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“the high point of the (Limburg) festival. Every detail of his show is carefully constructed ... With a never ending stream of comic business, movements, actions and reactions, he kept the audience … spellbound. The talent to pretend as if he invents and experiences everything for the first time during his performance, highlights every detail. … a clumsy virtuoso … An elastic looser. This is slapstick in the very best tradition, that of Chaplin and Buster Keaton.” Jos Prop, Limburgs Dagblad

AUTHOR AND DIRECTOR: Joe Dieffenbacher

STYLE: slapstick

LANGUAGE: silent comedy

MINIMUM PLAY AREA: 10m circle 5m height

DURATION OF SHOW: 30 mins.

SET-UP/STRIKE TIME: 10/10 mins.

AUDIENCE: family

VENUE: street / theatre / event

the trap

a plan, a man, a plant.

technology and nature

do battle with

an unlucky fool

caught in the middle.

sublime slapstick

and poetic pratfalls,

mad music, peculiar props

and hilarious physical comedy.

a unique and unusual performance.

Background: The Trap was born out of a desire to create a work of pure slapstick, an artform so rarely performed but one that is timeless and universal. The show is built around a character first conceived when I was working with the Ringling Circus in 1984. Dubbed "the Janitor" he spent his "formative years" at the Red Parrot Club in Detroit where I worked with the Abbotts of Unreason. After wandering in an out of various productions as a bit player, I decided to build a show around his particular experience of Life: forever slip-sliding, tripped up, assaulted, and in conflict with the world, not fully comprehending why things are in the way, why machines vex him and why inanimate objects call him out to play, As the Swiss clown Grock would say about his props, "...all kinds of objects have had a way of looking at me reproachfully and whispering to me in unguarded moments, 'We've been waiting for you ... take us now and turn us into something different.'" The particular object whispering my name was a ladder, a prop on which the Janitor had played many a slapstick riff. And when developing the scenario I heeded the wise words of another past master, Buster Keaton: "Think slow, act fast, set up a situation and create a character that tries their best. No begging."

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