According to Tanya Perez, the writer and artist of “Welcome to Clowntown,” strippers and clowns have the same modus operandi, which includes average dancing while wearing baby clothes. She would know: she’s done both jobs.
In this immature one-woman show, Perez, as Pixie the Clown, performs her party act for the audience as she regales them with stories about her career as a clown for hire (and more) in New York City and Los Angeles.
As Pixie, Perez is dressed in a vibrant ensemble designed by Lisa Renee Jordan featuring polka dots, corkscrew ribbons, a red petticoat, a purple corset and sparkly Chuck Taylors. She seems to have done it all, from stripping to bartending: parties spent placating hostile adults, serving crude fraternity brothers, and serving drinks for one of the Real Housewives. (Don’t ask which one; she signed a non-disclosure agreement).
And then, of course, there’s clowning, which she started in college, entertaining annoying kids for beer money. That’s why she announces with an unprintable word that she hates your children.
Perez has crafted a kind of rudimentary stand-up routine, but it’s light on punchy punchlines and lacks a cohesive narrative structure. Most of her stories stay close to the surface, barely exploiting their comedic potential or personal or political interests. She encounters misogyny in the exotic dance world, racist micro-aggressions in the clown world (she’s Latina, and describes a boss who expected her to be the “hip-hop clown”), and the class divide in both. But these themes usually float in the margins.
Produced by the Tank and billed as an “immersive adult experience”, “Welcome to Clowntown” encourages audience participation. Perez makes balloon animals for the audience and plays games like rock, paper, scissors and telephone, but that hardly seems to qualify the work as immersive theatre. As a result, the show feels under-blown despite the fleet’s 60-minute runtime. The erratic directing, by Lorca Peress, exacerbates the problem, as the transitions between Perez’s monologues and the parlor games are awkward.
Perez is lively, with a chuckle that’s somewhere between SpongeBob’s jovial trill and Skeletor’s tee-husky. But often her performance feels rehearsed rather than spontaneous, even a little detached, despite the intimate space of less than 50 seats and a small, unadorned stage.
Towards the end, Perez wrestles with a giant balloon animal as “Clowntown” wrestles in a message about the importance of play and nurturing your inner child. Don’t let the expletives fool you though: this may be adult clowning, but “Clowntown” has yet to grow up.
Welcome to Clowntown
Through May 13 at the Tank, Manhattan; thetanknyc.org. Running time: 1 hour.
