In Medellin, there is an event held every Christmas called “Los Alumbrados”. The river that runs through the city is lit up with huge installations, and “Los Paisas” (the people of Medellin) attend in huge numbers, to bare witness and be blinded by these brightly illuminated structures.
With my friend and clown colleague, Pepe Picaporte, we decided to take a show to Los Alumbrados. The problem was we had no specific show to take. And arriving at the river, we found to perform would be quite a challenge as there were numerous yellow shirted “Public Space Police” denying those “without permission” the right to labour in the “public space”.
After walking from one end to the other, under a light rainfall, we were pretty much ready to go home defeated. But then, I guess because we had come so far, we decided to give it a go. We were going to try an idea we had toyed with called “The Stupid Statues”.
Human statues are found in many tourist cities. Human painted from head to toe and dressed in stiff clothing, standing as still as possible in an attempt to resemble statues. Without paint, without stiff clothing, and without the skill to stand still like a statue for very long, Pepe and I thought we would give it the best shot we could, by doing the stupidest we could.
We placed a towel at out feet, placed a couple of coins on the towel, and adopted the silliest poses we were capable of, and stood as still as possible. It didn´t take long for people to gather, and like that, a little girl approached and put a coin on the towel to see what would happen. Neither Pepe nor I knew what would happen, however, when that coin was placed, something silly and spontaneous was born, the people laughed, and we returned to different poses. A show was somewhat born.
As I tried to keep still, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, that Pepe had given up on silly statue posing, and was doing some gags. I was really enjoying being the worst human statue ever, and persisted in trying to stay frozen, whilst Pepe animated the crowd with his humour. As Pepe cracked jokes, audience members continued to come and put money on the towel, and I kept letting new expressions come forth from my frozen state, in many cases, causing the fright and delight in the audience.
After some 15 minutes the yellow shirted public space police intervened and brought our show to a halt. As Pepe negotiated with them, I negotiated with the audience, who protested in our favour demanding to the police to let us continue. There was no leeway given by the police, and so we passed the hat, got changed, and sat down to count the coins. While sitting on the bench, a group of four teenagers approached us and congratulated us for our “laziness”. They liked that fact we were “making a living being lazy”. Pepe and I liked this, we too were pretty happy that we could perform our silly ideas in public spaces and by doing this entertain others!
