I have now seen David Shiner do his second-act sketch - where he takes four audience members onstage to help him make a silent movie set in the Wild West - five times. The most unpredictable sections of the show feature audience participation - and they also happen to be the funniest. "I mean her songs, her lyrics, her music is so smart in the milieu of the wacky blond. "And she's totally wacky and incredibly smart," Irwin says of McKay. When Irwin and Shiner are offstage, making quick costume changes, McKay sings some of her offbeat songs with a band - sometimes she's playing piano, sometimes her ukulele. "The place these things have in our culture is so fascinating and so potentially, eh, useful for a clown that I just said, 'Oh, we have to have piece in the show where a guy is totally mesmerized by his two pieces of equipment and then they take over his life, in a bad dream way, from thence!' " Irwin says. One of the funniest - and one which cleverly melds video and projections with live action - is what Irwin calls "The iPad Sketch." He plays a modern businessman in an oversized suit who ends up in a battle with his own image on an iPad and a smartphone. The night I saw it, the audience was laughing heartily at the sketches. You go home thinking, 'God, what a disaster this is!' And you go through the whole gamut it's just this roller-coaster ride of emotions." "And then you're ready to throw the whole piece out. "It's so excruciating because the first few nights, things that you thought were gonna work don't work at all - they don't land," Shiner says. "It's just pure speculation, when you're in the rehearsal room." ![]() ![]() "This kind of work doesn't exist until you get it in front of an audience," Irwin says. But like all artists, they're worried about how it's going over. Six weeks later, Irwin and Shiner have almost finished three weeks of previews and are gearing up for opening night. Joan Marcus Shiner and Irwin last collaborated in Fool Moon, which premiered on Broadway in 1992. And I thought, well, 'Darn it! Do it now!' " "And for example, I've always wanted to do a hobo. "It just starts with an idea," Shiner says. Still, Shiner says he's determined to figure out how to make it work. McKay improvises music to accompany him.īut Shiner finds himself struggling - the props aren't working, and he hasn't figured out how to end the sketch. Shiner is trying out a new sketch, where he plays a sad-sack hobo on a park bench, a la Emmett Kelly. There are lots of percussion instruments to rudely accompany any physical act. The rehearsal studio is like a big playroom there are all kinds of homemade props littered about, just in case Shiner or Irwin want to try something new. "Even though there's a lot of work involved, and it's - you don't want to show any effort!" "The last thing you ever want to do is show any effort," Irwin says. Seeing them together in a rehearsal room on a cold January day with director Tina Landau gives some insight into the old saw that dying is easy - comedy is hard. And this time they've brought in singer-songwriter Nellie McKay to provide wry musical counterpoint to their antics. Irwin, a MacArthur "genius grant" winner, and Shiner, who has also starred in and directed Cirque du Soleil shows, are passionate, articulate practitioners of their art. So that's - hence the title: Old Hats."īetween the two of them, Shiner and Irwin have close to 75 years of clowning experience. "You have to embrace the stage of life that you're at. ![]() "At a certain age, you're not the young lover anymore, and you can't even sort of pretend to be the young lover," Irwin says. Irwin and Shiner's rubber-faced, loose-bodied clowning hasn't gotten easier over two decades. Now Irwin and Shiner have put together a new show called Old Hats, and it's been receiving rave reviews off-Broadway. Twenty years ago, theatrical clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner collaborated on a Broadway show called Fool Moon - a giddy mixture of slapstick, improv and audience participation that proved such a success that it came back to Broadway for two more runs and toured both the U.S.
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