Wavy Gravy High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

Hippie Icon, Flower Geezer, Poet, Activist, Clown and Temple of Accumulated Error

Wavy Gravy is non your ordinary clown. He certainly has had a long run since his earlier days every bit a poet and stand up-up comic, improvisational theater artist, psychedelic bus caravan luminary, and rock concert MC, and often jokes: "if you don't take a sense of humor, it just isn't funny whatever more." Yet his reach extends far beyond the comic. He is devoted to "do something practiced for a alter," and his artistic activism on behalf of peace, justice, and good humor is legendary. Along with Jahanara, his wife of over fifty years, he has brought joy and helped to relieve suffering for countless people around the world, largely through his favorite projects, the Seva Foundation and Camp Winnarainbow. Wavy has been called "clown prince of the counter-culture" past Entertainment Weekly, "a saint in a clown suit" by Bob Weir, and "the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Female parent Teresa" past Paul Krassner. Now in his 80s, this iconic figure from the 60s refers to himself as a "temple of accumulated fault," yet he's e'er ready with a twinkling insight, a fantastic story and a helping hand. Almost those stories, Ram Dass said, "everything Wavy says is truthful, although it's all unbelievable."

Born Hugh Romney, his parents lived for a spell in Princeton. As a v-year-quondam he was taken for walks by his neighbour, and however remembers the daze of white hair and the twinkling eyes of Albert Einstein. His path to becoming a performer, a storyteller, a clown, and a sage is something like the labyrinths he loves to walk, no straight lines and lots of curves. Later high school in Connecticut and a stint in the Army, he studied theater in Boston and New York while experimenting with jazz and verse on the side, graduating from The Neighborhood Playhouse in1961.

Thereafter he became poetry and entertainment director at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Hamlet, and cavorted with the likes of Bob Dylan, who shared a room upstairs and used Wavy's typewriter for the first typhoon of "A Difficult Rain's A-Gonna Fall." Lenny Bruce briefly became his managing director. In fourth dimension he became a traveling monologist: "I decided to skip the poems and just talk about my weird mean solar day," and opened shows for John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Ian & Sylvia. He also created a Review at The Living Theater, called the "Phantom Cabaret," with Wavy, Tiny Tim and Moondog.

So California called, and Hugh began performing with the Commission improvisational theater company in San Francisco. In 1965 he met his married woman, a television actress so named Bonnie Jean, at the restaurant where she worked in LA. She put peanuts in his hamburger, and they married soon after. They were living in a one-room cabin in Sunland outside of LA when one day the Merry Prankster bus showed up and they suddenly had 40 extra people to house. They were given a mountaintop farm rent costless if they would take care of twoscore hogs, every bit onetime Saul the caretaker just had a stroke. This is how the extended family became known equally the Sus scrofa Subcontract commune. They hosted many extraordinary events there, and did lite shows and Energy Games at the Shrine Auditorium in LA with Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Aeroplane and the Grateful Dead.

The Hog Farm crew decided to have their way of life on the route, and lived in a caravan of psychedelic buses for seven years, performing at campuses around the state. As Wavy puts it: "We were a calorie-free evidence, a stone ring, a painting, a poem, an anti-state of war rally, an anthem for freedom and change." The Hog Farm became known for being able to take care of large crowds while putting on inspirational shows that fostered peace and joy.

In 1969 the creators of Woodstock asked the Hog Farm to do security at the upcoming festival, which position they rapidly re-named The Delight Force. They were also in charge of the free kitchen and the freak-out tent, and Hugh started giving announcements to the huge concert crowd. Later rain storms swept through, we observe him standing onstage telling the muddy multitudes, "What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000!" (a quip that Entertainment Weekly named one of the top entertainment lines of the 20th century). The Squealer Farmers, with lots of help, delivered a cup of granola to every person enmeshed in the mud. They besides helped those who were lost, hungry or freaking out from a bad trip, and brought touches of peace and love to the festival. Soon after they were asked to work at the International Texas Pop Festival, where B.B. King gave Hugh the moniker of "Wavy Gravy," and it stuck.

Over the years of protests and sit-ins, Wavy was desperately beaten by police force, and his back was injured. He wound up needing multiple spinal fusions and total trunk casts. This didn't stop him journeying with the Squealer Farm toward Pakistan along with 42 people from 17 countries in two buses filled with nutrient, medical supplies, and bottles of bubbles—a relief convoy in the wake of the disastrous cyclone that struck People's republic of bangladesh in 1970. They were hoping both to assist victims by providing onlinecasinogo.ng for basic human needs and to embarrass the regime into providing more help. "My God, at that place'southward hippies doing it. We'd better do it better." But the Indo-Pakistani State of war broke out and the caravan was diverted to India and Nepal, where the collected supplies were distributed amidst Tibetan refugees.

Back habitation, Wavy started dressing as a clown kiwigambling.co.nz when he was asked to cheer up the children in a cancer unit at Oakland Children'due south Infirmary. Someone handed him a red rubber nose, which was a big striking with the kids. He expanded his outfit from there, and continued to visit several days a week for the next seven years. One day he was heading to a political rally at People's Park and didn't accept time to have off his brand-up. He discovered that the police did not want to hit him anymore. "Clowns are prophylactic—the cops don't desire to be photographed clubbing a clown!"

For the American Bicentennial in 1976, Wavy launched the first of 4 Nobody for President campaigns, which whimsically conveyed a needed modify in our political imagination. Nobody stood for peace, love, honesty and humor, an all-too-rare platform on the national election scene. Of course, Nobody lost, just everyone gained.

In 1978 Wavy was invited by Larry Vivid, the sometime hippie doctor from the Sus scrofa Subcontract bus trip who helped atomic number 82 the groundbreaking WHO smallpox eradication plan, to join a diverse group of distinguished public health doctors, spiritual adepts, and activists to co-found the Seva Foundation. Seva is dedicated to working to better health in underserved populations, and with its partners, has restored sight to over four million people in developing countries. In 1979 Wavy founded Camp Winnarainbow, a circus and performing arts camp in which he and Jahanara are nonetheless agile participants. Here kids learn timing, residue, community, and a sense of sense of humour, and many have go young leaders who are helping seed a sweeter, saner, more than humane globe. The camp maintains a scholarship program that has enabled many economically disadvantaged kids to savor the magic of Winnarainbow year after year. Some of the greatest musicians of our time have answered Wavy's telephone call to perform in the myriad concerts he has organized over the decades to benefit Seva, out of their beloved and respect for him and the great work of these projects.

In 2009, Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Pic, a characteristic-length documentary film created by Michelle Esrick, was released and went on to receive numerous film festival awards, aired on Start and PBS, and is distributed on DVD, Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and other digital platforms. "Similar its subject, Saint Misbehavin' is an unabashed love alphabetic character to our world that defies the pessimism of our age." – NY Times

Fortunately, all is not said and done in the Wavy Gravy saga. He was last seen in his meditation room conjuring fantastic collage art pieces glued to rough-hewn rounds of wood from copse at Black Oak Ranch, the Sus scrofa Farm's country seat. Looking up, he says, "Hey boss" (a title he lifted from the Marx Brothers that is liberally applied to just about anyone within attain), and talks about his upcoming Seva benefit concert in Maui, a tribute to erstwhile Seva colleague Ram Dass, featuring Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, Krishna Das, and, of class, hosted by Wavy Gravy, MC for the ages.

– Shams Kairys, with help from Wavy'south family unit and friends

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Source: https://wavygravy.net/about/

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