An inspiring evening to marvel, smile and reflect. This evening balances, with a gentle musical accompaniment, between the joy of laughter and the realization that we ourselves could be the protagonists of this tragicomic story, which is necessary for an enjoyable evening full of joie de vivre and cheerfulness with depth.
Clowns in the circus are always cheerful. But sometimes even they lose their smile when their heart fills with tears. And what happens when the clown stops laughing? This production looks behind the mask and looks people in the face. Poetic, astonishing, touching, cheerful, tragic. full of compassion. Clown August sets off, steps out of the circus ring, having failed to live up to his own expectations, and sets off in search of deeply felt bliss - on his way to himself. Without applause and the spotlight, defenceless and almost naked, he feels much closer to nature again - in essential stage moments like these, reduced to primal truths, we are all similar. Audience and clown are one. In a world in which weakness is seen as a threat and performance as an expectation is in the foreground, the clown symbolizes the deeply human: Insecurity, longing for truthfulness, connectedness and love.
Ralf Bauer plays the clown August in "The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder". As a comic figure, he brings out the dark side. The reverse side of the comforting silver moon. Through laughter, the clown has permission to speak truths. He is a fantastic hybrid being from another world. Laughter, born of grief and anger at death, our own or that of loved ones, cannot change our finiteness: But we can make peace with it. And as soon as we can smile about it, we are already one step further up the ladder ... "
Ralf Bauer, a yoga master immersed in Tibetan philosophy as a second passion and lifeworld, throws the audience back on themselves in an entertaining way with this soulful production.
"The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder" is a poetic fable of obsessive passion in search of oneself, the passionate tale of an artist following his destiny.
About the author:
"Among Henry Miller's works, this fable of the obsessed ego who wants to come to himself, of the clown, his smile, his trance, the moon and the ladder, has the rank of a cabinet piece. Here, in the incessant search for purity and bliss, a voice becomes audible that speaks of the utopia of self-realization - a poetic call of happiness."
Henry Miller, the German-born outsider of modern American literature, grew up in Brooklyn, where he lived through the First World War and the Great Depression, and belonged to the Parisian circles of the "American Exiles" until the beginning of the Second World War. Seemingly unscathed by the "roar of the world", he created not only his taboo-free work, which was to become the basis for the "beat generation", but also this timeless figure of the clown August, who wants to give people true happiness. August, untouched and "untainted by general misery, has seemingly won his freedom, experiences the moment in all its grandeur, radiates, and this radiance around him is a perpetual song of joy. The circus opens a tiny gap in the arena of oblivion..."
