ClownFest:
Two Clowns and a Chair
Two Clowns and a Chair
Presented by Marty Honig & Ryan Gangwish
Sept. 26, 2024 @ 7:30 PM
Two weary clown travelers enter upstage on opposite sides. They both walk straight down stage. At some point they discover a single chair center stage. A place to sit down! But then they see each other and realize they will have to compete each other for the chair. This competition takes the form of 2 clowns in a battle and then evolves into a dance, hat juggling and clown’s physically battling. They chase each other off and then reappear to find a little girl has come up from the audience and now sits in the chair.
About the Creator
Marty Honig
In 1975 I attended the first year of a physical theater school in Northern California founded by Carlos Mazonne Clementi now called Dell ‘Arte International. I had just graduated in theater arts from San Jose State University. This 5 month experience changed my whole vision of what theater and performance could be. Since that time I have pursued performance emphasizing devising original pieces using both clown and original characters. In the late 70’s I performed in an open mike format in a garage on Sundays. I did short clown sketches and puppet pieces. But in the 80’s I left creative pursuits for a career in electronics and eventually computers. I needed to earn a decent living while being married and raising 2 kids. In the early 90’s we moved from San Francisco to Colorado. My visual artist engineer husband and I created interactive puppet shows for Jewish holidays at our Synagogue. My husband created paper mache puppets and I devised stories that used members of the congregation as puppeteers and performers. I was paid on 2 occasions to create puppet performances for other synagogues. In the late 90’s I started performing with Theater Sports a short form improv franchise founded by Keith Johnstone. I took a 2 week workshop from him in Calgary with the Loose Moose Theater company. I took several special workshops at the Naropa Institute in Boulder. One was with a former member of Mummenschantz in physical theater. In the early 2000’s I took classes in long form improv and performed on a house team. But when I learned of a special 2 week clown workshop in Boulder with Giovanni Fusetti I knew I had found my life’s purpose. I used up all of my vacation time to take it but it was very hard.
Being in my 50’s I had a lot of protective layers to get through to realize my clown. I cried a lot and pushed through to the end with a solo clown performance that I can only say was only half way to my clown. I couldn’t give up and came back each year to work with Elizabeth Bowman a teacher from Giovanni’s school in Italy. In 2010 I moved to Kansas City, MO and Elizabeth actually traveled there several years in a row to teach clown. There I formed a clown troupe called the Flock with other members of the clown workshops. We performed at several fringe shows over the years. When I retired in 2017 I decided to follow my performance passion full time and attended a summer intensive at Dell’Arte in northern California. There I met the artistic director for a theater company called From the Ground Up which produces women’s stories into short theatrical pieces. I knew I wanted to work with this company to tell my own story which I did in 2019. In that piece I told the story of losing my husband to alzheimer’s disease but finding myself in the aftermath. I moved to Portland from Kansas City after the pandemic to be part of the very exciting clown community that exists here. I have found someone to partner with in clowning to create something I’m calling Clowns in Small Spaces. Im hoping to perform in small venues in order to be more connected to an audience.