Everybody loves a clown. They’re usually the cheerfullest of creatures. So what happens when they discover a dead body?
Emma Sinclair, Kelly Malcolm and director Kathryn Smith wrote and designed a show about two clowns Olive and Pistachio and their friend , a cardboard box named Schmee, who discover a chalk outline in the middle of their game of hide and seek, which inspires them to try to solve the murder.
The result proved to be a huge success for three recent University of Lethbridge graduates who developed a one act play which ended up winning the Provincial One Act Play Festival in High River, May 10 and 11 after debuting at Airdrie’s first one act play festival and winning the Chinook Regional One Act Play Festival in Lethbridge, April 19 and 20.
What happened was we started to develop The Tighty Whities Present Death while we were at the University of Lethbridge and decided to show it at the One Act Play Festival in Airdrie because they were having their first one act play festival,” explained director Kathryn Smith.
“ We wanted to go where nobody knew us,” she continued adding they workshopped their play a lot before presenting it again in Lethbridge.
“ Clowns feed off the audience, so we added and subtracted a lot and tightened up a lot of loose ends based on that,” she said.
“It evolved based on those hard adjustments,” she continued.
They were impressed with the audience response.
“A lot of people were impressed to see a dark clown comedy. That was part of the fun of it because clowns are usually the happiest and most fun of creatures so it was a contrast to see them in this situation,” she said.
The trio were so inspired by their professor Gail Hanrahan’s discussion of Canadian clown trainer Richard Pochinko’s style of clowning that they developed the characters Pistachio and Olive and put them to work.
“The clowns are from a different universe, so they don‘t speak English. They speak in gibberish (with a little bit of French) and everything is new and exciting for them,” summarized Emma Sinclair, who plays Olive, the more straight edged and serious clown who provides the comedic foil for Pistachio the more free-spirited and fun-loving clown who gets into trouble without meaning to.
“They are so exciting. They live between moments of pure excitement and pure misery,” she noted.
“ Olive is more straight edged. Pistachio is fun loving and silly. She gets into trouble without meaning to so Olive has to rein her in and helps here. They love each other and we love them,” she said adding the play was an opportunity for the three friends to work together.
“ Kelly and I have been friends since the beginning of university. And I work well with Kathryn. This was an opportunity to work together. We have great chemistry,” she continued.
“It’s very technically difficult to do, we liked the challenge.”
They didn’t expect their play to win the provincials.
“ I did not expect it. It was just amazing,” she enthused.
“I don’t think any of us expected it,” Smith said.
They are working on finding other venues and festivals for their show, but are considering designing a second show around the characters.
For now The Tighty Whities have a one night run at the Red Phone Theatre in Calgary in June, then they are going to try to get into fringe festivals
Jonah Holgate was stage manager and Ryan Reese was the crew for the show.
