I saw three shows that featured clowns at PhysFestNYC, billed as the first-ever festival in New York City to showcase physical theater, which is wrapping up its ten-day run on Sunday.  Physical theater doesn’t have to feature clowning, judging from the festival line-up: The 16 shows presented by some 100 theater artists seem to include mime, dance, performance art, even puppetry but, yes, lots of clown shows (three of which happened to coincide with my schedule.)  This  wide-ranging selection provoked some questions about the festival organizers’ working definition of physical theater: Can it include extensive dialogue? Must it be executed by performers highly trained in physical movement?  That the answers to those questions seemed to be yes and no, respectively, didn’t bother me. I was happy to stumble upon an unexpected performance by Bill Irwin, and not just him.

One of the first pieces in the festival, which ran last weekend, had an intriguing premiere. it was entitled “War and Play,” and promised to be a clown show about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The three colorfully-garbed performers in the show, none of whom spoke, were skilled at, well, clowning around: tap-dancing, playing the accordion, putting on red noses. Two were a fun-loving Ukrainian couple, Vira (Ania Upstill) and Nadiya (Danielle Levsky).  The third, Mariko Iwasa, portrayed a number of characters. In the most memorable scene in the hour-long play, Vira and Nadiya had lured members of the audience to join them in a spontaneous promenade, a kind of conga line — only to be confronted by Iwasa as a stern Russian soldier – which made the situation feel  more menacing. Turned into refugees, their homes destroyed, the Ukrainians find ways to play once again.

“War and Play” is a lovely idea that might have been more effective had the devisers (Upstill, Levsky and director SMJ) been satisfied with representing the invasion through Iwasa’s soldier, supplemented with sound effects. Instead the show also featured videos of actual scenes from the war —  tanks, explosions, a speech by Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky in Ukrainian — which felt like overkill.

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Danielle Levsky was also the scribe and main actor in “The Crone Chronicles,” which was a riff on the Slavic folk story of a witch named Baba Yaga, a familiar character  in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Levsky as a new character named Baba Yana (identified in the program as “the Soviet Jewish Grandma Clown”) reads to the audience from a big storybook, while the rest of the six-member cast act out the tale (including as flora and fauna and indeterminate sounds from the forest) which focuses on a young girl named Chava, whose evil stepmother sends her into the forest to meet Baba Yaga as a way of getting rid of her. Baba Yaga threatens to eat her.

At this point, the folk tale is turned on its head, Baba Yana breaking the fourth wall,  eliciting from the ensemble that this traditional tale “demonizes a woman who didn’t follow patriarchal traditions,” and enlisting members of the audience (on the night I saw it, a mother and daughter) to rewrite the tale. For a moment, the audience members stand on stage offering a scenario that the ensemble acts out mutely, an inventive interlude. But then the theatergoers sat back down, and the folktale continued, updated for modern times, but such a talkative tale that it was perhaps not an ideal fit for a festival meant to emphasize physical theater.   

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“Clown Flex” was a variety show featuring a half dozen clown acts. These were decidedly uneven, but several were clever, such as Richard Saudeck, who did little more than attempt to sit on a stool, but did so with impressive, and amusing, physical prowess. Two of the acts approached nirvana: To bouncy piano music, Bill Irwin came out with a valise and a trunk labeled “Old Stuff,” but give me his old stuff anytime: Baggy pants, rabbits (not real) from a top hat juggling heavy plates, one of which he shockingly threw at the audience (but, through sleight of hand, turned out to be a frisbee) 

Dick Monday and Tiffany Riley (aka Slappy and Monday) were the big revelation in the show, even though their act consisted almost entirely of blowing ever-more elaborate bubbles (ok, there were also feathers, and Monday played an accordion.) They were identified as performers in life and in performance for the past twenty years, but why haven’t they been in my life before now?

Host Julia Proctor introduced each act with a different elaborate costume, and a hammy shtick, the best of which was as Estragon in Waiting for Godot trying to take off his shoes. Proctor herself was introduced as the founding director of Clown Gym, which was described as “NYC’s community clown hub” (?) – and also as the co-founding producer of the PhysFestNYC festival. Is she the one who sent in the clowns?

PhysfestNYC is at Stella Adler Studios at 65 Broadway through January 14, 2024.  All tickets are $20.