Ten actors dressed in black walk into a room lit with spotlights and sit around a long table to talk about clown.

We move rolling tables and chairs to create one mega-table in the center of the room. Sitting around it, thoughts and percolations about the readings from last week thaw and percolate on the table. "We have to let things go." "The fool paints scars instead of healing wounds." "The clown"--what is a clown to each of us?

Let's take a swing. During a quiet five minutes each of us writes down the definition of clown. Variable ideas appear: the clown laughs at the world's tradegies, clowning is to use exaggerated movements to tell a story and cause laughter, clown is a verb, clowns are our inner unsocialized selves, clownery is unbridled emotion, to clown is to be here with audience, a clown knows who they are.

Empowerment, subjugation, and oppression appear as key words as well. Hierarchies, societies, are clowns dangerous? We question each other between pauses and our thoughts put pressure on reality. In the highly pressurized zone of deep discussion, Mycah prompts the class to move forward a little bit. 

Write about a time in your life when you played the fool or you felt foolish and you felt the fool.

After fifteen minutes, we move to a different room, the one next to the room with spotlights. We take off our shoes and walk around. No beats missed, all the artists in the class boom into the space. Pace, noise, stretch, then, pair-up, make contact, make noise, expand it together.

The first noise is a very dinosaurian RAAAAAA that ends in a huddle. The next noise is a O from one and a Kay from the other. They're playing a game. O seems to have a certain personality, and Kay another. Each pair takes on this game, switching roles throughout and finding an ending. 

At the end of that, we switch partners and just see them. It's hard to keep still after how big O and Kay got. Giggling and collapsing seems to be more natural to relaxation than just standing still. But see and be seen is the challenge here, leading up to a single observation. Tell your partner something about themselves. Allow it. Does anything soften?

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

New partners, still relaxed, neutral. Allow the game to emerge from complete neutrality: "Shall we dance?" "No," means your partner is not beginning at resting, not allowing themselves to be centered, and lying to you. Does your partner mean it or not? "Shall we dance?" right back means you are escalating.

"Know that the skill you're building is escalation. The game is escalation." "Oh, I wanna dance with somebody / I wanna feel the heat with somebody"

Commands fly in the air as dance music gets everyone soaring. We are at a fourteen out of ten in escalation. Keep switching to a new dancing partner. Get drunker. Wake up on the quad. Suddenly the class is experiencing the first rager of their college years. And their first heartbreak. No matter who the new dancing partner is, it's not them. Is that them? It's not. And that leads to tears. To weeping. To sobbing. To a different genre of music.

Then, "GET UP!"

GET UP!

One word ending: demon, encouraged, enhanced, clarity, eager, vulnerability, rubber, freed, grateful, sweet, arrival, party!