Word: clown
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...TERMS, which are admittedly peculiar, and in its own way, which is often exasperating, "The Empire Builders" is a fascinating drama in the Absurd tradition: which means that it mingles farce and tragedy, fantasy and reality, in a dramaturgic jumble; that its people are fools, doomed to play clown roles in the face of impending disaster; that it is myterious, mystifying, enignatic, foolish, funny--all at the same time...
There is one other: a strange creature, half monster and half man; with a clown's white face, dressed in a rubber coverall, listed in the program as a "schmurz...
...summarized in the first piece, "Confrontation, or Getting Acquainted." The music, a sweet-flowing jazz, begins by swinging the dancers to its beat. Suddenly, the dancers have taken command over the instruments--dancer Scott Kemper slumps and the sax follows with a long nasal whine, much like the clown and his circus band...
HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). The clown prince of basketball, Meadowlark Lemon, leads his team against the Washington Generals in one more display of the Trotters' court comedy...
Some more speculation: Babe's use of film and other media conflicts with his rather pedestrian notion of a crowd of puppets--clown-like figures unable to stand straight who exist only insofar as they are manipulated by the tribunes or swayed by mass instinct. The crowd is conceived as pantomime, the movies as a sophisticated blend of film and drama, and the two styles belong to two different kinds of production. Shakespeare made the crowd puppet-like enough; Babe extends the metaphor and is heavy-handed...