NYCLOWNFEST: The Four shows I saw on Saturday

You can read about the 3 shows I saw on Friday here: 

On Saturday, I saw 4 more shows of the NY Clown Festival.  Here’s what I saw

PERHAPS… PERHAPS… QUIZAS.

I get a theatrical divorce from Gaby Muñoz. (Photo by Jim Moore of Vaudevisuals)

I’d seen Gabriela Muñoz perform a shorter version of this show 2 years ago.  Here’s what I thought of it then.(In fact, I was the audience volunteer that got married to her!) This time she did a full 55 minute version. It was still pretty darned great. The concept is wonderful- we see a bride on the couch, reading a book and eating bonbons.  Eventually she chooses somebody from the audience to get married to.  Problems ensue, and at the end she is where she started, but now we know why.

Gaby is a funny clown who is patient and great at dealing with people.  This time my replacement suitor was a little bit of a bad pick– he was a “performer” and started to mess around, eating her cake and so forth.  She dealt with him as best she could and eventually banished him out of the theatre.  Which was hilarious.

You can see a bunch more photos of the show taken by Jim Moore of the show on his website vaudevisuals.

She has two more shows- Thursday 9/20 at 7 pm and Saturday 9/22 at 8:30 pm.  You should definitely try to catch this show.

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DON’T RUSH… RUN

Next up was a clown from Finland, Mona Ray (Ratalahti), who presented  a show that was a collection of characters. My favorite one was a lecturer on the different kinds of laughter, and then exhorts the audience to laugh in those certain ways.  Mona has a strong character and her work is interesting.  She also did a bride character, who ended up picking the same guy that Gaby picked!  He was better behaved in her routine.

I enjoyed Mona’s work, although I’m not sure it hung together as a show– I didn’t see the strong connection between the 4 or so characters she presented.  Her personality and clown is strong, and the music in the show is great– I just wanted to see a stronger throughline.

She has one more show, Thursday September 20th @ 8:30pm .

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DEADPAN ALLEY

Will Shaw has been doing juggling shows and performances for a really long time.  And it shows (in a good way).
Although this show is brand new, it’s not new at all.  He’s just taking what he’s been doing for the last 30 years and putting it on stage with some props.

Will is a great juggler, a great musician, and very funny and quick.  He’s got tons and tons of one-liners and throwaway lines.  In the show, he does a great spinning top act, spins a ball on his finger while playing the piano, does a series of cigar-box sculptures and balances and rhythm playing that are pretty unique and interesting. I hadn’t seen somebody play with the cigar boxes in quite the way that Will does– playing percussion with them.  It was great.
I was sitting in the row with two other clown Adam’s– Cigar box juggler and Ringling/Bindlestiff Alum Adam Kuchler and Cirque du Soleil clown Amo Gulinello  and all three of us loved the show.  Perhaps Will just appeals to clowns named Adam?

I highly recommend seeing this show and disproving that hypothesis.  He has one more show Saturday September 29th @ 5:30pm

The last show that I saw on Saturday was the only show of the festival the Donovan Ensemble had.  The good news is they are local, and have lots of fans, so I assume you can see them locally regularly (I hadn’t).