Purity. It doesn’t come easily to everyone. On stage, at least, it’s often subjugated by a collective desire to mix and experiment. So when Dan Rothenberg, Pig Iron Theatre’s co-artistic director, looks back at the genesis of their newest show, he concedes that he was taken by surprise by how it grew. It was intended as a fusion between two highly demonstrative types of physical performance, dance and clowning. By the end, he says, the project had sprouted into “pure clown.” The irony isn’t lost on him: Having brought together three of the city’s foremost female performers, whose names are synonymous with experimentation in very different fields, the group had ended up navigating a form in which everyone was finding their feet.

"For me," muses Lee Etzold, "much of the investigation has been about courage." The co-founder of New Paradise Laboratories, whose trio of epic '60s-inspired performance pieces concluded with last year's This Mansion is a Hole, felt she "had to be willing to let go of a lot of self-editing that actors and dancers tend to do," before she could freestyle a clown character. Back in December, when the show existed only in name -- Flop -- she traveled with fellow performers Emmanuelle Delpech and Nichole Canuso to Paris, where they met with Ami Hassab, clown performer and alum of the Lecoq School. Their first step, once there, was to make a snap decision: What would each clown wear? Rooting through bins in a Parisian thrift market reminded Etzold of the "animalistic" impulse essential to improvising, where, unlike in most theater, the surface of the character was constructed first. Without the time to think too much before presenting, she found herself "allow[ing] myself to be very, very vulnerable and embarrassed."

For Canuso, these impulsive choices in costume -- which left her, as the attention-seeker Snow, wearing "white fluff" from head to toe -- were bolstered by her experience as a member of Headlong Dance Theater and MOXIE. "With my own choreography and Headlong as well, the idea of taking your weaknesses or awkwardness and sharing them with the audience is something that's already there." Indeed, weaknesses and imperfections became central to the collective development of the girls' characters: Millie, Snow and Fleur, as they are known, succeed in creating a rift "of mythic proportions" in the delicately balanced space-time continuum, through their tiny, inquisitive actions. The ensuing revelations, whether on the thorniness of friendships or the nature of the universe, take place inside a more tightly controlled rhythm framework than appears in dance: Canuso suggests that clown performance relies more heavily on reading the characters' exact gestures from moment to moment.

Delpech, completing the trio, continues to concentrate on how to master that pace, learning "how to give time and focus to the others, take focus when you need to." Her understanding of the necessity for immaculate timing in clowning takes into account audience logic: "If you don't hold your breath with them, they'll misunderstand what you're showing them." A native of France, she has been an integral part of Pig Iron since 1998, interspersing her work abroad with Philadelphia appearances, in shows such as Gentleman Volunteers and Anodyne. "The search for a clown starts with an understanding of individuality," she says, "and it never ends." The successful quest for a comic alter-ego can depend on how much one is willing to devote to it: She has studied at Lecoq, while the other two started clowning with an entirely clean slate; yet, as she prepares for the show's opening this week, she insists that she still has not truly found her "own clown" in adventurous tyke Fleur. "That's okay," she adds cheerily. "I have my own life."

One thing all can agree on is their thirst to bring their creations to life in ways that challenge typical representations of clowning. Etzold urges herself to find "very human parts of [herself]" that filter through her character, the detail-obsessed Millie, showing the "many levels on which a comic character can exist." To do this, they have retooled the elements of humor and narrative to suit their tone; instead of the more common milieu of sketches and gags, these clowns inhabit a full-blooded tale, wherein the consequences of action follow hard on the heels of their (mostly) unintentional gaffes. As Canuso puts it, "We wanted to find a trajectory that's meaty and interesting, and then the muscle inside it, that's what should be funny."

As an ensemble, they confess to battling uneasiness as the accident-prone threesome are challenged to become accidental heroines. "I love the idea that we are links between the audience and the story," says Etzold. "But is it OK for these characters to succeed? We feel we should always fail, fail, fail. ... It's hard work. We look to the audience for help from the story -- ŒHelp us! We want to be out there with you!'"

Flop, May 9–26, $15-$20, Pig Iron Theatre Co. at Christ Church Annex, Second and Market sts., 215-627-1883.

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March 11, 2004
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