By: Clair Sargeant
July 2023
Far Flung Dance Theatre C.I.C are creatively working with Funky Llama and Extraordinary Bodies on the Connecting Communities Project, this is our second project with Connecting Communities and it has been a privilege to be invited again. For this next project we have been honoured to work with Funky Llama and Our Space community members again to co create a digital exhibition exploring our very own clown characters inspired by Waldo’s Circus of Magic and Terror.
Over five sessions, we delivered a series of workshops that explored clowning, circus history, costume design and clown makeup to create clown characters that explored a combination of fact and fictional traits, this could be an alter ego like character or an exaggerated version of oneself. We worked with a guest artist Fran Daykin to creatively support the group to make collars, roughs, hats, bow ties and props for the photoshoot out of materials from our local scrap store. Alongside these creations the group created their own Clown CV to accompany the image and to help delve into their character further. We also created a poem out of a collection of words relating to magic, circus and memories. Dom Moore worked with us in the final session and created a series of beautiful portraits, each person will have a ‘mug shot’ image and a second image that shows their clown personality.
The exhibition will be called ‘The Circus of Life’ and we were excited to develop the work for the Funky Llama Community Cabaret in June 2023. We showcased a live Aerial and contemporary dance performance created and performed by Charlotte Evans, Charlotte Eaton and Far Flung. The piece was accompanied by Brandon, Cally and Sarah reading the poem, with the clown images projected.
Click the arrows below to view the images:
Artists working on the project include:
Lead Artists: Sarah Farrow-Jones, Clair Sargeant
Assistant: Ed Larkin
Unexpected Leader: Charlotte Evans
Assistant Theatre Royal Practitioners: previous Unexpected Leaders Bernadette Molton and Ferri Feredouni.
Props/Costume Design: Fran Daykin.
Performer and mentor: Charlotte Eaton