Capacity for comedy
Island-raised director Charlotte Gowdy puts comedic training to good use at Victoria Playhouse
Charlotte Gowdy was in Grade 2 when she realized that she loved to make people laugh.
And it wasn’t long before she discovered she was good at it.
In a Sherwood Elementary School production of “Good Manners vs Bad Manners”, she was originally cast as Miss Good Manners, but something told her she’d have more fun playing Miss Bad Manners.
Her disheveled, gum-chewing character was a hit, and Gowdy recalls thinking, “People are laughing at me, and it’s a good thing!”
This aha moment was just the beginning of a lifelong affinity for the performing arts, comedy and making people laugh.
The signs just kept appearing. Her instructor at the National Ballet School of Canada told her she should consider circus school instead of ballet.
The dance she choreographed for her peers at dance umbrella evolved into a spoof of a competitive ballet class.
Her chemistry teacher at Pearson College said, “You’re very bad at chemistry, but a very good actor.”
Then a one-month clowning workshop at the National Theatre School, under the instruction of Francine Coté of Cirque du Soleil, opened a new avenue in the performing arts. Gowdy fell in love with clowning and physical comedy.
“In performing arts circles, if you want to take your clowning to the next level, you study with legendary instructor Phillipe Gaulier at his school in Paris, France,” she says.
Gaulier’s past students include Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen of Ali G fame, who called his instructor “the funniest man he’s ever met” in an article in the UK’s Guardian. Gowdy enrolled in his program and was blown away by his teaching and his process.
“Gaulier teaches not only clowning but also how to approach a variety of theatrical styles in the spirit of play (such as the) character mask, Vaudeville (and) bouffons. Ninety per cent of what I know of comedy, I learned from Gaulier,” Gowdy says.
Most recently, she applied her affinity for comedy and her background in clowning to her direction of Allana Harkin’s “Real Estate” for Victoria Playhouse.
She has produced a comedy with a great deal of physical play. She teases out the humour in a tense situation and encourages her cast to have fun with their performances.
She asks them to think, “What is the most fun choice I can make in this situation?”
And audiences are responding. When the actors are clearly having fun with their characters, their joy is infectious.
Theatre lovers can catch “Real Estate” on stage at Victoria Playhouse until Sept. 1.