Face

What the parents are teaching their young, through coming into contact with this mime artist, translated…

“You have an unattractive face, you can scare children easily.  If………”, the owner of the theme park, as I left the carousels, caught up with me, and used a close-to-scolding tone of voice.  He’d passionately, “persuaded” that because as I was performing, my makeup had thrilled a three-year-old young girl.  The girl and her parents were two carousel horses from me, but as she’d turned her head and saw me, she’d started, crying aloud.does this look scary???  not my photo…

Normally, as I did my performances, my experiences told me, that I should, avoid the younger children.  And most parents would make their young children, who are scared of unfamiliar things stay through my performances, and told them, “It’s Uncle Clown, just like we saw on television”.  Some of the parents had, immediately, taken their young away from the performances.

like this???  Not my photo…

The basic makeup of white mascara with black eyeliner, and red lips, along with the basic black-and-white stripes of the clothes, came from the French mime master, Marceau, and later, most of the mime artists used this as a basis and got from there.  As I tried to take the mime performances out of the theatres and onto the streets, toward the lives of ordinary citizens, this attire and make up, plus my comedic body, normally can cause the audience to get interested in me, but from time to time, it would cause explosions as well.

Once, I was performing at the marketplace in Daling, Chiayi, a group of shoppers came around the corner, especially the elderly ladies, eight out of ten who saw me as I dressed, behaved as if they’d seen a ghost, and gestured out at me, called aloud, “Buddha help me!  Are you trying to, scare us to death!”  “I thought he’s a demon!”  “Holy!”, I’d just thought, why are the elderly women in Daling so mean, and, as I’d performed to the corner, I’d found, that there was, a funeral being held.  I’d imagined that the elderly ladies may have chanted the Buddhist verses as they passed by, and yet, as they turned the corner, a man with a white face was, waiting for them, it’s no wonder they’d, overreacted.

There was one more time, that I was in a not-for-profit performance.  As I arrived to the place, I was told, that the members of the board of the organization wanted me to take off my mascara, and wipe off my lipstick, and change out of my stripe costume, reason being, “a man wearing lipsticks may cause the younger boys who were there to model after, and, the black-and-white stripes made me look like a convicted felon, it was improper.”  And so, I’d put my makeup bag back in, and returned, “Then, why don’t you have the board go up there and perform themselves?”, then I’d left.  How scary it would be, if a rule maker of an organization regarding the education of the young was so narrow-minded?

a curious child, who’s not the least bit frightened, but more curious of what is happening here…photo from online…

Most of the times, the audience from the streets gave me the more positive feedbacks, and through my face, my expressions were, magnified and focused on, and it would usually, spark the smiles from the viewers.  Toward the younger children, I’d normally stand like a statue, giving them some time, for the children and parents to, look upon me, and to interact for a bit.  And if the child started crying because of fear, then, I’d covered up my face with my hand, or get away.  In the process of my performances, I’d encountered a lot of parents who worried that their kids’ cries may affect my performances, the streets were originally, a noisy place, and, we can’t prohibit any and ALL reactions toward the performer, the point is, how the parents treat the matter.

Once, there was a mother, in order to make her son feel safe and secure to watch me, she’d copied my body language, and kept making faces to her son, and this originally crying boy slowly, got used to the movements I’d made, and started laughing, and in the end, this mother and her son sat quietly, through my entire performances.

Toward the amusement park owner that said that my miming face was “unlovable”, I’d still gotten angered by him.  The truth was, a few minutes after the young girl started crying, I’d switched to a carousel horse farther away, and I’d performed, on the carousel horses, there’s no safety concerns, and my performances were, approved by the amusement park already.  The words of concern out of the manager, other than “fearing something might happen…”, didn’t serve ANY purpose at all, and this amusement park, for the sake of children’s joys, perhaps, is, unfitted, for someone, a performer, who may cause something.

Yeah uh, from this, you can see, how important the adults’ attitude is, because adults are teaching their young by their actions and words, and, the writer met people who were too narrow-minded to see what he brought to the places he’d performed in, and at the same time, there were parents, who taught their children to accept things that they’d never seen before, something that may scare their young…