I will make a static work for outdoor festivals & shortlisted for Unlimited main commission R&D April – Sept 2021; Production & Touring 2022. I will explore with audiences the comic impact of a black deaf clown; my hope is to lift the spirits of audiences & provide festivals with a new funny clown, emerging from the wake up call of Black Lives Matters & disability campaign, “We Shall Not Be Removed”. I am inspired by Cuban Black Clown, Rafael Padilla; with great humour I will confound audiences with my personal experience of double discrimination with that of Rafael, a century before. In March 2019, I led an R&D with Strictly Theatre’s director Cory Campbell & actor Stephen Collins & percussionist Lekan Babalola. Together we found a form for this brave new work.
The piece was received well at a scratch night at Derby Theatre. I now want to make ‘Chocolat’ an extraordinary clown who can communicate visually across languages, and bring my unique message about inequality to audiences in the uk and overseas. Chocolat’s adversary, white British clown, George Foottit (Foottit) will be played by actor Simon Gleave who trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
Link to video by Rinkoo Barpaga in first language of BSL – https://deafexplorer.com/2021/01/04/xtrax-pitch-rinkoo-barpaga/
