Pie Fights

The folks over at the Brick set up a tarp arena with a clear plastic window for their opening day pie fight. The tarp covered roughly two thirds of the stage and hung from the ceiling like the covering of a magic hat. This was not inappropriate as it protected the audience sitting in the rafters from realizing the pies being flung about were filled with shaving – not whipping - cream. (This gave the theatre a very clean smell and gave the floor the grip of a Slip-and-Slide. I kept wondering how it tasted though - the cream, not the floor). It also gave the impression of the arena being a secret to be revealed.

I cannot tell you the rules of the fight but the process went something like this: twelve participants (I can’t call them clowns because there were few red noses) line up back to back in two rows of six, each given a pie. Once situated, a referee, so designated by his black and white striped shirt and the fact that he was the only one anyone listened to, counted to three with each warrior taking a step away from his adversary on each number. And once the ref said go, all hell broke loose.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a pie fight outside the confines of a movie screen but it’s a mess. It doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s a lot of slipping, tossing, tripping, smearing, screaming, flinging and, above all, laughing. At some point in the proceeding, the ref began pulling people out of the arena, for reasons best known to no one but himself. One by one they exited through a slit in the tarp, covered in cream, wiping their eyes and sculpting their hair into Mohawks and other fashionable slants. In the end, one person is declared a winner and all the participants exited the theatre to be literally hosed down by a volunteer.

I saw three manifestations pie fight: one as described above, one in which everyone tossed pies wearing nothing but their underwear (which was fun and surprisingly asexual) and one in which a large group of people stood in a circle, surrounding a smaller circle of pies. At the signal, they all grabbed a pie and it was every man, woman and child for themselves. One kid walked around, picking up aluminum pie tins, stacking them on his head. A man grabbed a woman and kissed her passionately, if not deeply. A woman smeared handfuls of cream all over her friend as they laughed and laughed and laughed. A man walked up to the clear plastic window and smeared cream onto it like an giddy and amateurish Jackson Pollack. It was pure pandemonium.

Was it clown? Were there bides and relationship shifts and resolutions and poetry? I’m sure if you looked deeply enough, you’d find examples of all those things but then, the same would happen if you looked closely into a production of August: Osage County or a subway ride from Union Square to Grand Central Station on the 4 train. But was it Clown? I asked myself the question and then dismissed it immediately. Pies and clowns (and by extension, Clown Festivals) are a classic match. And in the absence of a torch lighting ceremony, it seemed like a perfect way to prepare the space for the coming mayhem.

∑ To get your geek on, here is a slight History of the Pie Fight from The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.