Clown Compass, Sri Lanka’s first professional Clown & Physical theatre company, proposes an integrated international collaboration with Butch Mermaid Productions. This six-week program brings together Sri Lankan and international artists to explore climate change through clowning, physical theatre, and Sri Lankan traditional dance movement practices. The collaboration is rooted in the belief that performance can foster emotional, accessible, and intergenerational dialogue around environmental challenges. Sri Lanka, as an island nation, faces urgent climate-related challenges including coastal erosion, rising sea levels, and extreme weather patterns.

WHY CLOWNING?

Clowning is a universally accessible performance language rooted in playfulness, vulnerability, and direct audience connection. Unlike conventional climate communication, clowning fosters empathy, curiosity, and emotional engagement. Through humor, absurdity, and poetic physicality, audiences experience environmental realities on an emotional level. Clowning serves both as an artistic methodology and as a gentle yet powerful form of advocacy, transforming climate discourse into a shared human experience.

This region is a living laboratory where climate realities, community life, and traditional artistic practices converge, creating a rich site for creative exploration.

An open call will invite clowns, theatre makers, dancers, choreographers, storytellers, athletes and movement practitioners, designers, multidisciplinary artists, and physical performers to participate in this immersive and collaborative creative process.

Three-week rehearsal Period

We will refine residency material into a climate-responsive production. We will incorporate sustainable design with upcycled, recycled, and natural materials.

Production and Touring

School holiday performances for families and communities in coastal areas, including interactive workshops and community engagement.

COLLABORATORS:

Veenadari Lakshika Jayakody - Clown Compass Productions
Veena is a multifaceted artist deeply rooted in physical theater. Her rich repertoire spans roles as a Researcher, Clown, Teaching Artist, Dancer, Physical Theater Artist, Choreographer, and Mask Player. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Clown Compass (Pvt) Ltd, a pioneering clown company in Sri Lanka. Veena's creative journey is fueled by a deep connection to personal and communal healing rituals, with a particular focus on engaging with non-theatrical communities, especially children. Veena holds an MFA equivalent in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater in the USA and graduated with a First Class BPA Theatre and Television Special Degree from Lovely Professional University, India. Her extensive training covers a wide range of actor training methods and styles, from Navarasa Training to Balinese dance, Sri Lankan traditional dance, Commedia Dell’arte, Clowning, Acrobatics, Mask Performance, Tai-Chi, Yoga, Contact Improvisation, and Alexander Technique. 

Ania Upstill - Butch Mermaid Productions
Ania is a teaching artist, theatre maker and clown. Ania trained at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater and holds a Masters degree in Applied Theater from the City University of New York. Ania teaches Clown at Montclair University, works as a Joker for Theater of the Oppressed NYC, and is a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Theater, New York Theater Workshop and New Victory Theater. Ania is a New Georges affiliated artist; a Social Practice CUNY Fellow; and a 2025-26 PLAYA Arts and Science Resident Artist. They were a 2024 - 2025 Folger Shakespeare Library Artistic Fellow, a member of The Orchard Project’s Greenhouse Lab 2023-24 and an Artist Fellow with The Urban Field Station Collaborative Arts Residency 2022-23. They have performed at venues including Lincoln Center, BAM and the Kennedy Center. Across their work, Ania is deeply interested in how to use theater forms and techniques to help people engage their curiosity, develop deeper understanding, and make meaning of the world around them.