She is a director/founder of the NY Clown Theatre Festival, Co-artistic director of Ten Directions along with Lynn Berg, creating over 13 original productions including the acclaimed Bouffon Glass Menajoree. Her bouffon, Graspy McTakeItAll, was originally commissioned for the International Globesity Festival and now performs variety programs in NYC and the plays Detritus and Robert Honeywell’s Lord Oxford

She has written and performed parody with NPR, Minnesota Public Radio, political and social humor Brave New Workshop and was featured in ComedyCentral’s satirical Lets Bowl! Audrey studied bouffon with Sue Morrison and Giovanni Fusetti, and has continued working and training in the form leading the year long weekly Bouffon Workout. Currently, she is in development on projects working in bouffon with young adults in the foster system and physically and mentally handicapped adults.

Emilia Javanica is an interdisciplinary performance artist & director whose work often incorporates physical theater, puppetry, video, animation and audience participation. Her projects have been presented in Indonesia, Taiwan, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, Brooklyn and Washington D.C. In addition to her creative work, Emilia co-curates an ongoing performance series in Detroit called The Performance Laboratory. She recently established a new alternative venue for art-making and residencies in her backyard, called “The Backyard.” Additional information about Emilia and her work can be found on her website: http://emiliajavanica.com/

BOUFFON WORK: Elements of humor and dark comedy/bouffon are prevalent in most of Emilia’s creative work. Her solo performance series as character Buoj iz Jeb has included interactive figure modeling sessions, swimsuit strip-teases, art protests, bachelorette parties, facebook profiles, and unexpected street corners. Each performance involves the ‘fake’ naked body of Buoj iz Jeb and the interactions he has with his audience. More info: Buoj iz Jeb.  Likewise, Red Blob Massacre was inspired by B Movie horror films and the bouffon philosophy. The short silent horror film tells the story of a young woman, Maddy Blitz, who has horrendously ugly teeth. Enduring constant torment from her peers and an awkwardly sterile family life, Maddy’s violent nightmares manifest themselves into a living Red Blob, who Maddy then uses to seek revenge on her tormenters. As the Red Blob grows bigger and bigger with each victim, Maddy slowly begins to lose control… More info: http://emiliajavanica.com/Red-Blob-Massacre

“Must see,” -Rob Avila, SF Bay Guardian, 9/12/12

John Marcher, A Beast In The Jungle, writes:

Watching these mutant, foul-looking offspring who looked like they were conceived during a gang bang involving an alien from Bad Taste, the Michelin Man, Brundlefly and Susan Lowe stride down the hallway of the Exit Theatre complex before the show was disturbing enough. One grotesquely fat, the other sickeningly thin, they looked like human maggots more than anything else. The safest place to sit seemed to be toward the rear, but even that felt suspect, and my suspicions turned out to be true. The audience had an expectant air in it, no doubt fueled by provocative reviews posted on the SF Fringe site from the first show, and of course there’s that title, an accusation leveled at anyone present.

They came in with his corpse, abusing it in the most offensive, base manner imaginable, even beyond what I could conjure up in my most venal revenge fantasies. Using their phalluses as weapons, they taunted the dead Danish Prince without mercy. Certainly I nor anyone in the audience had anything to do with this. Or did we?

Naked Empire Bouffon Compay deliver the goods in unexpected ways in You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting At A Play. It’s vile and provocative, but it’s also a very sly, smart commentary on a culture busily amusing itself as it slides off this mortal coil, too afraid to talk about serious things, and too busy dumbing itself down. You Killed Hamlet, we all kill Hamlet, every time we click on that link to see what the latest false celebrity did to end up on what’s called news, when we spend more time on Facebook than with a book, and when we accept the fact that we live in a culture where the words artand intellectual (and their synonyms) are combined into pejoratives. Natty Justiniano and Ross Travis know this, and aren’t afraid to rub your face in your own complicity in this shitty state of affairs- but you probably don’t want to talk about it.

Highly recommended.

Audiences:

Rebecca on September 5, 2012 at 10:02 am said:
These guys are both terrifying and vile and I can’t get enough of their weird protuberances. I probably should have run screaming from the theater, but I didn’t, because I was afraid one of the freaky mutant performer-creatures would follow me and mock me until I cried. And besides, I wanted more. Am I weak? Squeamish? A glutton for punishment? If I’m anything like this show, all of the above.

simmian42 on September 16, 2012 at 7:06 pm said:
I had large overstuffed buttocks pressed against me. The bad part was I LIKED it…

Plays ONE NIGHT ONLY at the Main Street Theatre

Friday, May 24^th, 8pm.

Award-winning Naked Empire Bouffon Company

ignores death so much better than you.

You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting At A Play. Naked Empire Bouffon Company joins the International Home Theatre Festival with a funnier, more outrageous version of their Best of the Fringe-winning hit show. The prophetic pranksters, Shreds & Patches, become a funhouse mirror of your discomfort with mortality for one night only before taking their grotesque shenanigans on tour to three Canadian theatre festivals this summer.

When: Friday, May 24th 8pm

Where: Main Street Theatre, 915 Cayuga Ave, San Francisco

Tickets: $15 – $25. http://youkilledhamlet.brownpapertickets.com

San Francisco, May 1st, 2013. Naked Empire Bouffon Company proudly presents the return of their hit show, You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting At A Play at the Main Street Theatre.  A participant in the International Home Theatre Festival, this original production features two grotesque anti-clowns mocking your relationship with death and its most famous messenger, Hamlet.  Improvisation and audience participation feature prominently in the show as these two prophetic pranksters enter with the dead body of Hamlet and use it to play a disturbingly hilarious set of games based on one theme: denying mortality.  No prior knowledge of Shakespeare’s Hamlet necessary.  Simply bring your deep discomfort with dying and prepare for a 60-minute death match.

“They don’t judge you, they just love to play,” explains Artistic Director, Nathaniel Justiniano, “and their favorite sport uses your shame and fear like a baseball and bat.” Based in the comically aggressive European physical theatre tradition of bouffon, You Killed Hamlet features two performers, Ross Travis and Nathaniel Justiniano. Their characters, a grotesquely emaciated freak (Travis as Shreds) alongside a 350-pound jiggling juggernaut (Justiniano as Patches) interweave ecstatic ritual, parody, poetry, song, extreme physical comedy, and a no-holds-barred relationship with the audience to create an evening of satirical sport with piercing honesty.

“Naked Empire Bouffon Company deliver the goods in unexpected ways. It’s vile and provocative, but it’s also a very sly, smart commentary on a culture busily amusing itself as it slides off this mortal coil, too afraid to talk about serious things, and too busy dumbing itself down.”

-John Marcher, Beast In The Jungle

You Killed Hamlet premiered at the 2012 San Francisco Fringe Festival and was honored with two sold-out awards, a Best of the Fringe award, and an encore performance.  After inviting feedback from veteran Bay Area directors and performers including Stephen Buescher, Paoli Lacy, Joe Dieffenbacher, Leonard Pitt, and Ava Roy, they returned to the rehearsal room. After three months of reworking the content Naked Empire presents a version that is more acrobatic, more poetic, containing sharper satire and more audience interaction than before.

“…their acutely confrontational performance style makes the San Francisco Mime Troupe look like a bunch of old biddies gathering for afternoon tea.”

-George Heymont, Huffington Post

Naked Empire Bouffon Company is a performance ensemble dedicated to researching, practicing, and popularizing bouffon through training and performance both locally and internationally.  Recently awarded the SF Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay Award for Best Romp With Your Inner Psychopath, the company aims to undermine apathy and inspire discourse with the use of disturbing hilarity and grotesque satire.  The original production, generously funded in part by the San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant, marked the company’s most ambitious project to date.  The two co-creators/performers used Shakespeare’s most famous play and their personal experience (both performers have tragically lost a parent in recent years) as a springboard for seven months of research on the complex relationship contemporary society has with mortality.  Content for the show was then developed through extensive improvisations where the bouffons were given free rein to exploit and exaggerate our darkest and most dysfunctional habits when we are confronted with death.

“…the excellence of the piece lies in the [Bouffons'] ability to bring the high falutin subject matter down to its knees, only to raise it up again, somehow more reverently than ever before.”

-Stuart Bousel, Co-founder of San Francisco Theater Pub

2013 Tour dates also include May 31 – June 2 at the Toronto Festival of Clowns, August 15 – 25 at the Edmonton Fringe Festival, and September 5 – 15 at the Vancouver Fringe Festival.

For More Information Contact:

Nathaniel Justiniano

(415) 494-9299

nathaniel@nakedempirebouffon.org

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Media

“Nathaniel Justiniano and Ross Travis in  Naked Empire Bouffon Company’s You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting At A Play. “
Nathaniel Justiniano, Ross Travis
Photo: Shootthatklown

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“Ross Travis and Nathaniel Justiniano in  Naked Empire Bouffon Company’s You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting At A Play. “
Ross Travis (L), Nathaniel Justiniano
Photo: Patrick Zuercher
Download High Res

Did you see SHAME!?  We’d love to hear from you.  Leave a comment below, visit us on facebook, or contact Artistic Director, Nathaniel Justiniano directly and tell us about your experience.  Send emails to: info@nakedempirebouffon.org

CAST, CREW, CO-CREATORS:
Director – Nathaniel Justiniano
Assistant Director & Stage Manager – Alan Kline
Outside Eye – Megan Finlay
Performers – Adriana Chavez, Jorge De Hoyos Jr., Evan Johnson, Faeble Kievman

SHAME! Naked Empire Bouffon Company’s original Queer performance sucking the piss out of San Francisco’s pride.  Grotesque, prophetic and charmingly offensive, this band of bouffons lambastes the hypocrisies, hierarchies and happiness of our Queer community.

When: August 20-22 & 27-29, 2009, 8pm

Where: Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory – 1519 Mission St (11^th), San Francisco 94103

Naked Empire Bouffon Company is proud to present the world premiere of SHAME! at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, August 20-29^th, 2009. Featuring four Queer performance artists who deform their bodies into grotesque anti-clowns, this original production lambastes the hypocrisies, hierarchies and happiness of Queer San Francisco. NEBC invites you to an unflattering celebration of pride that asks: Does a mecca of Queer support and safety also create a culture of complacency? How might a liberation-seeking community contribute to their own oppression? Does pride eliminate shame? Charmingly obscene and dangerously perceptive, the cast of SHAME! sniffs out the possible answers to these questions through cutting satire, virtuosic physicality and a no-holds-barred relationship with the audience.

“They’re not out to pass judgment,” explains Artistic Director Nathaniel Justiniano, “but they’re bursting to play with repression, shame, and all things taboo.” Based in the European physical theatre tradition of bouffon, this fearless ensemble creates an evening of vulgar vaudeville with piercing honesty.  SHAME! interweaves ecstatic rituals, parody, direct audience interaction, song, and extreme physical comedy.  From Castro queens to kinky fems, from the apathetic to the ultra-empowered, the bouffons make fun of the audience and their values by holding a magnifying glass up to stereotypes and social norms.  “If we don’t offend you, then we haven’t done our job,” insists Justiniano.

A new voice in the San Francisco theatre world, Naked Empire Bouffon Company combines social activism with grotesque satire in original, actor-created bouffon performances for the stage and street. For this inaugural performance a Queer-identified ensemble was gathered to explore shame as the root of the Queer subconscious. Through community story circles, personal analysis, interviews and field research, the cast mined the tumultuous experience of shame in their daily lives both as participants and observers. Content for the show was then developed through extensive improvisations where the bouffons were given free reign to exploit and make games of the darkest and most embarrassing aspects of everyday Queer happenings.

They also took to the streets almost getting arrested at Pride for harassment and misconduct in the port-o-potties, thrown out of a Queer fundraiser at El Rio, and attacked by angry parents at the SF Free Theater Festival. Deliberate social transgression has already earned them some impassioned crowds, so how far will these bouffons take it when they let loose on the stage at Mama Calizo’s?

Video

We just completed our first two weeks of rehearsals which were focused on ensemble-building, and the playful nature of the bouffon.

Over the last couple of weeks we moved into the creation of each performer’s unique bouffon through a series of improvizations, collective imagining, and by creating deformations of the body which seem to give the performers permission to begin playing in the grotesque.

In early July we made our first public performance at a fundraiser for Heidi Landgraff DanceAct. Here’s some rehearsal and performance footage along with some personal revelations about our work and our audience.

Pictures

Reviews

“By far the most socially responsible piece of work I have seen in ages….i am speechless at the truth and honesty and absurdity of this work…if you are anywhere within a 500 mile radius of the bay area (and especially if you are any variety of queer) it would be irresponsible to not go see this show… seriously.” -Cohdi Harrell, queer performance artist/artistic director of Ricochet

“The Naked Empire Bouffons, a foursome of prancing grotesques sport their deformities and filth like badges of (dare I say it?) pride. In Shame! the question of Pride with a capital P is examined, worried, fondled indecently, punched in the head, and left limping down a dark alley… cast members spend some contrarian quality time with each member of the captive audience before turning on each other with equal parts lust and loathing….the Naked Empire ensemble makes sure to hold everyone complicit in the ultimate humiliation of sitting idly by in the face of suffering.” -Nicole Gluckstern, SF BAY GUARDIAN

“The interactive, community efforts of these actors and their creators deliver a fast-paced, clever show. Many good lines, often accompanied by appropriate comic lazzi… This show could stand more than one viewing.” -Albert Goodwyn, SF BAY TIMES

Artistic Director, Nathaniel Justiniano, is offering his weekend long Bouffon Intensive October 22-23 in Chicago and November 5-6 in San Francisco.

“The work of bouffon satisfies my greatest desires of the theatre.  As a performer it demands an intense athleticism and availability to one’s wildest imagination.  As audience to it I have found a way to both laugh at myself and check my apathy at the door.  As a citizen I am consistently impressed by how much of the ‘unsayable’ the bouffon is allowed to say and by how well people hear it.  The space is electrified by the presence of the bouffon, making each moment potentially and hilariously explosive or deadly silent.  No one is safe.”

This intensive is a crash course in bouffon performance with the only company this side of the Mississippi exclusively dedicated to the research and performance of bouffon.

What you’ll be learning and practicing:

• Finding your personal bouffon
• Entering into and creating within a state of ecstatic play
• Choral, movement-based improvization
• Mercurial acting techniques for shape-shifting between characters of heightened text and grace to those of base, groveling goblin prophets
• Audacious and confrontational status play with the audience
• Wielding stillness and silence like a scapel
• Parodying social maladies and hypocrisies
• Ramshackle techniques for on-the-fly costume creation

Details:

Saturday, October 22nd 10am – 10pm.
Sunday, October 23rd 10am – 10 pm.

Price:
$150 if you register by September 15th (25% off!)
$175 early-bird rate if you register by October 1st
$200 full price

Register by visiting www.aloftloft.com/bouffonintensive

Location:
Main Street Theatre
915 Cayuga Ave – SF
(5 minutes from Balboa Park BART / Muni lines J, K, 14, 49)

Artistic Director, Nathaniel Justiniano, is offering his weekend long Bouffon Intensive October 22-23 in Chicago and November 5-6 in San Francisco.

“The work of bouffon satisfies my greatest desires of the theatre.  As a performer it demands an intense athleticism and availability to one’s wildest imagination.  As audience to it I have found a way to both laugh at myself and check my apathy at the door.  As a citizen I am consistently impressed by how much of the ‘unsayable’ the bouffon is allowed to say and by how well people hear it.  The space is electrified by the presence of the bouffon, making each moment potentially and hilariously explosive or deadly silent.  No one is safe.”

This intensive is a crash course in bouffon performance with the only company this side of the Mississippi exclusively dedicated to the research and performance of bouffon.

What you’ll be learning and practicing:

• Finding your personal bouffon
• Entering into and creating within a state of ecstatic play
• Choral, movement-based improvization
• Mercurial acting techniques for shape-shifting between characters of heightened text and grace to those of base, groveling goblin prophets
• Audacious and confrontational status play with the audience
• Wielding stillness and silence like a scapel
• Parodying social maladies and hypocrisies
• Ramshackle techniques for on-the-fly costume creation

Details:

Saturday, October 22nd 10am – 10pm.
Sunday, October 23rd 10am – 10 pm.

Price:

$150 if you register by September 15th (25% off!)
$175 early-bird rate if you register by October 1st
$200 full price

Register by visiting www.aloftloft.com/bouffonintensive

Location:

The Aloft Loft
2041 W. Carroll Ave, Suite F319
Chicago, IL 60612

The Performant: The Empire has no clothes