home sweet home & al-fatihah

Arrived home last monday after 21 hours flight from NYC.
Glad to be back. Jetlagged still.
Just got news from my sister that her MIL passed away in Mekah. Road Accident costing 9 lives. Have yet to get full details.

Al-Fatihah.

Life is all about HaHa HeHe...

Contradicting Meera Syal's novel and recently adopted TV series, My life this week is all about HaHa Hehe.

Just got email today from Brick Theatre informing that one spot has opened for Sue Morrison class during NY Clown Festival. Phew!! I quickly booked the place for USD200. In total, 4 workshops to attend for USD500 and 16 performances to be watched. The workshops I will be attending are as follows:

• Jef Johnson: Unlocking the Life of the Clown

In this workshop, traditional and non-traditional exercises are used to explore and unlock the creative impulse, freeing the true expression of the clown under any given circumstance.

Jef Johnson is a principal clown in the company of Slava's Snowshow. As clown, he toured with Cirque du Soleil and also served as Artistic Director for the tour's 2003 stage parody of Dralion in Mexico City. Other theatrical roles include The Cat in the Hat in Seussical, Fool in Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Major in Goldoni's Mirandolina, Harpagon in Moliere's The Miser, Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of OZ. He has more than fifteen years experience in costume character and large format puppet performance, walk around character development and free form clown performance.

He has studied in a wide range of Old World disciplines, including Clown, Mask, Mime, Dance, Commedia Dell'arte, Circus and Improvisation.

• Sue Morrison: Clown Intensive Workshop

Sue Morrison, Artistic Director of the Theatre Resource Centre, has been teaching, directing and collaborating on Clown and Bouffon across the globe for 25 years. Today, Morrison's unique and powerful work brings together the diverse elements of Native American and European Clowning, Bouffon, le Jeu and Improvisation.

Her students are currently featured in Cirque du Soliel, The Blue Man Group, Slava's Snow Show, the Second City and on other International stages. She has taught at the dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre and teaches and creates regularly with the LUME group of Brazil. She has also been a presenter at International Theatre Conferences in Brazil and Argentina. Her work has been the focus of several International documentaries.

• Chris Bayes workshops: The Greatest Trick in the World: a celebration of the stupid! & The Flop: the clowns capacity for tragedy.

Chris Bayes has directed numerous plays including Red Noses, Four by Feydeau, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Moliere One Acts, The Love of Three Oranges, The Imaginary Invalid, The New Place by Carlo Goldoni, We Won't Pay, and his new adaptation of Molière's The Reluctant Doctor of Love, all at the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Acting Program. He has staged original works including Wreckage at P.S. 122, The Big Day and The Fiasco Bro. Circus at Juilliard, Zibaldon? at HERE, The Fools/Los Locos Del Pueblo at Touchstone Theater, and Necromance, A Night of Conjuration at Dixon Place.

Regional directing credits include shows at the Intiman in Seattle, the Court in Chicago, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and Yale Repertory Theater. Chris has served on the faculty of the Juilliard School, the Actor's Center, Yale School of Drama, the Academy of Classical Acting at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C., NYU's Graduate Acting Program, and as the Director of Movement and Physical Theater at the Brown/Trinity Consortium. His new book, detailing his approach to clown and acting is due out this Spring.

Apart from attending the workshops, I have another very important mission to accomplish. A good friend of mine asked me to get him Corn Nuts and Grape Nuts to bring back home. I am not sure whether the Corn Nuts will survive the journey back home especially when return flight on the 1st of Ramadhan and smell of Corn Nuts is quite tempting for sahur on the plane.