Nouveau Clown Institute presents: 2012 Barcelona Workshops!
Johnny Melville, Steve Smith, Jango Edwards, and John Towsen

1. The Clown Tribe of a New Paradigm FULL!
March 7–17, 2012
Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards
(400€ - 40h)
Another edition will be announced soon.

2. Clown Master Class
April 9–14, 2012
Steve Smith
(300€ - 24h)

3. The Clown Theory
May 14–18, 2012
Jango Edwards
(250€ - 20h)

4. Physical Comedy
June 12–17
John Towsen
(300€ - 24h)

1. The Clown Tribe of a New Paradigm is a unique opportunity to train for ten days with two of the leading teachers of the N.C.I., Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards, who are veterans of stage and screen with thousands of hours of performing experience and success and who still perform around the globe as comedy surges through their blood and love through their hearts.

Johnny Melville, B.Sc., is a trained teacher, actor, clown, writer, and director and a trained Pleiadian light worker. In 2001 he won best actor award at the Brooklyn Film Festival. He has performed and taught in over 30 countries and is continually active in the theater and movie world. Johnny will appear with Jango in the feature film The Parade of Fools, to be shot in New York in summer of 2012. johnnymelville.com

Jango Edwards is founder of the original Festival of Fools; director of The Nouveau Clown Institute and the Fools Militia; creator of Cabaret Cabrón; and an international clown artist, writer, composer, director, and producer. During the past 40 years, he has performed and taught in over 30 countries and is constantly active in the evolution of the global clown profession. jangoedwards.net

We plan to open a new group of Clown Tribe of a New Paradigm next summer. More info soon.

2. Clown Master Class
Steve Smith has built a highly successful career in the entertainment industry, fully utilizing his talents as a writer, performer, producer, teacher, manager, and director. He started out as a performer, having studied at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, earned a BFA in acting from the Goodman School of Drama and studying physical comedy with some of the world’s top performers. He performed in the Greatest Show on Earth for several years before “running away from the circus to join a home."

Steve has taught extensively and served as the director of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College for ten years, from 1985 to 1994. He has also traveled the world conducting workshops and master classes in physical comedy. During his tenure as director of the college, Steve conceived and directed the highly successful 123rd edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (“The Greatest Show on Earth”).

In 1996, Steve was able to combine his skills as a producer, performer, and manager when he served as the talent development coordinator for Chuck Jones Film Productions, and he went on to produce and direct numerous shows including several of his own plays and a critically-acclaimed one-man show, Slapstick & Sawdust. He was co-writer and guest director of the 2005, 2006, 2008, & 2009 editions of The Big Apple Circus. stevesmithshow.com

3. Clown Theory by Jango Edwards
The art of the clown actor is not just a profession, but a lifestyle that demands an understanding of emotion, sensitivity, passion, pathos and the heart.

The essence of clown, in the pure sense, is a combination of innocence and maturity. The Clown Theory Encounter is a way of uniting these qualities so each participant can discover and develop their personal clown and apply it to their life after the course is completed. A combination of 20 years of professional experience, simple awareness, and common logic enables the instructor to reveal the clown character within each of us.

Through the use of assorted games, physical activities, sociological demonstrations, improvisations, and performance, each student will find his or her comic simplicity, innocence, and logic, which are the fundamental ingredients of the clown formula. A play-environment is created, in which trust within the group ensemble can develop. This motivates the students to remember the innocence they have forgotten. It will also reveal present social and human conditions. It may sound complicated but in fact it’s simple; it is the simplicity that is difficult for us to grasp.

Clown is a social character in all realms of life. The performance situation, be it theater or circus, is probably the most common form through which we know clowns; but it’s the least important. The primary requirements to reveal your personal clown are a knowledge of the comic formula and the creation of a clown heart. You have always had, and always will have, a clown heart, but to revive it demands the simple desire to regain and sustain your youth throughout all aspects of life.

The Clown Theory Class first reveals the innocence each of us has surrendered; and then proves it is never too late to recapture it again. It’s a challenge, it’s revealing but most of all it’s fun.

4. Physical Comedy.
A hands-on crash course in physical comedy vocabulary for clowns, mimes, actors, and everyone in between. Technique leads to application in short pieces, with an emphasis on character interaction, gag structure, and storytelling. Skills are centered around working with your partner (counterweights, levers, mounts, lifts, partner tumbling) and with the physical world around you (tables, chairs, doors, props, etc.). Some performance experience and a reasonably sound body highly recommended, but all levels of experience welcome.

John Towsen has taught full-length physical comedy courses at Princeton University, Ohio University, and the Juilliard School (the latter two for six years each), plus numerous shorter workshops, most recently at the Nouveau Clown Institute in Barcelona. He has many famous former students but doubts he had anything to do with their success. His once-upon-a-time performance career included seven years of television acting as a child growing up in New York and a decade of clowning as an adult, from the elementary schools of Long Island to the sands of Saudi Arabia, most of it with partner Fred Yockers. In his other lives he teaches multimedia and digital video in the Creative Arts & Technology program at Bloomfield College, and spends his summers working for the Open Society Institute doing media training for activists in hot spots across the globe. He is the author of Clowns (1976) and was artistic director for the first two New York international clown theater festivals (1983, 1985). He currently teaches and directs physical comedy in New York City, where he is co-founder with Audrey Crabtree of the NYC Physical Comedy Lab. His latest research on the subject is to be found on his blog, physicalcomedyblogspot.com