Unfortunately Dr. Dour & Peach weren't able to make it to our return. Check out their fantasy musical web series on YouTube (if you dare) to explore the dangerous depths of this creative duo. Will they appear at our next show? We sure hope so!
Happenstance is an award winning theater company that creates visual, poetic, physical theater. With the simplest means - humor, whimsy, music, silence, text, physical comedy, clown antics, object manipulation, vulnerability and generosity - we seek to elevate the moment when the performers and audience meet, to lift the encounter beyond the daily and pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. Meaning is often found by happenstance.
Mab Just Mab is a retired touring sideshow performer who combines theatre, music, movement, comedy to bring you classic sideshow, with a taste of vaudeville, covered in comedy, seasoned with ukulele. Mab was once found monkeying around with the rest of the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow, which happens to also be "award winning", and "record setting". Mab believes that every single person has superpowers. One of Mab’s super powers is the ability to find the shortest lane at a toll booth. The other is the ability to walk on broken glass and hammer spikes into her face.
Mark Jaster studied mime with Marcel Marceau's teacher Etienne Decroux, and then with Marceau himself, serving as teaching assistant in the Master's Ann Arbor summer intensives in the 1980's. But Mime was ultimately a tool for his clowning, which he studied primarily with LeCoq Protegée Dody DiSanto. He performed with the Big Apple Clown Care Unit (not as a mute) for 20 years, as a Fool named 'O' for almost 40 years at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and many times with the Washington and Cambridge Revels. He co-directs Happenstance Theater with Sabrina Mandell, appearing in all their shows since its founding in 2006. He's the proud winner of the Helen Hayes/Robert Prosky Award for Outstanding Lead Actor for his multiple roles in "Impossible! A Happenstance Circus."
You may know Les S. Moore as a dapper, vaudevillesque pickpocket and sophisticate, but you may be surprised (and so may he) by some of his other skills.
Founder
Matthew clowns regularly in hospitals and at events around town. He also performs stage shows at the Maryland Renaissance Festival and at any theater in the area that will have him.
Founder
Karen has been a professional magician for most of her adult life, performing around the world. She has performed for a range of celebrities and politicians, including her own favorite RBG. Karen has clowned in hospitals for the past 15 years with Healthy Humor. Most recently she pivoted and got her Masters in Social Work, but is confident she will never stop performing because it is the "funnest thing ever."
Founder
Rich co-created (w/Matthew and Karen) “Delusions of Grandeur” and “The Heist. He also created “God! The One-Man Show.” Other credits include “Late Show with David Letterman,” Kennedy Center, Wolftrap, and the Vice Presidential Mansion. He worked as a Big Apple Circus pediatric hospital clown.
Since 2019, Rich has resided in NYC, appearing on Fallon’s “Tonight Show” in Macy’s Parade, and he teaches for National Circus Project where he brings circus skills to a new generation. During COVID, he published a book of his circus artwork and is currently working on his book, “64 Teslas,” an artistic tribute to the famous inventor. www.richpotter.com
Past Co-Producer
Chantal has clowned with Borealis Theatre, Clowns Without Borders, Occupy Circus, the Baltimore Physical Comedy Colloquium, and in a burlesque adaptation of a surrealist French opera by Appollinaire; and has also performed Commedia dell’ Arte with Faction of Fools. Other performance experiences include being a member of an imaginary theatre collective, a robot in a live-action video game, short- and longform comedy improv, and even straight theatre. Chantal has also taught improv to kids, stage-managed, and produced the one-man show Hysterical Blindness.
New Co-Producer
Christina began her professional clowning career with All About Fun Entertainment in Richmond, VA. Walking globe, juggling, aerial silks, balloon animals, puppetry, fire breathing, and stage combat are just a few of the skills she has dazzled and dabbled in. She also performed in the IAAPA award-winning juggling show Ed-Zoo-Cation Team for two seasons at Hersheypark.
Christina's a proud clown with a passion for physical comedy, honed by legendary instructors Dody DiSanto, Avner Eisenberg, Big Apple Circus, VCU Theatre, and the Stella Adler Acting Conservatory, among others.
New Co-Producer
Jim, aka Crickett, clowned with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for half a decade but you may have seen him around with Laboum Brunch, Cox farms as a stilt walker and fire performer, or in Shows by Crickett or Block Party Bubbles.
A familiar face on and off the stage at Clown Cabaret, Jim "Crickett” McGrath was introduced to fellow Ringling Bros. clown, Rich Potter, through a mutual acquaintance who was selling a rubber chicken to Rich.
Photography Wizard
Technical Dude
Christian (He/Him) is very happy to get to work with such an incredible group of folk. Not one to come out for just anyone, Christian is over the moon to work with some of his favorite artists from a bunch of different periods in his life.
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