This past week I was lucky enough to speak with Don Rieder. Don is a performer, master teacher, director and dramaturge. I asked Don about his past experiences, advice for artists and much more. check it out below.
So let’s begin with you background, How did you get to the performing arts?
I was stolen by the circus people as a child in Cleveland, Ohio, Hahah No.
I guess there are a couple of ways to get into circus, to get into the arts. Because if your family doesn’t have that tradition then what you’re doing is looking for those doors that open, you may not be able to articluate what you want but they’re out there, and maybe later you come to understand as you find this other family, illogical family. So I was in university learning how to be a teacher of English, English teacher and teacher of English literature in high school, but after working in high schools I realized why would I want to do that it’s hell Hahaha. And I didn’t know enough anyway to be on that side of the desk, I’d been in a classroom all my life it seemed so when I had the opportunity to take mime and dance classes that’s what I started doing, and I saw Marcel Marceau in 1966, I had never seen a man move that way and it was “that’s what I want” I want to be like that, it took me I think 5 years when the door opened to do that, because there was no one in my town, my hometown teaching this. Little town of 40 thousand people, where even in 2020 you can’t get an espresso.
So I started studying with these 2 guys, who were theatre people, they were actors, but were also mimes, and one of them taught aikido, and another taught yoga also, so it was a very long introduction to the body, with a background in breathing and connectivity as well as this form. Then I was in a mime troop in Columbus Ohio and we toured around Ohio in the schools, we went to Canada, performed in Ottawa, and I’d never been in Canada before and in Ottawa there was this big grassy lawn that led up to an old building. And we thought this will be perfect, until the RCMP came and told us you can’t perform on this hill because... yeah. So that’s how I got into it and I made the decision early on that this feels good, I love this, I’m going to do this as long as this feels good to me,because what it did for me was unite my body, and my mind, and my heart. So as I moved, I was a thought, as I thought I could move as I felt something, it became movement, and that was very unifying. So that’s why I do it, to keep myself together.
So I read that your serious clown training began in Prague?
Well yes, because as I was doing the mime it wasn’t it was insufficiently moving and heartfelt, because there’s something superficial about Marceau in the end, something superficial about creating illusions, the wall, the lean, the umbrella, and all of these things. And then there was a mime festival in Wisconsin and all of these French mimes, Czech mimes, German clowns, all these people were there. And I wasn’t there, I was touring with this mime company in Ohio but I wanted to be there. because eventually my Czech mentors were there. The descriptions of the pieces said to me this is where I have to go. This is what I need to learn. And it took me maybe 3 years to get there, to get grants, to get enough money to go and study with these people because at the time Prague was behind the iron curtain, it was a closed country. I had official permission from that side and the support educationally and academically from the US to go there. And the French mimes and clowns were no slouches either, because they had something else going on, but it didn’t appeal to what was so surreal, and unusual and dark in the work that was done in Prague. So it was the culture they came out of that was also very interesting.
How did your style of performance evolve over time?
It evolved because I was very curious, asking questions about, asking myself is this the best I could do, and comparing myself to other people, talking to other people about their styles, seeing a lot of dance, theatre, mime, and clown. But the style evolved over time because when I was preforming in the Czech Republic people said “oh this is the American style of clowning. “ I came back from Prague and they said you’re a Central European clown, I had to scratch my head and go what why is that, what have I found over there. Now what I’d learned from them was their way of looking at American silent film, their way of looking at American culture, they have no tradition of circus and clown but they have rich traditions, long traditions of cabaret, puppetry, film animated film, and these were all the things that fed me and had a strong sense of political theatre because the clowns that I studied with should have been in jail, but they ended up getting by the censors because there were no words involved, and the trick was perform very badly for the censors and then they’ll say you’re okay. Then when you’re in front of your people, BAM! That’s it. And I learned about different levels of laughter from these Czech clowns because laughter was resistance to the Russian occupation just as cabaret, comedy and laughter was resistance to the german occupation. And it was how to survive. How clowns did that, and you’d learn how a clown holds people in their hands.
And it wasn’t about the gags and making people laugh. It was something underneath all of that. There was an intention to do this because it was dangerous to do. Because I met a lot of artists with slit wrists, who were unsuccessful suicides, life was hard there because of the slow strangulation of the culture. One clown said to me “well you’re an American, you think you’re free but notice the three kinds of culture, three levels of culture, the dissonant culture, the tolerated culture, and the official culture, where are you in this? Look at your freedom, you’re free to buy whatever colour refrigerator you want to, but what else is going on there”, So it was opening my eyes to my own culture. And that’s what I brought back. I wasn’t just about making people laugh so people would put money in my hat. Because soon after that I left the street theatre because I couldn’t do anything dark, dangerous, or surreal on the streets. I’d starve. So I’m a life long learner, the styles continuing to evolve.
What kind of things would you say inspire your work?
Well early on, one of my wife’s teachers, who was a very important dancer, a German dancer, who was very important in the Canadian arts scene, in the post war period because she fled Germany. She was one of Mary Wigman’s dancers and she said, know the history of your art form, you have to know your ancestors. So it was like know all the clowns, all the silent films, where did these people come from and you have to look at visual art, you have to listen to a lot of music, look at sculpture and what it gives you. It was a very large humanities education, it wasn’t just about your physical technique, but that had to be informed by soul and heart, and mind. So she was one, Samuel Beckett, early on Buster Keaton, I was compared to a sprouted-up Buster Keaton, because I’m tall and he wasn’t, but I liked falls and tumbling. Obviously I no longer do that hahah. That’s the evolution, a quieter comedy, but the Czech clowns were strongest influences on my art. They made people laugh but you also had to ask questions. I could tell lots of stories of their performances and what they were about but that’s another long interview. They drew on all kinds of sources but the stuff I remember, their plays. And even performed one of them. I mean one of them was Adam and Eve, ahm and grea. Ringmasters were guardian angels, the archangels, and the circus ring was eden. God was the audience who laughed, and the two clowns Ahm and Ghea. The forbidden fruits were cigarettes, alcohol and sex. And after the clowns indulged in all of these, because there was heavy drinking on stage, there were tricks with cigarettes, and there was sex in the armour and we were banished from the circus ring. Our noses were taken, our clown clothes. So we came out dressed as wudience members, so a nice, funny play, but it was a creation myth told through the clowns eyes.
Where would someone go to train in the circus or similar performing arts?
Today is difficult, just because of the pandemic, a lot of us are working very hard to figure out how we can do this online, how to do it say for example, summer to fall, training outdoors in a circus tent. Because before, you’d go to the nation circus school after having prepared a lot to make the audition to get there. But that’s not functioning now because all of these schools, these professional places are deciding how they can continue, how they can function. And we are very worried about the next generation of artists because training in a physical artwork takes a very long time. Ballet, acrobatics, gymnastics, circus apparatus, you need lots of on stage experience to do this so ideally look for the people that move you, watch a lot of things and something will touch you. And that’s what you want to follow and you may imitate these artists in the beginning but that’s a way of finding your original voice. I had proposed once at the national circus school that we learn clowning by learning the numbers of Grock, the Fratellini’s, contemporary clowns, why did they work? And if you could get their timing, their physicality. Say for example you’re a jazz musician and you’re playing a saxophone, well you’ve got a lot of people to learn from. How did they do it? What did they do with this instrument? And when I walk out the house In the morning and call myself a Jazz saxophone player how do I not be a cliche? So it’s the same with any other Artist, so I call myself a visual artist but mhmm, what’s my voice? What do I have to give that’s different? And that’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for building your technical skills, your craft, but also how do you do it? What’s your voice? No matter what the art form. And you’ll see this, you have to do that with theatre, with dance, what’s the style that grabs you and you say I have to do it that way. For now, and then I can do it my way.
Kind of take and evolve on the style, I’ve found not enough people get drilled into them the importance of fundamentals in art. because they see the style and the end product, but not at all the hard work it takes to get there.
Yeah, like line, colour, form, and all of this, how do you direct an eye around a page or painting. There’s a lot of technique. And you have to balance the technique with the expression.
How have you seen art involved with activism? In different places, or at different times. And have you seen an evolution or change?
Well I’m someways there are people that have always done art that is activist some people do art that’s decorative, some people do art thats entertaining, and these are all fine. Art in activism is difficult to do because you don’t want it to be journalism, you want it to be timeless, because what a lot of people are wanting to change doesn’t change quickly. If we listen to Marvin Gaye singing Inner-City blues, oh could be right now. So art and activism in my art form, I’ve seen it in the clowns that influenced me. It looked like a performance but it wasn’t. So for example there was a little clown orchestra inside of of the tent, and they were playing away symbols, violins, clarinets, everything. they had music stands and sheet music. but the stagehands came out, and they were drifting around and had on black high boots, in a way they were the Russians and the Russians take everything, so the Russians came out and at first they took all the instruments but they (the orchestra) kept on playing. Then the Russians came out and they were going to take the music so someone grabbed the music and put it in their mouth, and they(the Russians) took all the music and then he pulled this out of his mouth and they kept playing and dancing. It was a way of saying the Russians take everything, but we’re clever and we’ll keep playing our music no matter what. So the clown work can be resistance it can be educational. I was lucky enough to work in a program for Roma children in Prague, that was the start of what I did as an arts activist, working with the physical training and that was the initial way into arts activism, then my wife Valerie and I lived in Seattle we worked with a group of abled and developmentally disabled adults, we started in a group home and that’s where we worked, with movement and improvisation, voice, breathing and voice so they could communicate, so they could speak clearly. Next we moved to a Church hall so they have to work on time, being on time, catching the bus, having bus tickets, so they were more out in the world. And the third stage we began performing in theatres and at their places of work so that they were actors now. They had come with actors, and then in the end, Herb and his Girlfriend, from our company, felt so comfortable being out in public together they went to theatre performances with the actors. That the actors they had seen and worked with were in, they could go backstage and talk to people, that was a real empowerment, or coming out into the world for them. Later when I was in Montreal I used the circus work and my familiarity with dance therapy to work with youth at risk, street youth in Quebec, mostly in Montreal but sometimes Quebec City, Trois Rivieres, the other places, and in Atlanta and Las Vegas. And I was a teacher of artists who worked with youth at risk. We used circus arts to say that your hands are supportive, they’re not always going to do you violence, people can touch you and that’s okay, you are different but you have this talent and sense of risk, which is supported by the circus movement. They just needed that adrenaline, but also circus is about family, these are people who escaped their small towns full of intolerance and came out to the big city. This was a place where they were safe, but not necessarily when they’re on a trampoline or in the air, doing handstands. So they found a logical family that the circus provides. And they went on to do great things, to work with the cirque de soliel in the costume department, as riggers and electricians, and to work with rock groups as riggers and electricians on tour, and to have a lifestyle that they were invested in. Doing stuff, travelling, we don’t want 9 to 5 jobs, we’re not university people. Cities provide that. It’s where the artists collect. And a collective way to find groups of people to work with. You could be a circus artist but it’s really nice to work with musicians or fabric artists, singers, and do things that aren’t traditional.
And about last time (ref to 1st interview) I got certified In a method called Timeslips. It’s a way of storytelling, a way of working with seniors in various stages of dementia. We work with movement, and creative storytelling as a way of keeping them livened and active, and for a brief time I worked as a hospital clown. Sharing that mostly in paediatrics. But it was very difficult, you needed high skill, and then have help.
Yeah I’d imagine it’s quite emotionally taxing
Yeah it was hard to come in and entertain a child and his father who had been in a car accident, his brother and sister were dead and his mother too. He was paralyzed from the waist down and he didn’t know it. But we made him laugh, he laughed with us, His father cried. We were devastated when we left the room. It’s hard.
I think you had mentioned earlier how you’d gotten involved with teaching?
This is what’s important about if you’re going to be a freelance artist, finding the balance between your hopes, your goals, your dreams for your art and how do you pay the rent, feed yourself. My wife and I worked in a bookstore cafe in Seattle, and I think I said back when there was only one Starbucks in the world, we weren’t working in that one. There was a scheduling issue that was not our fault it was the coke-addled people working there who made the scheduling error, but we took the fall. But we decided, is working in a restaurant really on the way to our goals, is it helping us meet these. We decided that we were going to stay close to the art, we were going to teach what we know, and that way get better at what we do, and in that way share what we do with other people in the widest way possible. Because a teacher always learns. It also helped us make decisions about our choices in this path. Neil Gaiman gives a metaphor to it like “ your goal is this mountain and you always have to think am I getting closer to it, or what are the distractions along the way that aren’t taking me there”. So You have your goal in mind then you can decide is your work taking you closer. And that’s why my wife and I always did the arts activism because there were always grants available. But we were at service of the community, at service of people in need. We didn’t go back into restaurants or retail, or do anything else other than be who we are in the work. That really was fruitful and really helped out progress, what we needed to do.
(Brief interruption in the video so he summed up last point again)
It’s just if you’re free lance then you have to stay close to the art and avoid retail or restaurant work or other kinds of things that don’t help you on your goal because you’ll find that the money is less important then you think, the goal is more important, so you need to be willing to live in tight circumstances. Even as you progress because we found that talking to some people they got trapped in paying jobs in universities and theatre departments and whatever and they were no longer creative. They were comfortable. So It’s hard.
And then once you can kind that kind of stability and work, then all your time is taken up by that work, and your spare time is when you can be creative. And I find when a lot of people take those 9 to 5 jobs to satisfy bills and that, the art is the first thing they can cut time away from to do anything else, it seems the most malleable. Whereas other people who have gone through and look at it as the other way around like “this is the most important thing to me And everything else can just kind of come or go”.
Yeah that’s true, last time I think I’d talked about where you get this education, and ideally you’d start early with junior high school or high school. And provincially and federally art is funded as an equal to math, science, you know all those other subjects. And that helps us enrich our communities with art but not everyone is going to end up as an artist. But as you work the arts are communal, they involve communication and empathy, and organization, creativity, and that’s applicable everywhere.
There’s a sense of literacy and we think “oh being literate means you can read and write” but for you as a visual artist there are other literatures, your literacies are in colour, and line and form. There are musicians and their literacy is sound and the mathematics of music. So when you work in the arts you discover this is my literacy, this is how I learn, this is how I express, and that’s very helpful in choosing what you want to do with your life and with other people.
Are their any resources you wish were more available for youth looking to enter the performing arts, or more specifically what you do?
What’s really important is that people become activists so that the arts are not just for people who can afford to pay for their children’s training so that has to be accessible to everybody, and we don’t get artists as trust fund children so they grow up in an elite environment and go to these elite music schools. Because there are lots of talents out there that always need to be encouraged and nurtured, those are the resources. Because art is a lot of training, it’s expensive, and people need help, they need grants. And also to begin educating people in education that the arts are not frills. There’s all the science out there, for example that if you’re learning music your math skills go way up.
There are other applications to this stuff, it’s not so linear that it has no other applications.
Yes and we avoid a lot of stupid things, like people who are studying the brain think oh if I slice a rats brain and I have these little electrodes and I’m going to know how the brain works. No. It’s not in the body, the brain is the body, and it gets all this information from the body, from the environment, that’s how it thinks and intuites and decides. It’s all one.
Do you have any advice for young artists
Make a lot of mistakes. Why? Because if you’re making mistakes then you’re doing your work, you’re out there. So don’t be afraid of making mistakes because sometimes the mistake is the best possible mistake, it’s a new direction for you. Now, expect failure and rejection, you have to be thick skinned, so don’t be discouraged. Just keep going, you have got to put it out there, maybe you got rejected by someone who didnt understand it, maybe your work will be accepted by someone who gets it and then you have that opening. And you know, Don’t follow the rules, you don’t want to do what everyone else does. The thing to remember, and this was hard because In the beginning maybe you’re not having a good time making your art because you’re working so hard are worried about success and acceptance, but no, you have to enjoy that. It’s just part of the journey, because you can’t worry about the next grant, the next show, the next thing, it’s about being in the moment. And the last part, we don’t know how young people are going to solve this but expressivity and how to channel this work into distribution. Like Gallery space, concerts, theatre, dance, how is that working now? Can you earn your income from this stuff. At this point it’s not only the pandemic but what’s happened to musicians and streaming, and film and streaming.
It’s intimidating but it should be liberating because there’s got to be new ways to do this. And that’s not for people of my generation to find, in a way I’ve had other experiences because of knowing distribution channels that weren’t disrupted by the digital revolution and now distribution channels are disrupted by the pandemic and will continue to be because of climate change, but that’s a task and a set of obstacles for other people who are going to solve those that.
Digital is certainly a platform that youth will jump on and get a lot of exposure but from what I’ve seen during the pandemic is that people aren’t going to give up that in person show experience any time soon.
there’s just something that happens between people in the audience when you’re laughing, you’re feeling something, the performer, the performance is a gift for people alive and for me as a performer I need people for my timing to tell me how much more I need to give to them. There’s a liveliness and in the moment there’s an intimacy that you can’t get. That’s why my wife and I never went into film, it’s an artificial art form, and yet it looks real when it’s all put together, if you’re making it, no, it’s hell, it’s hard. We want to experience That moment in time is not reproducible. You lived it right now, that was the challenge, the edge. For a clown you perform as if it’s the last time. This is the last time I’m doing this. For actors there’s a sense in the training that this is the first time it’s happened, it’s new, it’s the lie of the as if, but for a clown there’s something else turning that this is never going to happen again in the same way it will tonight so I got to do this.
We'd like to thank Don for taking the time to do this interview, and sharing some of his wisdom and experience for fellow artists.
Here's something Don wanted to add after the fact:
All of us have our biological families. These families may or may not support a career in the arts. When we go into the arts we are looking for our logical family, a new family of art parents, siblings and cousins where you find love, trust, support, encouragement and truth telling.
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