1. Introduction
Hello, and welcome to the weekly Clown-Ministry mailing list. This is just a short note to let everyone who’s interested know about new additions to the site, and related information.
First, a welcome to all of the new subscribers from around the world! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, or to post a question in the Forums (http://www.clown-ministry.com/phpBB2/)
Which leads me to the second quick point — the forums are back on-line after a server crash. Sadly, the old forums were lost — feel free to re-post your questions, comments, ideas, skits, etc. and help us re-build the forums. If you find anything ‘missing’ or not working, please let me know — thanks to everyone for their time and patience.
And now, back to our regularly-scheduled newsletter.
2. New skits on-line
2 new skits — one titled ‘Follow Jesus,’ contributed by Nelda Singer, aka. TenderHeart (thanks, Nelda!), based on a dream that she had. The other, ‘You Never Knew Me‘ was based on something that my 9-year-old said as a knock-knock joke, and it grew from there… please check them out (both are linked from the home page at http://www.clown-ministry.com/ and are permanently available at /skits)
3. New Articles
Nothing this time around, although I’ve updated some of the clown tutorial articles, and I’m currently working on biographies for Robert Armin and William Kempe, Shakespeare’s clowns.
4. Questions
Q: Not so much a question as a request for help from Jane Sander (ljsander at charter dot net) – “Tom, I have a mother-daughter banquet to perform for and need a good mother-daughter something! Can you help? Can anyone help. The banquet is at a church. Thanks.”
A: In one of those interesting coincidences, my local clown troupe is going to be performing at a mother-daughter banquet at a local Lutheran church next month. So, for what it’s worth, here’s the rough sketch of what we’ll be doing. 1) Entrance and introduction of the clowns — which will lead into the Clown Bell Choir — this is an old clown skit, where each clown is given a bell, put into a row, ranging from low to high pitch of the individual bells. The clowns are out of order, as we found out once they start to play, and after a few frenetic re-arrangings, play a short tune by the “conductor” pointing to each clown as they play each note. I first saw this performed by Brenda Ahern at Clown Camp, and a version of it is on the Bozo 4-5-6 DVD that I reviewed a few weeks ago. 2) A nice Mother’s Day Skit, taken from “Everything New & Who’s Who in Clown Ministry,” also reviewed on the site 3) A monologue by one of the lady clowns, as she unpacks her groceries, using the items as part of her skit, i.e. “… now that I have a daughter, she’s become my Pride and Joy …” as she pulls a bottle of Pride and a bottle of Joy out of the bag, etc. 4) two other skits/routines that I’ll find out more about this Sunday :o) If there’s interest, I’ll pass that along in next week’s newsletter
5. Web Site of the Week
I always recommend that people use their local clown dealers whenever possible. But, if you don’t have one, I’ve been very happy with my dealings with http://www.ClownAntics.com/ — a nice selection, good merchandise, and knowledgeable people. And, in a ‘two-fer’ the site http://www.clown-forum.com/ has been updated recently, and is definitely worth a look.
6. Outroduction
This is a weekly e-mailing from http://www.clown-ministry.com/ — if you received this by mistake, or you just don’t want to receive it any more then simply reply to this message with ‘unsubscribe’ as the subject of your message, and I’ll gladly remove you from any future mailings. As always, feel free to submit your own skits, articles, ideas for articles, etc.
Thanks for listening, and bump a nose!