to Gil Alon’s character, the character of the dresser (played by Gabi Cohen Groendland) remains mute throughout.
The dresser continually works and labors to remove the clown clothing from the senior actor (Gil Alon) and to dress him in his costume for the performance. He is the only one of the three who actually performs realistic work, but he remains dressed as a clown to the end.
The character of the clown is the reality, while the text, which seemingly tells a real story, is fanciful. On a costume crate the graffiti “Fuck Hamlet” is written, while the dresser holds in his hand a polystyrene wig dummy and mimics the famous “To be or not to be" scene from the classic play.
The polystyrene head is also a parodic metaphor of a real skull: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Toward the end of the play the senior actor returns backstage from the imaginary stage, and the dresser removes from his mouth a long colored ribbon that symbolizes “the accessory of words” that has been used and no longer has any function,
Talented Directing
In this context I must mention here the play’s director, Julian Chagrin, whose talent has already been proven in England, where he was winner of the Berlin Film Festival “Golden Bear” Award and Nominated for the the Oscar for short films that he directed. He has lived here for many years, for all practical purposes language-less, thus for him a kind of virtual world. His real world is located in a place where he can express himself in his own language. And perhaps precisely because of that the theatrical language of "Clowns" is so rich.
It is rare that a play succeeds in reaching the heart of the theatrical experience and the essence of the question “With what is the art of the theatre really involved?” Most frequently theatre here falls into the trap of dealing with the difficult state of our current affairs -- which is our lot in this country, where the theatre chiefly serves the ‘goal’, whether as social or other criticism.
At other times the theatre flees toward escapist plays. "Clowns" is a short, brilliant and precise theatrical expression, with superbly talented direction by Julian Chagrin and virtuoso performances by the actors. Set against the wholly suitable background of the colorful stage design and costumes of Michal Ya’akobi, the play addresses the question “What is Theatre?”, with charm and silliness, in which is reflected, of course the question, “What is life?”
"Clowns" demonstrates that indeed “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Imagination is more authentic than reality, and words are more than “words, words, words.”
"Clowns", by Maor Gillerman, directed by Julian Chagrin, was performed at Miktzaron 2, Short Theatre Festival, at Tzavta, Tel Aviv, December18, 2008. Actors: Gil Alon, Liron Gillerman, Gabi Cohen Groenland.
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