"Bubkus"--10/7

It is difficult to describe a clown show to someone who's never seen one before. In some ways it's like trying to describe other performance-based theatrical forms to the uninitiated. How do you describe with language, in meaningful terms, the experience of watching a Noh play, or a Commedia Dell 'Arte scenario, or a Kathakali dance drama? Clown may be even more difficult in that it carries with it some negative cultural baggage when speaking to an American auditor: you say “clown” and immediately the images conjured up are the prevalent “clown signs”: the party clown playing with props in the cleared-out corner, cartoon clowns (although Krusty is better than most), birthday clowns, hamburger clowns, murderer clowns, and people who dress like murderer clowns as a gimmick to sell records or other schlock of any innumerable varieties.
“What happens?” people sometimes ask about this show you're trying to describe ecstatically. And as you try to recount the events that take place, you sometimes realize halfway through, that what you've described sounds juvenile, uninteresting, and not even you want to see the show you've just described. It's hard talk about what happens, in other words, because so much of it is in the treatment, not the events. The sublime is difficult to enfence with words.
A more savvy interlocutor may ask, “what does it mean?” I used to bristle at this question and retort somewhat sarcastically, “what do the Water Lilies mean? What does King Lear mean? What does Endgame mean?” I have since come around to the notion that what one is really often asking in that question is, “was it meaningful to you? And if so, what was it that was meaningful?” This is a legitimate question and takes the burden off of me to try to encapsulate into two or three logical sentences the emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual responses to a show that should hopefully stay with me long after the show and mean different things to me as I make my way through life.
“Meaningfulness,” however, is not the same thing as “meaning.” "Meaningfulness" is not reached through peppered identifiable references or topicality, although those things could be meaningfully played with/upon. Rather, the question of “meaningfulness” has to do with relations: between moments, between actors, between actors and audience. “Meaningfulness” is the space that opens up between two or more elements and resonates, inviting other ideas and experiences in the viewer's (and the clown's) head to join in the party, even if that participation is small or silent. “Meaningfulness” is the space between visible parts where something invisible that cannot be fully named becomes clear.
“Bubkus,” performed by Jesse Buck answers the first above question quite adequately. A clown wakes from his slumber to find an audience in his sparsely decorated room. He uses a series of quotidian props—a sheet, a pillowcase, a toothbrush, a bottle of water, a milk crate—to imaginatively play out a series of scenarios, sometimes thematically, sometimes aesthetically linked. The games start simply: waking up, brushing teeth, playing “waiter” with audience using the bottle of water and the pillowcase. These games get more elaborate as the show moves on, with the last half of the show devoted to an elaborate story involving a hero guarding a sleeping companion made from a pillowcase against a nefarious-looking villain and his minions, in which the clown plays all of the parts using a sort of montage technique vaguely reminiscent of some of scenes from Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo.
This description does not do justice to Mr. Buck's performance, which contains many surprises and well-executed gags. He also has written some witty comic structures, in which physical challenges are encountered, overcome, forgotten about, and then encountered again in a different context and with raised stakes. He has some nice moments of physical and writing prowess, transforming himself into many different characters and objects, and hitting the button well on many of his gags. He does some very funny bits and occasionally made me say to myself, “that was a nice surprise!”
This is what happens. A series of feats, essentially. While the question of “what happens,” is answered, and answered entertainingly in many parts, the question of “meaningfulness” is more problematic. I am not posing the question, as some might, “who gives a sh*t about a guy playing make-believe in his room?” The theme could be quite meaningful. The question here, rather, is one of arc and execution. The operative personality trait of Mr. Buck's clown is a person who continually says, “look! See what I can do!” And he shows us some wonderful storytelling techniques and comic structures. But that is all. The performance reminded me not so much of a dramatic work (that is—a work where the story of a character is told through action) as an acrobatic event. And not a theatrical acrobatic event, but more of a sporting one, like a gymnastics display for an Olympics trial, or a martial arts demonstration.
Ultimately the events in the show do not resonate. They mean what they are and do not become “meaningful” in a larger, resonant sense. This is for a number of reasons. First is the question of breath and stillness. While executing movement and gags with precision, Buck rarely shares himself in the action. He does have “sharing moments”, but these unfortunately seem canned, scripted, occupying too much the same tension of his gags. I found myself asking, “where is his innocence? His bide [void]?” The innocence existed largely as an idea, not as a state, and by cheating me of this shift in states, I was not allowed the time or space to make his exploits meaningful. Rather we moved from one gag to the next, with little space between. This limits even his nuanced events, such as the transformation of his pillowcase into a delicate sleeping companion from becoming more than just a prop in the plot.
Related to this is a question of arc, in terms of writing. Mr. Buck's clown undergoes no change from start to finish. A clown is not an animator of a certain adventure story. Rather s/he is a ridiculous, naïve, sensitive creator of a certain adventure story. Implicit in this last statement is the fact that a clown show often is two stories. One is the story the clown is telling/enacting, and the other is the story of the clown trying to fulfill that task. (Noises Off, of the Mechanicals' production of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream might be examples from dramatic literature.) If we do not see internal challenge and change in the clown then we are left (in Mr. Buck's case) with a clown who wakes up in comfort, performs a strenuous workout, and then goes back to sleep in comfort. In “Bubkus,” from an emotional arc sense, we start at point “A” and end at point “A,” with gesticulating in between, but no journey.
Mr Buck works very hard for his audience, and in a good way. Physically, he is interesting and accomplished. Maybe he works too hard sometimes? With so much audible breath in a text-free show, the breath almost becomes a sort of text that comments on the difficulty of his feats. At times I was reminded of ancient Noh practitioner Zeami's advice to never play physically more than 7, even at moments when you must internally play 10. But it must be said that his show was funny and surprising, and while he could be more open as a performer, he does have a good relationship with the audience. I might like to see another show by Mr. Buck where he does less, but feels and lives more.