'Pepito's CLOWNdemonium Reveu' - Vaudeville comes to Highlandtown
Female comics keep patrons laughing for an entire evening and then some
Investigative Voice - By Alan Z. Forman
27 March 2011
PERFORMERS ARE BALTIMOREANS
We all know there’s a bunch of clowns in Maryland. Investigative Voice covers them constantly. They’re called politicians.
But when’s the last time a troupe of clowns that weren’t running for office came to town and made us laugh, nonstop, for an entire weekend?
No, these clowns didn’t deal with same-sex marriage or gather in Annapolis and bicker with each other to the extent that important legislation never got done.
Neither did they meet at City Hall and take election-year jabs at one another — funny as those barbs can often be.
However they did make their peers the butt of jokes, and the subject of “same-sex” wasn’t off the table: The troupe was schooled in San Francisco after all, and so a joke calling one of the women “a ‘muffin’ — and not the good kind of lesbian either” — was right in character.
BAWDY HUMOR WAS INOFFENSIVE
Nor was any of the humor offensive. Even though there were many children in the audience, none of the adults appeared uptight about it.
The antics took place this past weekend at East Baltimore’s Patterson Theatre, that wonderful creative space in Highlandtown that brings innovative productions at affordable prices to the people of Charm City.
But what made it especially unique is that the performers — with a minor exception or two for support — were all women. And most were Baltimoreans.
And they were hilarious.
Charm City native Z Smith as her alter ego Pepito the Clown. Pepito hosted a CLOWNdemonium Revue last weekend at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson. (Photo/Holly Stewart)
Billed by the Patterson as “A PG-13 clown show with a bit of language and double entendre!” Pepito’s CLOWNdemonium Revue went a bit beyond the limits of PG-13.
The occasional risqué joke — and there were precious few of them (contradictory to the troupe’s heads-up to parents in San Francisco that their “puppet peepshow” is “for adults,… [and] will contain lewd language, [and more! with] puppets doing things you may not want your children to replicate”) — suggested, for example, that the Mayor of Baltimore might consider allowing “public sex” in the city, “but only by lesbian couples.”
Even a segment where one of the troupe called her stage “sister” a “whore” — and got chased around the auditorium, involving members of the audience as she attempted to shield herself behind women and children — had the kids in hysterics and the adults laughing at the fact the children didn’t have a clue.
Either that, or the kids were just open to sexual preference? (These days, it’s unlikely that any kid beyond the age of six would miss a trick.) Still, the more liberal members of the audience appeared to content themselves with the knowledge that the double entendres and risqué language was going well over the heads of the allegedly clueless children.
It was Vaudeville come to Highlandtown, a clown revue and mock country/western music show produced by Baltimore School for the Arts graduate Z Smith, who went on from high school a decade ago to attend the Clown Conservatory — yes, there really is a clown conservatory! — of San Francisco.
Smith — who once performed in a Coca-Cola commercial as a stilt dancer and was an extra in “Liberty Heights,” the last of the Barry Levinson films set in 1950s Baltimore — now stages birthday parties for kids, performing as her alter ego, Pepito the Clown, a hilarious, stilt-walking, ukulele-playing, androgynous character of the old-school circus variety that audiences cannot help but love.
“Today when people think of women performing in a ‘revue,’” Smith told Investigative Voice in an email prior to the performance, “it is generally assumed that it will be some sort of burlesque show. Comedy has always been a male-dominated profession with only a few women clowns recognized today (think Lucille Ball and Lily Tomlin) and even fewer throughout history.
“It is exciting and unusual to have five funny females together on stage!” Smith maintained.
Her fellow high school cohorts — Anna Fitzgerald, a clown, puppeteer and actress also performing currently in Baltimore, and Sophie Hinderberger, a Charm City native who affected a French stilt-walker’s personality to entertain the children — co-wrote and helped produce the Clowndemonium show, under the auspices of the Creative Alliance at the Patterson.
Luz Gaxiola, of Vashon Island, Washington, joined female clown cohorts and clown college alumnae last weekend in Baltimore for Pepito's CLOWNdemonium Revue. At left, she poses prettily as Miss April 2011 for the West Coast/Bay Area Accordion Babes Pin-up Calendar (Photo/Monica Crane). At right, she performs in the guise of alter ego Larva Lee Wiley, a clownish country/western singer with bawdy proclivities.
Joining the three Baltimore women were two members of San Francisco’s Circus Finelli, a West Coast troupe in which most of the women also perform. Luz Gaxiola — who told Investigative Voice insistently, “That’s my real name!” — was one of the founding members of Circus Finelli in 2005, along with Smith and Molly Shannon, who bills herself as “the world’s leader in comedy samba, [and] parodies the glitzy and glamorous queens of the stage.”
Circus Finelli’s stated mission is to perform, travel and aspire “to new heights of the stupid and sublime through music and mischief,” via its all-women clown troupe which specializes in “cartoonish and irreverent circus comedy.”
Shannon played various roles in the Creative Alliance show, including a quintessential burlesque dancer, although — probably because of the many children in the audience — no clothing actually came off.
The troupe’s first act was a vaudeville-style variety/burlesque show with clowns and puppets, followed by a second-half performance by the fictitious Wiley Sisters & Company, a mock country/western music act in which Smith affected a Dolly Parton lookalike character named Dorleen — complete with high blonde hair and glitzy costume — and Gaxiola played her stage “sister,” accordion player Larva Lee.
PROFESSIONAL MUSIC TALENT
The comedy was so good it was almost possible to not notice the group’s professional music talent, which was first-rate. The show included singing, dancing, juggling, tumbling, you name it.
Rounding out the performance were two male additions to the all-female clown troupe: Baltimore musician/guitar player Dave Huber, who performs on Tuesday nights at the Full Moon Saloon on Aliceanna Street in Fells Point and on Wednesdays with the band, Whale Show, at Bertha’s on South Broadway; and Trevor Paque, billed as “Pepito’s assistant,” who did the voices for the various puppets.
Baltimore native Sophie Hinderberger (on stilts) entertains a group of children playing with hula hoops during intermission at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson. (I.V. Photo/Alan Z. Forman)
Pepito enthralls children at a recent birthday party in Baltimore. Her/his alter ego Z Smith regularly performs at kids' parties as Pepito throughout the Baltimore metro- politan area. You can book her for a reasonable fee at www.PepitoTheClown.com.
During intermission some of the actors remained in character to entertain the children, especially Hinderberger, who walked on stilts and schooled the kids in the art of hula hooping, also affecting what I.V. feels certain was a fake French accent, despite her acknowledged Swiss heritage.
“Of course I am French!” she told a reporter, using a similar tone as that employed by Gaxiola in discussing her name.
Only Smith, who a year ago performed at Baltimore City Hall — on stilts in an Uncle Sam costume to promote Inner Harbor Fourth of July fireworks — acknowledged that Z was actually a nickname, short for Elizabeth.
“She’s been performing since the age of four,” said her father, Jim Smith, a fundraiser for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.
“Z grew up in an old house in Upper Park Heights” several years after the family moved to Baltimore in 1978, added her mother Cathy. “When she was little she would line up furniture in the living room and pretend it was her audience.”
She and the other performers are now in their mid-to-late twenties.
After completing clown college in 2006 the women established Canary Theatre and traveled for several weeks by bicycle, in Baltimore and western Massachusetts, putting on free performances and delighting audiences everywhere they went.
The project was funded by a Gladding Foundation grant.
Following the show, Gaxiola said that “clowning is really simple, really stupid,” then became serious when asked what it was like for women to act as clowns and whether being funny could be taught.
‘BAD FOR A LONG TIME’
“You can learn, but ya gotta want it real bad,” the graduate of Clown Conservatory said; “because [until you gain experience] you’re gonna be bad for a long time.”
Apparently there are not a lot of women who want to be clowns that bad. But it’s obvious that these clowns, these women, have worked long and hard to perfect their craft, and that they enjoy making people laugh.
As Robert Schwartz, a member of the audience who’s lived in Baltimore since 1989, observed: “With all the crazy things going on in the world, it’s a good time to have some levity.”
Added Baltimore sculptress, musician and actress Joyce J. Scott, a frequent attendee at the Patterson: “This troupe has taken something very old and breathed new life into it, inhabiting their characters, igniting the stage.
“A true theater experience.”
Susan Older, a founding editor of USA Today and Displaced Journalists, contributed to this article.
Investigative Voice - By Alan Z. Forman
27 March 2011
PERFORMERS ARE BALTIMOREANS
We all know there’s a bunch of clowns in Maryland. Investigative Voice covers them constantly. They’re called politicians.
But when’s the last time a troupe of clowns that weren’t running for office came to town and made us laugh, nonstop, for an entire weekend?
No, these clowns didn’t deal with same-sex marriage or gather in Annapolis and bicker with each other to the extent that important legislation never got done.
Neither did they meet at City Hall and take election-year jabs at one another — funny as those barbs can often be.
However they did make their peers the butt of jokes, and the subject of “same-sex” wasn’t off the table: The troupe was schooled in San Francisco after all, and so a joke calling one of the women “a ‘muffin’ — and not the good kind of lesbian either” — was right in character.
BAWDY HUMOR WAS INOFFENSIVE
Nor was any of the humor offensive. Even though there were many children in the audience, none of the adults appeared uptight about it.
The antics took place this past weekend at East Baltimore’s Patterson Theatre, that wonderful creative space in Highlandtown that brings innovative productions at affordable prices to the people of Charm City.
But what made it especially unique is that the performers — with a minor exception or two for support — were all women. And most were Baltimoreans.
And they were hilarious.
Charm City native Z Smith as her alter ego Pepito the Clown. Pepito hosted a CLOWNdemonium Revue last weekend at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson. (Photo/Holly Stewart)
Billed by the Patterson as “A PG-13 clown show with a bit of language and double entendre!” Pepito’s CLOWNdemonium Revue went a bit beyond the limits of PG-13.
The occasional risqué joke — and there were precious few of them (contradictory to the troupe’s heads-up to parents in San Francisco that their “puppet peepshow” is “for adults,… [and] will contain lewd language, [and more! with] puppets doing things you may not want your children to replicate”) — suggested, for example, that the Mayor of Baltimore might consider allowing “public sex” in the city, “but only by lesbian couples.”
Even a segment where one of the troupe called her stage “sister” a “whore” — and got chased around the auditorium, involving members of the audience as she attempted to shield herself behind women and children — had the kids in hysterics and the adults laughing at the fact the children didn’t have a clue.
Either that, or the kids were just open to sexual preference? (These days, it’s unlikely that any kid beyond the age of six would miss a trick.) Still, the more liberal members of the audience appeared to content themselves with the knowledge that the double entendres and risqué language was going well over the heads of the allegedly clueless children.
It was Vaudeville come to Highlandtown, a clown revue and mock country/western music show produced by Baltimore School for the Arts graduate Z Smith, who went on from high school a decade ago to attend the Clown Conservatory — yes, there really is a clown conservatory! — of San Francisco.
Smith — who once performed in a Coca-Cola commercial as a stilt dancer and was an extra in “Liberty Heights,” the last of the Barry Levinson films set in 1950s Baltimore — now stages birthday parties for kids, performing as her alter ego, Pepito the Clown, a hilarious, stilt-walking, ukulele-playing, androgynous character of the old-school circus variety that audiences cannot help but love.
“Today when people think of women performing in a ‘revue,’” Smith told Investigative Voice in an email prior to the performance, “it is generally assumed that it will be some sort of burlesque show. Comedy has always been a male-dominated profession with only a few women clowns recognized today (think Lucille Ball and Lily Tomlin) and even fewer throughout history.
“It is exciting and unusual to have five funny females together on stage!” Smith maintained.
Her fellow high school cohorts — Anna Fitzgerald, a clown, puppeteer and actress also performing currently in Baltimore, and Sophie Hinderberger, a Charm City native who affected a French stilt-walker’s personality to entertain the children — co-wrote and helped produce the Clowndemonium show, under the auspices of the Creative Alliance at the Patterson.
Luz Gaxiola, of Vashon Island, Washington, joined female clown cohorts and clown college alumnae last weekend in Baltimore for Pepito's CLOWNdemonium Revue. At left, she poses prettily as Miss April 2011 for the West Coast/Bay Area Accordion Babes Pin-up Calendar (Photo/Monica Crane). At right, she performs in the guise of alter ego Larva Lee Wiley, a clownish country/western singer with bawdy proclivities.
Joining the three Baltimore women were two members of San Francisco’s Circus Finelli, a West Coast troupe in which most of the women also perform. Luz Gaxiola — who told Investigative Voice insistently, “That’s my real name!” — was one of the founding members of Circus Finelli in 2005, along with Smith and Molly Shannon, who bills herself as “the world’s leader in comedy samba, [and] parodies the glitzy and glamorous queens of the stage.”
Circus Finelli’s stated mission is to perform, travel and aspire “to new heights of the stupid and sublime through music and mischief,” via its all-women clown troupe which specializes in “cartoonish and irreverent circus comedy.”
Shannon played various roles in the Creative Alliance show, including a quintessential burlesque dancer, although — probably because of the many children in the audience — no clothing actually came off.
The troupe’s first act was a vaudeville-style variety/burlesque show with clowns and puppets, followed by a second-half performance by the fictitious Wiley Sisters & Company, a mock country/western music act in which Smith affected a Dolly Parton lookalike character named Dorleen — complete with high blonde hair and glitzy costume — and Gaxiola played her stage “sister,” accordion player Larva Lee.
PROFESSIONAL MUSIC TALENT
The comedy was so good it was almost possible to not notice the group’s professional music talent, which was first-rate. The show included singing, dancing, juggling, tumbling, you name it.
Rounding out the performance were two male additions to the all-female clown troupe: Baltimore musician/guitar player Dave Huber, who performs on Tuesday nights at the Full Moon Saloon on Aliceanna Street in Fells Point and on Wednesdays with the band, Whale Show, at Bertha’s on South Broadway; and Trevor Paque, billed as “Pepito’s assistant,” who did the voices for the various puppets.
Baltimore native Sophie Hinderberger (on stilts) entertains a group of children playing with hula hoops during intermission at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson. (I.V. Photo/Alan Z. Forman)
Pepito enthralls children at a recent birthday party in Baltimore. Her/his alter ego Z Smith regularly performs at kids' parties as Pepito throughout the Baltimore metro- politan area. You can book her for a reasonable fee at www.PepitoTheClown.com.
During intermission some of the actors remained in character to entertain the children, especially Hinderberger, who walked on stilts and schooled the kids in the art of hula hooping, also affecting what I.V. feels certain was a fake French accent, despite her acknowledged Swiss heritage.
“Of course I am French!” she told a reporter, using a similar tone as that employed by Gaxiola in discussing her name.
Only Smith, who a year ago performed at Baltimore City Hall — on stilts in an Uncle Sam costume to promote Inner Harbor Fourth of July fireworks — acknowledged that Z was actually a nickname, short for Elizabeth.
“She’s been performing since the age of four,” said her father, Jim Smith, a fundraiser for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.
“Z grew up in an old house in Upper Park Heights” several years after the family moved to Baltimore in 1978, added her mother Cathy. “When she was little she would line up furniture in the living room and pretend it was her audience.”
She and the other performers are now in their mid-to-late twenties.
After completing clown college in 2006 the women established Canary Theatre and traveled for several weeks by bicycle, in Baltimore and western Massachusetts, putting on free performances and delighting audiences everywhere they went.
The project was funded by a Gladding Foundation grant.
Following the show, Gaxiola said that “clowning is really simple, really stupid,” then became serious when asked what it was like for women to act as clowns and whether being funny could be taught.
‘BAD FOR A LONG TIME’
“You can learn, but ya gotta want it real bad,” the graduate of Clown Conservatory said; “because [until you gain experience] you’re gonna be bad for a long time.”
Apparently there are not a lot of women who want to be clowns that bad. But it’s obvious that these clowns, these women, have worked long and hard to perfect their craft, and that they enjoy making people laugh.
As Robert Schwartz, a member of the audience who’s lived in Baltimore since 1989, observed: “With all the crazy things going on in the world, it’s a good time to have some levity.”
Added Baltimore sculptress, musician and actress Joyce J. Scott, a frequent attendee at the Patterson: “This troupe has taken something very old and breathed new life into it, inhabiting their characters, igniting the stage.
“A true theater experience.”
Susan Older, a founding editor of USA Today and Displaced Journalists, contributed to this article.