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: nakedempirebouffon@gmail.com

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

www.voicefactorysf.org

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

So far, in three, or four rehearsals I have been apart of ensemble building, discovering my bouffon and a analytical research discussion about the San Francisco queer (GLBTQI) community. We/I have explored “view points.” A technique that has the performers walking a invisible grid using tempo, jumping, running and falling.  Working with this technique I have learned about the unnecessary way I use my body. Like “indicating”. Indicating that I might take a step by shifting my weight forward. Indicating is a common block among performers/actors. It can kill the element of surprise and newness which I believe are vital pieces of the puzzle in terms of creating dynamic and lively plays, or solo theater work.

The discovery of my bouffon was one of exhaustion and physical and mental perseverance. I found my self being transported to another state of being. Like this monstrous creature was woken up and decided to come out to play, but much like a first born it can’t help but to feel tired and confused, but exhilarated everything around it.  I found my self seeing in a different way. My eyes were merely a glass window for the bouffon inside me.

Discussing politics has been something I had avoided for quite some time after being jaded by identity politics, sub groups within sub groups within sub groups. I will say though after two years I found this discussion about the SF queer community quite refreshing. Especially when the group presented the information out a of their personal interests . I researched Craig’s List personals.  I looked up different adds within M4M and W4W and casual encounters and I typed in Queer to get a well rounded idea about the different “appetites.” It made me think about power structure and the way Craig’s list is designed to have everyone treat everyone else like some object they can ignore or reply to if they are good enough for their personal taste. Kind of like how the government looks at people as faceless numbers that can be sacrificed for the “greater cause”.   Which brings me to think of that concept of SUBJECT-SUBJECT consciousness talked about by Harry Hay’s book Radically GAY.

Thanks for reading.

Remember, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.

Blessings,

Faeble

Both the rehearsal rooms were booked this night so we took the Voice Box – a very small room that had installation art from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence which created a sort otherworldly yet specifically queer environment.  We met Alan our stage manager as well as Eric Wilcox (SF Buffoons) our costume designer, and they both sat in on our rehearsal. Given that Evan, Xandra and I were the only cast members that night I felt a little bit of pressure to perform and excel since we had new outside eyes.  Our assignment was to create a 5-minute piece about some queer gathering or event where the audience (Nathaniel, Alan, and Eric) would be able to immediately tell what we were satirizing.  Tricky because we’re not necessarily creating a narrative piece. It’s supposed to be as if we bouffons just came back from an event and are now playing in exuberant joy all the things we saw and experienced.   Some examples of what we did (we did a big gay movie event at the Castro Theater)…

–Saying “excuse me” as we passed each other slyly feeling each other up…the physical gestures would get more and more obvious and exaggerated, but our “excuse me”s stayed at the whispering, polite volume level.

–We spent a good few minutes squatted down taking shits, and this went from noisy and constipated sounds to orgasmic, red-faced yells of relief and large-demon child-birthing.

–We slyly cruised each other’s penis while pissing at the urinal, and this spiraled into a high-powered firehose to even a slip-and-slide (I don’t remember if we actually did the slip-and-slide, but it sounds like a great idea)

My big question leaving rehearsal…Bouffons have the ability to imitate people at the drop of a hat…how can I keep my bouffon body and intention yet be able to shift in and out of these different characters my bouffon sees without losing the essence of the bouffon?  I kept feeling like once we started doing imitations and acting like pedestrians, it was difficult to easily change back into our core bouffon bodies.

Thursday, June 11^th.

The four levels of Bouffon…

Nathaniel says that there are four levels to the bouffon in terms of “putting” on other people.

0–At 0 we are the bouffon in its uncultured, untouched purity.

1–We are still mostly bouffon with the same body and voice, and we are saying or doing things that the person we’re satirizing would do.  There is no attempt by the bouffon to imitate…it is the bouffon obviously satirizing the person.

2–Beginning to take on the person’s voice and recognizable physicalities, but it still looks like a bouffon…just doing a really good impression of a person.

3–3 is where we are 100% the person being mocked.  I feel there is the most danger at this level because the commitment to taking on that person is so complete that the audience has no idea where the bouffon went or disappeared to…as if the lights have suddenly gone out in a room where you know there is a dangerous entity lurking around you, but you don’t know where or when it will pop out.

We did an exercise where Nathaniel told us to mock him using these four different levels.  This exercise was promising in that it offered a way for me to figure out how to negotiate the bouffon sensibility while changing my body from obvious grotesque creature to someone actual in real life.  I would have liked to sit and play in each level for a while before adding on the new levels, but time ran out for that day.

Sunday, June 14^th.

Who are these bouffons?  Are we aliens that are new to the world and ecstatically curious and enthusiastic about the human race? Are we rejects of society that don’t give a shit…or who do give a shit because they love shit?

Nathaniel proposes that we are manifestations of the subconscious of the queer community of San Francisco.

This I find helpful because I now have a closer idea of my source material in creating and improving with my bouffon character.  It’s fitting also because a title like “Shame!” speaks to a broad subconscious that could very well define a major element of queerdom.  I think that most queers can relate to “shame” in one way or another.

-Jorge