• Bill Irwin's Clowning:Zany Labor of the "Physical Intellect"
• Dave Peterson (bio)

When Bill Irwin frantically rushes about stage, missing cues and looking lost, everything is going just as planned. His hapless clown character always seems to be working hard, and coming up just short. Irwin's work came to prominence in the 1980s and was welcomed by many as a mixture between the rediscovery of traditional clowning practices and the innovation of these practices through use of contemporary ideas and techniques. As Mel Gussow put it in a 1982 New York Times review, "Mr. Irwin is the inheritor of a grand comic tradition that stretches back past burlesque and silent-film comedies to commedia dell'arte, but he is also very contemporary—and unique."¹ Was all this seemingly frantic work a brand new kind of comedy, or just a return to the basics? In the same review Gussow goes on to state that "his face is animated and his body is elastic," he notes that Irwin makes the theatre "a circus," and he concludes, finally, that Irwin is "priceless comedy."² Whatever Irwin was (and is), critics consistently characterize him as both funny and frantic. [End Page 1]

It is indeed this combination of funny and frantic that lies at the heart of Irwin's theatrical practice. And in being so funny and so frantic, Irwin positions his body as a physical site of the mental labor needed to innovate in theatre, and ultimately to create theatre at all. While this theme can be seen in many of his works, it is perhaps clearest in his early clown show The Regard of Flight, which self-consciously mocks the aspirations of the avantgarde's theatrical innovations, primarily through Irwin's uses of the body to showcase the physical and mental work essential to create something new.³ In thus making intellectual work simultaneously physical, funny, and exhaustingly laborious, Irwin exemplifies Sianne Ngai's contention that "the zany" has become a key category of American aesthetic experience, wrestling, as the aesthetic does, with the cultural imperative to constantly work and create, and with the effects of this imperative on a stable sense of identity.

This paper will argue that Irwin's humorously staged mental and physical labor in The Regard of Flight performs the stress and anxieties centered on contemporary theatrical bodies, even as his performance ultimately finds comic joy in the limits of the overtaxed performer. Irwin's performance is narratively and historically situated as taking part in theatrical innovation, but he frames this labor of innovation as bodily exertion. The framing of innovation as actual labor further allows Irwin to playfully invert the ways theatre itself often engages in concealing the very bodily labor that makes the art form possible. Ngai's account of the zany aesthetic helps position Irwin's expose as a response, not just to the labor of theatre specifically, but also to larger social concerns regarding the relationship between art and labor. Ngai argues that this zany aesthetic wrestles with the threat to individual identity posed by the contemporary worker's ever-present desire to execute the demand to always be producing; Irwin's performance reveals the particularly zany nature of theatre, as well as an alternative response to the anxieties associated with the constant demands of theatrical production—namely, a reveling in the limitations of theatre and performance. This paper will first orient the reader to Irwin's work and training before moving on to the theatrical contexts of the American Avant-Garde and New Variety performers in the 1980s United States. These movements are clear aesthetic and intellectual influences on Irwin in his first major work, The Regard of Flight. [End Page 2] With this context established, I will then turn to Ngai's analysis of the zany aesthetic, and argue that theatre is uniquely zany, and therefore suited to negotiate the anxieties over stable identity under late capitalism's demands to constantly produce.⁴ Finally, I will analyze The Regard of Flight to make clear the ways in which Irwin physicalizes acts of mental labor in his comedy. Bodily labor is shown as both essential to theatre and as an...

• 比尔·欧文（Bill Irwin）的慢语：“物理智力”的Zany Labor
• 戴夫·彼得森（生物）

当比尔·欧文（Bill Irwin）疯狂奔波于舞台上，缺少线索，看上去迷失时，一切都按计划进行。他那不幸的小丑角色似乎总是在努力工作，而且很快就出现了。欧文（Irwin）的工作在1980年代举世瞩目，受到人们的欢迎，因为它是对传统小丑习俗的重新发现与通过使用现代思想和技术对这些习俗进行创新之间的混合体。正如梅尔·古索（Mel Gussow）在1982年《纽约时报》的评论中所言，“欧文先生是喜剧传统的继承者，该喜剧传统可以追溯到过去的滑稽喜剧和无声电影喜剧，后来又传到了漫画界，但他也非常具有时代感，而且与众不同。” ^1个这些看似疯狂的作品是一部崭新的喜剧，还是仅仅是回归基础？在同一则评论中，Gussow继续说“他的脸充满活力，身体有弹性”，他指出，欧文使剧院成为“马戏团”，最后他得出结论，欧文是“无价喜剧”。²不论欧文过去（和现在）是什么，评论家们始终将他描述为既滑稽又疯狂。[结束页1]

确实，这种有趣与疯狂的结合是欧文戏剧实践的核心。欧文非常有趣又疯狂，他将自己的身体定位为在剧院中进行创新并最终创造剧院所需的脑力劳动的物理场所。虽然这个主题在他的许多作品中可以看出，这也许是他早期的小丑清晰的显示飞行的方面，其自觉地嘲笑前卫的戏剧创新的愿望，主要是通过人体的欧文的用途向人们展示了物理和脑力劳动对创造新事物必不可少。³ 因此，欧文在使知识分子的工作变得既物理，有趣又费劲的同时，也证明了茜安娜·恩盖（Sianne Ngai）的论点，即“疯子”已成为美国美学经验的一个重要类别，与美学一样，摔跤与不断工作和创造的文化要求也一样。 ，并且这种必要性对稳定的认同感产生了影响。

本文将论证欧文在《飞行方面》中幽默地进行脑力劳动和体力劳动尽管他的表演最终在超负荷表演者的极限中找到了喜剧的乐趣，但他的表演和焦虑集中在当代戏剧机构上。欧文的表演在叙事和历史上都处于参与戏剧创新的境地，但他将这种创新工作视为身体的努力。将创新作为实际工作的框架进一步使Irwin能够有趣地颠覆剧院本身经常掩盖隐藏使艺术形式成为可能的非常体力劳动的方式。Ngai对怪异美学的描述有助于将Irwin的曝光定位为一种回应，不仅是对戏剧工作的回应，而且是对艺术与劳动之间关系的更大社会关注的回应。Ngai认为，这种琐的美学与当代工人始终存在的执行需求以始终实现生产的愿望对个人身份构成的威胁息息相关。欧文（Irwin）的表演揭示了剧院的特别怪异的本质，以及对戏剧制作不断需求相关的焦虑的另一种应对方式，即，陶醉于剧院和表演的局限性。本文将首先使读者了解Irwin的工作和培训，然后再介绍1980年代美国的American Avant-Garde和New Variety表演者的戏剧背景。这些动作对Irwin的第一部主要作品有着明显的美学和思想影响，他的表演揭示了剧院特别古怪的本质，以及对与戏剧制作不断需求相关的焦虑的另一种应对方式，即，陶醉于剧院和表演的局限性。本文将首先使读者了解Irwin的工作和培训，然后再介绍1980年代美国的American Avant-Garde和New Variety表演者的戏剧背景。这些运动明显地影响了欧文在他的第一部主要作品中的美学和思想影响力，他的表演揭示了剧院特别古怪的本质，以及对与戏剧制作不断需求相关的焦虑的另一种应对方式，即，陶醉于剧院和表演的局限性。本文将首先使读者了解Irwin的工作和培训，然后再介绍1980年代美国的American Avant-Garde和New Variety表演者的戏剧背景。这些动作对Irwin的第一部主要作品有着明显的美学和思想影响，的工作和培训，然后再介绍1980年代美国的美国前卫和新综艺表演者的戏剧背景。这些动作对Irwin的第一部主要作品有着明显的美学和思想影响，的工作和培训，然后再介绍1980年代美国的美国前卫和新综艺表演者的戏剧背景。这些动作对Irwin的第一部主要作品有着明显的美学和思想影响，关于飞行。[结束第2页]在这种情况下，我将转向Ngai对滑稽风格的分析，并认为戏剧是独特的滑稽风格，因此适合在后期资本主义不断生产的要求下协商稳定身份的焦虑。⁴最后，我将分析《逃亡之路》，以明确欧文在喜剧中物理化脑力劳动的方式。身体劳动既是剧院必不可少的，又是娱乐活动的必需品。