The Clown Conservatory is a performing arts school in

San Francisco, CA San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in the ...

. The school began in 2000 with a grant from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

Curriculum

Jeff Raz founded and served as director of the Clown Conservatory from 2000 to 2010. From 2012 to 201
Joe Dieffenbacher
took over as Director assisted by Dan Griffiths. The training format offered 5-7 week Intensives in Clown, Slapstick, Commedia dell'arte and Bouffon, as well as 2 week long summer workshops. This format was established in order to make training more affordable and more accessible to working artists. The focus was on developing professional level performance material for cabaret, theatrical clowning, street theater and circus. It draws inspiration from traditional circus clowning, European street theater and variety. Currently Sara Moore has taken on the role of Director offering a 24-week training program.

Advanced Program Ensemble

In 2008–9, the Clown Conservatory's Advanced Program Ensemble spent a year developing and performing a circus adaptation of Lewis Carroll's ''

Alice in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...

'' under the direction of Jeff Raz. The production, titled ''Wonderland'', was developed around the performing skills of an ensemble of nine Conservatory students selected by audition. The show opened on April 18, 2009, at the Julia Morgan Center in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

and was shown locally in a tour of San Francisco Bay area community centers. ''Spectacle'' magazine wrote: "This highly inventive circus theatre project and its cast of promising new artists are off to an auspicious beginning... Both the Conservatory's 2009 class of clowns and the play ''Wonderland'' deserve to be seen more widely."

Circus Center

Clown Conservatory exists as part of the Circus Center in San Francisco. A not-for-profit circus organization, Circus Center was created in July 2001, after the San Francisco School of Circus Arts had acquired the New Pickle Circus. The San Francisco School of Circus Arts was founded in 1984, as a project of the Pickle Family Circus, which in turn was founded ten years earlier. The Circus Center offers training for adults and children in recreational, amateur and professional circus arts. These conservatories focus individually on Clowning, Aerial Arts, and Contortion. The Circus Center also offers live performances showcasing students and staff.

Charitable efforts

In 2008, the Clown Conservatory produced a "naked clown calendar" to raise money for research and advocacy for

multiple sclerosis Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease resulting in damage to myelinthe insulating covers of nerve cellsin the brain and spinal cord. As a demyelinating disease, MS disrupts the nervous system's ability to Action potential, transmit ...

."Naked clown calendar -- now that's scary"
Laura Casey. ''Contra Costa Times''. 2008. Retrieved 17 October 2014.

References

External links

Circus Center's Clown Conservatory website
{{authority control Circus schools Schools of the performing arts in the United States Schools in San Francisco Clown organizations