Artiste | Brymore Productions
Presented by Brymore Productions, Artiste is one person show that is all about, you guessed it, an artist, moustache and all. Only this artist is a clown who often mistakes the floor and their clothes for the canvas. This forty-five minute piece is a playful, high energy physical comedy in which we follow the artiste’s mission to create a masterpiece.
This journey includes selecting audience members to draw portraits of as they stand in silly poses, audience members holding up pieces of butchers paper for the artiste to sketch on, as well as throwing the artist’s scrunched up paintings back into the trash can.
It’s clear that the creators of the show are incredibly skilled in their craft and in clowning, as everything was threaded together so seamlessly. To each paint splatter, audience interaction and expression… it was so cleverly constructed.
As with many a great clowning performance, the comedy is born from the rules created by the performer and how quickly those boundaries get broken. In this sense, the Artiste was as hilarious a rule breaker as they come. The no hot-dog embargo was thrown to the wind as we witnessed the Artiste create and consume a gloriously messy meal for themselves, and the 45 minute runtime was continually referenced with an audience member providing time updates that hilariously discouraged the Artiste more and more each time.
To me, it felt like a creativity party… a celebration of creativity and playfulness for both young and old.
It’s clownish, it’s playful and it’s a reminder to keep making that masterpiece.
