[I confess that I’m not a huge fan of clowning (though I’ve actually performed as a clown in at least one children’s show), but I’ve covered clown performances on Rick On Theater, such as Old Hats (22 March 2013) with Bill Irwin and David Shiner, Theater of Panic (in “Short Takes: Some Unique Performances” [28 July 2018]), The Second New York International Festival of Clown Theatre (in “Some Vintage Reviews from the Archive” [15 March 2021]), and “Chicago’s Physical Theater Festival: Moving in Many Senses” by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (in “Physical Theater” [24 November 2024]), and one piece on clown school/clown training, “It’s A Clown’s Life: Lessons From Clown School” by Lara Bevan-Shiraz (in “Theater Education & Training, Part 1” [3 October 2024]).
[(There are also several articles on ROT that touch on clowns in various contexts, including mentions in a couple of posts on Native American performance events. Clowns are important figures in the cultures of several American Indian peoples, including the Taos Pueblos and the Zunis.)
[In the spirit of full disclosure, let me quote something I inserted into my report on the above referenced report on Old Hats, a clowning duet by Bill Irwin (b. 1950) and David Shiner (b. 1953):
Before
I get too far into this report, let me cop to something moderately
significant. I’m not a fan of
clowns. I have nothing against them—I’m
not coulrophobic or anything—and I don’t object to the people who play the
clowns. I’ve just never found clowning
very funny, not in circuses or on stage and film. I can admire the skill of Chaplin or Keaton,
but I was never drawn to their movies; I wasn’t a fan of [Jackie] Gleason (I
don’t like The Honeymooners even today), [Red] Skelton, Lucille Ball, or
the Three Stooges, and I don’t much like Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell. I also ought to admit that there have always
been exceptions: the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields, Carol Burnett, Robin Williams—and
Bill Irwin and David Shiner.
[Nonetheless, a recent article in the New York Times caught my attention, and then I came across some other
recent writing on clowns and clowning. I
collected some of them to post below.
This posting is part of my effort on my blog to cover aspects of theater
and performance that aren’t as well known as mainstream theater, film, and television.]
“FUNNY GIRLS”
by Michael Snyder
[This article was published in the New York Times of 30 March 2025 in T: The New York Times Style Magazine. A version of this article appears online with the headline “There’s Always Room in the Clown Car,” posted on 24 March.]
For centuries, clowns have mostly been men. A new group of talent is changing that.
As a young woman in Mexico City, Gaby Muñoz, a 43-year-old performer known onstage as Chula the Clown [mentioned in “Chicago’s Physical Theater Festival,” referenced above], recalls, putting on makeup with her friends was always a fraught experience. “There was this whole idea of how to be a woman. They had this beautiful hair and these divine bodies, and I would look in the mirror and think, ‘Well, I guess not in this life.’ That made me laugh,” she says. As Chula — her round face washed white, her lips a tiny red heart, her eyebrows painted into inquisitive asymmetry — Muñoz, who this spring will begin touring through Europe and Central and South America, has played a jilted bride and a doddering old lady. She’s used her open, expressive face and antic physicality to joke wordlessly about loss, aging in a woman’s body and other concepts that have long been overlooked in the male-dominated world of clowns. For Muñoz, laughter isn’t an end in itself but rather, she says, “a way to connect.”
Clowns, jesters, harlequins and fools have, of course, played a similar role throughout history. In ancient Greece, they served as ribald choristers in epic dramas, while emperors in Han dynasty China delighted in the buffoonish exertions of the court paiyou [comic actor, similar to a jester]. Shakespeare’s world-weary wags spoke truth to King Lear and other royals, while the heyoka, the holy fool of many Sioux tribes, inverted day-to-day logic to provoke healing laughter. The emblematic sad clown that we know today evolved from the melancholic, talc-dusted Pedrolino of 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte [one of the stock character types known as a Zanni], while the contemporary circus clown, with his exaggerated face paint and physical wit, debuted on a London stage around 1800. (The one dressed in an ill-fitting suit and oversize shoes emerged as his clumsy foil seven decades later.) Though ritually and physically distinct, clowns have always been, as the heyoka John Fire Lame Deer [1903-76; Lakota holy man] writes with Richard Erdoes [1912-2008; artist, photographer, illustrator, and author] in their 1972 book, “Lame Deer Seeker of Visions,” “sacred, funny, powerful, ridiculous, holy, shameful, visionary.” They were also almost always men.
During her childhood in Estonia, the 29-year-old London-based clown Julia Masli dreamed of acting in tragedies for exactly that reason: comedy, she assumed, was a man’s game. When, in 2017, she watched the legendary English clown Lucy Hopkins [b. ca. 1979] perform in Brighton for the first time, “seeing a woman do something so absurd and free felt like a revolution,” she says. In Masli’s show “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha,” which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023 and has since toured internationally [see below, “We All Have An Inner Clown” for a link to and comments on this show], she appears onstage as a doe-eyed Victorian vagabond who asks audience members to share their problems. As she offers solutions both genuine and absurd — enlisting a bored office worker to record the show’s minutes; duct-taping a lonely young woman to a group of strangers onstage — she transforms the emotional labor so often foisted on women into a source of laughter and catharsis.
Other rising female clowns, like the 26-year-old English actress Frankie Thompson and the 32-year-old Swiss Mexican theater artist Paulina Lenoir, use womanhood itself as a source of humor. In the former’s “Body Show,” performed with her collaborator the 29-year-old trans masculine anarchist clown Liv Ello, Thompson forgoes exaggerated makeup and costume, combining lip-syncing and confrontational bouffon (an approach to clowning that emphasizes absurdity and shock) to discuss her history with anorexia. Small and blond — “people treat me like this tiny-angel special little bird to be protected,” she says — Thompson makes herself grotesque by, say, licking the stage or choking down Marmite, eliciting laughter that implicates the audience in the humiliations of body dysmorphia. Meanwhile, Lenoir’s persona Puella Eterna feminizes the physical exaggeration of the classic male clown by wearing a corset, a flamenco skirt and a giant Minnie Mouse bow in lieu of a bulging nose. As master of ceremonies at her Fool’s Moon cabaret, Puella displays the kind of unearned self-assurance that usually wins praise for men and scorn for women.
[Marmite, a British food spread, is a dark brown, salty, and yeasty paste. It’s often described as having a strong, savory flavor, similar to soy sauce, but saltier and with a deeper, more complex taste. Because of its strong and unique flavor profile, Marmite is often considered an “acquired taste.”]
While Thompson and Lenoir blur boundaries between cabaret and comedy, the 41-year-old British performer Ella Golt, better known as Ella the Great, has incorporated sly observations about gender into characters rooted in traditional clowning. Since 2015, Golt has mostly played Richard Melanin the Third, a bearded magician who believes deeply in his own abilities. Richard was born when another of Golt’s characters, Babushka — a prototypical female clown in a frilly skirt and tiny jacket — was invited to participate in a London drag king night. Slow, silent and charming, Richard started out as a clown-world Victor/Victoria: a gender-ambivalent actor playing a woman playing a man.
[The reference is to the 1982 musical comedy film Victor/Victoria, written and directed by Blake Edwards and starring Julie Andrews, James Garner, and Robert Preston, or the 1995 stage musical with a book by Edwards, music by Henry Mancini, and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, again directed by Edwards and starring Andrews, Tony Roberts, and Michael Nouri.]
Golt’s choices pay homage to the clowns who inspired her to join a London youth circus at age 7. Today she’s found similar solace as a queer Black artist in a genre that has only recently become more diverse. “Seeing people perform who look like you allows you to see that laughter is for you,” she says. “The permission to laugh and be laughed at can be empowering.” For these artists, clowning ultimately has less to do with putting on makeup than with stripping it away. It’s about “uncovering your inner idiot, the thing you’re taught to hide,” Lenoir says, “and learning to let that come through.” Foolishness, after all, is its own kind of freedom.
[Michael Snyder is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City focused on architecture, design, and food and their intersections with history, politics, economics, and culture. In addition to T Magazine, his work has appeared in a range of publications, including The Believer, The Caravan, The Nation, Lucky Peach, and Scientific American.]
* *
* *
“THE SERIOUS
BUSINESS OF SILLINESS:
YOUR
PERFORMANCE GAME”
by Zoe Dumas
[This article was published online in Backstage, the entertainment industry trade publication, on 4 June 2024]
Steve-O [Stephen Gilchrist Glover, b. 1974; stunt performer and comedian] famously attended the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, a boot camp-like experience that didn’t get him a spot with the circus—but did prepare him for his “Jackass” hijinks [see “‘Dante update neither divine nor comedy’” by Kyle Smith (1 December 2010)]. While not everyone in the industry finds themselves called to the clown’s oversized shoes and squeaky red nose, clown training can be highly beneficial to entertainers of all types. Whether you want to be the next Bozo or are just looking to hone your craft, learning to clown is a great way to expand your repertoire, improve your improv skills, and explore the great absurdities of life through the lens of comedy.
What is clowning?
Clowning is a type of performance that portrays exaggerated characters through a mix of comedy, physical performance, and costuming. This character has a long history as entertainer, healer, and truth-teller, leading to a wide array of types that can still be seen today. The circus clown, with its crazy-colored hair, white face paint, a honking red nose, and oversized shoes, is likely the one that people associate most with the profession. Some performers create character clowns, such as the classic tramp, where they exaggerate archetypal character traits to create hilarious scenarios.
The art of clowning goes back millennia, with the earliest recorded instance of clowns coming from ancient Egypt. During the fifth dynasty, around 2500 B.C.E., pharaohs were entertained and advised by African pygmy clowns. Centuries later and continents apart, clowns held a sacred role in several indigenous American tribes such as the Navajo and Hopi, participating in religious rituals to entertain and expand minds.
These traditions echo our modern conception of clowning, but closer to that were Grecian and Roman clowns in overstuffed suits and garish makeup. Performers took this tradition on the road during the Middle Ages, carrying over the jester’s specific brand of mockery to a broader audience. It was this that led to Italy’s famed “commedia dell’arte,” which in turn inspired the first clown resembling the character we most often think of today: Joseph Grimaldi [1778-1837]. The father of modern clowning, Grimaldi wowed 19th-century English audiences with his harlequin character, which overtook the then-standard country bumpkin clown as the de facto style.
How is clowning an important part of an actor’s training?
Accessing vulnerability: Clowning helps performers access their usually hidden selves, L.A.’s the Idiot Workshop founder John Gilkey [b. 1966] told the Hollywood Reporter. “We’re looking for your voice. Not your verbal, auditory voice. But your full personality voice, which is based on your vulnerability,” he said. “What we teach is the boldness to be you at your wildest, most fun, crazy self and, once you open that up, you’re going to take that wherever you go as long as the medium you’re performing in allows for that expression.”
Connecting with audiences: Regardless of style, clowning is about creating an authentic connection with viewers. Director of the Highland Park Clowns and the Clown Church workshop Jet Eveleth described clowning to the Los Angeles Times as “a celebration of the physical and vulnerable side of the human experience. When the performer embraces this ‘muchness’ of life, they serve as a mirror for the audience to see and laugh at themselves from a safe distance . . . . Clown is poking fun at the human condition.” In other words, clowning allows performers to let loose and open up while showing audiences the profound beauty of being human.
Refining comedic chops: Clowning requires an excellent sense of humor and the ability to make people laugh. David Bridel, the founder of the Clown School in L.A., emphasizes that learning the art allows performers to improve their skills in comedy and make fun of themselves. This “is obviously a huge part of the work of a clown and is also very therapeutic to some people,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
Broadening horizons: All this is to say that clowning is a feat of vulnerability that pushes performers to step far outside their comfort zone and explore aspects of themselves they may never have thought possible. Clowns have a long tradition as theater characters; Shakespeare, for example, used the clown quite heavily because they are a character that can speak truth to the absurdities of everyday life without fear of consequences. Far from the laughable doofus we often make the clown out to be, this is a character and type of acting that allows for endless creativity from a performer. They can put themselves in the vulnerable position of being laughable, certainly, but they can also explore the vast contrasts and eccentricities of being human.
Clowning ideas and exercises
Even if you don’t decide to don the big shoes and red nose, incorporating some aspects of clowning into your regimen can go a long way in taking your performance art to the next level. If you’re a performer looking to explore the art of clowning, there are several activities and exercises you might do to open up and stand out.
1. Immerse yourself in theory. Books such as Christopher Bayes’ “Discovering the Clown, or The Funny Book of Good Acting,” Henry Jestworth’s “How to Clown,” Paul Bouissac’s “The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning,” Jon Davison’s “Clown Training: A Practical Guide,” and Eli Simon’s “The Art of Clowning” encourage performers to connect with their inner clowns. Simon, UC Irvine chancellor’s professor of drama and founding artistic director of the New Swan Shakespeare Festival, has been teaching his students clowning for years; he specializes in the development of original clown shows that he’s directed and produced around the world. In his book, he provides a complete regimen of exercises and techniques that “[yield] swift and deep access to the clown in you.”
2. Take a workshop. Clowns love sharing their art with eager audiences and performers, so there are a wide variety of workshops and classes available throughout the U.S. and the world. Research the clown classes available in your area to find a troupe that can brighten up your act. Alternatively, you can also attend online classes and workshops such as those offered by the Clown School, University of Southern California, the Online Clown Academy, and the Clown Institute.
3. Practice with a group. If you already have a troupe of actors or even just friends you prefer working with, try performing some clowning exercises together. There are countless improv activities out there to release your inner clown. These include dolphin training, where audience members guide an actor to perform specific tasks only by clapping or laughing, and the exaggeration exercise, where one actor follows another, comically exaggerating the first’s movements and expressions. A third actor might even join this one and exaggerate what the second clown is doing.
4. Put a routine together. Another way to try clowning is to simply do it! Create a simple character and routine—it could be joke-heavy, something with more props, or perhaps slapstick calls to you—and explore the world through new eyes. Bring your routine to an acting or improv class, or another place where you’ll have an accepting audience, and see what it takes to make your fellow actors laugh and clown around with you.
[Zoe Dumas, a freelance writer based in Fresno, California, covers the entertainment industry, with a specific emphasis on expert commentary and reviews. In addition to her work for Backstage, she’s been a content writer at Movieweb.com.]
* *
* *
“WE ALL HAVE AN
INNER CLOWN;
by Priscilla Posada
[The Los Angeles Times ran this article on 15 March 2025; it was also posted online as “A fool’s journey: Notes from a clowning workshop” on 13 March.]
This story is part of Image’s March Devotion issue, exploring various forms of reverence, love and worship.
[Eight times a year, the L.A. Times publishes Image, a themed issue covering style and culture in L.A. and beyond.]
We all have an inner clown, a wild self whose yearning for delight is greater than the fear of failure. A little one who wants to play during nap time, convenience to others be damned. Underneath layers and layers of socialization, we each have a clown willing to risk heartbreak for joy. Or at least that’s the idea.
Clowning, an ancient art form that includes but is not limited to the red wigs and big shoes of the circus, is difficult to define. Filed under “physical comedy,” a clown communicates primarily through their body rather than words.
All I’m sure of is that without an audience — to play with, to laugh or not laugh, and hopefully cry and transform — there is no clown. I’ll admit: When I started, I wanted the benefits of clowning, namely feeling comfortable and even coming to enjoy reading my work in public, without any of the scary bits (and clowns in America have quite a scary reputation). I had asked my first clown teacher for private (read: audience-free) lessons. She chuckled over the phone: “It doesn’t work that way.” Thus began my fool’s journey, if you will, from scared and lost to scared and lost with a dash more openness to being vulnerable.
I was glad I was wearing sneakers because I ended up running from the subway station to the midtown Manhattan building. I arrived at Room 315 on time and out of breath. It was a Saturday, and I was there for a two-day workshop, from noon to 5 p.m., with an hour break for lunch, with Christopher Bayes. His credentials, in a field where it feels funny to have them, include studying under clown masters Philippe Gaulier [French; b. 1943; master clown, teacher, and professor of theater; founder of École Philippe Gaulier; see “It’s A Clown’s Life,” cited above] and Jacques Lecoq [French; 1921-99; stage actor and acting movement coach] and working as the head of physical acting at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama. While this all sounds technique-heavy, Bayes is known for valuing a heart-forward approach over an intellectual one. This was an honor for which I somehow justified paying $300.
We began with introductions — names, pronouns, why we were there. “I’m a writer,” I said, picking one job, out of the three I had, most suited to the moment. “And I’m writing a piece on clowning.” I scanned the room and my eyes landed on A, whom I recognized from another workshop. Our faces lighted up. We smiled — and clowns must smile only when they’re actually happy since, as I learned in workshop, a smile is a mask — and waved to each other. When it was A’s turn, they explained that whatever they were seeking from psychoanalysis, they were finding in clowning.
In this group of about 25 people, there was also a theater director who flew all the way to New York from San Francisco to take this workshop. There were a lot of people who loved theater and hoped a more honest connection with audiences would bring them back.
Next were the warm-up exercises. We started shaking our bodies, and I made another mental note: Actors and musicians all did warm-up exercises. What was the equivalent for writers? My thought was interrupted when Bayes instructed us to laugh very hard. It had been a confusing week, a mix of macro tragedy and micro wins. I cracked up, and it felt like sobbing. The group entered a frenzied state. I acclimated to the cacophony of primal sounds. We sounded like the animals we tend to forget we are.
“Now cry!” Bayes shouted. I wailed and made my ugliest face. I was screaming so loud my voice cracked and I had to cough to clear it. I said, “Why, oh why?” I slapped my hands down on my quads. I headed toward the floor. I curled into a ball and cried with my face hovering an inch above the wooden floor. I heard a voice from above: “Don’t hide your sadness.” I stood up awkwardly having just been reprimanded for crying the polite way. I needed to cry the clown way, that is, take up space. I balled my hands into fists and stretched my arms out and up. I turned my face toward the ceiling and blamed it for all that was wrong with the world. Sobbing from the belly and feeling like some sort of tragic figure, I doubled over in laughter and now I couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
Afterward, we separated into groups of four. We were given 10 minutes to devise a song, along with a dance. My group chose the chorus “I love it.” We all had solos when we sang about something we genuinely loved. I sang about my apartment, how I loved it. I got the instructions mixed up and tried to rhyme but learned I wasn’t supposed to, so I sang, “Ohhhhhh, that’s easieeeeerrrr.” My solo came to a dark end: I loved my apartment, but I couldn’t afford it on my own, without roommates, and even if I could, it would be selfish to live there alone because of the city’s housing crisis. I sang about how the rental vacancy rate was 1.4% and that 5% was considered an emergency. There was nowhere else to go, so I sang to the audience to think about that. Some of the faces in the audience looked scared. My group sang, all together, “I love it, I love this love, I love love love love, yeah I like it!” We broke for lunch, and someone added me to the “Clown NYC” WhatsApp group. It has 712 members, and there are multiple threads, including “Shows & Mics,” “Meetup & Hangouts,” “Prop/Costume Exchange” — and “Housing.”
When I saw my first clown show, Julia Masli’s “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha,” my first words might have been, “What the f—?” Masli emerged on a blueish dark stage amid the haze of fog. I recall a Medusa-like nest of wires around her head with a light illuminating her face. A gold mannequin’s leg with an attached microphone substituted as Masli’s left arm. She was bundled in a witchy outfit resembling a duvet cover. Masli looked extraterrestrial, complete with the wide, innocent stare of a being looking upon our society and its problems from a fresh perspective.
As a clown, it’s ideal if you wear something so stupid, people laugh just glancing at you. A performer’s costume signals to the audience that they’re in a space operating outside of societal norms, a place of amplification. While a clown’s “look” can be idiosyncratic and interesting, what starts off as funny and absurd gives way to the profound. In this way, clowning appears light and gets deep. With the support of aesthetics, a clown communicates, “Isn’t being human with all of its striving for status and repression in order to fit in kind of ridiculous?”
In “Nothing Doing,” a work-in-progress, clown Alex Tatarsky announced at the top that they didn’t believe in work or progress. They entered the stage in a top hat, white sequined leotard, rhinestone heels, sporting a long, thick braid attached to their hair. When they turned around for the first time, I was treated to a grotesque mask at the back of Tatarsky’s head and prosthetic cleavage that might have also been the plastic molding of butt cheeks. By the close of their show, after having mimed chasing after the performance’s nonexistent plot, Tatarsky sat at the head of a table, facing the audience, eating Life cereal with milk, with their hands, out of an empty skull, and at one point chewed and swallowed a cigarette. They said something like, “Darling, I just want you to love me, but it’s repulsive when I’m this desperate.” This desperation, rather than repelling me, became a source of connection. I found myself falling in love with this clown and, in turn, with the parts of myself I tend to reject.
In the environment of a clown workshop, practicing loss of control (a clown can’t plan for an audience’s response) and being present with what is (a clown works with whatever they’ve got) can feel good. One eases off expecting specific results and being disappointed when things don’t turn out according to a rigid vision of success and delights in surprises no one could have imagined. If clowning is on the rise, and it certainly feels that way, it might be because it provides relief from having to keep it together.
On the second day of the workshop, we tried a different exercise. Two conventionally attractive men were onstage, and I was prepared to hate them both. Why? Because conventionally attractive men send me hurtling back in time to when I was an awkward preteen, and I’ve since developed an aversion. Bayes instructed them to get to know each other. They looked uncomfortable. One extended a handshake to the other. The crowd booed at the predictably masculine, business-like gesture. Then, Bayes told them to turn away from each other and walk to opposite ends of the room. One faced stage left, the other stage right.
They had to jump around to face each other and land at the exact same time. They kept failing. “Oh, come on,” I jeered. Ten minutes passed. The audience was exasperated. An eternity passed. One would turn around while the other didn’t move. Was I cursing them somehow? One wore a crisp white T-shirt that looked expensive with black wide-leg trousers. He had shoulder-length hair parted down the middle, like a model. The other, a white T-shirt that looked worn-in, black joggers and a delicate hoop earring. Both were barefoot. They kept missing even though they could technically cheat and set a pattern for the other to follow. It was agony. Bayes, who was sitting next to me, drew my attention to the man on the right. He was twitching. His eyebrows, his legs. The impulses were all confused. I laughed. I thanked the heavens that my performance of the same exercise didn’t go this badly.
Bayes told them, “You’re not getting it because you haven’t tucked in your shirts and raised your pants all the way up.” The two clowns followed the instructions. Now, they looked more ridiculous and endearing. We waited. We breathed. Finally. They jumped. They landed at the exact same time. People erupted in applause. A great tension was released. I rose from my seat along with others for a standing ovation. No matter how hopeless it seems, a clown can always win back the audience.
Now, the two men were facing each other. There were more boos. They lost us because they were “trying” again. I joined in, feeling like I was at a wrestling match where I wanted neither party to win. Now they were holding hands and squatting up and down vigorously. “Say, ‘Oh, yeah,’” shouted Bayes. They complied in unison. “Now say, ‘Oh, daddy,’” Bayes shouted. Again, the two complied, but they missed a beat and now they were saying “Daddy, O” in a guttural way as they continued holding hands and squatting up and down. I was laughing hard and clapping my hands. I was full of glee. In less than 30 minutes, I’d seen myself mirrored and altered. I could be someone who was afraid of being in front of others. Cocooned in the safety of a crowd, I could be cruel. I could be extravagantly generous. The clown wanted my love regardless. The clown was there to hold it all. I learned things that words fail to capture.
You had to be there. And that’s what I love most about clowning — it brings you into the now. Everything else fades away. It’s no longer about the shape something takes but about the attempt. No one is ever done as a clown.
Later that week, I found myself singing a stupid-sweet song from the workshop called “Open Like a Little Flower.” The next line was “Open like a different type of flower.” I remembered Bayes saying that when you go looking for beauty, you find it. I remembered too my pounding heart. Breathing hard from physical exertion. Buzzing with the high of a collective response, with the feeling of wholeness.
[Priscilla Posada is a
writer living in New York City. Her work
can be found in the Los Angeles Review
of Books, BOMB, and the Brooklyn Rail, among other places.]
