Pochinko

This is Wyckham: So as I try to create my spiritual dwelling place for my clown I can't help but think about the Pochinko clowning method...what's that you ask? Well, I don't know a ton so I've been reading a bunch more and it's fascinating. It is a predominately Canadian tradition. (This is the method Mump and Smoot were trained in. http://www.mumpandsmoot.com/) So this guy Richard Pochinko, a definite 60s kinda guy played with Ouija boards and was prone to psychedelic dreams and channelling, after getting kicked out of Lecoq and returning to Canada developed this clowning method with a very spiritual center. Really looking at the native american roots of clown as both trickster and shaman. He said, "What we need, is a clown for our time. A clown that gives us a larger sense of God in each of us, that celebrates our humanness, our animalness, and the times that we can touch each other in a moment of laughter."

His method is often referred to as clown through mask. in a nutshell, the performer creates 6 masks corresponding to the 4 points of the compass (north, south, east and west...duh) and heaven and earth. The performer plays in all of those masks and then ends in the 7th--the clown nose. That character is allowed to travel to all of those previous points. OK, I don't know who much of that makes any sense. So here's some links....they don't make much sense either...but if you are interested, check it out. http://www.richardpochinko.com/index.html and the Wiki page is pretty wacky too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pochinko