Charming Charley - Ouch!

Charming Charley is inspired by the Bouffon (character development in collaboration with Gerry Flanagan of the Shifting Sands Theatre) and the show was created under the direction of Peter Sweet (“Meet Pete Sweet”, “Boom Circus”).

Charley explores the limits of our consensus culture by exposing the shadow-side of beauty-cult and the need to please. With a focus on physical theatre the player researches the boundaries of repulsion and fascination, of freedom and fear.

The character of the Bouffon is well known and well loved in Southern Europe and South America and virtually unknown in Germany.

The Bouffon belongs amongst the outcasts, the freaks and the disfigured, that were allowed into town for special occasions to entertain the citizens and then were thrown out again. The side-shows too originate from these roots.

As an archetype the Bouffon plays with the theme of being different and the isolation that may result from that, but also with the fascination of exposing what is repressed. This “Play” is very interesting artistically, as well as culturally, as it brings us into areas that are rarely touched on in the world of entertainment, but find resonance within all of us. The inner process that results from this may not necessarily be conscious, but is always fruitful!

Charming Charley - Ouch! is classic street theatre. A show of 35 minutes that needs no amplification, is interactive, mainly non-verbal and built on physical theatre and slapstick. Martin Dronsfield has been street-performing for 33 years in more than 30 countries and shared his passion for art and open-air culture under all imaginable conditions.