Clown Through Mask 2020

Clown through Mask students Kira Sheppard and Kyle Bustin. Photo by Sara Tilley.

Clown through Mask

a.k.a. Pochinko Method

a.k.a. Baby Clown

with Sara Tilley

Mondays and Wednesdays, 6-10 pm, & Saturdays 1-5 pm 

July 6-August 3, 2020

Arts and Culture Centre, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Maximum 10 participants. 

$600 for 60 hours of instruction ($10/hour). 

Sliding scale rates are available for people who face financial barriers to accessing this work. Please contact Sara to confidentially discuss your options. 

Space is limited and early registration is encouraged. TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT, PLEASE EMAIL sara@saratilley.ca 

Clown through Mask is for all types of people – you don’t need to be an actor or performer to participate. The work uses games, improvisation, mask-making, painting, writing and a variety of physical exercises to open up hidden creative possibilities, to bring us back to an experience of play, impulse, wonder, a full range of emotions and limitless potential for expression.

This is a journey toward discovering your own inner clown – transitioning from working with a full-face mask that you create yourself into wearing the red clown nose. The focus is on personal exploration and adventure, not on performance as an end goal. 

This training is not intended to prepare you for the circus. There are no tricks, no juggling and no stilts involved. Rather, we seek to expose human vulnerability, innocence, and expression through the exploration of red nose clown. This work is a powerful tool for any artist, opening up new avenues of exploration which can be pursued in any medium. Participants do not need to be performers – all that is required is the willingness to experiment, to face yourself honestly, and to move beyond your comfort zone.

Sara Tilley trained with Ian Wallace and Sue Morrison in Clown Through Mask (Pochinko) technique. In 2008, she mentored with Ian Wallace to teach Clown through Mask and Neutral Mask, and has been offering this training ever since. Sara uses the Pochinko work as inspiration not just for clown, but for acting, directing, writing, puppetry and design. She’s taught clown and Neutral Mask in St. John’s, Vancouver, Dawson City, Winnipeg, Calgary, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Sackville New Brunswick, and Cianciana, Sicily, so far.

What previous students have said:

“Sara Tilley’s clown through mask workshop was truly one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. It pushed me to places that were initially uncomfortable, but within the intimate group experience Sara facilitates it is easy to let ones’ guard down and embrace the zany, wacky, weird, and unusual.” -Stephen Quinlan

“The freedom I felt allowed me to do anything and everything! It’s almost like there was a part of me that came to life for the first time.  In my own writing, acting and dancing, these workshops have helped unlock ideas and a creative energy.  On a personal level, I think it’s opened my eyes to the beauty of everything that surrounds me. Sara is a fantastic teacher and guide. Her encouragement and spirit are so welcoming and freeing, she really makes you excited about the work.” -Mark White

“Thank you for generously sharing this work which is so sacred and close to your heart. You created a magical space and a place safe enough to experiment. The clown workshop has changed the way I experience a moment, the way I imagine the shape and texture of world, what my body is and how I inhabit it.” - Bryhanna Greenough

 “After the first class I realized that this course would have a profound effect on my life. I felt like parts of me were breaking out of cement; deep cement that encased many emotions that were difficult to access. I was both physically and mentally exhausted. It was the best I felt in ages. This course requires commitment to face uncomfortable emotions and to celebrate good ones. It is a roller coaster of crying and laughing and truly feeling alive. This translated to renewed fresh motivation in my visual art practice and in my life in general. I highly recommend it to everyone in the world.” -Annette Manning

Comic: Metaphors

Part of my ongoing work with chronic illness. Copyright Sara Tilley, 2019.

Creative nonfiction at Understorey Magazine

Here’s a link to a piece of creative nonfiction which has just been published by Undestorey Magazine, as part of a special issue about women and theatre. This is part of a larger project I am working on about chronic illness.

https://understoreymagazine.ca/article/dragging-my-soul-across-a-hellscape-of-broken-glass-or-one-womans-account-of-filing-for-disability-support/

At the Root

I’ve been writing a series of short pieces about life with chronic illness lately, and was struck with the impulse to turn one into a comic. We’ll see if this plays out further as I figure out what to do with these terse little nuggets of prose. #EONScomix #EarlyOnsetNanSyndrome #fibromyalgia #fibrolivin #comics

White or Red wins award! And can now be found online!

Last night the Arts and Letters Awards were held in St. John’s. I was not feeling well enough to go, which is fairly fitting, considering my winning play in the Dramatic Script category, White or Red, is largely centred around the experience of chronic illness. Today feels like a very good time to announce that the script is available for purchase online through the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, and that it’s currently unproduced, making it your next world premiere…?

Saint Agatha. Poor Saint Agatha.

In White or Red, three writers, one female and two male, of different types and levels of ability, are forced to form a community and rely on each other to survive. Leah is in her thirties, bisexual, and Canadian. She is coming to terms with a chronic, invisible illness that has ravaged her life. She's signed up for a writing retreat in rural Sicily, and arrives to find she is the only participant. Her host, Turner, is a gay, unwittingly misogynist ex-pat American writer in his 60’s, who was once famous. Tony is a straight, unwittingly misogynist Italian writer in his 50’s who becomes entangled with them both. A hideous crime forces them to rely on each other in ways they could never have imagined, as they are threatened with death if they leave the confines of Turner’s farm. Faced with remaking a world for themselves, the line between real and surreal becomes increasingly blurred as the play continues. Hunger, ecstatic visions, bondage, withdrawal, marionette shows, healing ceremonies, collective drug trips and the makings of a new goddess cult blend together as the three fall further away from normalcy. White or Red is either a relentlessly dark comedy or a demented tragedy, taking on big themes such as systemic misogyny and violence against women, homophobia, monosexism, trans- and genderqueerphobia, national identity, organized crime, PTSD, communication across language, old and new technologies, chronic illness, kink, mythology, revolution, and the creation of community out of sheer need to survive.