Photo by Marc Norberg

Photo by Terry Gydesen:

I’m really looking forward to working with playwright and master storyteller, Kevin Kling. Thanks to a MN Arts Board Grant, Kevin and I will be collaborating on adapting it to the stage, a children’s story I wrote called, The Land of Clowns, about where clowns came from, why they are here, and why they now live in circus tents.

I never thought of myself as a writer because I’ve performed without words my entire adult life. The problem began when my family and I moved next-door to Kevin Kling.

I must admit that I was a little star-struck when we became neighbors. I had memories of being impressed with Kevin as far back as 1981, when I saw him in a young theater troupe at the MN Renaissance Festival. As an outside observer Kevin seemed to be the one in charge, or at least the chief cook and bottle washer as the playwright, lead actor, and only juggler in the troupe. I also have an indelible memory of watching Kevin deftly climb  Jacob’s Ladder as part of his gig with SAK Theater.   Finally, when I saw Kevin’s one-man play, 21A at the Guthrie, I became a lifelong fan.

Kevin, Rosie and I live on an extraordinary block in Minneapolis. There are two photographers, three published authors, several actors, a couple of clowns, plus Rosie and I.   When the block voted on who was the most eccentric I came in third, and Kevin came in fourth.

Maybe it’s the water.

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Today I received my official notice that I was awarded the Artist Initiative Grant form the MN State Arts Board. Below is my project statement.

Lloyd Brant will collaborate with playwright and master storyteller Kevin Kling, on adapting his children’s story The Land of Clowns for the stage. The story tells the tale of where clowns came from, why they are here, and why they live in circus tents. The show will be presented at Open Eye Figure Theater in Minneapolis in the spring of 2016

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In 2012, after twenty-years of teaching our Waldorf Circus Program, Rosie and I were honored to receive the Minnesota Private and Independent Education STORY AWARD.  It turns out Rosie and I founded the first full-time Circus Arts Program in Minnesota, as well as being pioneers in bringing the circus arts to the international Waldorf school movement globally. Today there are several successful circus schools in the Twin Cities, as well as countless circus arts programs in Waldorf schools around the world.

It was not easy to be one of the first to establish a circus arts program at a Waldorf school. I remember once in the early years walking past the Kindergarten with thirteen rubber chickens stuffed in a box for the fifth grade class who were leaving for the Pentathlon Games in Wisconsin. It was just after our annual circus and the energy in the school was still buzzing. I smiled at the Kindergarten Teacher as she came out of her room. She looked at the rubber chicken legs sticking out of my box and scowled, “Lloyd, what is that?”

I casually answered, “rubber chickens^.” I could see that she was agitated, so I asked, “Is there a problem?”

The teacher pointed to the door at the end of the hall, “Please remove those before the children see.” When I asked why, she looked at me with steely eyes, “Because they represent dead animals.”

As I mentioned in my first post about Waldorf, my secret mission was to bring laughter to a New Age school that was suffering from what I like to call, “The Humorless Reverence Syndrome.“ Today as a remedy for this malady they teach clowning as a requirement in Waldorf Teacher Training Programs.

My mother was a Minnesota pioneer in education, and my role model for being teacher. For twenty-years I taught beside my wife Rosie, and was always humbled by her natural gift as a teacher. I’ve never witnessed anyone better with children.

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Photo by Marc Norberg:

My relationship with Waldorf began when Liza became school age and Rosie insisted on a Waldorf education for her child, and so our full-time gypsy lifestyle abruptly ended for our family.   We still made our living primarily on-the-road, but when the school year began I went out as a solo act.

It was Rosie’s tenacity that made her Waldorf dream a reality. I found myself sitting in a circle with The College of Teachers.   Rosie proposed to barter a deal that she and I teach for free in exchange for free tuition. Even though Waldorf is New Age we were politely informed that they do not operate their finances on the barter system, but offered to hire us on the spot. That first year I taught drama classes during the day, and Rosie and I were given permission to teach after-school circus classes, but I told that story in yesterday’s blog post.

Rudolf Steiner is godfather of New Age philosophy, Anthroposophy, and founder of the international Waldorf school movement. Steiner intentionally wove theater throughout his elegant pedagogy. The students learn history by acting out on stage our evolving human story through the re-telling of world myths. The first myths were told orally around the fire, so the first grade play is performed in a circle. In fifth grade they open up the stage to a semi-circle to perform Greek theater.   Finally in eighth grade the semi-circle is tipped on its side to become the classic proscenium arch in which to perform Shakespeare.

Theater is not optional at Waldorf. All students from first through eighth grade perform together in a yearly class play. Traditionally the Main Lesson Teacher, who follows the same group of students up through eighth grade is the one responsible for directing the lower grade plays. My job was when the task became too difficult for certain teachers, I would be brought in to direct upper grade plays by William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens. We didn’t have a stage with a proscenium arch, but I slowly accumulated the resources to transform the downstairs gym into a functioning theater.

Upstairs in the Waldorf High School I also directed the senior class play, and the annual Medieval Feast, which I co-created with my good friend John Miller. We both loved the King Arthur myths, and every year John and I would pick another one of the many stories from the Arthurian cycle and find a way to update it for the taste of modern high school students. John would write the script, and I would direct the show.

I have always been an unorthodox Waldorf teacher. I must admit that I often caught the more orthodox members of the faculty off-guard. The Medieval Feast shows seemed to have gotten me into the most trouble over the years. Long before I ever added Matrix characters, or light-saber battles, there was the year of the coconuts.

We were doing, Gawain and The Loathly Lady, which was my favorite Arthurian story. Early in the rehearsal process the High School Administrator came up to me red faced and fuming, “I understand you’re using coconuts in the show.”

Perplexed, I admitted that Sir Gawain does mime riding a horse, while his squire follows behind with a set of coconut shells making the sound of a horse. When I started to explain who Monty Python was, I quickly learned that Anthroposphists take King Arthur and the Holy Grail very seriously.

With my back against the wall I retorted, “There are two things that make us human, our ability laugh, and our ability to cry.” The Administrator listened with her mouth agape, then slowly clenched her jaw, and walked silently away.

The next morning the Administrator approached me, and said she thought about what I had said all night, and wanted to share a third trait that makes us human, “Reverence.”

To be continued…

My next series of blog posts will be about my post-Disney career as a director.  Immediately after returning home from my summer at Disney in 1992, Rosie and I began teaching an after-school circus arts program at our local Waldorf School in Minneapolis.  That same year our first-born daughter Liza began attending the Waldorf kindergarten. To offset the cost of tuition we were given permission to offer our after-school classes that concluded with the first of what became an annual Circus event for the Waldorf community.  That first year we had a dozen students.  The audience sat in a circle of metal folding chairs, set-up in the back corner of the school’s Social Hall.

My secret mission was to bring laughter to what I thought was a stuffy New Age private school.  Rosie is the one who insisted on a Waldorf education for our children.  It was a typical Waldorf story of a New Age mom dragging her skeptical husband to visit an odd little school that boasts a three-fold education, where the child’s mind, body, and spirit are all of equal value.

However, when I first entered the school building I was struck by the haunting absence of children’s laughter. The teachers led their students through the hallways with an earnest humorless reverence, like a stoic mother duck, followed by her well ordered line of silent little ducklings. I felt as if I was in a monastery for kids.

What finally sold me on Waldorf was when Rosie and I first visited the kindergarten. The room was draped in billowy clouds of pastel gauze with a tree house built in the middle of the room. The children were sitting in a circle being told a story about gnomes and goblins, as if they were as real as Santa Claus. Magic crackled in the air.

Our circus program quickly became an official part of the school curriculum. Rosie and my annual Waldorf Circus grew into a huge event with standing room only audiences at every performance. During the spring the hallways were always filled with the sound of children’s laughter in anticipation of our upcoming show.

In 1998 the first Harry Potter book was released in America, and I quickly began seeing the thick tombs tucked under the children’s arms. I soon began hearing parents describe our school as, “Hogwarts for your kids.”

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Today I’m celebrating the Day of the Dead.  People always ask, “Where did the idea for the chickens come from?”  I figured this is the perfect day to tell the story.  Normally when I’m asked, I mumble something about Shakespeare’s wise fool in King Lear who wore a cock’s comb, or I blabber about how most fools depicted on medieval woodcuts have rooster combs.   Below is the real story with some of the names redacted to protect the innocent.

After I finished directing at Disney in the summer of 1992, I returned to Minneapolis with a fire in my belly to create new and more challenging art.  The secret to Walt Disney’s success was that he believed real magic was created through great story telling.  He was a true wizard who wove a magic spell upon America’s imagination with his talking ducks and mice.

Long before I directed at Disney, Rosie and my Chicken Routine was the finale of our original red nose show. To this day we still close our street show by bringing an audience member up on stage, and making him strut, cluck, and crow like a rooster, before laying an egg, which he then cracks into a pan to magically appear a live chicken at the end.

My new inspiration was to create a show where Rosie’s character believed she was a real chicken, and my character was born with an egg-shaped head.   I was excited to start working on it together when Rosie became pregnant. Tragically our second daughter Katya was born at home with serious complications, and rushed to the hospital. We held her until she died in Rosie’s arms at six days old. Then our eldest daughter Liza helped Rosie and I give Katya a bath.   Afterwards the nurse asked Liza to help dress her sister in a frilly dress that the hospital had available for just such a sad occasion.

With a mailbox full of unpaid medical bills, I flew to New York the day after Katya’s funeral in time for opening weekend of the Sterling Renaissance Festival, while Rosie stayed home recovering. If you’ve been to Sterling you know it’s one of the most magic places on Earth. The artistic director, Gary Izzo drills his cast with improvisational theater games for a month before the festival opens its gates. When the public arrives they are treated to a day as magical as Brigadoon.  It is the same brilliantly simple scenario everyday. The town of Warwick, which is the birthplace of William Shakespeare, is honored to host Queen Elizabeth on the happiest day of her life.

In order to escape my grief I threw everything I had into my performances. I remember after my last show on the first day I ran into the town Sheriff who had decided during rehearsals that his character suffered from a fear of clowns, and naturally chose to brutally harass me, the red nose clown.  At the end of the day I found myself weeping alone backstage in the woods.

A Renaissance Festival is a comedy war zone. On a good day you kill, and on a bad day you die. With steely resolve the next morning when I saw the Sheriff at the Opening Ceremony I pressed a penny into the palm of his hand. I knew as a trained actor he had to accept my proposed bribe under the rules of improvisation.

The Sheriff looked at me with a wink and smiled, “We’re square for today, Clown.” However, the next morning when I held out my penny the Sheriff coldly said, “The price has gone up today, Clown.”  Without missing a beat a plucked a silver dollar from his ear and handed it to him with a flourish. The Sheriff and I enjoyed playing this game of wits for the rest of the summer.

The last day I knew I had to top all my earlier bribes, so the night before I bought an uncooked whole chicken along with a bag of vegetables. In the morning I happily started washing the vegetables, but when I held the chicken under the warm water I began to weep when I realized it felt just like bathing Katya.

At the Opening Ceremony I handed the Sheriff a dozen carrots with the greens still attached, a red cabbage, and the chicken.  After the Queen exited the Sheriff immediately dropped the raw chicken on the exposed hairy belly of a mud beggar, who squealed like a baby pig. For the rest of the day that chicken was lightening in a jar.

The mud beggar quickly handed the chicken off to a less squeamish actor, who made it into a dancing puppet using some twine. The dancing chicken was then put on trial before the Queen who sentenced it to be dunked in the Froggy Pond. At the end of the day the actors strung up the battered chicken as a target at the Axe Throw Game, which drew a huge crowd that cheered with delight when it exploded with a lucky hit.

I’m told years later that when Gary Izzo was asked to recall his favorite bits, the chicken made his short list.  It was sublime to watch that poor bird that I had baptized with tears be transformed into a vessel of playful joy. The lightening in a jar that I discovered that day is what eventually hatched those daffy Wacky Chickens into the world.

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Photo by Marc Norberg:

 

“Which Came First The Chicken Or The Egg?”

 

As a creationist, Thomas Aquinas believed it was the chicken.

 

The Hindus believe it’s the Cosmic Egg.

 

The Spanish Inquisition burned you as a witch if your answer wasn’t chicken.

 

My bet is the rooster came first.

 

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Photo by Marc Norberg:

Photo by Marc Norberg:

Today’s blog post might not make sense without first reading the full text of yesterday’s post. My experience of opening for the rock & roll band THE DOORS provided an unexpected moment of clarity on a long journey to understanding the clown’s art.  I’ve learned if you grab a flash of artistic clarity by the tail, you might catch lighting in a jar.

Jim Morrison believed his role, as an artist was to be a shaman-clown, and like his ancient ancestors did, poke holes through the veil of our perceptions to allow the concealed light to shine through, or to reveal the hidden darkness within. He unfortunately fell down this rabbit hole to his death, but you don’t grab lightening by the tail without consequences.

As a happily married family man it’s probably good that the European tour with THE DOORS didn’t work out, but I did create a full evening show inspired by the character I created called, A Spirit of Halloween.  I premiered it at the Jewel Theatre above the old downtown location of Twin Cities Magic.

This was my third show that Josette directed, as well as my first solo show she directed. I was nervous because she never lets me get away with any of my cheap tricks. At our first lunch meeting for the Halloween show she was reading The Hero’s Journey, by Joseph Campbell when I arrived at the cafe. My work was clearly cut out for me.

When I returned home I ran into our playwright neighbor, Kevin Kling, and mentioned how my first meeting with Josette went. Kevin laughed and said, “That’s it! I’m gonna read The Hero’s Journey, at every first show meeting just to scare the hell out of everybody in the room.”

 

Photo by Narc Norberg:

 

I was convinced that my character could never smile, after his birth performing with THE DOORS. I must say, Josette was very patient with me, but in the end my character developed a beautiful smile. When photographer, Marc Norberg took and edited this photo he captured the truth of who my Spirit of Halloween is in my imagination. His hero’s journey is to find the crossroads between the living and the dead on All Hallows Eve, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, to bring a laughter that can heal the human spirit on the darkest night of the soul.

Happy Halloween

I’m the clown standing on the right between Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger of the THE DOORS when I was their opening act in 2004. Standing on the far left is their lead singer, Ian Asbury, next to their manager, Tom Vitorino, the ringmaster of this crazy circus. I got the gig thanks to my friend, Sarah Sawyer, who had recommended me to the Orpheum Theater where THE DOORS were scheduled to play, but needed an opening act.

I remember on the day before I was hammering away on my computer trying to finish the script for our annual Waldorf Circus, when an email pops up from Sarah that I read as, “Lloyd, are you available this Friday night to open doors as a mime at the Orpheum?”

Disgusted I type, “Yes,” then press “send,” and return to my script. I hate putting on mime face to perform mundane tasks like being a doorman silently greeting the public, but I needed the money.

Then Sarah fires back a second email that I stop to read, “Great Lloyd, I feel like a Rock Star groupie. “I’ll let the Orpheum know.” I was a little confused, but I shrug it off, and go back to writing.

A short time later I receive an email from the Orpheum that reads, “Mr. Brant, we are so glad that you are available to be The Opening Act for THE DOORS this Friday night at The Orpheum Theater.

Perplexed, I retrieve Sarah’s original email, and re-read, “Lloyd, are you available this Friday night to open for The Doors as a mime at the Orpheum?”  I shit in my pants. Quickly, I email back the Orpheum to confirm exactly what it is that I had agreed to do, and then go back to writing my script a bit distracted.

Finally, the Orpheum answers back assuring me, “Yes, you will be The Opening Act for the Rock and Roll band, THE DOORS.” The message ends; “Please arrive tomorrow at noon. Bring your own mime make-up, costume, and juggling equipment.”

The next morning I wake up in a panic. I couldn’t believe that I had agreed to perform for 3,000 screaming Rock and Roll fans… as a mime. I will be eaten alive. I go to the basement and begin digging through my props. I think luckily they want me to juggle, as I pack my prop case with fire torches, gasoline, and a set of two-foot long knives. Almost as an afterthought I also toss in a set of glow-in-the-dark LED powered juggling balls .

At noon I arrive at the Orpheum, and I’m shown to a front room where a crew of scraggly old hippies are sitting. One of them asks, “Who are you?”

I answer, “I’m the opening act for THE DOORS.”

They all look at each other and laugh. The one who appears to be in charge says, “You’re not opening “for” THE DOORS. You’re opening “with” THE DOORS.” Ray Manzarek’s organ music is playing you on, and we will be doing the special lighting effects.

I ask, “Who are you?”

He answers, “You’re looking at the Liquid Light Show.” He explains that they are the original crew that created the wall of psychedelic liquid light that was the iconic backdrop in the 1960s for bands like, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors.

Soon a slick man with jet-black hair arrives introducing himself as Tom Vitorino, the band’s manager. Tom leads me back to where Ray Manzarek, and Robbie Kieger were just sitting down to eat. Over lunch I listen to their stories from the sixties; then enjoy observing a good natured argument between Ray and Robbie on who will lead The Door’s signature extended jam that night, and finally I learn the reason why the original drummer John Densmore is not on the tour. It has something to do with John being half deaf, but fully crazy.

After lunch, Tom leads me to my dressing room. He wants to see my costume, and approves of my top hat and tailcoat. He then asks if I brought my make-up. When I say yes, he takes out paper to sketch what looks like a crude human skull, and asks, “Can you paint this with your makeup?”

I ask, “You mean like a Mexican Day of the Dead mask?” Tom, smiles and nods yes. At that moment all my nervousness from the past 24 hours vanishes, and I knew I had nothing to fear.   I said, “Yes, but I’ll need time.”

Tom leaves me alone, and I begin painting my face like the image on the paper. A dark character fully formed enters my imagination, and begins guiding my hand as I finish applying my make-up. When I look in the mirror I see a shaman-clown staring back at me

When it’s time for my tech rehearsal I decide to use my glow-in-the-dark juggling balls, and stuff them in my pockets. I follow the smoky haze to Ray Manzarek’s dressing room, and silently enter. When Ray sees me his eyes grow to the size of saucers, as he leaps up in shock.

I crack a smile and realize I’ve broken the spell. I say to Ray, “I’m sorry this character really shouldn’t smile.”

Ray nods, “Yah, stay in character. Keep it up.”

I then walk out to the stage where two technicians are talking in the wings with their backs turned to me. I hear one guy say, “Why did Tom book a mime this year.” Then the other guy laughs, “How about the Indian Chief he booked last year to do that Buffalo Dance.” The first guy begins to turn, “All I know is that I hate mimes.” Suddenly he sees me standing in the shadows. I remain deadpan watching their two faces turn white, then bright red as they sputter their apologies. The rest of the tech rehearsal goes smoothly.

At the top of the show I walk out in darkness, with Ray Manzarek’s organ playing carnival music. I stand silently at center stage with my head bowed to hide my horror makeup behind the brim of my top hat. I then reveal my LED powered juggling balls that were concealed under my tailcoat, and begin juggling. The light trails created by my glowing orbs spark a huge acid induced gasp from the audience. As I continue juggling I look-up slowly revealing my painted face, which causes the audience to freak out in joyful terror. I then start throwing the balls high in the air until Ray’s organ music falls off to silence, which is my cue to drop my juggling balls to the stage. In the empty darkness a huge video image appears of a human heart beating loudly, which is meant to scare death away. I quickly pickup my juggling balls and slink off, as THE DOORS enter to thunderous applause.

After my short moment on stage I slip behind the closed mid-traveler curtains to find myself directly behind the band in the vast dark void of the Orpheum’s cavernous backstage. Still wearing my costume and make-up, I begin dancing alone to the music. In the inky blackness I close my eyes, and allow my imagination to feel the ghostly presence of Jim Morrison looking down at me from the rafters. This is the night when I followed the footprints of an Indian Chief to help raise the spirit of Jim Morrison from the dead.

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