Eggsodus

On our last day together in Athens, the three of us revisited the project and reflected on: - 2 days collaborating with others - the whole project and the lessons we can draw - what we want to do next Group cohesion and complicity  Compared to the first day, the second day with collaborators brought a higher level of cohesion and group complicity. This probably arose from having a group organization, with tasks assigned from the beginning of Day 2, as opposed to Day 1 when each individual could set their own tasks. Particularly on the return to the workspace, there was much more group work than on the journey from the workspace to the designated place of action on Day 2. However, valorising this is not an easy task. Some collaborators, in the feedback, valued the individual freedom of Day 1 over the group cohesion of Day 2. The feedback of others was the opposite. In general, this valorisation was related to the fun that the person reported having. This raises another question: how...

The three of us spent the morning assessing the previous day's activity and coming up with a new plan for the afternoon.  We decided to plan a simple scenario with clear differentiation between roles, that we would invite collaborators to make real, first by making costumes appropriate for each role, and then by going to a specific nearby square to carry out the scenario.  IN order to simplify this transition from idea via costume to street action, we decided that the three of us would assume key organising roles, to avoid collaborators having to concern themselves with direction, and also to ensure we stayed on track.  The roles were: - central figure / silent clown (Jon) - high priestess (Hilary) - ritual organiser (Robyn) - 2 free clowns - several ritual enactors The free clowns had the task of engaging verbally and gesturally with any onlookers, encouraging them to ask questions such as: What are they doing? What is this? What does it mean? The aim was not to provide ...

Prior to our days of collaborating with a group of local clowns and artists who responded. to our invitation, we gathered together what we were interested in taking forward with that group.  In order to make some sense of all of this, and to be able to communicate some of our direction of travel to people joining us, we found the categories below to be useful.  The plan for this new phase of the research was as follows: 1. Short Discursive Introduction a. Our starting points  - decolonising clowning - the third concerns of old trickster traditions, political activism and public spaces b. What we've come up with so far - see below for categories of the work c. Our invitation to the collaborators - the intention of the workshop is to simply continue in the same direction we have taken on previous days, continuing to explore, to ask questions in practice, to test ideas, to reflect. The presence of the collaborators will of course alter and influence what we are doing, and en...

As soon as we got up on our feet and started doing something active we began to discover how we tend to take on roles. After a while messing around, we identified a main description for each of us: the innovator, the formaliser and the follower.  The innovator got bored quickly, didn't want to follow rules and was on the look out for something new and surprising. The formaliser saw the new and moved to find and establish patterns and rules. The follower looked for whatever was happening and a way to join in. Although each of these was identified with a named individual, we felt that each of us could also choose to play each role. Other terms that seemed appropriate for some of these roles were: disruptor, rule-maintainer, and so on.  The three roles might also easily map onto other ways of understanding clown roles, such as the circus terminology of whiteface clown, auguste, counter-auguste and ringmaster.  Looking at traditional festivities, we also noticed three paralle...