DELUSIONS AND GRANDEUR – Venerated Clowning Perfectly Tuned….

By Ernest KearneyHollywood Fringe 2024 has had a richness of clowns and clowning: Polish clown Piotr Sikora’s Furiozo, Medicine Woman by Veronica Osorio, Mark Vigeant’s The Best Man Show.  And add to that list Karen Hall’s Delusions and Grandeur

Some wonder how it can be a clown show without grease-painted faces and floppy shoes.  But at the core of clowning is the performer’s interaction with their audience and their employment of a prop or props, with the end achieving an expression of the absurdity of life.

One of the goals of the “holy fools” of clowning is to “place a smile on the face, a tear on the soul,” and Hall succeeds at this superbly.  This is clowning with no buffoonery or pratfalls, only a touching lamentation on the fragility of beauty and artistry contrasted against her staggering rendering of Bach’s music which attests to the eternity of both.

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Delusions and Grandeur

Played During the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2024

Learn More at inforthelonghall.com

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Ernest Kearney - author

 

Written by

An award-winning L.A. playwright and rabble-rouser of note who has hoisted glasses with Orson Welles, been arrested on three continents and once beat up Charlie Manson. His first play, "Among the Vipers" was a semi-finalist in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition and was featured in the Carnegie-Mellon Showcase of New Plays. It was produced at the NPT Theater in Ashland, Oregon and Los Angeles’ celebrated Odyssey Ensemble Theatre. His following play, “The Little Boy Who Loved Monsters” was produced at The Hollywood Actors Theater, where he earned praise from the Los Angeles Times for his “…inordinately creative writing.” The play went on to numerous other productions including Berlin’s The Black Theatre under the direction of Rainer Fassbinder who wrote in his program notes of Kearney, “He is a skilled playwright, but more importantly he is a dangerous one.” Ernest Kearney has worked as literary manager or as dramaturge for among others The Hudson Theater Guild, Nova Diem and the Odyssey Ensemble Theatre, where he still serves on the play selection committee. He has been the recipient of two Dramalogue Awards and a finalist or semi-finalist, three times, in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition. His work has been performed by Michael Dunn, Sandra Tsing Loh, Jack Colvin and Billy Bob Thornton, and to date, either as playwright or director, he has upwards of a hundred and thirty productions under his belt, including a few at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater as puppeteer. Kearney remains focused on his writing, as well as living happily ever after with his lovely wife Marlene. His stage reviews and social essays can be found at TheTVolution.com and workingauthor.com. Follow him on Facebook.

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