TIMEOUT: The Long Pigs
See article in its original context here by Andrew Fuhrmann for TimeOut Melbourne.
Watch out Zig! Watch our Zag! Clare Bartholomew is coming for you next
Devised and performed by clowning supergroup We!3!, The Long Pigs is the kind of sinister oddity that could only be dreamed up in the wilds of north eastern Tasmania.
Enter the black-nosed clowns, dressed in an ominous medley of surgical gear and abattoir workwear. From rusty buckets they pour their spoils, hundreds of red noses, bloody trophies torn from their sunny cousins in clowning. But one nose is missing. And one of the three is hiding something from the others.
Clare Bartholomew, Derek Ives and Nicci Wilks were at the Golconda Circus Festival, east of Launceston, when they first conjured this strange vision of the darkside of the clown, working on ideas for an impromptu festival show.
“I had this big bag of red noses with me because I’d been teaching clowning at a festival workshop,” explains Bartholomew. “So I was just sitting and staring at this bag, and I thought, well, what if we came from the forest out there and we were clown scalpers, hunting red-nosed clowns.”
For a career clown, this might be thought a symbolic act of self-murder; “long pigs” is, after all, Melanesian Pidgin for “human flesh”. But for Bartholomew it’s more an opportunity to change public expectations.
“I’ve never really been a fan of red noses, to be honest,” she says, sharpening her knife. “A lot of people have such a fixed notion of what a clown is. It can be a real stereotype, boring and clichéd.”
This first incarnation of The Long Pigs was a hit with festival goers, and the trio quickly began work on an extended version, testing the bleaker edges of the bouffon style – a sort of gallows humour clowning popularised by French actor and mime Jacques Lecoq. For Clare Bartholomew it was a revelation.
“The grotesque is something I’ve always been attracted to, but not necessarily something I’ve often worked in,” she says. “I’ve done a lot more gentle sort of comedy, a lot more classic clowning.”
In fact, besides collaborating regularly with local physical comedy ensemble The Business, Bartholomew also works as a clown doctor and trains other clown doctors for The Humour Foundation, a group that co-ordinates clown visits to hospitals around Australia. But she’s found it liberating to work with these darker material.
“I don’t think we’re trying to be evil for the sake of being evil,” she says, “but I love that things are dark and that you can push them in a way that you can’t in light comedy.”
All three performers have formidable CVs, with decades of experience in circus, theatre and cabaret between them. But as if there wasn’t enough dramaturgical nous in the room, they’re also working with director Susie Dee and multi award-winning designers Anna Tregloan (set) and Jethro Woodward (sound).
“I think the images will be quite beautiful,” she says. And, indeed, the production stills from an early development at La Mama last year look exquisite – in a nightmare kind of way – the shocking red of the lopped noses standing out against a grim, industrial background.
It’s almost enough to make you pity the old Zig and Zag. Almost.
IMAGE CREDIT: Ponch Hawkes