BUT, BUT, YOU SAID…

I know what I said; I said I'd give you a movie review about lawnmower safety.  I changed my mind.  In the words of Mother Teresa; 'Deal with it'.  I wanted to mix things up a bit, so this time I'm going to give an account of my experiences at the 2011 Dublin Circus Skills Convention.  This is hands on research people.  I should probably get a Nobel Prize for this shit.

The 2011 Dublin Circus Skills Convention was held in Larkin Hall on Cathal Brugha Street from March 25th to the 27th.  From a scriptwriting point of view, I really wasn't sure what benefit this event would be to me, but it was only five minutes walk from my apartment, so I had no excuse not to pop in.  I promised myself I would keep an open mind, and just see where the day might take me.
  I didn't know what to expect, so it was strange to enter the hall and find that it was exactly what I expected.  You can imagine my confusion.  I found myself in a large gym filled with people juggling, wobbling around on unicycles, swinging poi, lobbing Diablos, and generally being hippies without a war to protest.  My feeling on first entering was that I really was in the wrong place.  I mean, yes, it was the right place for circus skills, but what the hell was I doing there?!

  The Circus Skills Convention evolved out of the Dublin Juggling Festival, which I had actually attended several years before with a friend of mine from college in Galway.  Joe (my friend from college; do try to keep up) has developed a real love for circus skills over the years.  During my one and only year studying at NUIG, myself, Joe, and several others spent many a sunny afternoons out on the lawn being really bad at Diablo.  Well, I was really bad.  Joe was actually quite good, but where his skills really came to the fore were as a juggler and unicyclist.  He is a computer programmer, and he used to ride to work in Limerick on his unicycle, an image I always loved!  We've lost touch over the years, but I intended to keep an eye out for him on this day.

  I took my first tentative steps inside and got chatting with the guy collecting money on the door.  He gave me the lowdown on the various workshops that were taking place over the course of the day.  After that, I stood around and waited until it looked like something might happen.

  I was feeling very lonely until I saw that Conor, my co-writer and director, was over doing some meditation with a load of bendy people.  We joined forces, and took part in one of the workshops, which was imaginatively titled Imagination.  This basically consisted of word association, followed by a game where you put people in a pose and they had to describe what they thought the pose meant.  We were then given various objects, and in a Whose Line Is It Anyway? style, had to come up with a use for them, before passing it on.  All of this stuff was fun, and there were some very clever ideas, even if I wasn't learning a damn thing.  The last routine we did, however, was not fun.  Not fun at all.

  We all had to line up, and then two people were selected from the group.  They had to invent an animal, and perform it.  They weren't aloud to use any words; they simply had to parade in front of us, and show off their animal.  The guy hosting the workshop then came up to us one by one, and told us to take on the characteristics of one or the other of these fictional animals.
  Good.
  God.
  No.
  This was so not for me!
  To make matters worse, when he came to me, he said I had to invent a whole new animal!  I had made a promise to myself when I started that I would try, so I stepped out and paraded around, doing something like a cross between a velociraptor and a mortified human being.  I can only imagine what we all looked like, as we pranced around like a menagerie of muppets.

  However, and I want to be very clear about this; I don't discount the value of this exercise.  Circus skills are about performance, and imagination exercises of this sort are no doubt of great benefit to someone interested in standing before a crowd and physically entertaining them.  If you are a public entertainer, you shouldn't feel self-conscious about doing this sort of thing.  But that is not my area whatsoever.  I like to work away quietly in the background, hand over my finished piece, be given a quite nod of appreciation, and then seethe in self-loathing because people didn't make a bigger deal when I presented my work.  I do not like the limelight at all.
  Imagination is not a catch all term.  It doesn't take one simple form that can be defined by a word.  It has a million different faces.  It is a unique process for everyone who chooses to express it. To design a building, write a novel, paint a picture, compose a song, cook a delicious meal, tell a joke, feign interest while some asshole prattles on and on and on; all of these require imagination, but no two are the same.  The particular strain we dealt with in this workshop just wasn't for me.  Still, it was an interesting window into that world, and I will take at least that much from it.

  At this point, Conor had to go, as his car had broken down on the way over and he had to get it towed to a garage.  I was alone again with the circus people…

  There was a lot of waiting around at this point.  While there were numerous workshops underway, there was very little for beginners.  It was pretty much assumed that if you were there, you already knew the basics, so I was very much on the outside.  That's just the nature of hobbies, especially niche ones.  It would be no different than if one of those people were to sit down and talk about movies with my friends and I; they would most likely be lost in the morass of in-jokes and side references, and they probably wouldn't understand our rage-filled tears over the Prequel trilogy.

  Since I was unable to partake in workshops, I wandered and watched.  There was certainly a lot of talent on display, but people were learning new skills, not performing, so there was little real entertainment value, and in terms of the reason I was there; research, none of it was very useful.  I really needed to start achieving something, so I sought out Richard Kane.

  Richard Kane is a professional clown whom Lorraine in the office had contacted during the week.  It turned out that he was running a stall at the convention, and he was happy to meet with us and answer our questions.  He told me the story about how he came to be a clown after years of working in the construction industry, and he gave me plenty of details on clown history.  These proved extremely interesting, and I will detail them in future postings.

  When Richard finally tired of my bullshit, I left to attend the only other workshop that I would be capable of doing.  I was on my way over when, lo and behold, there was Joe from NUIG!  I wasn't  particularly surprised to see him (so I probably shouldn't have used an exclamation mark there), but he certainly was to see me! (correct usage).  We hadn't seen each other in many years.  We embraced in a manly and completely heterosexual fashion, and exchanged pleasantries.  I was half expecting that it might be weird to see each other, but my optimistic half said, 'Stop being so goddamn negative all the time.'  About thirty seconds later, my pessimistic half was, sadly I must say, vindicated.  It was weird.  We really had nothing to say to one another.  My pessimistic half said, 'I told you so,' but my optimistic half, ever the optimist, said, 'Hey guy; wanna maybe catch this workshop?'  Both halves agreed, and in solidarity with myself, I made my goodbyes.

  I was quite looking forward to this particular workshop.  If I live my life by one rule (and I don't), it is this; if a guy who goes by the name of Mr. Ballonatic ever runs a workshop, you'd damn well better participate!  In case you didn't get it from the name,  Mr. Ballonatic, or Mike, makes balloon animals, and boy can this guy work a balloon.  I had a look though his work after the class, and some of the pieces he has created are just stunning.  Check it out:

http://www.balloonatic.eu/

  As for my own work, check this shit:

Okay, maybe I've, hehe, overblown my talents somewhat.  Basically, unless you're massively impressed with deformed dogs, then my stuff is probably a bit too 'real' for you.  Still I got the basics, and by the end, I could make a sausage dog/poodle/donkey/giraffe, and a flower.
  After the workshop, I hung around and chatted with Mike for a bit.  He's been doing this since he was about six, and it shows; his work is really amazing.  He does loads of corporate events and festivals, and he told me that people often come to him with specific ideas of stuff they want made as gifts for people.  He saw them as little works of art, and there is nothing pretentious in this; Mike is anything but pretentious.  Some of them simply are.   He also recommended some things for me to watch in my research, which again, I will blog about soon.

  At this point in the day, I was all circused out.  I used what air was left in my lungs to fashion a way home for myself:

 

...then I sped off into the sunset to the sound of a comedy bicycle bell ring.

So that was my day at the Circus Skills Convention.  I entered a fool, and left a very slightly wiser fool.  At least now I have a party trick that I can do really badly, which is leaps and bounds ahead of what I had before, which was absolutely nothing.
  Next up is a non-clown related horror film, which teaches a valuable lesson in lawnmower blah blah blah.  Who knows, maybe I'll actually deliver it this time.