For the past few years, much of Anthony Hudsonâs performance energy has gone towards his ever-evolving show Looking for Tiger Lily, where Hudson and his âdrag clownâ persona Carla Rossi explore Hudsonâs First Nations identity. Itâs a thoughtful, fun, funny exploration of persona, and Hudson will debut a grand, multicast version of the work for Artists Repertory Theatreâs spring season. So with the short, weekend-long production of Clown Down: Failed to Mount Hudsonâas Carla Rossiâimmediately notes that this short hour-long show will not have any material about Hudsonâs cultural identity. I think the phrase was "no Indian stuff," but I didnât write the quote down legibly. Carla Rossi would say something along those lines, as she is Hudsonâs clown persona that he uses to play with the idea of wearing whitefaceâtaking on a caricature of a catty, suburbanite woman.
In Clown Down, Carla Rossi is costumed in a breathtaking fluorescent tracksuit. She raves about how busy sheâs been, assembling a âmirkdorp-ga-dorpâ cabinet she bought from a well known Swedish manufacturer, which she didnât bother to affix to the wall because, honestly, who does that? Moments later, Murphy's law takes effect, and the cabinet falls. Carla Rossi spends the rest of the show trapped beneath it, soliciting help from a variety of sources: a Life AlertÂŽ robot she stole from a senior center, a proselytizing compassionate conservative, a cult of opossums, and so many more!
Last night I got to do the show Iâve wanted to do for two years, and now itâs alive and itâs so silly and stupid and I love it. CLOWN DOWN: FAILED TO MOUNT is tonight & tomorrow at 8 + Sunday at 5 at @pnca via @RiskRewardPDX! Pay What You Can at https://t.co/JUegRz0mjq â ď¸đ¤ĄâŹď¸ pic.twitter.com/pRvfOWl4Ce
â Anthony Hudson / Carla Rossi (@TheCarlaRossi) November 15, 2019
I canât say enough about how much I loved Clown Down. I loved the premise. I loved the execution. I loved the puppetry by Matthew Leavitt, who managed to communicate so much physical comedy despite being covered from head to toe in black fabric. I loved special guest Jillian Snow Harris, who blew me away with her impersonation of a telekinetic Liza Minnelli.
If you canât tell from these descriptions, the show is hilarious. Hudson is a gifted, original comedy writerâweâve seen this in his other projects like the Queer Horror screenings at the Hollywood Theatre, his recent âAlternate Options for Harvey Milk Streetâ installation for the 2019 Portand Biennial, and the associated âRequiem for Vaseline Alleyâ walking tour. The jokes in Clown Down flew at the audience so quickly and with such abundance that I could barely write any down, but holy crap that joke about Virginia Woolf cosplayers with rocks in their pockets was next level.
If I have any complaints itâs that I couldnât somehow (selfishly) get even more jokes from Clown Down. Carla Rossi commits to full versions of appropriate hits like âIs That All There Is?â and âCabaret,â but I greedily wanted truncated songs so I could sip on more glorious gags. If you missed Clown Down, you have my sympathy. It only played for one weekend. But if you're a Sunday blog reader, you have one more shot: there's a last show at 5 pm.
(Thurs Nov 14â Sat Nov 16, 8 pm & Sun Nov 17, 5 pm, Pacific Northwest College of Art, 511 NW Broadway, tickets are pay what you can [suggested price: $20])