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| Dancing Bouffons! photo by Stefano Borghi |
Hello! This
is Vika, a fellow traveller at the HELIKOS journey; I am honoured to be a guest
writer on this blog as I have always told Jenine that I consider it my best
notes.
Jenine
asked me to write about last term where we studied Grotesque and the art of
mocking in the crazy world of Bouffon –or Buffoons as I have heard English
speakers call them. I had never heard of them before they invaded the school…who
are they? Well, they have big white puffed bodies; their shape is somewhat
human, but twisted into a grotesque version of the human form. Giovanni tells
us that they are minor Gods related to satyrs, who come to our world, and love
to imitate it, because to the Bouffons everything is a game, and their favourite
game is called “Human Society”. They see everything and will play with the
subjects most dear or painful too us: family, moral, race, religion, war…
Nobody or anything can feel safe…
How to
become a Bouffon? Well, once you have got your puffed body, you need to change
your state of mind into an extremely playful one, somehow similar to that of a
child – but with absolutely no feelings about what you play except for the ecstatic
excitement of the game. And then you have to change the way you look at things,
isn’t it all fun? The gaze in your eyes will adjust and get a slightly sadistic
smile behind… and AH! The Bouffon has arrived, as Giovanni would state. Now all
you need is a Band – a gang of fellows up to no good – ready to mock in
jubilation…
Of course
there are many ways to mock something. A character might contain a mocking
aspect, but the treatment is somehow compassionate, a clown is the mocking of
the actor behind it, but in both cases they generously give or share their suffering with the audience…the Bouffons take from and feed off the
audience and make them suffer. At
best it should be almost unbearable to watch, and the laughter is different, if
it comes… once you have surrendered to the madness.
At our show
Giovanni warned the audience that the might feel offended, but he did not apologize,
because it is not the artist that makes the world grotesque, the world is full
of contradictions. The Bouffons have no opinion, they just play the game, can
you imagine to be part of this?
However,
even if the Bouffons have no opinion the actors and writes behind them do, and
you have to check what you want to say, and first of all check that in the
mocking of a subject you must mock EVERYTHING about it… luckily the Bouffons
have no problem with that.
So if you
mock the subject of abortion, make sure you get around both the people for and
against. In the mocking of the event of 9/11 let the Bouffons scream with fear
as they watch the airplanes crash but at the same time let them take photos in excitement
and film it for YouTube. And if you let the Bouffons have a go at the people
who do not care about the extreme exploit of the third world, have them also
mock the new age conscious consumers who feel like such a better person. And in
the end do not forget to give a kick at artists who make art about social
injustice through the art of mocking...
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| Bouffons are played at an extremely high level of tension and energy, and after a full of play you would find big white pools of exhausted actors lying around the floor of the studio... photo by Stefano Borghi |
After the crazy
mind-blowing period of mocking madness we worked on grotesque characters. The
word grotesque means something that is hidden. What lies underneath?
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| A singing duo. photo by Stefano Borghi |
There are several levels of
grotesqueness in the world around us, all you need to do is push the hints further
to find what was hidden. Often it means that the dynamic of a character must be
pushed so far that the complete opposite will appear. Something is grotesque when
the mask and counter mask are present at the same time, like fear and excitement,
like complete order and absolute chaos… like a vulgar woman singing a
sentimental love-song or a diva that demands: look at me – don’t look at me!..
The pushed
contradicting dynamic creates an extreme tension that twists the characters and
makes them suffer. The physical forms, like the Bouffons, are also puffed with
stuffing underlining or creating a tension in the body. Any character can be
pushed to the grotesque, it is a bit like wearing the character inside out and
turning the volume to the max… sometimes you find quite surprising things
stirring underneath the surface in the grotto –tesque.
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| Ahhhh. photo by Stefano Borghi |
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