Winnipeg’s Lee enjoys clowning around on stage

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This article was published 09/11/2017 (3220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘I used to have naps on those little benches right there,” says Amy Lee, pointing to one of the seating areas on the edges of the lobby of the Manitoba Theatre for Young People at the Forks.

 

The Winnipeg-born Lee, better known as Jasp of the sister clown duo Morro and Jasp, is making something of a homecoming with the MTYP production of Of Mice and Morro and Jasp, alongside creative partner Heather Marie Annis (Morro).

“That’s where it all began for me,” says Lee. “My parents put my brother in classes because he was a little bit shy. And I saw a performance and I went: ‘That!’

“I think I was four,” she says. “You had to be six to take classes, so as soon as I turned six, I was in.”

Lee attended MTYP at the old Princess Street location, making the move to The Forks in her final year.

“This is where I learned everything about theatre until I went to university.”

It was at York University in Toronto where Lee met Annis, who hails from the rural community of Greenwood, north of Pickering, Ont. And, thus, began a relationship that is, in many ways, an anomaly in Canadian theatre: a clown partnership that has endured for 13 years and counting.

The duo, who create works in collaboration with director Byron Laviolette, have enjoyed considerable success with shows such as Morro and Jasp Do Puberty and Morro and Jasp in Stupefaction, but even success doesn’t always translate to endurance. The secret?

“I think it’s love and respect,” says Lee.

“And also luck,” says Annis. “Sometimes, the reason some people stop working together is that life just takes them to other places, and some people are able to keep working through that.

“But we’ve just had paths that we’ve been able to keep going thus far,” Annis says.

“The two of us, as well as Byron, we’re all committers in a big way,” Lee says.

“The three of us do like to see things through. And we’re always looking to what’s next.”

Of Mice and Morro and Jasp is partly a reaction to the ironic fate of the clown, which is that they are not always taken seriously.

“We decided we wanted to do a tragedy, and give ourselves that challenge,” says Lee, adding that they took the challenge “begrudgingly.

“It’s harder to sell a comedy sometimes, and people don’t respect you as much if you do comedy as your art,” Lee says.

They fixed on the template of John Steinbeck’s modern classic Of Mice and Men, the Depression-era tale of a couple of friends trying to survive as itinerant labourers.

George is small and wily, and Lenny is big, strong and intellectually challenged.

“It had a real strong duo relationship to it that we could see Morro and Jasp fitting into,” Annis says. “It felt like a sibling relationship, and Morro and Jasp are siblings, so we felt we could play with that.”

Of Mice and Morro and Jasp is deemed appropriate for children aged 13-plus, and for adults of all ages.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing