Pi: Not Square

(Aug. 26, 2010) Pies are round. Determining the surface area of a pie involves application of the Euclidean formula: Pi (3.141593…) times the radius squared (pi R squared). However, Pi: The Physical Comedy Troupe is not square; they’re six hip clowns. And they’re coming to perform a show called Slices for All at the Arcata Playhouse.

Now based in San Francisco, the troupe first came together a bit further down the coast. “We were all students at UC Santa Cruz; we started the group there,” said Pi managing director/clown ringmaster Andrew Quick. “Once we graduated we all moved to San Francisco and went to clown college. From there we just kept performing together.”

Humboldt connections abound: Ace juggler Tyler Parks is originally from Fortuna; clown Bruce Glaseroff is from Arcata, the son of Dr. Alan Glaseroff and Humboldt County Public Health director Dr. Ann Lindsay.

And, said Quick, “The school we went to, Clown Conservatory, is kind of a sister school to Dell’Arte.” (To be precise, they were trained in the clown program in the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, which evolved out of the Pickle Family Circus School.)

Pi is what you might call a fringe troupe. They won a “Best of the Fringe” award at the San Francisco Fringe Festival a couple of years back and just returned from the Berkshire Fringe Festival in Massachusetts, where they debuted the Slices for All show.

Quick sees Pi as more theatrical than most clown/circus companies. “We’re definitely theatre artists who’ve gotten into the circus; that’s how we’re different from most other clown troupes. We’re more based in theatre and we use circus skills of juggling, acrobatics and things like that in our theatre shows.”

The material is aimed at an all ages audience. “We like to say it’s for kids ages 3 through 99,” said Quick. “Kids like it, but some of the jokes land harder on adults because they get the subtext, the overjoke.”

And the new show, what’s it about? Quick hesitated at the question then repeated it. “What is it about? Well, we examine the world we live in through a lens of wonder. We kind of travel and explore the absurdities of life while we show the circus skills.

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