CONTACT FOR INQUIRIESDenisekisershaw@gmail.com
“Lisa I’ll Kill You In Your Sleep Biscuit”
This is a self portrait of me in my clown form. I took my first clowning workshops “Sublime Stupidity” with Elizabeth Baron in 2015 when I was 53 years old and it changed my life. Through the process of creating a safe space for our small group of ten students, and being lead into movement based practices and body awareness exercises, our clown forms organically emerged. They are not a character but a part of ourselves. We are allowed to be fully seen by our audience and encouraged to listen to our impulses and express them fully. I came away from the first weekend workshop feeling emotionally vulnerable like I’ve never experienced before. Not even with all the paintings and prints I’d created over the years. Theatre work was never a part of my experience or interest. But when I saw the poster for this workshop (which had Liz’s clown in two opposing corners like I have in the painting) I was somehow drawn into the clown image and I knew there was much to learn from this experience. Plus I was born on April Fools Day, born a fool, born a clown.
My clown Lisa Biscuit always shows her teeth. This is not her smiling big for the portrait sitting. This is her natural state. Her name was chosen by speaking several suggested names the group of clowns came up with. If they laughed after I spoke a suggested name, then the name worked. Her long middle name, I’ll Kill You In Your Sleep, was a suggestion by Liz, and when I spoke this entire name to my fellow clowns they laughed, they laughed hard. So it passed. The middle name is a bit shocking, but if you imagine Lisa saying these words in her long drawn out nasally voice, just know they give my abused inner child a secret satisfaction and strength. A foreshadowing for any lurking predators. Her first word was “yellow” which happens to be my favorite color and I love yellow in my paintings. Lisa has several stuffed animals and teddy is her favorite. She wears a leopard onesie and a crown she made using a stuffed snake with yellow and black stripes, and a toy octopus. My current clown teacher is Mery Miguez who sits on Lisa’s shoulder in one of her clown forms called, “Peaches In Heavy Syrup”. The wolf spirit flying in the background is for Maddy Middleton. A little eight year old girl who was brutally murdered at the arts complex where we had our second workshop. She would ride her scooter around the building we were working in and peek in at us while we were clowning. We were some of the last to see her, and our work was profoundly affected.
Lisa wants to protect all the innocent children. She will slay all the predators and wrong doers with her fierce teeth and gaze. She stands for Peace and Justice. If all the world did “Sublime Stupidity” clowning there would surely be world peace. As we would all be fully seen and heard. We would all play out ourselves with each other and for each other.
