Dearest Clowns, fools, idiots and plonkers,

It's probably no surprise for you to hear that we have taken the decision to cancel most of our courses until the end of April. Unfortunately, the nature of our work involves bringing room-fulls of people together and inviting them to explore intimate connection, laughing, touching, sharing breath. It’s just too risky with the virus on the rampage.

Here’s a run down of what’s off and what’s ON… 

Cancelled courses

We’ve cancelled April's Deepening Clown 5-day course and our April Introduction To Clowning weekend in Bristol. All the applicants should have been notified - let us know if you applied and didn’t get an email from us.

We're really sad to do this and it's not what we want to do, but the health and safety of our community is our number one priority, and we don't want to do anything that will put anybody at risk.

Online courses

In happier news, we’ve moved our weekly Fools Play sessions online. This is a bit of an experiment at this stage, but if it’s successful, we’ll consider creating other online courses. Watch this space...

[edit: we've already begun experimenting with online clowning click here to find out more]

June Introduction to Clowning weekends

We are remaining optimistic and hoping that by June the coronavirus will have blown over and we will all be able to come out to play in groups again. We have two Introduction To Clowning weekends in Bristol in June*:

• 13 & 14 June facebook event here 

• 27 & 28 June facebook event here

* We’ve made the decision to move the Birmingham Introduction To Clowning weekend (scheduled for 13th and 14th June) to Bristol on account of not being able to find an available venue. 

Despite putting in the legwork, we’ve struggled to find a venue in Birmingham who will have us for the times we need. We’ve made plenty of connections with venues who are excited to host us in the future, but for various reasons, the weekend we selected was fully booked.

We’re very keen to bring our special brand of play to Birmingham, we know there is a great and growing playful community there which we want to come and meet - we’ll be working with Pete (Bertie Boulevard) to make this happen, possibly in the autumn or the new year. 

Summer Schools 

We are continuing to accept applications for all our August Summer Schools**:

- 3-7 August: Comic Storytelling

- 10-14 August: Fooling

- 24-28 August: Body Play, Voice Play, co-facilitated with amazing voice practitioner Briony Greenhill

More info on all our Summer Schools and application forms here.  

**For people who have completed our Introduction To Clowning Weekend

Please apply if you’re interested and if things change for you or for us in the meantime, we’ll let each other know.

Beyond The Ridiculous

Our company of fools are due to be doing an intensive training together in May before performing at The Wardrobe Theatre from 28th-30th May. This is all a bit up in the air, but we’ll hopefully have a clearer idea of whether it’ll be safe enough to gather together to play and feel and dream, in a few weeks time… watch this space.

Holly’s Available For Consultancy

Holly now has a lot of unexpected time on her hands. Do you have a project you’d like Holly’s support with? Perhaps you’d like to explore a new creative idea or take this time to dissolve an old creative block? Here’s a bit of info about what Holly can do for you. We’re open for offers for paid consultancy work, over phone, skype or email. Drop us a line with your ideas.

Donate Button

We’re diving into brand new territory with a ‘donate’ button. We’re really proud of how we’ve managed to sustain ourselves without any funding for all these years. Our only income is the fees paid to us by our students (thank you, thank you, thank you). If you’d like to contribute to keeping us afloat, feel free! We promise to use the money very wisely, you’ll be supporting us to keep the play flowing in these uncertain times. 

Donate Button coming soon...In the meantime you can use this link. Please let us know if you try to donate and the link doesn’t work.

Thank you x

Thanks for reading - we wish you the best in health, safety and peace of mind Holly & Beccy (Holly's admin) xx