Come spend five days diving headfirst into the joyful, ridiculous, finely tuned, and fully alive world of clown and physical comedy with one of Australia’s most experienced and currently touring performers and teachers.

Clare brings three decades of lived, on-the-floor, in-front-of-real-audiences experience. She’s not teaching from concepts or the past: she’s performing constantly, nationally and internationally, testing ideas, refining the craft in real time with fresh audiences every week.

This workshop is a vibrant, generous space for play: a place to take creative risks, discover the fun of your own absurdity, and explore the kind of connection that energises an audience. Clare distils her lived practice, the instincts, the precision, and the glorious flops that ultimately light the way into a playful, structured, deeply practical week of creative investigation for performers hungry to stretch, leap, and surprise themselves.

Over the five days we will explore exercises, tasks and scenarios for solos, duos and small groups where you’ll practice expressing joy, vulnerability, mischief, your inner idiot, and the absolute pleasure of “being seen” by an audience. The workshop is hands-on, joy-forward, and designed to feed directly into your artistic practice, whether you’re devising new work, strengthening stage presence, or wanting permission (and a push!) to be gloriously, imaginatively silly.

The workshop will focus on:

• Your solo presence - what makes you funny before you do anything.
• Investigating your personal relationship with clown and embracing your own stupidity.
• Practicing the joy of “being seen.”
• Ensemble complicité
• Group devising provocations for duos, trios, and beyond.
• Physical comedy scenarios, games and improvisations
• Deconstructing physical comedy techniques to understand how and why they land.

What we explore together will feed directly into your live performance work and devising processes. Strong clowning and physical comedy skills sharpen everything: farce, pure clown, stand-up, circus, cabaret, scripted plays, devised work, even dramatic text.

Clare draws from 30 years of performance, devising, directing and touring as well as training with John Bolton, Sophie Gazel, Jos Houben, Angela De Castro, Philippe Gaulier, Sian Newey, Alex Pinder, Phil Burgers and others to create workshops that are practical, generous and instantly applicable.

Who is this for?

Performers with some experience from any background: acting, circus, dance, cabaret, comedy, physical theatre who are ready to take risks, be ridiculous, be brave, be seen, and have fun.

Testimonials

“I don't think I've ever laughed so hard while learning so much. It's a great time.'
Matt Kelly (The Listies)

“Clare is without doubt one of Australia's most experienced and funniest clowns… You will be a better, more sensitive and aware performer after one of her workshops.”
Josh Glanc

“Clare made us all feel so comfortable to try things out and allow ourselves to be super silly! So many gems to take into my practice.”
Stephanie Teitelbaum

“If you get the opportunity to work with Clare and you want to be a clown… take that chance.”
Paul Bourke

About Clare

Clare Bartholomew is a Melbourne-based performer, writer, director and producer who has been creating new theatrical works across Australia and internationally for over 30 years. She is best known as Astrid from the anarchic pop-punk sibling duo Otto & Astrid - Die Roten Punkte, who have toured everywhere from Joe’s Pub (NY) to Soho Theatre (London) to La Botanique (Brussels). They have won numerous awards for their work including four Greenroom Awards for Most Outstanding Production, Writing and Ensemble (and 22 nominations) as well as nominations for the Time Out & Soho Theatre Award and Total Theatre Award, Edinburgh.

As Salvador Dinosaur, Clare and collaborator Daniel Tobias have also created acclaimed works including Sunny Ray & The Magnificent Moon, The Orchid and the Crow, and the non-verbal physical comedy farce The Anniversary with Peter Houghton.

Clare has taught at the John Bolton Theatre School, VCA (theatre makers and actors), NICA, Collarts, she has run masterclasses nationally and internationally at LA’s Lyric Hyperion, University of New Mexico - US, Atomic Vaudeville, Victoria - Canada, Handsome Little Devils, Denver – US and for the Tasmanian & Mullum Circus Festivals’.

She has worked as a Clown Doctor for 25 years and runs regular training programs for Clown Doctors Australia. She has performed with, consulted on, or directed works for: Batton & Broadway, Circus Oz, Dummies Corp, Barnie Duncan’s Juan Vesuvius, Josh Glanc, Hannah Gadsby, Fringe Wives Club, Women’s Circus, Rawcus, Bunk Puppets and many others. She is currently writing and directing a new physical comedy called The Portrait, devising alongside Emilie Bloom & Tim Sneddon.

Read about Clare’s extensive experience in this freshly published ARTShub article: https://www.artshub.com.au/.../so-you-want-my-arts-job.../

“Astrid (Clare Bartholomew) is a crisp-eating comedy powerhouse. She is a superb clown. Everything about her is funny.”
- Kate Copstick, The Scotsman

TICKETING & POLICIES

Early Bird price $680 (before until January 15^th)
Full Price $780 (from January 16^th)

There are sixteen (16) spots in this workshop.

There is a non-refundable deposit to secure any booking ($250 per spot).
However, should the workshop be cancelled for any reason all deposits and fees are 100% refunded.

Please note: the workshop will only commence if we recieve eight (8) confirmed bookings. Once we reach the requirement we'll send a confirmation of workshop email. In the event that we don't meet the threshhold, we'll refund all booking holders 100% of their ticket (deposit included).

We have a couple of discounted spots available for folks experiencing financial hardship, please enquire.

All enquiries about the workshop to Clare: clarebartholomew@me.com

All enquiries about workshop fees, applications for discounts and more to Jess: jessica.yx.lu@gmail.com

Location

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