Giedrė Degutytė is a
circus, clown and physical theatre performer, creator and researcher.
She
is a self-taught circus practitioner
and did her Master studies ‘performance practice as
research’ at the Royal
Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She performs in
London each 3rd Friday of the month in Friday Flop, a clownshow with
various numbers led
by Jon Davison. During her research she read and
explored boredom as the critical context of her hula hoop
practice and only one month before her graduation she decided to
focus on clowning. I met her during
a clown workshop and spoke with her about her practice. She told me:
‘I
remember in one of the clown classes we did an exercise in which we
had to say how we feel and I realised that most of the time I am
bored. How stupid of me, I've never thought that boredom occupied
such a big part of my life, although I could trace its presence since
I was a child. At some point during my MA
however I realised that actually I am not bored anymore and that I’ll
have to fake my research. But clowning offers pretence as a tool, so
I pretend in my graduation piece that I am bored, while I am not
anymore, but I used to be and maybe I still do sometimes, but it goes
away very quickly.’
Giedrė, to
me, has a very interesting and pleasant performing style. Often, in
performances of people who have skills, they alternate between 'now I
am doing something funny' and 'now I show a skill' so the audience
goes from; 'ah cute, s/he's one of us' to 'wow, impressive, I could
never do that'. With her, skill and clowning merge.
It’s elegant and playful at the
same time. When she is hula hooping I still relate to the playful way
she does it although I know I could never do that skill. It’s the
fact that she is 'doing the skill in a stupid way' that makes it
interesting to me.
I think
with her quest for a way out of the boredom of skill, that led her to
clowning, she also found a way out for the audience that is bored of
seeing someone perform ‘trick after trick, after trick, after
trick’ without being able to relate to it.
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