by Kirby Laney, posted 13 March 2019
On March 14th, Moisture Festival returns for its 16th season! Fremont now hosts the largest and longest-running vaudeville showcase in the world – with performers coming here from points around our region, and around the globe!
As it continues to grow, both in its audiences and in its outreach to artists, the Moisture Festival non-profit wants to be smart about determining its direction. As the MF Board looks at creating a new five-year plan, David Taft has been enlisted to lend some expertise and insight.
No Fourth Wall
Taft is a performer and academic who taught circus skills and clowning at Cornish College and SANCA. “My training came in Loony Tunes,” Taft admitted. He taught movement and comedy, encouraging his students to look at the old comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, to learn “planning for the unknown,” he said.
Most theater, and most television, Taft observed, “is structured around realism and representation.” In these stories, the audience enter, “a dream world that you get to be a part of,” he said. That is, the story is told realistically with familiar markers and identifiable characters from daily life. Even in ‘reality television’, the shows highlight outrageousness, and allow some audience input, but usually after-the-fact or at a great distance.
“Moisture Festival is very, very different,” from mainstream theater, Taft explained. He described the shows as a form of ‘presentism’, that allow audiences to witness what the performer is doing, and most performer will speak directly to the people in the room. Moisture Festival doesn’t shatter the ‘fourth wall’ of theater. There just isn’t one.
Performers can adapt to audience preferences, adding a trick to a juggling act or pulling in a participant; making a joke more bawdy (or less) depending on the type of people at a given show. More importantly, everything at Moisture Festival is done live, in the moment, and after endless rehearsal (hopefully) but not with any kind of guarantee or absolute assurance beyond the performers professionalism.
Being Present
With presentism, “I am present,” Taft said, as the performer, “in front of an audience that is present.” Everyone in the room becomes part of the story, and part of the performance, in an immediate way. “Are we so disconnected from the present,” Taft asked, that we prefer hearing our stories only at a distance? A story told, in the theater or a cinema, no matter how immediate, is never told as we sit in the room. Moisture Festival is not a play, but a performance, that happens in front of others, with an outcome perhaps pre-decided but not certain.
This immediacy, and involvement of the whole room, makes Moisture Festival, Taft observed, “more about community building,” than most theater. We all, those of us in the room, share an experience in the moment.
At the same time, Moisture Festival has built a community, through its gathering together of performers, volunteers and the enthusiastic audiences. The MF magicians, jugglers, singers, dancers, acrobats, hoop spinners, aerialists, clowns, puppeteers, contortionists, and whatever the Daredevil Chicken Club is, usually work solo, performing at corporate events and/or as a feature of a theater show. The singular nature of Moisture means that everyone involved can come together, and bond, in a mutual affection for this rare experience.
Coincidentally, or not, the Fremont Fair and the Fremont Arts Council Solstice Parade do give a similar opportunity for community building. Taft used these local productions as further examples of presentism, that involve the audience in the show as it happens. These events also welcome in performers and other artists who may not fit into mainstream exhibits, and allow them to build an audience of those appreciative of the unusual and incredible.
No Fear Of Clowns Here
Taft has worked in clowning for most of his career, and he has had experience with the ‘fear of clowning’ that has scared off a few people from trying out Moisture Festival. “I’ve come from a theatrical clown background,” he explained, and the European Clown style is what he taught students. “I don’t think the media has done us any favors,” in dispelling a fear of clowns, Taft observed. “Make-up and a red nose,” he observed, “it’s pretty much gone.”
One of the most legendary clowns to appear at Moisture Festival in 2019 will be Avner The Eccentric. “He is not a red nosed clown,” Taft explained, yet Avner’s work embodies the ideal of the buffoon. Avner has appeared in ‘representative’ theater and movies. He’s appeared on Broadway, and gained a Tony nomination, as well as playing ‘The Jewel’ in the 1985 film ‘The Jewel of the Nile.’ Still, what Avner does, and has taught others, is clowning.
One of the most familiar sights on Moisture Festival promotional materials is Godfrey Daniels, who resembles a clown. Taft actually suggested that the character of Godfrey might more accurately be placed in the category of puppet. A 7-foot tall, non-speaking, balloon balancer, Godfrey is the least threatening of all MF performers. As Taft explained, Godfrey barely resembles a human being, and doesn’t really carry the tag of buffoon. “Puppets are non-confrontational,” he said, and “because they don’t feel, the audience feels for them,” and this explains the audience reaction at most MF performances by Godfrey, where the audience will ooh, aww, and gasp for Godfrey, while he remains silent.
Still, for those who fear clowns, the representational theater style is more comfortable. The performers “have to stay in the four walls,” Taft observed, “there is a certain safety in that.” With presentational theater, like MF, “the audience is a willing partner,” in the fun, “not a passive,” watcher. The audience can react, but they can also be pulled into the action if they desire.
‘A Communal Experience’
“Varieté is a popular theater form,” Taft said, with “a variety of different things; different rhythms, different timing, different comedy delivery.” For those who may not like a clown, in varieté he/she will soon be replaced by something else.
“It’s a communal experience,” Taft observed about Moisture Festival, and so much of varieté and presentism. All of live theater gives that sense of coming together and sharing. Theater is “a way for the community to recognize itself,” Taft observed, “recognizing who you are and where you are in relation to the communal activity.” Ultimately, Taft said, “we crave a communal activity. It’s why I still remain hopeful and connected.”
To get into the Moisture Festival community, purchase tickets now to one of the 40 shows going on in the 2019 season. Every show is different, and provides a unique and individual opportunity to be present. While the list of performers changes from week to week, every show has a different mix of the musicians, jugglers, dancers, aerialists, clowns, etc.
Don’t miss out!!
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©2019 Kirby S. Laney. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.