Aluma (hatchet in hand) clowning around with a bunch of, er, clowns. Photo via Facebook
Artistically speaking, Jeremy Aluma is a hometown boy. He obtained his theatre degree from CSU Long Beach, and in 2008 he co-founded Alive Theatre, which brought some much-needed exuberance to a theatre scene that can be a little stiff.
And while he may have moved to Los Angeles in mid 2010, he kept a foot in Long Beach, debuting a clown show that would birth a company. Now he’s back in Long Beach (however ephemerally), with Four Clowns’ sixth production, the award-winning That Beautiful Laugh (at the Long Beach Playhouse through March 17). It’s a story of one of our own venturing out into the big world and trying to make good. And it’s proof that you can come home again.
***
Aluma says it was simply his love of laughter—along with his positive experiences studying movement as CSULB and clown and mask during an Indonesian sojourn—that in early 2007 led him to enroll in a clown-school class. Ever the impresario, the experience stoked his fire to present something to the public. And when he heard about the debut of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, he was locked on target.
“I knew I wanted to present something [at Hollywood Fringe],” he says. “I had a few ideas but the time felt right for the clown show so I decided to do it. I submitted the project on the fringe site, cast it, and started working with the actors through clown and improv games to create the show.”
That show, simply titled Four Clowns, was a tour de force of improvisational sharpness and comedic physicality structured by a loosely scripted vignettes that add up to adumbrate the development of four damaged personalities. It captured Best in Physical Theatre Award at Hollywood Fringe , and to date has played over 50 times in around a dozen cities. Including, of course, Long Beach.
By the time of the 2011 Hollywood Fringe, Four Clowns was a growing concern, as Aluma and friends adapted Romeo & Juliet. All that show did was win five Fringe awards, including Top of the Fringe.
Aluma (far right) and castmembers at the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival
“Things just progressed from there,” he says. “We linked up with The Clown School, got new members, directors, shows, and formed a troupe. I call it a troupe because it feels like less responsibility than calling it a company. But we’re turning into a company, which is nice.”
In June 2012, that company created That Beautiful Laugh as their first kid-friendly show. Again debuting at Hollywood Fringe, That Beautiful Laugh won Best in Dance & Physical Theatre Award and was Flavorpill’s Editor’s Pick.
Aluma notes some interesting differences between the theatergoing publics of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
“[L.A.] is a different type of crowd,” he says. “It’s a type of crowd that maybe has seen more things. They’re younger for us; they’re typically in the 18-to-34 demographic. I think in Long Beach it’s a little more family, and here we run the gamut [audience-wise]. […] When we did Four Clowns here two years ago […] the first few shows were hard. Like, we had an audience that was not fully engaged. But it kept building and growing […] and by the end we did have full houses. And a lot of the older demographic—which we never get in L.A.—really enjoyed it.”
Four Clowns got a big boost in last fall, when it staged the troupe’s second kid-friendly show, an adaptation of Robin Hood, at South Coast Repertory, perhaps Orange County’s most prestigious theatre.
“South Coast Rep was a great opportunity to sort of link up with these big institutional children’s theatre type places,” Aluma recounts. “We had kids filling 300-seat theatre twice a day, six days a week pretty much.”
For the foreseeable future Long Beach will remain something of a home-away-from-home base for Aluma and Four Clowns, as he hopes to workshop a couple of clown shows at the Garage Theatre (which is in “collision” with Alive Theatre this year) sometime in the next few months.
“Long Beach is a wonderful community,” Aluma says. “What I’ve loved about producing theatre in Long Beach is how interconnected everything feels. […] Whenever I come back, I’m reminded of that.”
***
According to the company’s website, Four Clowns’ “is dedicated to entertaining audiences and experimenting with the relationship between actors and audience, all while shining a light on humanity.”
It’s not a bad mission. Neither is doing one’s part to show the rest of the world that good things come out of Long Beach.
That Beautiful Laugh runs now through March 17 at the Long Beach Playhouse. For tickets, click here.
{FG_GEOMAP [33.78258988326756,-118.13725193183592] FG_GEOMAP}