Charlotte Ford

Charlotte will teach a free clown workshop to senior citizens at the Philadelphia Senior Center and lead them in creating a public performance of their own work. Clowning is a vulnerable and empowering comedic and poetic theatrical form in which the performer plays an exaggerated version of their own core emotional state and body. Her project will give voice and empower a marginalized age group as well as create a bonding experience and sense of community.

Charlotte will create a one-woman clown show about being female in our modern world, and perform it at cabarets around the city.  She will use the comedic and poetic form in Clown, to address fear, sexuality, and gender all from a female perspective rarely seen on stage or in our modern media.  Clown is a vivid physical and emotional articulation of the truth, and shares emotional vulnerability and honesty with the audience.  She will perform excerpts of this clown play in a variety of venues throughout 2009 and 2010 with the aim of developing interactive improvisatory skills, creating a full-length one-woman clown show, and being seen by as diverse an audience as possible.

Charlotte will further her study of the theatrical genre of "clown" in Boulder, Colorado with the world-renowned clown teacher Giovanni Fusetti. Clown is a theatrical style that exaggerates a performer's own physicality and personality to create a character who makes direct contact with the audience. Charlotte has experience in clown now, but in order to teach it she feels she first must take an advanced course. She will then return to Philadelphia and work with Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey, a gifted clown teacher by observing her classes on clown at Temple University, and work with her to create a curriculum appropriate for junior and high school students at Girard College. Finally, Charlotte will teach clown to the students at Girard College, coaching each student on a road of self-awareness and acceptance through performing her/his clown.