In a production decidedly for grown-ups, Tanya Perez’s one-woman show draws on her life as a professional clown (and occasional stripper).
According to Tanya Perez, the writer and performer of “Welcome to Clowntown,” strippers and clowns have the same modus operandi, which includes average dancing while wearing baby attire. She would know: She’s done both jobs.
In this unripe one-woman show, Perez, as Pixie the Clown, performs her party act for the audience while regaling them with tales of her career as a clown-for-hire (and more) in New York City and Los Angeles.
As Pixie, Perez is dressed in a vivid ensemble designed by Lisa Renee Jordan with polka dots, corkscrew ribbons, a red petticoat, a purple corset and sparkly Chuck Taylors. She seems to have done it all, from stripping to bartending: parties spent placating hostile adults, catering to gross fraternity brothers and serving drinks for one of the Real Housewives. (Don’t ask which one; she signed a nondisclosure agreement.)
And then of course there’s clowning, which she started doing in college, amusing obnoxious kids for beer money. That’s why, she announces, with an unprintable word, that she hates your children.
Perez has crafted a kind of rudimentary stand-up routine, but it’s light on snappy punch lines and lacks a cohesive narrative structure. Most of her stories stay close to the surface, barely mining their comic potential or personal or political stakes. She gets into misogyny in the exotic dancing world, racist microaggressions in the clowning world (she is Latina, and describes one boss who expected her to be the “hip-hop clown”) and the class divide at play in both. But these themes mostly float at the margins.
Produced by the Tank and billed as an “adult immersive experience,” “Welcome to Clowntown” encourages audience participation. Perez makes balloon animals for the audience and plays games like rock, paper, scissors and telephone, but that hardly seems to qualify the work as immersive theater. As a result, the show feels underinflated, despite its fleet 60-minute running time. The erratic direction, by Lorca Peress, exacerbates the problem, fumbling the transitions between Perez’s monologues and the party games.
Perez is lively, with a chuckle that’s somewhere between the jovial trill of SpongeBob and the tee-hees of Skeletor. But often her performance feels rehearsed instead of spontaneous, even a bit detached, despite the intimate space with fewer than 50 seats and a small, unadorned stage.
Near the end, Perez wrestles a giant balloon animal the way “Clowntown” wrestles in a message about the importance of play and fostering one’s inner child. Still, don’t let the expletives fool you: This may be clowning for adults, but “Clowntown” still has some growing up to do.
Welcome to Clowntown
Through May 13 at the Tank, Manhattan; thetanknyc.org. Running time: 1 hour.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
