Où est la sortie?!
Bonjour! Bonjour! Normally there is absolutely no way I'd go out on a school night, particularly a Monday with a full week ahead. But Riss Obolensky's Stinky Little Pilgrim at Jacksons Lane, part of this year’s London Clown Festival, was beckoning. They had me at the title, quite frankly (see previous post). As I walked into the foyer I heard a group of friends hailing each other in French with hilarity, as though sharing some sort of inside joke. My ears pricked up. You can take the French teacher out of the classroom, mais...
In honour of the occasion I had
put round my neck a pilgrim's conch shell, a present from my sister who walked
the Camino to Santiago. And my naked mermaid, a sailing talisman echoing the
siren call of the evening. As it turned out, exactly the right company for the
evening ahead.
Having arrived in the nick of
time, I tested the patience of the theatre gods and ordered a gin and tonic,
then immediately stressed about the delay, my own doing, as I'd booked a seat
right at the front in the centre as a show of support and was suddenly worried
about being conspicuous, picking my way through other punters as the show was
about to start. Then I worried the lovely bar staff would pick up on my stress
and didn't want them to worry. Some days I am my own worst enemy.
I slid into my seat. A beautiful
spirit with all the grace and bearing of a dancer took their seat next to me,
clearly knowing half the row, with an exuberance that set the tone for the
audience there. The lights dimmed. A voiceover introduced us to the world of a
medieval French pilgrim. And in came Riss with all the ribald earthiness of
jester pilgrim. They took in the audience and within minutes got our knees
dancing and shoulders shrugging off with gallic insouciance all the cares of
the day. Bonjour! Bonjour! Encore! Choral repetition in different registers,
which is exactly what I do in the classroom to switch the energy round of
reluctant teenagers. Home from home, really. But Riss takes it to another
level. There was an energy generated by a boundless freedom of movement and
bonkersness that could go in any direction.
Theirs was a pilgrim wearing
pantaloons held up with a belt, a tunic and a white pilgrim's capuchon like
Marianne, French liberté incarnate, their face and legs caked in clay with
streaks of mud and Jesus-style sandals. This is a pilgrim who had walked miles
(to say kilometres here feels reductive). Their presence loomed so large, I was
struck later by their petite frame in contrast.
Our pilgrim launched into a
quirky franglais with a couple of Spanish kinks that delighted the audience.
The teacher in me approved of their choice of cognate, Les Voyageurs, rather
than pèlerin or peregrino, though they later slipped that in en passant, to
encompass the audience in a sentiment of camaraderie. And locations took on an
exotic hue. Where are you from? Bethnal Verde, par exemple, ou bien, Bal-jambon?
The language play was as gratifying as the physical comedy. We followed a
narrative arc of a pilgrim on the cusp of arriving at their destination.
Looking for what? The Holy Grail? Not quite, as it turns out. But I don't want
a spoiler. This is a work in progress and part of the joy of it as an audience
member is not knowing where the show will lead.
Immersed in their world, with a
receptive audience, Riss drew out the clown in certain audience members too and
riffed off the energy. Their physical
comedy is absurd and anarchic, quicksilver in pace and wit, never quite where
you expect it to go, yet they get the audience to follow them anywhere.
There was one moment I won't
describe in full. It involved an object, dirty if not disgusting, and what they
did with it, in a sequence of escalating audacity, culminated in the audience
erupting in a collective gasp once became clear where it is heading. They
paused. Looked at us. Then took it further. The bouffon at work. The French
have a word, jolielaid.e, which describes their transformation through clowning
so well. Grotesque, gleeful, completely committed. They had us right where they
wanted us.
At one point we were directed to
take off our shoes. My neighbour was apologetic, and that made me laugh.
Suddenly I was twenty again, on a long train journey to Málaga, incarcerated in
an enclosed carriage for six opposite a Spanish grandmother, opening her wicker
picnic basket and cutting into a particularly fruity cheese, while four
Japanese tourists blithely took off their trainers after clearly having spent
the day sightseeing. Nothing will ever beat that stench in my imaginings.
I tried to take refuge in the restaurant car,
but the guard sent me back with the sentence ringing in my ears: "It is
the smell of humanity, señorita, welcome to the world." And that's the
point, isn't it? We are all stinky little pilgrims farting and belching our way
through life. If you aren't, you are not living. As someone somewhere once
said, our ass is always clenched because we're afraid to express ourselves,
afraid to be alienated or singled out. And that's the function of a great clown,
to release all that hot air with which we puff ourselves up, to give ourselves
permission to let go, to get us through that embarrassment, to celebrate this
big fat juicy life, to join in and laugh at it.
As fellow ClownFester Jamie Wood puts it: "for me clowning is reconnecting
to a part of all of us that doesn't mind being seen as ridiculous and idiotic…
a celebration of what it is to be human… the live connection between all of us
in this thing that will never happen again in this constellation." Sacré
bleu!
Amidst the comedy of errors there
is a poignancy too. What the Stinky Little Pilgrim does expertly is illustrate
how the journey is both one of companionship and of aloneness, and there are
moments where we cannot say au revoir, but, needs must, have to bid adieu. It
triggered a memory. The day after Mum died, walking along the corridor to her
bedroom, with one of my sisters. I had never seen a dead body before. As I came
to the door, my chest tightened, as though my heart was being squeezed in a
tourniquet, and I realised with force that I would have to cross the threshold
on my own. That's death for you. There is a fine line between le seuil and le
deuil. But the need to say farewell with Love trumped fear, which carried me across,
and while it took several months for the pain in my sternum to ease up, the
experience is not one I would trade for the world. It marked a transition
period, a falling into the second half of life for me.
This show puts the spotlight on
that transformation too, catharsis for all our lives' journeys. In a world
where the Pope recently got thunderous applause globally for his warnings about
AI, the work of performers is a case in point as to the art of living. As Riss themself
puts it: "I wish more people understood that clowning is in essence magic
and energy work." We all need luminaries in our life to light up the way
ahead. I hung around after to say thank you. Riss was radiant. Having
discovered we both practice Qi Gong, we talked energy and the way certain
practitioners weave this quietly into their creative process, a conversation to
be explored further another time.
Outside the theatre, there was a
magnificent sunset. I basked in the glow of an evening light, having laughed my
heart out, and surreptitiously shed a few tears in the dark. I then thought of
capturing a snapshot for posterity, but I am rubbish at selfies. A passer-by
spotted my flailing attempts and offered to take a picture. He was a confident Continental
in a classic navy quilted jacket, off home after a day in the city - the type
my Swiss husband would know or be. So,
while my automatic British instinct would have been to politely decline, not
wanting to be a bother, I checked myself and handed over my phone to this
complete stranger, who was somehow familiar. "You want the church in the
background, yes?" It's not a church, it's a theatre, I replied, a bit too quickly,
possibly a tad defensively. Checked myself again. I was just nervous about
being looked at, albeit through a lens. And then it struck me that perhaps the
fates had aligned for this encounter not so much to capture a photo, but to
bring home how fitting the ecclesiastical structure of Jacksons Lane was for
the pilgrim's journey. The knave had found their nave. Divine intervention, peut-être…?
When I got home that night I drew
a card from a meditation deck of cards to gather my thoughts and drew The Fool,
stepping off a cliff. Of course. It brought to mind the work of François
Villon, medieval poet, from university days. Inspired now to return to his
words, I like the synchronicty of the Fool leading into what could easily be a
pilgrim's hymn. Or hers. Or theirs. All ours:
En mon pays suis en terre loingtaine, In my own country I am in a far off land
[…] […]
Puissant je suis sans force et sans pouoir, I am strong but I have no force
or power
Je gaigne tout et demeure perdent, I
win all yet remain a loser
Au point du jour diz: At
break of day I say
«Dieu vous doint bon soir!»" Goodnight.
[…] […]
Gisant envers j'ay grand paour de chëoir When I lie down I have a great fear of falling.
François Villon - Ballade du concours de Blois
NEXT work in progress sharing is on 16 July at Shoreditch Town Hall as part of "SUMMER IN THE DITCH" (9-18 July).
Cover photo credit: Riss Obolensky
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