I have been attending clown school over the past 2 months with a man named David McMurray Smith at a place called Fantastic Space and it’s AMAZING! It keeps me very busy as the classes are every second day from 4 or 6 hours. These classes are not your red-nose-wearing clown classes, I do not learn how to fall or be funny, specifically. What we are learning in these classes is character work.

Each day we start with warm ups which includes working your diaphragm through laughing or crying (depending on what you sense in your body) and personal play time. It’s like being 5 again where you play by yourself in an imaginary world of your own creation and impulse! Then we have been creating 6 masks, molded from clay, paper-mâché, then worn only to find whom the character is, and embellishing this character to it’s largest and most ridiculous form possible.

This is hard work, I can’t lie. I enjoy the class, but bringing out some of these emotions that I have judged as “negative” to these huge degrees is a stretch of my boundaries. Of course, that is why I am in the course and I can’t wait to see all of these strange characters I have made to their largest degree, on stage, in my clown birthing on June 26th!

Here is a photo from the Earth Day Parade the Madskillz Crew and I came out for to celebrate healthy lifestyles and the earth.

The parade was fantastic and there were thousands of people marching down the street to celebrate and protect mother earth!

The Madskillz group is coming out more and more as the days get sunnier, and Saturday Circus has begun again with the new sunshine in the city! The pinnacle event of the summer the Madskillz Festival is coming up June 24-26, so mark it in your calendar, it’s going to be incredible!

I have made a new video about Home of Poi’s Isolation hoops, they work well, but there are some issues with them also. I will be excited to learn more about hoop isolations and show you some videos shortly with a new act!

What do you think?

I juggled for the We Are One rally today with the BC Federation of Unions to show solidarity between the US and Canada with the recent actions against unions within the States. From the BCFU website:

The B.C. Federation of Labour stands in solidarity with our brothers and sisters under attack by the Republican government of Wisconsin.

The Carnival Band was also hired so I got to play with them again! I love their music, it’s totally fun to juggle to.  It made the event so lively and people so happy in times which they are trying to fight for their rights. It’s great to add such joy to moments like these that happen because of strife. My friend Ben West got a photo of me juggling 5 balls too!

I worked with the Carnival Band for the Celtic Day Parade this year, and it was so much fun! I had so much fun I could barely walk for two days afterwards in fact!! It was totally worth it, and I got on the front page of the Vancouver Sun’s Web page!

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Photos+Patrick+Parade+Vancouver/4474810/story.html