Hanging from the Circus Ladder

When everything’s upside-down and there are no bearings to get, you can always shoot for a papier mâché moon, upspiraling the rungs of a perilous towering ladder under the Big Top: is it above or below, bottom or top? — how to reach that crescent, a Cheshire Cat smile.

Rebel poet, actor, filmmaker, and theater artist Dennis Leroy Kangalee and I are joining forces to adapt for the stage Henry Miller’s story, “The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder.” Kangalee is starring, I’m directing, and we’re co-writing the script as we go.

The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California commissioned this work with Kangalee’s Kangalee Arts Ensemble, and it’s being produced by J. Stock Productions in conjunction with the library (and with the blessings of the Miller estate and New Directions). I’m honored Kangalee asked me to join him in the creation of a full-length solo play based on this surprising tale of a circus artist shadowed by his own highest aspirations.

“The depth of collaboration can lead you to transcendence.”

— Dennis Leroy Kangalee

SMILE: A Clown’s Ascension will premiere at the Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, kicking off the Henry Miller in the 21st Century Symposium this October. More details to come.

Kangalee and I have never worked together this way before, but we’ve known each other since 2012, 2013 — originally through mutual Poets Theater interests and projects, and since then only deepening our discovery of shared creative affinities.

A few years ago I wrote about his masterful Krapp’s Last Tape here…

Re-Engagement

A great performance does something nothing else can do. A moment zeroed in on through a gesture or a look, through an exactly right tone of voice as the devastating phrase is pronounced, through an emotion - even a thought - made visible, embodied; such an instant lasts in memory as an illumination of what’s usually lost in the flux.

...wonders get accessed and that’s that for whatever else is happening...

...every sliver of momentousness that can be found in Beckett’s masterpiece was made to happen.

Of course, Krapp is a Beckettian clown! So now Kangalee’s further explorations into clown figures as symbolic of the plight of the artist coincide with my Killing Joke entanglements involving the Trickster archetype, and its subcategory of the Evil Clown. Here we’re gamboling (and leapfrogging each other) towards the Holy Clown, in Activation of the Divine Fool Archetype.

Through his art, Auguste the clown gains the world (or at least laughter and applause): it’s not enough; and yet, when some of what he reaches for becomes real, when he realizes himself through his art, he loses everything.

That’s just Act 1.

Right now, our job is creating the character of world-famous Auguste: building the clown as he presents himself to his audiences and building his underlying character. This means painting the mask of the clown onto the reality of an individual human visage — which is, at the same time, the character of the clown and the face of the actor, Kangalee. The actor is preparing for action.

“A clown is a poet in action.” — Henry Miller

Stay tuned for more. We’re writing all along the way. Rehearsals start in August.

August for Auguste, the clown.