Projects Training Artists Creating New Works Developing Communities
The Glass Contraption brings our blend of clown, physical and ensemble-based theater to schools and outreach centers throughout the five boroughs and to developing countries across the globe. We transform the found materials, stories and characters within a community into art. This process affirms the immediacy of art, unleashes innate creativity and
Where? The Glass Contraption presents itself to places that have not experienced clown or have had limited exposure to theater, or worse, bad exposure to clowns and theater! These communities might think all clowns wear crazy rainbow wigs and drive around in tiny cars. They might think theater is for suckers. These communities could be found in a public school in NYC, a brokerage firm, a university, or a rural community in South Africa.
How? We use the clown’s unique perspective to ask: What lights you up? What inspires you? What makes you furious? Crazy? What makes you laugh until you pee in your pants? The clown draws out the pre-negatively socialized self that slumbers within all of us. This self is mischievous, resourceful, curious, ferocious; it is as we would be if we had never heard the word NO.
We use this opening, along with the innovation and ingenuity inherent in the world of physical and collaborative theater, to promote the notion that you can make something out of nothing. We take your stories, impulses, dreams and humor, along with the junk found in your own backyard, and help you to fashion these little jewels into works of art.
What? Our teaching and performing has brought us throughout the United States, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Our community building clown collaborations occur over a year-long residency, a month-long intensive or a one-time workshop, with or without a show. Every residency is a carefully crafted event designed for the community we are partnering with. We spread the gospel of clown, using imagination to encircle the world.
Glass Contraption artists have conducted workshops and completed artist residencies with:
The Glass Contraption lived and worked with 150 children at The Topsy Center for Children Living with HIV in Grootvlei, South Africa.
Highlights of The TOPSY Residency:
