“You are a mime, or some kind of bizarre, but you are not a clown.” Those were the unforgettable words spat at me by Philippe Gaulier during the last week of my clown training in 2006. Gaulier, who passed away this February aged 82, was a master clown and founder of École Gaulier in Paris. At this small but successful theatre school, hundreds of wannabe clowns and performers signed up for full terms and summer courses hoping to hone their clowning expertise. Successful alumni included Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter and Rachel Weisz. I had little idea what I’d gotten myself into, but I gave it my all.
Gaulier didn’t teach me to be a clown; he provided the conditions for me to find my inner clown, one insult at a time.
Looking back, I’m so traumatised by my Gaulier schooling that I remember very little about what I actually learned there. Either that or it’s been lost due to the litres of French red wine my classmates and I guzzled every evening in an attempt to process the daily assassination. Or it’s that Gaulier doesn’t actually teach you anything (which is most likely true). You see, his pedagogy was to break you down. He was intentionally harsh with his criticism in an attempt to reveal behaviours that lie beyond the social conditioning of adulthood. Of course, he didn’t want you to behave like a child, or even a parody of a clown. He wanted you to connect with a kind of spontaneous energy and radical presence in response to his direction. Gaulier didn’t teach me to be a clown; he provided the conditions for me to find my inner clown, one insult at a time.
I’m recalling my clowning shenanigans having recently interviewed the artist Sophia Süßmilch about her new work, Something Terrible Will Happen: The Cannibal Woman. We discussed clowning because she plans to lean into an evil clown archetype during the show and will paint on a traditional clown face, exaggerating the colours with a fluro palette. She told me, “Clowns are back, apparently”, and I thought, ‘Did they ever go away?’
For a long time, I avoided the circus. I spent almost a decade working within cabaret and burlesque shows, and I felt I’d seen every conceivable act 100 times over. But recently, I decided to go back. Berlin Circus Festival, the largest festival for contemporary circus in Germany, takes things further than traditional clowning. It purposely pushes the boundaries of what we perceive as ‘big top’ circus shows. That’s not to say clowns have been banished entirely; they’ve simply adapted to meet contemporary ideas. I think what Süßmilch was getting at in her comment was that perhaps the ‘trad’ clown is making a come-back, because as far as I’m concerned, clowns are everywhere.
At the aforementioned Berlin Circus Festival, I watched Yes Person and Food, two shows that were distinctively different but similar in their execution of clowning. In essence, I think performers who are using physical comedy, satire and parody within their work are all clowning. Although the costumes vary and the red nose is absent, there is a recognisable quality to the on-stage antics. Even Sacha Baron Cohen, one of Gaulier’s greatest graduates, has provided us with two controversial clown characters: Ali G and Borat. Both these idiots combine Gaulier’s teaching methods with clowning 101: a clown knows nothing but pretends to know everything. When I rewatched the Borat mockumentary recently, I saw the absurdity and potentially dangerous situations that Cohen would create in order to clown himself through it. Apparently, before he became a celebrity, it was relatively easy to maintain the gag. Now, less so. Süßmilch concluded that one of the reasons she wanted to explore clown imagery was because, “Clowns are allowed to do what everybody else in society is not allowed to do.” In that case, maybe there’s a world in which we all don the warpaint and send in the clowns, regardless of what Gaulier says.
