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THE CLOWN or (the dressing room)
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There is a ten year gap between the Rabid Cow Mystery and The Clown. Ten years away from the theatre world. The Clown was therefore a reflection on what the writer's world would have been like if he had kept working in theatre, in the fringe, always in the fringe. It is about obsessions that begin passionately but reach a point when they hurtle into an internecine monotony. The result was these two monologues - returning to the monologue form of the Jack and Jill Story. The Clown concerns a burnt out actress who has decided she is going to rebel against the writer and director and not perform his Clown. As she decides on her final defiant act she expurges her life in the theatre. Ready to go on stage she does so to hang herself. After the desperate act, Lucy, the original actress for the Clown is convinced to stand in. The farce continues when she too finds herself incapable. Again a life story is vomited out. The two lives of the two actresses are interwined and this twirls them into a melodramatic vortex of the final tragedy they were always destined for. The Clown is as yet still unperformed. It had a reading in Melbourne at the La Mama Theatre Melbourne, on Saturday the 24th August 1996, read by Carmelina Di Guglielmo as Greta, and Susie Dee as Lucy, directed by Wendy Josephs. The Clown has also been written in Castilian Spanish, titled El Payaso o (el Camerino).
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