Tavi Voina - on questioning public space through the joyful lens of clowning!

The beginning of July moves Reactor's activity from the theater hall to the street. On July 2 and 3, we await you in the Mărăști neighborhood to encounter the street interventions made by our colleague and actor Tavi Voina, in the persona of a clown. For several weeks, Tavi took part in an artistic residency where he explored this area, an opportunity during which he also shared more details with us. Read in the lines below what this residency entailed.

In the Clown in the city residency in the Mărăști neighborhood, I am going in two directions: public space intervention and posting reels on the Instagram page clown_in_the_city in collaboration with the Reactor page. For both, I have a research period that consists of walks through the Mărăști neighborhood to discover it. I start from the questions: What does the public space in the neighborhood look like? What are the rules? Who is welcomed into the public space and how do we realize this? How can I break the rules of this space? Then, I go to the rehearsal room, put on my nose, and improvise starting from the answers given to these questions. I use objects that are found in the neighborhood's public spaces. The street intervention will take place on the sidewalk and the crosswalk in Piața Mărăști.

After several walks through the neighborhood, I chose to carry out my street intervention on the sidewalks and the crosswalk in Piața Mărăști. I noticed that the crosswalk is the public space where people, regardless of social class, sexual orientation, religion, etc., pass by each other without having any interaction. I wondered what it would be like to bring them together for a few seconds or minutes through the games I propose. I am aware that I won't change them profoundly, but given the divided world we live in, I think it's important to bring different people together, even if just for a few seconds. I built 3 games, I like to call them clown vignettes, which last around 30 seconds, because that's how long the green light lasts for pedestrians in Piața Mărăști. I wouldn't want to describe what the clown vignettes consist of; I invite you to come on July 2 and 3 to see them on site. More details about the time intervals will be posted on Instagram as well.

For the Instagram reels, I set up the tripod in the chosen space in the neighborhood and film myself performing. I let myself be very inspired by what types of buildings exist and what social categories live in or pass through the chosen space. The artistic sources are diverse, ranging from Ludor Citrik, a rather grotesque French clown, to these photos below, found online. I don't know exactly who took them.

navigate_beforenavigate_next

Through my clown's presence in the public space, I aim to break the rules and challenge the people there in a playful way. I'll give you a concrete example, so you can understand better: I'm thinking of having a picnic on the crosswalk. Or placing myself in an arrest position every time I see a police officer without being guilty of anything. That kind of action.

The passion for clowning emerged in my 3rd year of college, when my class had a partnership with a school in France. I was in Caen for 10 days, and there I had my first contact with the clown during a workshop on the Jacques Lecoq method. I discovered then that I could fool around, work more with the body than with speech, and that I could communicate directly with the audience, that I didn't have to pretend there was a fourth wall. I really, truly started studying this art in 2020 when I built a clowning moment in "M from Murphy," choreography by Andrea Gavriliu, and a year later when I did a rural theater project and decided, together with two female colleagues, to make a clown show. We met online weekly and discussed clown acts. Following that process, I discovered different techniques and many international companies. Besides the Jacques Lecoq method, I attended an activist clown workshop led by Robyn Hambrook and Hilary Ramsden in Brussels. Their method prepares you to take part in protests and laugh at the police/power, to de-escalate certain situations between protesters and police. Another important part of their workshop is intervening in public space with the aim of raising issues.

I draw a lot of inspiration from political events. I try to create a politically present clown. Many consider that the art of the clown has nothing to do with politics. I disagree. Chaplin was political. I heard this definition at a workshop I attended last summer and I like it very much: the clown is a person who has no friends, has no money, has no job, and who tries, tries, and tries to get them. We laugh at him because we find ourselves in his attempt to be a part of society. The clown also has a personal side. It leaves room for you to work with your type of corporeality, naivety, aggressiveness, innocence, with your style of playing. For me, it is a return to play. I know, it's a cliché. I constantly ask myself: how do I play as an adult? In my clown performances, I try not to use stage gimmicks, but to work with a minimum of objects, raw materials that I can use in a surprising way.

The relationship with the audience is direct. From my experience so far, I expect some people to join in the games I propose, while others I think will ignore me and be stressed by my presence. This residency is also an educational process through which I get passersby used to the idea that art can come to them; they don't have to go to specially designed venues to attend an artistic act.

/divider

Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the program or the way the results of the program may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.

Event co-financed by the Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council