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Funny man Wolfe Bowart talks about the LaLaLuna man on the moon.

“My heroes have always been cowboys”, sang American country music star Willie Nelson. But for his fellow countryman, physical theatre master Wolfe Bowart, entertainers like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton have been the people to look up to. Ahead of his arrival in Hong Kong to present his latest – and much acclaimed – production, LaLaLuna, the artistic director and one half of comedy duo The Shneedles shares that, “As a kid, I would watch Chaplin and Keaton films and then direct and film my own silent films with the neighborhood kids. I was also greatly inspired by the Swiss clown Grock and French film comedian Jacques Tati.”

Asked how he got into his line of work, Bowart replies, “When I look back, I realize I was a clown when I was a kid – many children are.” But that didn’t immediately lead to the career in which he has performed his brand of theatre before thousands of people in many different parts of the world. First came something much more serious – time at university studying the classics – “Brecht, Shakespeare et al” – although he had long before realized what a special feeling it was to make people laugh.

Bowart also realized early on how much more there is to clowning than the red nose and orange hair that typify “archetypal Ringling Brothers-type clowns like Bozo or Ronald McDonald or even Krusty from The Simpsons”. But, even though he’s happy to identify himself as a clown, particularly in places like Europe where he says there is a long and revered history of clowning, he prefers what he does to be known as ‘physical theatre’ because that more easily fits with the variety of cultures and connotations he visits.

In addition to differences in cultural perceptions of clowning, Bowart has discovered over the course of performing in places as disparate as Austria, Australia, Spain and Singapore that comedy has cultural nuances. So, he says of LaLaLuna, “While the show remains largely the same, at times I’ll find that a particular scene will play better to one audience in one country than to another in a different country.”

Yet, he believes, “ultimately, laughter is universal” and consequently, much in his self-described “funny and surreal folktale come to life onstage” will transcend cultures. He points to a couple of scenes in LaLaLuna “that have everyone rolling in the aisles, no matter whether they’re Greek or Icelandic or outback Australian”. That is not to say LaLaLuna is entirely about laughs. Rather, he hopes the whimsical story behind the presentation will come across as a series of dreams.

So, how did he come to have an idea for a show centring on the moon’s caretaker and his struggles to relight earth’s satellite when it blacked out? “As a kid growing up in the Arizona desert,” he says, “I’d often look up at the moon in the huge night sky, and wonder. While I knew that the moon’s light was the reflection from the sun, it didn’t stop me from occasionally thinking to myself ‘What if there is actually someone up there who takes care of turning the light on and off each evening?’”

In coming up with a story that adds one more personality to what he calls “the neighbourhood of mythological characters living up there”, Bowart says he draws on a story-telling gene he believes he inherited from his writer-editor-publisher and counter-culturalist father, Walter, and maternal grandfather, the abstract expressionist painter Edward Dugmore. And the essential ingredient, he feels, for a performer of his type of highly visual physical theatre is the ability to spin a yarn, be it inherited or not.

“Being physically flexible helps too,” he adds. Nonetheless, “For me, it’s [foremost] about wanting to explore ways to paint pictures on stage with images, colour, light, physicality and comedy – about wanting to offer a narrative to an audience yet wanting to tell that story visually and with humour. I’ve always been interested in magic, circus arts, film interaction and physical comedy.” And those are all the tools he uses to make LaLaLuna “full of magic and wonder, truly an evening for the whole family”.

Wolfe Bowart will present LaLaLuna at the Sha Tin Town Hall’s Cultural Activities Hall on April 4, the Sheung Wan Civic Centre’s Theatre on April 5, the Ngau Chi Wan Civic Centre’s Theatre on April 6 and the Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre’s Theatre on April 7. All four shows are set to start at 8pm. Tickets for all the performances are $170 and $110 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.