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The Clown Conservatory is a performing arts school in San Francisco, CA. The school began in 2000 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2013) |
The Clown Conservatory is a performing arts school in San Francisco, CA. The school began in 2000 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Jeff Raz founded and served as director of the Clown Conservatory from 2000 to 2010. From 2012 to 2015 Joe Dieffenbacher took over as Director assisted by Dan Griffiths. The training format offered 5-7 week Intensives in Clown, Slapstick, Commedia dell'arte and Bouffon, as well as 2 week long summer workshops. This format was established in order to make training more affordable and more accessible to working artists. The focus was on developing professional level performance material for cabaret, theatrical clowning, street theater and circus. It draws inspiration from traditional circus clowning, European street theater and variety. Currently Sara Moore has taken on the role of Director offering a 24-week training program.
In 2008–9, the Clown Conservatory's Advanced Program Ensemble spent a year developing and performing a circus adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland under the direction of Jeff Raz. The production, titled Wonderland, was developed around the performing skills of an ensemble of nine Conservatory students selected by audition. [1] The show opened on April 18, 2009, at the Julia Morgan Center in Berkeley, California and was shown locally in a tour of San Francisco Bay area community centers. Spectacle magazine wrote: "This highly inventive circus theatre project and its cast of promising new artists are off to an auspicious beginning... Both the Conservatory's 2009 class of clowns and the play Wonderland deserve to be seen more widely." [2]
Clown Conservatory exists as part of the Circus Center in San Francisco.
A not-for-profit circus organization, Circus Center was created in July 2001, after the San Francisco School of Circus Arts had acquired the New Pickle Circus. The San Francisco School of Circus Arts was founded in 1984, as a project of the Pickle Family Circus, which in turn was founded ten years earlier.
The Circus Center offers training for adults and children in recreational, amateur and professional circus arts. These conservatories focus individually on Clowning, Aerial Arts, and Contortion. The Circus Center also offers live performances showcasing students and staff.
In 2008, the Clown Conservatory produced a "naked clown calendar" to raise money for research and advocacy for multiple sclerosis. [3]
The Pickle Family Circus was a small circus founded in 1974 in San Francisco, California, United States. The circus formed an important part of the renewal of the American circus. They also influenced the creation of Cirque du Soleil in Montreal. Neither circus features animals or use the three-ring layout like the traditional circus.
Josh Routh is an American circus performer, and a founding member of the comedic troop Brothers Kaputnik, Death By Tickle and Circus Kaput. Josh trained at the Circus Center in San Francisco, California and attended the Clown Conservatory where he graduated "Class Clown". As Tchotchke, his alter ego, Josh has performed with The New Pickle Circus (formerly the Pickle Family Circus, The San Francisco Youth Circus, The Much Ado Shakespeare Circus and Velocity Circus.
Urban School of San Francisco is an independent coeducational high school located in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, California, United States.
Steve Smith, professional clown and circus director, is best known to audiences as the clown character, "TJ Tatters."
The American Conservatory Theater (ACT) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, national, and international artists and the Bay Area's diverse communities. YBCA programs year-round in two landmark buildings—the Galleries and Forum by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki and the adjacent Theater by American architect James Stewart Polshek and Todd Schliemann. Betti-Sue Hertz served as Curator from 2008 through 2015.
Circus Center is a circus school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1984 by Wendy Parkman and Judy Finelli as the San Francisco School of Circus Arts.
The San Francisco Opera Center (SFOC) is the San Francisco Opera's professional training center for opera singers. Based in San Francisco, it encompasses two different professional tracks for training: a summer training program known as the Merola Opera Program and a two year long term resident artist program known as the Adler Fellowship. For twenty years the SFOC also operated a touring opera company, the Western Opera Theatre, but for financial reasons this touring company was disbanded in 2003. In addition to providing training for opera singers, the Merola Opera Program also provides training for vocal coaches and stage directors. Four singers each year from the summer Merola Opera Program are offered Adler Fellowships with the San Francisco Opera. Soprano Sheri Greenawald served as director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 2002 through 2020.
The Museum of Performance + Design, formerly the San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, is located in the Bayview District of San Francisco, California at 2200 Jerrold Avenue, Ste. T. The Museum collects and makes accessible materials about the performing arts, with a special emphasis on documenting and preserving the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich and diverse performing arts heritage from the Gold Rush to the present. The museum produces public and educational programs, provides library services to researchers, and conservation and archival services to performing arts institutions. The Museum's collection includes personal papers of prominent artists, original costumes and design renderings, audio-visual recordings of live performances, original artwork, other artifacts, and ephemera. The Museum also serves as the official archives for many local performing arts organizations including the San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera, Stern Grove Festival, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.
The New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) is a not-for-profit theatre company, located in the Civic Center neighborhood at 25 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, California. NCTC showcases a Pride Season, an In-Concert/Cabaret Series, Family Matinee performances, YouthAware Touring Educational Theatre, and an Emerging Artists program. NCTC also houses a comprehensive Conservatory for youth and adults.
Michelle Nicole Matlock is a professional American clown and former "struggling actress", best known for playing the lead romantic role as the ladybug in OVO, the twenty-fifth annual traveling production of Cirque du Soleil.
Jeff Raz is an American clown, actor, teacher, and director. He founded and served as director of the Clown Conservatory in San Francisco, California, the country's only remaining professional clown training program from 2000 to 2010. As a performer he has had leading roles with Vaudeville Nouveau, Make*A*Circus, Pickle Family Circus, and Cirque du Soleil.
Contemporary circus is a contested term in circus studies. In this article, it is used in contrast to the term 'traditional circus', combining with the genre elsewhere disambiguated as new circus or nouveau cirque. Many circus scholars prefer to separate these styles, as elaborated in circus. Contemporary circus, by this definition, is a genre of performing arts developed in the late 20th century in which a story, theme, mood or question is conveyed through traditional circus skills. For fans of animal performance in circus, this genre could arguably be found more akin to Variety as animals are rarely used, and traditional circus skills are blended with more choreographic, character-driven or mechanical approaches.
Wanderlust Circus is a theatrical circus troupe based in Portland, Oregon, founded in 2006 by creative partners Noah Mickens and Nick "The Creature" Harbar. Since 2006, Wanderlust Circus has grown from a small band of creatives to a full-fledged circus troupe, and non-profit organization. The organization presently comprises a team of acrobats, a 10-piece swing band, a trick-roping cowboy clown; and several aerialists, contortionists, hand balancers, jugglers, and dancers. Their most popular recurring shows have been The White Album Christmas, A Circus Carol, and the dance party series MegaBounce.
Codarts University for the Arts is a Dutch vocational university in Rotterdam that teaches music, dance and circus. It was established in its present location in 2000.
The California Jazz Conservatory is a private conservatory in Berkeley, California. It is the only independent music conservatory in the United States devoted solely to jazz and related styles of music. Located in the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, the CJC offers Associate, Bachelor's, and Master's degrees in Jazz Studies. The conservatory also offers community education classes and workshops for instrumentalists and vocalists and precollege youth programs for beginning, intermediate and advanced musicians.
Mina Liccione is an American performing artist, comedian, tap dancer, choreographer, and arts educator.
Joan Mankin (May 16, 1948 – September 26, 2015] was an actor and clown prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area, from the early 1970s through 2014. Mankin started her professional career in San Francisco in 1970 with a production of the San Francisco Mime Troupe's An Independent Female. Thereafter, she appeared in major roles in many Bay Area theater companies including the American Conservatory Theater, Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, San Francisco Playhouse and California Shakespeare Theatre as well as the feminist Lilith Theater in the late 1970s early 1980s, of which she was Artistic Director for two years. In 2006 she had a major singing role in the Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatre's production of The Black Rider: The Casting of Magic Bullets.
Gregangelo's Velocity Circus/Arts and Entertainment is a San Francisco-based circus troupe and entertainment company that incorporates the arts, technology, astrophysical concepts, and cultural diversity into their performance acts. The circus and entertainment company was founded in 1993 by Artistic Director Gregangelo Herrera, a whirling dervish, aerial arts choreographer, and drummer. The company's signature performances incorporate multiculturalism, ensemble aerial acts, optical illusions, immersive entertainment, and interactive play. Operating both one-out events and a variety of immersive shows, the troupe and entertainment company create performances and experiences with a cast of local San Francisco and Bay Area artists, including several artists they have sponsored from around the world.
Make*A*Circus was a professional, recreational, and educational circus that created free day-long events in which children observed a professional circus performance, took workshops in the circus skills of their choice, and finally performed their own circus. It took place outdoors in parks, in primarily underserved neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, and all over the state of California, with 400 to 700 children per show. It lasted for 25 years, from 1975 to 2002.
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