For the last half hour my heart has been racing as I rummage through my room, collecting my clowning supplies in anticipation of my Tuesday Tots and Teens clowning adventure. I AM SO NERVOUS. I can research childhood humor development as much as I would like, but the real test comes on Tuesday when I walk through their daycare door. Will they think I'm funny? I will be absolutely devastated if they don't. This is the first audience I have performed for, where they don't have other things to distract them like at the carnival. All of their judging five year old eyes will be on me. I want to think of the whole show as more of an interaction with these kids, but in reality I'm supposed to be entertaining them and it's all up to me to put on a good performance.
So I've spent the weekend thinking up all the possible scenarios and routines I could pull out for them. On Friday I confirmed my "show" with Mary, the head of the program and she and the kids are super excited that I'm coming. She said she would let me walk in while the kids were playing and slowly I can gain their attention. Personally, I'm really happy with this setup because I won't be walking in to them all staring at me. (It's amazing how the five year olds can be this intimidating.) I checked a book out of the library on called "Be a Clown" by Mark Stolzenberg Thursday and in briefly skimming it I found some great ideas for what to do on Tuesday.
I'm planning on utilizing my shoes to make my walk look as funny as possible and waggle my knees around. I think they would find it funny if I came in pretending I didn't know where I was, acting very lost and then started interacting with them from there. I can take on and off my hat and pretend to have a difficult time putting it back on, and of course, the classic trip and fall, or almost trip and fall in this case because I wouldn't want to crush any small children during my visit. I've also decided that balloon animals are my strongest clown trait, so for most of the time I'm hoping to entertain them with sounds each of my balloon animals make and goofy stories to go along with each one. I have more than enough balloons to make an animal for each kid in the class, with a few to spare in case I pop them.
I packed my bags tonight so I'll have everything I need ready to go Tuesday morning. These items include: My nose, an extra nose just in case, my nose stickers, my flower hairs ties and some extras, balloons, balloon pump, juggling balls, stickers, flower shirt, clown pants, suspenders, my hat, shoes to wear in my clown shoes and lastly, my clown shoes. A new addition to my outfit is my penguin purse. Given to me by a relative a while ago, this is the perfect opportunity to use it! I'm storing all of my balls, balloons and stickers in the bag which I can conveniently sling over my shoulder and walk in.
While I'm very nervous about this presentation, I can't call myself a clown if I'm not actually entertaining kids. This will be a big step in my project and hopefully a lot of new learning will come out of the experience. Expect quite the long blog post Tuesday night!
Mary, your posts are very fun to read and the reader really gets a sense of how you feel about what you are writing. I also really like the videos and pictures, because they allow your audience to connect with your project on another level. I look forward to your post on how the teens and tots performance went!
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