Arts Fest: Gogo time
Actor Anastasia Phillips will be flying in from Nova Scotia, where she is on the set of The Trades, to present The Gogo Show at Creemore Festival of the Arts.
She describes it as the story of discovering her clown – a fancy clown with a Chanel bag who lives beyond her means, and probably shoplifts in her free time.
“When we first meet, Gogo,” said Phillips, “she’s sort of mired in the material world, and she suspects that there’s something more, and she hopes that there is… she knows that life as it’s currently being prescribed to her isn’t really fulfilling, but she is clueless as to how to fix that. So Gogo is like a synthesis of all of our unfulfilled parts.”
Phillips said she has always loved physical theatre. While at school she created a melancholy clown character having an existential crisis. Two years ago, she got a clown coach in preparation for a television role playing a woman who lives as her clown. As part of her process, she went to the fall fair as a clown.
“From there, I just couldn’t sleep because I was so excited by this opportunity and remembering my love of this sort of absurd theatrical performance art,” said Phillips.
She continued her training at Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in France, and then did baby clown with John Turner.
With support from Turner, Phillips started writing a clown show, finding a new collaborator and director in Erika Batdorf, also a student of Pochinko.
Phillips said over the past few months she has been developing the show, incorporating more European clown methods, where “there is an enormous amount of physical control and mastery. And the idea is that you would create this impeccable container for very nuanced moments of truth and honesty.”
She said the process of finding one’s clown is deeply psychological and very healing.
“It’s a way that you can accept all the parts of yourself you normally reject,” said Phillips. “In fact, it demands that of you, and the whole thing is just an exercise in vulnerability and the feeling of doing clown should be one of free falling and complete loss of control, which is really terrifying.
Baby clown takes the student back through to childhood, and then forward again, so they can observe how they began to mask, to protect themselves.
“Along the way, you lose your essential self and clown is a way to reclaim that again,” said Phillips. “I was in a place in my life where I felt like I wanted to reclaim myself, my autonomy, and this was the perfect vehicle to do that.”
The Gogo Show – Four shows at Creemore Log Cabin: 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4 and noon and 2 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 5. Tickets cost $25 at the door.
