Clown Rot - A Clown Workshop with Alex Tatarsky

Wiggle, write with your body, and find new ways into your work at this in-person clown workshop for all levels. Clown Rot is an in-person workshop with Alex Tatarsky for clowns, performers, writers, and curious people ready to move. Alex Tatarsky, a clown by trade, is interested in all the ways we can fall apart on stage, break down, break things down, be in the brokenness, decay, decompose and freak out. In our three hours together, we will play amidst the mess, be possessed rather than possess, and learn from the figure of the clown—for whom failure is a gift. An attempt to follow pleasure amidst impossible circumstances. Delight in the dirt and turn our shit into gold. For writing inspiration, we will look to the compost heap and the garbage can :) Who it’s for Clowns and clown-adjacent performers; writers who want to write with the body or write on their feet; and playful, curious people of all stripes who are up for wiggling around. Bring your project—or your curiosity If you’re working on a solo or ensemble show, explore a new way into your project or material. Everyone is welcome, from total newbies to grizzled old freaks. Attendees! Please bring: 1. An object you feel drawn to! Something you have in your home or trash or backpack or whatever that gives you a strong FEELING of some kind (could be delight, disgust, anger, ecstasy...) 2. Clothes you feel comfortable moving in 3. A pen and paper/notebook 4. Water and snacks! TEACHER BIO Called a “hilarious, finely tuned absurdist” (Theatre Jones) and “outrageous and profane” (NYTimes), Alex Tatarsky makes performances in the uncomfortable in-between zone of comedy, dance-theater, performance art, and deluded rant--sometimes with songs. Tatarsky experienced fleeting fame as Andy Kaufman’s daughter and used to perform as a mound of dirt. Playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure, their live performances are highly responsive to venue and audience, often breaking the fourth wall and embracing humor to deconstruct power dynamics. Tatarskys is currently touring two solo shows: Dirt Trip (MoMA PS1), a decomposing performance-lecture on clowns and compost, and Sad Boys in Harpy Land (Playwrights Horizons, Best of 2024 New Yorker, NYTimes, Art in America), a spiraling clown bildungsroman about living in a world that makes you want to die. Other shows include Americana Psychobabble (La Mama), MATERIAL (Whitney Museum of Art), Untitled Freakout (The Kitchen) and Buttplug Gnome (Gibney). They have toured widely to REDCAT, MCA Chicago, The Walker, PICA, On The Boards, and many bars and basements. As curatorial fellow at the Poetry Project, they organized a series on the poetics of rot. Research interests include bootlegs, hellscapes, and compost. @tartar.biz