For my Alchemy of Archetypes course, I was inspired to work with Frankie Armstrong and Janet Rodgers' book ‘Acting and Singing With Archetypes.’  and to combine the journeys with mask work. Trestle Theatre Company sell a set of 8 archetype half-masks. But now when I teach, I work with 10 Archetypes. I commissioned a Maiden mask from British mask-maker Stephen Jon Cooper. And I found, in the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre giftshop, a papier-mâché skull mask. I didn’t buy it when I first saw it but something was planted in me and I made a phone call. ‘Yes, we just have the one left’. ‘Hold it for me!’ and I dashed across town to buy it.
 
Archetypes Online
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, I adapted to run my Alchemy of Archetypes workshop online, without masks, using the process of stepping in and stepping out as described in Frankie and Janet’s book but also as I learned it from theatre practitioner Mollie Guilfoyle who ran Soylent Theatre People’s Theatre, creating plays that included masked and unmasked characters which demanded a shared level of ‘heightened’ playing (more physical / not-naturalism). In most of my teaching, I encourage a playing state which is both physically embodied and imaginatively immersed. My experience learning with Butoh performers (Sankai Juku, Natsu Nakajima and UK-based Yumino Seki), planted the seed for surrender to the essence. My great respect for comedy and clown also brings forward the joy of play and the joy of otherness.

How I came to develop the Death Archetype:
Inspiration was always there in memento mori paintings and illustrations of Death and the Maiden, and
in recent years, the work of Hungarian artist Zsuzsanna Ujj. I took her images below as inspiration for the character of Gloriana, in a  freely-adapted student production  of ‘The Revengers Tragedy’
at RADA in order to give Vindice’s dead girl friend a presence and a voice in the play.

The process for playing the Archetype of Death includes a warmup guided by the skeleton and celebrating joint articulations. 
 
‘Enjoy your bones as you move.’ I repeat Viola Spolin’s phrase from her book ‘Theatre Games for the Lone Actor’. Spolin says: Feel your skull. Feel your skull with your skull. 
 
Next follows a Carnival-esque ‘Dance your Bones’. Tom Waits’ track ‘Singapore’ has a perfect rhythm and is dark and downbeat but still jaunty.
I give side prompts during dance to get people to raise elbows, explore hips, think of empty eye sockets and explore teeth and jaw. Have fun playing with what funny things your legs can do. And then the hips. Death can be as dry as dust, but s/he/they can be a bit cheeky as well.
Towards the end of the track, everyone is at the Skeleton Ball, and dance together (if online, it’s fun to play ‘peekaboo’ by coming and going out of the screen).
 
Set up for the Immersion / Guided Journey:
Dina Glouberman invented ‘Imagework’. You use the body-mind’s ability to access knowledge intuitively by allowing spontaneous images or sensings of metaphors which can contain helpful information of issues and allow, through inhabiting and moving and calling in mentors or adopting different viewpoints, a transformation of unhelpful fixed patterns. The work includes imaginal journeys - for example, you can visit the House of Health; The House of Sleep; The House of Time; the House of Money - there are steps to pass through and it's possible to gain some startlingly helpful insights. 
 
On an advanced course, Dina led us on a journey to meet Death. And  most of us were empowered to find how calming it was to have that experience. Many of us found that Death is just a doorkeeper. That's their job. They're not scarily coming after you with a knife, they're just very patient. And very pragmatic. 
 
Death The Doorkeeper
Can you get a sense of this expression of Death, the functionary? For your voice: use your bones, or use your parchment skin or use the atmosphere; the dry, possibly dusty or slightly chill environment Death is in. Is there a table? On the table there is a ledger. Do you have a thermos? Is there a clock on the wall – does it tick? Are there no hands on the clock?  You can be whatever gender expression you like. What are you wearing? A poorly cut suit? A drab skirt and cardigan? Summon an image of an empty office space, a grey-hued Kafka-esque scene. Film director Roy Andersson in his film 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence’ evokes a cold-colour-palette world where figures with pasty faces stand in uninspiring, pragmatic surroundings. See image below.

Preparation for Immersion / Guided Journey
Participants are invited to close your eyes, if you are willing, but to stay safe in the space, do crack your eyelids open to see where you are stepping.
 
Immersion / Guided Journey
The 'journey' allows participants to explore Death in her/his/their workplace. First, participants are invited to visualise how they this Archetype of Death, to invite a spontaneous sensing or visualisation – the way inspiration delivers that he/she/they appear for you in this moment - then to step in and transform in shape and texture.
 
There you are, in your place of work. Just a functionary. Long hours, but you’re used to it. What does it sound like in there? Is there a desk in the room beside you? With a ledger on it? Is there a clock? Perhaps a filing cabinet you never use. You're on duty. There beside the door. It's a slow day today. So you're just patiently there: and your mantra is: ‘I am the inevitable.’ Sing it, speak it, chant it, or hum while thinking it.
 
The 'journey' continues with Death meeting a succession of characters: old man, young man, maiden, dog, child. Their names are crossed off and Death ushers them through the door.

There may be little admin tasks in the lulls. A pencil to sharpen? A sip of tea? Or just waiting. 
 
When Death's breaktime rolls round, I encourage participants to explore: What do you like to do in your break? Do you have a stand-up comedy set that you’ve been working on? A nice ‘tight five’ for the next open mic? What’s your catch phrase? Is it: ‘I am the inevitable’? Are you working up a tap routine? Are you practicing to juggle? Or is there a song that that you're working on? Do the lyrics include: ‘I am the inevitable’? Flamenco dancing? Where you rattle your bones like castanets? 

Very, very occasionally Death gets to go up and get someone. Up in the sun. But it's rare, you have to wait for orders.

You are good at your job, it may be hard work on your feet, but you’re used to it.
'I am the inevitable’ …
 
Step out step in:
And in this next moment, I'm going to invite you to take a small step backwards or to the side like a hand coming out of a glove. You're going to step yourself out. Don't open your eyes. Just step out for a moment. So you can feel the difference: feet on the floor, crown toward the ceiling - the normal self. 
And then just step back in so that you can prove to yourself that you can access that Archetype again. Yes. ‘I am the inevitable’ - their memories, their physicality, the quality of their skin. Go to your favourite moment, either from the dance or from the most vivid moment or from the most boring moment …
 
And once again, breathe and breathe and just slip out like a hand coming out of a glove.
 
And be sure to transition gently. Respect what you've done. Respect the transformation of the body.
twinkle your fingers and toes. Shimmy like a dog coming out of a puddle (as per Frankie Armstrong and Janet Rodger's journeys) and then place your hands either side of your face and remove that imaginary mask and set it very respectfully somewhere safe for now.
 
If you are feeling cold after the Journey:
This is Donna Eden’s Triple Warmer exercise from her book Energy Medicine. It’s a Chinese Medicine meridian, governing the adrenal gland.
https://www.edenmethodvictoria.com/triple-warmer
Mainly used for soothing nerves or when overheated, you can run Triple Warmer in the opposite direction to warm-up, if cold.
Rub your hands. Place the palm of your right hand on the ring finger of your left hand. Smooth up the slight outside of the forearm, upper arm, the back-ish of the neck, behind the ear and up over the ear to the temple. Do it three times.
Repeat on other side (x3).
 
Moving on to work with Text
I use a monologue I pieced together for the character of the dead Gloriana from the adapted version of ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’ and I also use a slightly adapted piece of text from Selena Godden’s book ‘Mrs Death Misses Death’.
 
Moving on to work with Improv
I work with the practitioner in the mask (or without, if online), responding to how they are in the space, or asking the 'mask' questions and seeing what arises. To play Death’s vaudeville aspect, I sometimes suggest the player sings ‘Chatanooga Choo Choo’. One course participant on an in-person workshop (playing Death) managed to entice a wary course participant out of their chair and on to the performing area to come aboard the ‘train’ and follow Death in the song, conga-style.
 
Literary references for the Death Archetype:
Philip Pullman ‘His Dark Materials’
Selena Godden ‘Mrs Death Misses Death’
Markus Zusak ‘The Book Thief’

Myth:
Charon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon
Also Anubis, Yama, Hermes, Mercury, Valkyries, Xolotl and Vanth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp
 
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I recently inaugurated a new Dark Clown Scenario.

Like Fox and Maiden, it has a Fairytale inspiration. As a child, I was fascinated by the story of The Little Mermaid. 

Here’s an edited excerpt from the Wikipedia synopsis of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale: ‘The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, visits the Sea Witch who lives in a dangerous part of the ocean. The witch willingly helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue and beautiful voice, as the Little Mermaid has the most enchanting voice in the world. The witch warns the Little Mermaid that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body, yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives. 
​
(The Mermaid will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam upon the waves.)
She agrees, swims to the surface and drinks the potion. The liquid feels like a sword piercing through her body and she passes out. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace, even though she is mute. Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step.’
 
The Little Mermaid Scenario is a game for two players. It is based on the particular pain of not having one’s suffering understood … can you relate? Or is it only me? The scenario features the Prince gazing lovingly at the newly-legged Mer-girl  and paying her compliments. She is mute, but inside she is in agony. Two kinds of pain – physical pain and the psychological agony of not being seen. The Mermaid player will use their voice and body to communicate their agony while the Prince player is unmoved by it. Imagine you are watching a film where we see the ‘subtext’ or ‘inside a character’s head’, invisible to the outside world and other characters.
 
I aim to teach the Dark Clown work with maximum care and clarity and course participants learn to travel from the light (Red Nose Clown) to the Dark in a step-by-step process. For all the tragedies of the pandemic, the plus-side of teaching online is that it prompted a finessed breaking down of the craft involved in preparing for the Scenarios. I set specific tasks and people try them in break-out rooms, building a muscle memory for the skills involved.
 
First, the Prince player needs to work on delivering lines such as ‘You are so beautiful. Your face, your hair. And yet you are silent. Oh how I’d love to hear your voice. I can imagine it trilling and cascading, the way your hair cascades and coils. Ah, How sweet it would be to hear you sing.’ - all this must in a poetic, longing, legato way. As with the The Beloved scenario (I’ve not written about The Beloved scenario on the blog yet) - there must be no complaint, no sarcasm, no reproach, no cynicism, no blame, no emotional blackmail. The Prince is a support role – it is the Mermaid where the Dark Clown work proper happens.
To advance the game, The Prince can move on to: 'How it would please me if you would dance with me. Come, let's waltz! A fast and beautiful Waltz.'

Here is the preparatory step for the Mermaid player. The conceit of the exercise is that the Prince will not see or react to anything you are saying while you job is to express the agony you are feeling. ‘It hurts!!!! It burns. Knives driving through my feet!!! Oh God oh God. Even just standing here hurts. I. AM. IN. AGONY.’ Then, to raise the game: ‘Can’t you SEE? I can't speak but inside I am screaming. SCREAMING. Agony. Agony.’ Of course using all the Dark Play strategies of contrast, variety of timbre, managing the audience’s physiology (‘laughing gear’) etc … 'No don't make me dance! Please - aiiiiiighhhhh! But you can't hear me can you? Searing hot knives! '

The two players are then set to improvise / play the scene.
 
People on the course found it (pardon the pun) painfully funny (Troubled Laughter).
 
*Side note: This is my favourite fairy tale. Which somehow mystifies me. Was I inspired by her resolve? I felt very ineffectual and cowardly as a child (I feel fairly much the same now, actually). Was I inspired by her ability to withstand pain? To transcend pain to achieve her goals (walk like a human)? Or was there something I deeply related to regarding her muteness - that her colossal suffering would go unseen? As a very anxious child, it seemed that I was often out of step with the normal world, witnessing how others all seemed to be coping unperturbedly, while I was invisibly trapped in some ghastly alternate realm.

 

​Trigger warning: pain, torture and some rather pernickety explanation. 
 
One of my Dark Clown scenarios is called 'The Menu' (subtitle, or 'For Her' - think of Don Draper-era gentleman ordering for his date).
 
Before we begin, some elements are put in place* – see below – but for a better reading experience I’ll get straight into the setup now.
 
It’s for two players (any gender). 
Imaginary Circumstances: I invite the players to imagine they are two prisoners in an anonymous torture realm. They are put in the ghastly predicament of being forced to choose the day's torture for the other. 
A loud voice (me, in the role of Controller): ‘The first prisoner will choose for their comrade. NOW!’
Prisoner One pants or grizzles with anxiety** Choices flash before their eyes, each one more horrific and problematic than the other.
Prisoner Two has the predicament of high-stakes uncertainty (I instruct frequent clocking of the other player – the head-turn of the clock acts like a laughter nudge). 

Prisoner Two is aware that their fellow is in charge of their well-being (or rather, unwell being). 
Prisoner Two is also aware that under duress (humans do not think well or kindly under duress).
(Both prisoners are also aware that is something is chosen that is not sufficiently dreadful, then something even worse will await them.)
Hesitations, false starts, stutters can all be used rhythmically.
Prisoner One finally chooses something. 
Prisoner Two makes a yelp or other involuntary sound. Their job is to really imagine what that would feel like, and to make a sound of anticipating that pain (and indignity sometimes). I just did this on a recent workshop and the player whose partner announced ‘stoning’ – portrayed such shock. Her eyes widened ina compelling disbelief and something happened to her body almost as if she had just been stoned.
Two must then make a transition from this trauma, must somehow put this abomination aside because now they have something equally? more? dreadful to do. They must now choose a torture for ‘Prisoner One’. 
Two is so distressed they cannot think (but the performer inside is making rhythmic sounds of distress to work the audience's laughing gear). 
Perhaps they take too long (the delay is now excruciating for ‘Prisoner One’.
Perhaps the Controller yells: ‘Taking too long, Prisoner One, choose again!’
Problem for both of them. One’s reprieve is nothing in the face of having to again contemplate a torture choice for Two. 
A squeal from number Two. The tension is held or ramping (perhaps the prisoners play a call response rhythm of contrasting sounds), stretching out the suspense for the audience.
Depending on the sensing of the impulse and the moment, perhaps at this point One shouts something very horrific (some maiming may be involved).
Or, perhaps ….
Prisoner One (coping with the stress and regret at having already traumatised his fellow, continues to painfully dither).
Unable to deal with the stress of waiting any longer to hear their own torture (and secretly, attending to the need to adjust the audience’s breathing with a softer timbre), Two might, from the corner of their mouth, begin to urgently whisper: 'Choose, choose something ... Just choose!' They have been forced in to the ghastly and absurd predicament of urging the other to name their next harming.
 
About two minutes playing-time is plenty for this exercise.
 
‘Thank you!’ I will say. ‘Well done, well done. Step out of it, everybody have a shimmy. Good work.’
In an in-person situation, I will ask the audience (the watchers of the exercise) to hug the players***  I also prompt the players to hug each other. 
 
*Preparation for this exercise
Of course, there is the preliminary training leading up to this: bodies prepared, voices prepared, key comedy craft given, Dark Side Play on a number of the Marginalised Emotions, my talk on the aims, origin, inspirations and ethics of the work. The possibility (rare, but possible) of upset explained and normalised and Upset Procedure put in place. 
 
For Red Nose Clown I transparently let people know that I may be speaking to them in the role of grumpy Clown Professor. I explain the source of this (the Lecoq/Gaulier pedagogy) and explain some of the many reasons for this: to help them feel some of the useful alertness that is useful for the clown, to keep them I the present moment, to stop them going into their hears or the future and theyebylosing contact with their flexible, expanded physicality and contact with their audience etc, etc. In the Dark Clown work, I explain that I will play the role of a Controller. I remind the watchers that they are to be themselves (although the Dark Clown player will be looking at them as if they are an invited audience in the torture facility, and responding to them from within that reality). I also let people know that I speak in tow voices - the Controller, but also in a voice where I am offering side-coaching in my role as course leader or feeding in text.
 
I put a pre-step in place where people name some types of torture. Sadly there are many. Humanity, it seems, just loves to inventively hurt its fellows. I suggest a number of methods I have researched. 
 
I also check whether participants have any no go areas e.g. ‘You can do anything but don’t do anything to my teeth.’ Or ‘Anything, but nothing to do with fire.’ Consent is important and this step can take some stress off each player.
 
Always before beginning, and I put this in place when I work with Red Nose Clown too. I make it clear that a course participant is free to leave an exercise if they feel the wrong level of discomfort. 
 
** see the previous post on this blog the importance of the players’ use of audible breath (among other things) as a way of working rhythm and keeping the audiences’s laughing gear ready and flexible.
 
*** At the start of the Dark Clown section of the work, I give a recommendation for hugging, it helps to soothe the adrenal system. I also acknowledge that those who are hug-averse can offer a bow with hand gesture of thanks instead. I also lead the whole group periodically with an adrenal soothing exercise from Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine work.
 

An alphabetised list of Key Phrases for Dark Clown practice (as part of the 'Clown & Dark Clown Course' and the 'Level 2 Dark Clown Course').
 
Having chosen to arrange this list alphabetically makes this post a bit of a deconstructed Scavenger Hunt - but it all flows together in the room. The Clown & Dark Clown course progresses in a way that is fun and enlivening. There are practical tasks and exercises for each principle and we get there step by step - these principles and techniques become understood and assimilated experientially. The Level 2 Dark Clown Course builds on ground gained and gives more opportunity to play with the Dark Clown Scenarios e.g. this one.
 
A believable verisimilitude of pain and distress
Verisimilitude means a likeness, or a portrayal.
If the clown player looks like they are enjoying their pain, the audience cannot experience the Troubled Laughter which is one of the defining characteristics of the Dark Clown. In order to Implicate the Audience (see below), the Dark Clown player needs to create / present ‘a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress’ (using rhythm, timbre, energy and imagination; using a set of given imaginary circumstances).
 
​Clown/ Red Nose Clown 
There are many different types of Clown, for the purposes of teaching on the Clown & Dark Clown course, I use ‘Red Nose Clown’ as a handy distinction from Dark Clown. (I use Red Nose to refer mostly to the Lecoq-lineage of clown regardless of whether a player uses a painted or rubber nose or different coloured nose or no nose at all in their clowning).
 
Comedy Craft 
This is a collection of principles and techniques (rhythm, phrasing, musicality, timbre, clocks, beats, contrast, repetition, call backs, nudges, alternation, acceleration/deceleration, escalation (snowballing), spatial embroidery, micropauses etc) that can then be applied to generate laughter. In order to have Troubled Laughter, we need first to have the ability to reliably provoke/create laughter. Comedy Craft plus audience awareness (and calibration) is then applied to generate laughter in Dark contexts.
As part of Comedy Craft, I emphasise that laughter is a physiological phenomenon – I speak of priming* (priming as you prime a  motor – see below) the ‘laughing gear’. 

Carlo Boso, Commedia dell’Arte Teacher and director of TAG Teatro di Venezia (in a London workshop circa 1990):
‘It’s easy to make people laugh, all you need to do is to control people’s breathing and their heart rate.’ (nowadays I prefer to say ‘affect’ rather than control).
 
Cost / Palpable cost
In a Red Nose Clown exercise, we love to see the Clown thinking and reacting - for example, when another clown in the scene/exercise is being praised. We love the micro expressions, the tiny momentary reactions or 'tells'* of humanity which the ‘Sad Normals’ (see below) take considerable pains to mask or suppress. In Dark Clown I call this the Cost. The psychological Cost - the visible processing of thoughts and emotions of humanity in extremis.
In class I may well call out as an instruction: ‘we want to see the cost’. With the Red Nose Clowns, we love to see their humanity, their emotions. We specially enjoy seeing this in the eyes: the micro-expressions of pride, affront, surprise, confusion, disappointment or other thought processes. Also in tiny head turns or spontaneous micro gestures, or the breath. 
In Dark Clown work, the audience gets to see how the Dark Clown player responds to a command or predicament where they must make a terrible choice, how they look when they are wrestling with themselves in the moment before they must jettison they dignity, or betray a fellow ‘prisoner’, and how they look when (within the scene) they must live with what they just did for the rest of their lives.
 
Dark Clown as distinct from Philippe Gaulier’s Bouffon work 
Bouffon plays Satire – Dark Clown does not have the luxury to play satire.
Historically (it is said) the outcast had a day of the year to enter the church or village and mock those who had privilege. The Dark Clown does not have the luxury to mock. The Dark Clown is concerned with how to survive the next 30 seconds.
 
Dark Side Play
Once players (course participants) are clear on the aims and parameters of the work – and then on the given predicament (for the exercise or scenario) – with its context and stakes, the play can begin. At this point we are looking for physical and verbal motifs, as well as the player being strategic with rhythms and vocal timbre / breath, space (where possible). Dark Side Play works the Comedy Craft with the Marginalised Emotions in a Dark context.
 
Dramaturgy and implication
There isn’t time on a Clown & Dark Clown course to deal with the subject of Dark Clown Dramaturgy. it will be a course that requires Level Two Dark Clown - but here’s a brief note:
Just as the Marx Brothers films need the breathing space of the lover’s plots, Dark Clown dramaturgies are allowed strategic moments of pathos and poetry. (In the context of teaching, I discourage moments of pathos and poetry because it deprives the student of learning the less-familiar Dark Clown craft. But when organising a dramaturgy for the audience, or in a longer-duration improvisation with an audience in mind, we can certainly go there for a beat or so. Wonderful if the pathos still keeps the audience on the hook, though – take a look at the Seal scenario in the Dark Clown Documentary or consider the dramaturgy for The Maids - i.e. the moment towards the end where one sister is reading the lines of her dying poisoned 'sister' while the audience looks on.) 
 
Enforced Performance: 
For some exercises we imagine a prison scenario – the purpose of this is to Raise the Stakes* to help the release into the Marginalised Emotions. I may also mention Life or Death Stakes.
 
Extraordinary Physiological Response
With sufficient (imaginary, of course) pressure, logical thought stalls, emotion short-circuits and the player can find themselves releasing into a panicked amygdala response, allowing the audience the possibility to witness a  spontaneously-released extraordinary physiological response (a pulsing brow vein, an involuntary twitch or flinch ... ). This is one of the compelling features of the Dark Clown work. 
The EPR is in fact a motif. This is something you can see in Clown, comedy and Commedia work where the performer creates motifs (succinct, repeatable gestures, often combining sound and movement, and aimed to charm the audience or to be a laughter nudge for the audience.) The EPR is a motif of a different flavour, but still designed to create laughter, or prime the laughing gear for future potential laughter.

Hyper-vigilance (one could say it's a physiological state, but I list it as one of the Marginalised Emotions)
Hyper-vigilance is a natural result of fear. It’s when you are highly alert to any movement or sound, perceiving it as a potential source of threat. In Dark Clown work, this replaces the 'complicité' style of eye-contact and responsiveness of the Red Nose Clown. In an enforced performance scenario, the player will give ‘a believable verisimilitude of hyper-vigilance’.
 
Humanity in extremis
Dark Clown is in extremis or trying to survive. It is a more existential look at the human condition (yes some other kinds of Clown can go there too, but usually via moments of pathos).
The Dark Clown work I teach resonates with a life-long personal questions: Come torture or duress, what choices would I make?  When given appalling choices (impossible choices), how does one feel as one continues to exist after whatever ghastly choice was made (under duress)? When oppression is so great that courage is punished by death (or worse) - what are the options? When exactly does one succumb to force? What does the word 'force' really mean? 
 
High Stakes Predicament
Course participants are invited to imagine ghastly or highly constrained / oppressive circumstances in certain exercises and scenarios in order to help fuel release into Marginalised Emotions, using Dark Side Play (comedy craft) in a way that hopefully produces laughter-provoking text or sounds and motifs (including Extraordinary Physiological Responses). (See below for explanation of Stakes)
 
Implicating the Audience
I use the term Implicating the Audience to refer to the Dark Clown practice where the performer or ensemble manage to create the conditions whereby the audience feel that they are somehow 'on the hook'/at cause/somehow responsible/or that they just feel guilty watching/or that their comfort is in stark contrast to the player onstage portraying the suffering. Although all audiences know that they paid for their ticket and walked in to watch a composed performance, they can, via the suspension of disbelief, feel conflicted or shamed in their witnessing and even to a degree, culpable. While no one may actually think: 'Oh my, I must rush on stage and help these people', they feel compelled and conflicted that 'It is not me suffering over there.' 
Allied to this is the Dark Clown concept of Troubled Laughter whereby the audience laughs and at some level feels troubled or shamed or conflicted in their laughter.
 
Impossible choices
As with Enforced performance, or inside an Enforced scenario, the player/prisoner may have to make a choice. We will see the Cost and we will witness Marginalised Emotions, possibly some Extraordinary Physiological responses.
 
Laughing Gear
An Australian expression meaning mouth – but I mean it to refer to the heart, lungs and diaphragm (eyes and mouth/jaw are also important). Key principle: Carlo Boso Commedia dell’Arte Teacher - TAG Teatro di Venezia said (workshop, London circa 1986): ‘It’s easy to make people laugh, all you need to do is to control people’s breathing and their heart rate.’ Nowadays I prefer to say ‘affect’ rather than control. 

Laughter Nudge 
We all show that moment when sitting next to your friend in the serious seminar when they nudge you in the arm or your ribs and they will probably do it again and again. Or substitute an eyebrow raise or mouth movement or just a head turn. And do remember, if your friend was funny, they'd do this at the perfect moments to keep you going or to bring back the game. In the context of Dark Clown work sound motifs or physical tics or surprising changes in breath can all be employed with the aim of keeping the audience laughing or keeping them ready to laugh. In my C-words blogpost I talk about Creating the Conditions for Comedy. When I am teaching I often say the phrase: Creating the Conditions for Laughter, and yes' it's related to 'Priming' see here below. 
 
Marginalised Emotions
Imagine human expression were expressed as a line or continuum. Say that on one side we have the expression we might most often see in the Red Nose Clown, e.g. joy, silliness, loveliness, pride, bashfulness … near the centre of the line there may be grumpiness, crossness, even anger. But what about the other half of the line? Here we are heading for the expressions of the Dark Clown and what I call the Marginalised Emotions – such as: hyper-vigilance, fear, distress, shame, anguish, regret, guilt, humiliation, indignity, disbelief, grief, shock, absurdity, desolation, dread, despair, physical pain, horror, terror and existential dread. (Listed in no special or incremental order). N.B.: No 'emotional recall' is used in Dark Clown work. ('Emotional recall' is a technique used by some Stanislavsky teachers whereby the performer deliberately recalls an upsetting moments from their own life in order to summon emotion – we do not do this).  The Dark Clown work relies on the natural human ability to pretend in a set of imaginary circumstances.
 
Priming the Laughing Gear
Enlivening your own agility with your own heart, lungs and diaphragm so as to be able to affect your audience’s Laughing Gear.
What does priming mean?  (I use it to mean getting the ‘laughing gear’: i.e. heart, lungs and diaphragm nice and flexible/available; but this following definition refers to its everyday meaning of readying an engine)

1. Fill the oil pan with a quality Break-In Oil.
2. Prime the system by turning the oil pump with a power drill and Priming Tool, or with an external Engine Preluber.
3. Rotate the crankshaft by hand, while priming the system. This ensures that oil gets around all the bearings and into all the internal oil passages.

 
*Raise the Stakes 
Definition of 'raise the stakes' from the Collins English Dictionary:
a. to increase the amount of money or valuables hazarded in a gambling game. b. to increase the costs, risks, or considerations involved in taking an action or reaching a conclusion. the Libyan allegations raised the stakes in the propaganda war between Libya and the United States.
 
Ridiculous (a judicious use if the ridiculous)
Adding a skilful touch of the ridiculous to a ghastly situation is a useful technique to surprise the audience into Troubled Laughter. For example, in the Buzzer exercise (an image here), players employ clocks and beats and express the appropriate Marginalised Emotions (strategically, using comedy craft and with audience awareness). It’s helpful/an extra level of skill to add something ridiculous - e.g.: a feigned electric shock, presented believably, yet which causes the Dark Clown player to spin in a circle like a wind-up toy. Another example: in the setup for The Somali Pirates scenario, I give the players a back story where there is a small past niggle between the two hostages. They are instructed not to play this niggle, but to allow it to bleed into their reactions to the other within the larger predicament. This layering can produce compelling results – a portrayal of a genuine predicament of suffering, inflected with little micro-beats of flawed humanity – which, once released, can in turn release a further micro-beat of Marginalised Emotion - i.e. ‘Oh no, I was just selfish, in such an awful situation! I feel shame at my own behaviour.’
 
‘Sad Normals’ 
This is a playful teaching phrase to encourage the compassion of the clown performer – this is us in our normal life (in the supermarket, travelling to work etc).
 
*Tell
‘A tell in the card game poker is a change in a player's behaviour or demeanour that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. Sometimes a player may fake a tell, hoping to induce their opponents to make poor judgments in response to the false tell. More often, people try to avoid giving out a tell, by maintaining a ‘poker face’ regardless of how strong or weak their hand is.’ - Wikipedia
 
Troubled Laughter
In the intro into the Dark Clown work proper, I usually tell the story of watching a scene in a show I saw in 1980 (mentioned here) where I first experienced what I later came to call Troubled Laughter. From my book-in-progress: “I laughed, while at the same time thinking 'I shouldn’t be laughing at this’. I laughed with a particular sensation in my ribs and lungs. I laughed with hot cheeks. That ‘shouldn’t’ wasn’t simply the transgression of naughtiness, it was something else. I felt awful and I was somehow glad to feel awful because what I was witnessing was a depiction of an appalling predicament. As much as it was ghastly, it was somehow a relief to sit there and make a noise, to find a noise being released out of me; to give expression to a conflicted response via this rhymical release of the breath, to physically and vocally resonate with the stage action.”
 
If this document raises questions about the way the work unfolds on the course – go here.

If you'd like to support the writing on the book, please go here.

oThe painter Tessa Schneideman (see below) turned to me one night at Desmond Jones' Mime School on Kings Road, Chelsea and said 'I want to keep doing this'. We would meet in the lounge room of my basement flat in Marylebone or in the upstairs room that was her studio in Brixton (see me in the suit in front of her canvases below). She was an astonishing painter, but found the work too solitary and turned to performance. Together with Claudia Prietzel trained puppeteer (now a film writer / director), we formed a company called Three Women.

The mime 'everyman' was ready to be refreshed - with a female viewpoint.

We were doing mime, but a lot of it was clown. 
Brabarella was not a take on the Jane Fonda film Barbarella but the story of Cinderella told in lingerie. If you step away from their purpose-built function, bras are fascinating objects. A front-opening maternity bra with a strange panel shape was 'Cindy's' 'apron, and another light-support bra her cleaning rag.  (As a base costume, we all wore the then de-rigeur black unitards - at the time only available from the Gandolfi Dance Shop on Marylebone Road).

As fairy godmother I wore - ok google is not helping me with nomenclature - it was a thing women wore ('all-in-one'? step-ins'?) that was a bra that carried on down to tighten the tummy and ended in suspender clips for stockings - Tessa's mother-in-law somehow had a copious quantity of them that she donated to us. I had a peach-coloured diaphanous front-closing bra attached to the back of that which I made to flap like wings (the fairy costume I never had as a child!). Tessa as 'Cindy' brought on more 'rags' which, with a strike of my wand (was the wand a rolled-up Time Out magazine?) turned into a gown made of cascading tiers of B cups. A mouse (strapless bra upside down on her head like mouse ears) transformed into a blinkered horse (adjustment of headpiece bra - snorting and pawing the ground). Other lightweight bras were slung around the 'horse' and Cindy galloped merrily off whipping the reins. Claudia made a gloriously dashing prince all in black. Upside-down step-ins whose cups suggested 'puffing pants' and a piece of corsetry on each arm as regal sleeves.

Housewives' Circus. We also did a circus performed by 'Housewives' - yes this was the 1980's when that was still a word. Entrance of the Gladiators played and a roving spotlight set the scene for a parade of three women in aprons and respectively headscarf, hairnet and mobcap. There was stilt walking (two large brooms), a bearded-lady (dustpan brush), weightlifting (wooden pastry roller). A high-wire unicycle act (rotary eggbeater), a daredevil motorcyclist (tea-strainer goggles, round jaffle iron as handlebars. An elephant (using an old fashioned hair-bonnet with attached air-tube as a mask). Saucepan lids were cymbals for a hoover-hose snake charmer. 
There was a magic act where a toy panda was trapped beneath a colander and skewers put through then a disappearing act - using the classic clown trope of clown appearing disguised as a member of the audience Claudia would come forward with her handbag and her 'husband'. One night  at BAC, Claudia brought on pop musician Joe Jackson. Tessa (magician) and I ('lovely assistant') would hold a sheet, held in place by a peg: it was triple- not double-folded, so the 'couple' were disappeared, but of course, after the sheet is flourished away, they were revealed crouching at the back. 

Man, there is a hilarious amount of vintage references in this post!

Businessmen ​began with a dance. To a jaunty/plodding music track, three (almost) faceless figures walked in rhythmic patterns backwards and forwards, flat-on like playing cards. Charity-shop jackets were pulled onto heads and the ties were tied on our foreheads and hung between our eyes in front of our noses. Tiny garden stools were carried in like briefcases, then snapped out in dynamic ways (think a fringe-theatre low-tech pre-envisioning of the business cards in America Psycho), then assembled for an inevitable status game with the seating. After a while a blow-up sex doll was brought on. She was naked but for a spiral bound secretary’s notebook covering her, erm, lap (remember short-hand, remember stenography?). There is nothing achieved and no real meeting, but the men use the secretary's listening** for a long winded word salad riff ‘My wife doesn’t understand me. Stand doesn’t wife under my me? Under-wife my stand. Stand me under my wife!’. Phones start to ring. From pockets come phone receivers with curly cords (1980, remember?!). The ‘men’ are in a cat's cradle, choking as a cacophony of ringing grows. 

Three Women performed in Art Centres up and down the UK, toured to Holland, performed in festivals in Denmark and Spain and on British Council tours to Germany. We won an Edinburgh Festival Fringe First for 'High Heels', performed in the London International Mime Festival. Other shows were 'Follies Berserk' (a satire on women in popular performance) and 'Clotted Cream' which featured the ground-breaking piece 'Wounds' directed by the remarkable Hilary Westlake.

* Sadly Tessa's bold and creative life was cut short. I owe her so much. I wish I could find more of her paintings online. You can see a couple of her canvases here below behind me in the piece Businessmen.

** I recently re-watched My Fair Lady - Professor Higgins asks his housekeeper Mrs Pearce 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' (zero cut-away shot for Mrs Pearce's eye-roll - I joke - there would have been no eye-roll, not even the faintest glimmer of an eyebrow lift. Mrs Pearce could not risk anything other than obedient indulgence - her livelihood depends on humouring as well as serving).

#clown #feministclown #womenintheatre #mime #DesmondJones

In 2018, I had the joy of leading a Clown & Dark Clown workshop in Oporto, Portugal. The venue was the basement of Campo Alegre Theatre complex in Oporto. I think the building qualifies as a piece of  Brutalist architecture. These courageous souls signed up for the experience.

We found ourselves in a concrete bunker, in the basement of the building, several flights down. While offering an atmospheric 'backdrop'/environment, the space was also a blessing in that it had a spectacularly high ceiling, and, ingeniously natural lighting (windows very high up), so there was room for the sometimes intense energy of the work to disperse.

It was a sentimental journey for me as the theatre above had, in 2003, been the home of the Enforced Performance production of The Maids. I mention Enforced Performance in a number of places on this blog  - you can use the categories under the ko-fi bit on the right, or you can take a look at this post.

You can also see the amazing Ines Lua who played 'the prisoner playing the role of Solange' in the 2003 production of 'The Maids'. Ines is fourth from the right in the image above.

Since 2020, due to the global pandemic, I have been delivering the Clown & Dark Clown course online.  There is much joy in teaching a group that includes participants from Bangalore, Costa Rica, California, Uruguay and New Zealand. I have found many pluses in the adaptation from the studio space to the Zoom-room. I have invented new iterations of the exercises, explored new scenarios and discovered that we can still clock and implicate online.

There are minuses on not having a physical 3-D shared space, but, on Zoom, we still have light-giving windows and the energy can still flow between us. Plus, the Marginalised Emotions (see the footnotes to this post, or scroll down the Categories on the right) might perhaps be more in need of a workout than ever.

As a small girl, I read a Grimms' Fairy Tale where a fox helps a maiden (as kind as she beautiful, you know how it goes) then asks her a boon in return.

The maiden was in trouble (High Stakes). Saved by the fox, she is grateful to him and thanks him kindly. The maiden experiences a moment of respite, a sweet moment to exhale.

When the fox makes his request, she, being a good and kind maiden, is more than ready to grant the boon.

That's until she hears the fox's request:

'Cut off my head and my paws.' 

... I can still remember my seven-year-old breath and brain being stopped by this benumbing horror.



The nice and kind maiden is locked into an impossible choice, a High Stakes Predicament. Bound by good manners and kindness (her USP, the defining code of her identity) - she is especially conflicted by the thought of picking up the axe and causing bloody and irrevocable harm.

​In the story version I read as a child, the fox does not explain he is a Prince under a malign enchantment, who will be liberated by this action. This is a good exemplar, by the way, of the principle I impress on people during the Buzzer exercise: if the guard in attendance gees the prisoner along, then the person playing the prisoner loses the extra psychological pressure to make a decision (or knee-jerk reaction) against their own will, values and instincts. With sufficient (imaginary, of course) pressure,  logical thought stalls, emotion short-circuits and the player can find themselves releasing into a panicked amygdala response, allowing the audience the possibility to witness a  spontaneously-released extraordinary physiological response (a pulsing brow vein, an involuntary twitch or flinch ... ). This is one of the compelling features of the Dark Clown work. Remember how in a Red Nose Clown exercise we love to see the Clown thinking - for example, when another clown in the scene is being praised? We love the micro expressions, the niche reactions or 'tells' of humanity which the Sad Normals take considerable pains to mask or suppress. In Dark Clown I call this the Cost. The psychological Cost, the visible processing of thoughts and emotions of humanity in extremis.

I had been nursing this scenario for a while - and was delighted to find an opportunity to inaugurate it recently. On the July Level 2 Dark Clown course we only played the fox's role (although this scenario could give play-possibility for both fox and maiden).

The fox has the predicament of begging for harm to be done to him. It's a High Stakes predicament for the fox - his request is urgent. He needs to be decapitated to be free ... plus, maidens in need of help in a dark wood don't come along every five minutes. The fox has the constraint of not shocking or alienating the maiden; he must suppress his agitation and make his insane request sound doable and reasonable. If he were to get short-tempered, he would have reduced his chances of success significantly and would need to work hard (good play-possibilities to explore here) to gain back lost ground.

The maiden experiences the horrific conflict of being good and true and compliant, balanced against the prospect of causing atrocious harm. With no maiden player, the fox plays to the audience, who get to experience this dilemma as the maiden might.

Once players (course participants) are clear on the predicament, context and stakes, the play can begin. Remember that at this point we are looking for physical and verbal motifs, as well as being strategic with rhythms and vocal timbre / breath in general (Dark Side Play)

Similar to The Beloved Scenario, there must be no blame or blackmail on the part of the fox. A Fairytale Fox Dark Clown scene might go something like this:

'I helped you out of the forest ... so, now, chop off my head and paws.

Please. 

Did you hear what I said?
Just ... just ... whhht whhht 
... whhht! 


... Ok, look. See that tree trunk over there? Mmhmm? No, the one to the left of that. Yes! Ok.  See the axe?
It's O-Kay! ...
Just ... just ... (urging with an upward and over gesture of the eyes and head) just get it and ...
and ... you know ... 
whhht whhht ... whhht! 

Look, I'll shut my eyes ... Look, they're shut.
It's ok ...

(with eyes closed or one eye cracked)
Are  you doing it? Are you?
Quick now ...
whhht whhht whhht! Now! ...
(squeezes eyes shut and braces)

...

(opens eyes fully, reacts to inactivity of audience / maiden)

Look, please. Honestly, ​I'd do it myself but ... look ... (waggle paws) ... paws! You see! You see, I can't ... can't actually hold ... can't ...

Ok look, I can get the axe for you, ok?

Ok.

Ok I'll bring it to you ... '

The fox hops over to the tree trunk (good rhythm), with effort (3 tries),  prises axe out of the tree trunk, making little effort sounds, finally has the axe in his jaws and, after a little balance difficulty: 

whoah whoah woah

(lazzi of balancing the heavy axe)
... he brings the axe back in his mouth.

'Ere ... Ere ... Aake eee ashhe ... aake the ashhe. Chrom ma mouff ... ma mouff. 'eah.
Eee ashhe ... Aake it! Aake it!'

etc ...

​Have a look of these gorgeous Maiden and Fox images - relevant to the Alchemy of Archetypes course, too!

Nigerian writer Elnathan John , when asked ‘You have a reputation as a political satirist. Has your writing ever landed you in hot water?' said: ‘The sexy answer would be to say, ”Yes, it is dangerous.’ The real answer is ‘No.’ The tragedy is that people are so numb. Satire depends upon people’s ability to feel or respond to shame. We live in a post-shame world. There is no political shame. The president can say whatever comes into his head and walk away. There is no shame to make people act here. When you write satire, the worst that can happen is that people laugh it off.’
In The New Review The Observer 03.04.16 Q&A 
 
I wish satire could bite hard enough to affect those high up in power, give them a new perspective, to awaken their hearts towards justice, to point them away from inflicting suffering on others or denying or dismissing the suffering of others.

Satire can be elegant. A bold concept, clever keen language, well-articulated reversals. A single satirical cartoon can awaken awareness of an issue. Or even be a channel for emotions. I am thinking of a number of cartoons involving a weeping or violated Statue of Liberty some few years back.

From time to time people ask about the difference between Bouffon and Dark Clown. I was electrified when I first saw Philippe Gaulier leading a class on Bouffon. He walked amongst the course participants, their bodies made strange with hoods and stuffed clothing belted into place and huddled in to a choric clump. Philippe stood there tickling the tops of their heads to help them relax their surface tension and find the requisite sweetness which would allow them to thrust metaphorical daggers into the 'beautiful people' watching them.

I realise in retrospect my character, Muriel from 1984 show 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'* had aspects of the Bouffon about her, but not completely so - she was too kind hearted to skewer her audience, instead the statements she made at the end of the piece were more a kind of tough love - she had an ardent message to impart, a wake-up call rather than a shaming. 
 
This site nicely articulates Bouffon, quoting Lecoq: “The difference between the clown and the bouffon is that while the clown is alone, the bouffon is part of a gang; while we make fun of the clown, the bouffon makes fun of us. At the heart of the bouffon is mockery pushed to the point of parody. Bouffons amuse themselves by reproducing the life of man in their own way, through games and pranks. The parody isn’t directly offensive with regard to the public; there is no deliberate intention to mock—the relation is of a different order. Bouffons come from elsewhere.”
Jacques Lecoq  – “Theatre of Movement and Gesture” 2006 (Trans. David Bradbury)

The site's writer then goes on to say that what Gaulier taught was a 'stripped back, purified version of Lecoq’s Bouffon style'. From the class notes of Aqueous Humour's Artistic Director Tom Hogan: “making the beautiful people laugh is the weapon and its aim is to kill by asphyxiation in the laughter or by turning the joke so that they realise that they are laughing at themselves and in the horror of their reflected image they have a heart attack and die”.

Tom Hogan goes on to say: “We came to the understanding that the Bouffon represents the outcast, the one who fails to uphold the social etiquette expected from an integrated and fully functional member of society. They speak for the excluded, the shunned, and untouchable: those that we ignore because of our embarrassment and guilt. We realise that our position in society is upheld by those we consider to be lesser or greater than ourselves. Bouffons challenge our position in society through parody and satire, holding up a mirror to moralising, judgmental, social airs and graces.”

Though admiring Bouffon, I felt my attention called to not just the outcast but the oppressed. I was inspired (as frequent visitors to this blog will know), in 1980, by a scene in Pip Simmonds' unforgettable and disturbing production 'An die Musik'. Later a scene in Lumiere and Son's Circus Lumiere added extra resonance to the feeling of 'implication'.  The work I do under the title of Dark Clown has other, non-clown inspirations including George Orwell's 1984 and Sydney Pollack's 1969 film 'They Shoot Horses Don't They?' - works which portray humanity in extremis.

The Dark Clown work I teach resonates with a life-long personal questions: Come torture or duress, what choices would I make?  When given appalling choices, how does one feel as one continues to exist after whatever ghastly choice was made? When oppression is so great that courage is punished by death (or worse) - what are the options? When exactly does one succumb to force? What does the word 'force' really mean? 

The work I do under the title of Dark Clown provides a way to witness humanity in extremity. For the Dark Clown, playing satire is an impossible luxury.

Although compelled in many ways by Bouffon work; as a theatre maker in the 1980's, touring small scale venues, I could not, personally, see my way to being too scathing towards the people in the audience who had actually made their way out to a small Arts Centre to watch an evening of niche, fringe, physical theatre. 

Dark Clown (especially in the Enforced Performance scenarios) provides opportunities to witness. The Dark Clown as a prisoner in an Enforced Performance scenario allows an audience to see the cost of making an impossible choice under duress and the self-reflective horror and shame and indignity of carrying on existence after such a moment. 

Historically, the Bouffon had a day of the year to enter the church and mock those who had privilege. The Dark Clown does not have the luxury to mock. The Dark Clown is concerned with how to survive the next 30 seconds.

Over time, scenarios not dependent on an Enforced Performance predicament have emerged. The Seal or Eco-horror scenario must be played with a sweetness of approach, similar to the Bouffon but the player cannot follow it up with a spit or the puncture of an insult. The Seal dies slowly, and apologetically in front of the audience. Dramaturgically, taken as a whole - performance and presented predicament - the piece serves as critique, similar to the function of satire, but in the playing of it, satire or mockery must not be employed.

I am interested in giving the performer the experience of embodying Marginalised Emotions and allowing the audience to witness them. 

I celebrate those doing Bouffon work. Audiences get a tremendous amount from the form. And I salute satire. This post is dedicated to making a distinction between the forms.
 
One Clown & Dark Clown Course Participant wrote this, which captures the distinction nicely:
 
‘Regarding Bouffon - I saw a few similarities with the Dark Clown in the seeing humour through pain ... from what I understand, the Bouffon was created as a survival method almost, where people with disabilities and deformities would have normally been persecuted, so to escape that persecution they created characters to make their persecutors laugh, and made them laugh by cleverly parodying their persecutors. The Dark Clown is more desperate and seems to come from a more life & death situation. The main difference I see is that where the Bouffon parodies, the Dark Clown implicates.'

This person went on to say: 'The Bouffon makes you laugh without realising you may be laughing at yourself. Whereas the Dark Clown makes you laugh knowing that you really shouldn't.' 

I would like to finesse that final statement - done correctly, in Dark Clown work, the audience laughs but can still see the horror of the predicament. They get to witnessing themselves laughing in the presence of a dire predicament. The Troubled Laughter the work aims at is not the snigger of transgression, it is a sound-making while witnessing. A sound which is surprised out of the audience by adept rhythm-work and comedy craft (and sound dramaturgy). When laughter happens, the Dark Clown performer swivels their face to clock the laugh, and responds (from within the reality of the portrayed situation) with an added level of shock / fear / alarm / horror / disbelief - done correctly, this allows the audience to experience a feeling of being Implicated (due to the phenomenon of 'suspension of disbelief' they feel at cause, they feel an agency in the suffering of the Dark Clown. 

Going back to Elnathan John's quote at the start on this post ... regrettably, It seems that we have many in power at the moment who are immune to feeling shame.

However, there are many of us who daily witness or contemplate suffering, and find it troubling, but who often find ourselves with no time or dedicated outlet to do anything with it except put it to one side as we get on with our day.** Today, at the end of a Level 2 Dark Clown Course, a practitioner who works in the field of Social Services mentioned his gratitude for the work. In the course of the work, the trauma of a badly treated child is kept 'at arms length' and for professionals in the field, the risk is that 'empathy is blunted'. Having opportunity to embody the Marginalised Emotions, provides a kind of grounding, they said, an experience less fatiguing than keeping the emotions at bay.

Most of us want to keep the feeling of shame at arms length, it's a natural impulse. One of the character-forming and ego-reducing effects of clown training is to jettison resistance to the emotions surrounding failure. The day I realised: 'Ok, being in the 'bide' is somewhere I have been before', it left me free to carry on. It gave me courage without bravado, dignity in being ok with having no dignity.

I doubt many world leaders would ever enrol on a clown course - but in the meantime for those of us living with the inequities they create and sustain, perhaps Dark Clown might provide us with a bespoke moment to honour the uncomfortable emotions.

* No relation to Alain Resnais' film - screenplay by Marguerite Duras.
​** Of course there is tireless petition-signing and donating and of course many courageously devote themselves to activism.

In the post Resisting Vulnerability, I quote a course participant:

'One other idea I find extremely useful is that emotions like anger and resentment have the potential to be obstructive. In the workshops we were steered away from anger, self-pity, indignation etc. in favour of less defensive emotions like shame, sadness, despair ... Knowing that the territory of slightly more egotistical or aggressive emotions is liable to put up a barrier between the performer and the audience, to create antagonism, rather than letting vulnerability build pathos and evoke empathy, is invaluable.'

I have been listening lately to Brené Brown's Podcast: Unlocking Us. In the episode I have just linked, Brené speaks about using awareness of Shame as a useful step for white folx to avoid any reactivity which may arise during discussions about racism. Brown mentions the value in being able to recognise the symptoms of shame - the hot cheeks and the tunnel vision and the sweating palms. And then Brown gives some handy mantras to reframe thoughts which otherwise risk to get channelled into reactivity, defensiveness, denial and blame.

Generally in life, we normally try to escape uncomfortable emotions. The Dark Clown work has an exercise where course participants do what I call Dark Side Play, where they do a kind of Lazy Susan exercise (an inner circle facing an outer circle). (The outer circle does the exercise and rotates to a fresh partner after each turn.) Those doing the exercise are all given a Marginalised Emotion* to portray (to pretend into). The 'do-ers' have three aims 1/ to create 'a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress' 2/ to employ as many of the comedy crafts as they can remember to employ in the service of 3/ making their partner access Troubled Laughter. Emotions worked include (among others) panic, dread, grief and shame.

When I reach Red Nose Clown, I mention proprioception. I may need a more precise word - science friends, please email me! What I mean is when a spontaneous moment of play has created a sound, gesture, timbre, rhythm, phrase-length that has caused laughter. I encourage students (course participants) to develop the hunger to grow the sense-ability to take an inner snapshot so that they can reproduce what they just did. Then it can be tried again, impartially, like a scientist. Possibly, they might employ the rule of three. No harm if they don't - they can practice the 'fail', accept their emotions of the moment, or just be the presence of that new moment (play the ball where it lies) breathe, await the incoming impulse, and do something else from there - it's all good for the Clown. 

This skill, or understanding of being able to feel what is manifest in your body and voice in the moment, this 'knack', once learned in Red Nose mode, can be employed in Dark Clown mode. To create Troubled Laughter, the Dark Clown performer must nurture the audience's responses and seek to stimulate and recreate laughter where possible (by recreating the physical/vocal/energetic moment which caused the laugh in the first place. It is important in Dark Clown that the duplicated sound appear to be reproduced 'involuntarily': 'The amygdala made me do it', as it were.** Why? Because, in order to keep the audience 'on the hook', the Dark Clown must sustain the 'truth' of the situation (by situation I meant the Imagined Predicament).

So there is this practice to emulate, to portray and to do this over some duration - to stay in the discomforting emotions. This is in pursuit of creating the Implication of the Audience and the Troubled Laughter. But it may just be that this exercise has, incidentally, a further (or bonus) value.

When I first encountered Clowning with Philippe Gaulier (alongside John Wright, John Lee, Phelim McDermot, Rick Kemp, and Annie Griffin) - many of us had a crunch moment. It was totally new, this being exposed, defences down, the 'bide', the 'fail', the 'shit in the pants'. The very thing that one normally wishes fervently to avoid. After Gaulier, sometime in the late 80's/early 90's I attended a workshop in Stand-up. Ivor Dembina stomped into the room where all the chairs were stacked and we, the participants were standing about. Ivor said, 'When you make me laugh, you can sit down.' Discomfort, pricking cheeks, a soupçon of fear. But I thought: 'Oh, this. This is ok. I have been here before.' And I was able to work, to try.

It is a strain, avoiding discomfort. One clamps down. Flow is compromised, or stopped completely. Life force is lost. I wonder if the visiting of the Marginalised Emotions - playing in them like so much mud - was the experience a recent Clown & Dark Clown course participant was indicating when they said: 
'What surprised me was how very alive I felt after the weekend with the Dark Clown.'

* A list of the Marginalised Emotions is given in this earlier blog post Rehearsing for Darkness.
** There is another tactic (should the moment be right and not too close to the start of the scene). A repeat of the sound could be done as if, from within the ghastly Predicament, The Dark Clown is 'testing' reality in hopeless hope of getting an answer to the unanswerable question: 'What kind of a world IS this? ... Where my pain is being discounted and even laughed at?!' 

People have often asked what other things are ‘like’ Dark Clown. 
 


Contents of this post: 
1/ My Dark Clown productions 
2/ Key inspirations
3/ Spirit of Dark Clown 
4/ Resonances
5/ What I talk about when I talk about Dark Clown (a reminder) 
6/ Other resonances collected over time
7/ Exploration
8/ Other random thoughts 

Appendix: Video and other publications
 




1/ My Dark Clown productions include:
2000 Hong Kong Fringe. ‘Hamlet Or Die’ 'deals with extremity, pointlessness and pain ... a dark and disturbing piece of theatre built on the sufferings of others.' - South China Morning Post 
2003 Tryfuss Theatre Company, Portugal. ‘The Maids’ - ‘The most meaningful and truthful production of the play I have seen.’ - Pedro Aparício, Academia Contemporâner do Espectáculo 
2005 Robbie Gringras' ‘About the Oranges’ - 'moving and gripping' - Sunday Telegraph 'bleakly, blackly funny.' - Sunday Times I directed this piece – Gringras contacted me to direct after attending the Clown & Dark Clown course – some element of Dark Clown was used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX650lWQZbI&t=6s
2012 Lily served as Dark Clown consultant to Jammy Voo's production ‘Birdhouse’ and ‘Acrojou's Wake’ (neither production was completely Dark Clown). 
2013 – ‘Strange Forces’ at Circus Space. ‘Peta Lily directed show at Circus Space last night was terrific. Clowns like wounded refugees from a post-apocalyptic Beckett play.’ The chorus doing the links between the main acts were Dark Clown inspired.
2016 directed award-winning 'Je Regrette' (aka 'La Poule Plombée') for Sarah-Louise Young - Cabaret meets Dark Clown 'hilariously moving' - The List 
2018 ‘Famished’ for Lost In Translation Circus - Clowns are forced to deliver a cult seminar event. 
2018 Dark Clown Consultant to Hocus Pocus’ show ‘Clown About Town’.
2020 Dark Clown Consultant to Lucia Tong's 'Vegan Gluten Free' at Soho Theatre.
 
2/ My direct, key inspirations were:
A scene from Pip Simmons’ theatre piece ‘An Die Musik’ – you can google reviews for this amazing courageous production. I mention it in this blog post: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/the-comedy-of-terrors-dark-clown-enforced-performance
 
Also, a scene Lumiere and Son’s ‘Circus Lumiere’, Anyone fortunate enough to have seen the clown scene in UK theatre group Circus Lumiere's wonderful show ‘Circus Lumiere’ many years ago will have a good example of the clown having to offer its suffering for the audience's pleasure. I speak about my memory of it in this blog post: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/implicating-the-audience

... other influences:
Absurd theatre contributed inspiration. There is a wonderful scene with a wounded soldier in Ionesco’s ‘Macbett’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbett
Also see the prologue notes to Jean Genet's play ‘The Blacks’, for a good model of implicating the audience. Of course, the work is nourished by the plays of Samuel Beckett who used Clown and Music Hall influences.

Another key influence for me was the film 'They Shoot Horses Don't They?' about marathon dancing in the 30's in America. The jobless, starving people allow themselves to be a spectacle enduring exhaustion and sleep deprivation to have a chance at the prize or simply to have access to food. It's not comic, but there's a scene (like the ‘shooting gallery’ exercise) where Jane Fonda carries her dying and dead partner through a dance in order to stay in the game.
 
In my 2000 production of ‘Hamlet or Die’ at the Hong Kong Fringe Club and also in the production of ‘The Maids’ in Oporto which was set in a women’s prison, I was no doubt influenced by Peter Weiss’ play ‘Marat/Sade’, with its play within a play concept. 
 
1984 George Orwell wrote "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." I am not sure whether it is a quote from his dystopian novel 1984 – but much in the novel is relevant: ‘Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.’ I continue to be haunted by the thought that, faced with torture as George Winston was, would I too call out ‘Do it to Julia’.
 
I saw ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ in my teens – powerful presentation of the obscene absurdity of power and the devastation of war.
 
In my late teens I read Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22’. When I talk about Impossible Choices in the Dark Clown work, perhaps this book had a part to play.
 
Another influence I have gathered along the way is the scene in the second half of the film ‘Saving Private Ryan’ where a German soldier in a hole digging what might become his own grave begins to say how much he loves America. I have now adapted this as a Dark Clown exercise. I write about it in this blog: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/dark-clown-talking-your-way-out-of-your-grave
 
3/ Spirit of Dark Clown 
This is something I feel to really be in the spirit of Dark Clown: Woman paints herself white Sept 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4UMirLcdpM
I wrote about this in this blog post: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/dark-clown-desperate-measures-hard-issues-and-distance
 
4/ More recent resonances that depict Enforced Performance,  Marginalised Emotions but which are not in the style of clown.

Orange is the New Black Episode 5 season 4 ‘Litchfield’s Got Talent’ – not clown but …
‘The prisoners have taken over the prison. On a high, they decide they want the COs to perform a talent show for their enjoyment. The "talents" include singing from CO Dixon, a Mormon-themed magic show from CO Blake, an Italian monologue from Josh (that nobody can understand) and a strip show from CO Stratman. – not clown but wonderful moments of Enforced Performance., people jettisoning their dignity and having to sell themselves out.
 
Again, not Clown but - In ‘Great News’ season 2 episode 3 ‘Honeypot’ there is one scene where a man forced to dance in front of Tina Fey as Diana – specifically the brief scene in which the male character is called Wayne.
 
Anna Jordan’s play ‘Chicken Shop’ begins with a tired, fearful, hopeless woman having to perform sexiness for her pimp. She is trapped in sexual slavery – I found the play devastating.

5/ What I talk about when I talk about Dark Clown (just a reminder)
The Dark Clown work I have been exploring and teaching since the mid 1980’s is not Killer Clown or Scary Clown or Crazy Clown (e.g. The Joker) or Creepy Clown or Bad Clown or Grumpy Clown or Sleazy Clown or Cynical Clown. It is rather a comedy of suffering - where the performer offers up not silliness or cheekiness or joyfulness or other qualities often seen when a performer is in Red Nose clown state; but a range of human experience and expression that is on the darker end of the continuum: shame, horror, terror, disbelief, guilt, desolation, despair. All the indignities and failures undergone by Dark Clown are not (like those of the Red Nose Clown) offered up for the audience’s delight, or shadenfreude, but accessed and presented for the audience to witness and to feel implicated.
 
Red Nose Clown is luckless, hapless; but can, through a creative or rebellious streak convert failure into triumph. Dark Clown is disempowered, under constraint or force and without recourse to any possibility of rebellion or escape and any creative solutions there may be come at a cost – (either punishment or most effectively, the punishment of another) causing the Dark Clown either pain, guilt or shame.
 
A fuller explication of Dark Clown work is given in my paper Comedy of Terrors – Dark Clown and Enforced Performance delivered in 2011 at Bath Spa University. A list of differences between Red Nose and Dark Clown are available on request.
I also wrote material on Dark Clown for Jon Davison's book, Clown - a reader in theatre practice, Palgrave MacMillan I mention it in this blog post: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/the-comedy-of-terrors-dark-clown-enforced-performance
 
6/ Here are some other resonances I have collected over time:
Not all of these are married specifically with laughter creation or with clown.

The harrowing film ‘Funny Games’ is interesting. Michael Haneke has perpetrators who play comedy and a victimised family who play real suffering. It’s harrowing. It is different to Dark Clown though, because 1/ not done as a Clown piece and 2/ because the performer of Dark Clown must play the tragedy and suffering together with the comedy i.e. use skillful rhythm and audience management to provoke laughter. The aim is to create the kind of laughter where the audiences laughs but asks - 'should I really be laughing at this?'

There is an excellent film called ‘No Man's Land’ – directed by Danis Tanović  Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2001 - a Black Comedy about being trapped in an impossible situation - which is very good. directed by Danis Tanović. It is a co-production among companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Land_%282001_film%29

One participant mentioned that I should read ‘The Long Walk’ by Richard Bachman, a pen name of Stephen King. I read it – you may find it possibly interesting for atmosphere…raises a question for me as to why the young men choose to walk (deluded? rather than forced, but once they are signed up, there they are definitely enforced).

People sometimes are reminded of the film ‘Life is Beautiful’ – a film that successfully mixes comedy with a horrific setting – in the story simple human ingenuity overcomes horror. I imagine the audience mostly feel pity, horror and uplift.  I don’t think the film aims at the same implication of the DC work. It seems to me to be more a Red Nose Clown in a dark context. I need to see it again.
 
7/ Exploration
With the students of the Acting Collaborative and Devised Pathway at RCSSD, we explored Red Nose Clown and Dark Clown sharing the same world - very interesting experiment! I wrote a blog post on this: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/when-red-and-dark-meet
 
8/ Other random thoughts – of interest for varying reasons:
 
In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a practice where horrors are contemplated as a way to enlightenment or compassion. Blog post: https://www.petalily.com/blog-dark-clown-clown-plus/on-tibetan-buddhism-horror-and-dark-clown
 
Martin Sherman wrote a play set in Dachau called ‘Bent’.
 
Robert Le Page’s ‘Seven Streams of the River Ota’ has a section depicting artists in a concentration camp.
 
I admire the use of the lack of fourth wall  in Forced Entertainment’ show – ‘Speak Bitterness’. I wonder whether ‘Speak Bitterness’ was influenced by Peter Handke’s play ‘Offending the Audience’ is interesting and obliquely assonant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jRPcQpOlwU
review 2018 https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/14/batshevas-version-of-offending-the-audience-mirrors-our-cultures-fractured-discourse/
 
There is a scene in Italian film ‘The Great Beauty’ where a young girl is forced to do a painting to entertain her wealthy parent’s guests. She paints and sobs.
 
Someone mentioned to me Enda Walsh’s play ‘The Walworth Farce’ as having some kind of relevance or resonances, but I have not read it yet.
 
There is a heart-breaking story of enforced action in ‘The White Hotel’ by D M Thomas
 
The Ernst Lubitsch film ‘To be or not to be’ has been recommended to me – it’s an intelligent satire set in WW2 (but not having the flavour of implicating the audience, apparently) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Be_or_Not_to_Be_%281942_film%29
 
‘Scaramouche Jones’ by Justin Butcher – the titular character is born with a clown-like ‘white face’ and storytells his life. Black humour and Tragedy are juxtaposed. I have not seen a live production.
 
On the nature of human kind’s lack of ‘humanity’ ‘Blindness’ by José Saramago is a very good read.
 
‘Far Away’ by Caryl Churchill has a scene of a fashion parade, which some students have mentioned makes a kind of resonance – the 2020 production at the Donmar (run sadly cut short by COVID-19) captured the Enforced Performance of this moment very well – one of the performers was a student of my Dark Clown work.
 
Concerning the Armenian Holocaust and enforced actions, the film ‘Ararat’ is devastating.
 
Just a beautiful film on the Holocaust by a Hungarian film maker ‘Fateless’ (2005) "Sorstalanság" (original title) – more of an essay on the ability of the film’s protagonist to see beauty and kindness amidst all the horror – an antidote to Dark Clown!
 
Hanoch Levin is an Israeli playwright whose work is existentially bleak – his works are currently only available in a poor translation.
 
Enforced Performance in ‘Goodfellas’ - Joe Pesci forces a boy to dance by shooting at his feet. 
 
People who had not done my workshops suggested the Company Derevo – I only managed to see one of their shows – I am not sure how to describe it (dramatic, tragic, abstract) but it is not what I call Dark Clown. http://fringereview.co.uk/review/edinburgh-fringe/2010/derevo-harlekin/
 
A concise description of the psychology of the perpetrator – not my point of focus with the Dark Clown work but interesting as a philosophical/psychological adjunct (pages 12 and 13) and of the effect of having been the recipient of harsh conditions and brutality on (pages 24 and 25) in Geoff Dyers lovely book ; But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz’.
 
Also on the perpetrator’s mentality – this was the first book that explained to me how an ordinary official could slide into terrible deeds (the banality of evil). ’The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’ by Louis de Berniers. It is set in South America.
 
The Kander and Ebb musical ‘The Scotsboro Boys’ has chilling scenes – the nightmare about the electric chair, the ‘I don’t know nuthin’ song is a perfect example of someone forced to sell themselves out in an attempt to save their lives. There is the element of Enforced Performance, in the bitter Minstrel show which the show uses 'turn(ed) on its head' to point up the horror and ghastly injustice in the story.
 
I am a fan of ‘In Bruges’ but when I saw Martin McDonagh’s play ‘A Very Very Very Dark Matter’, I was very very very disappointed. I dissuade Dark Clown students away from the grotesque and the satirical. I felt this review was spot-on: 
http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/dark-matter-limits-satire/
 
Maguy Marin’s work has resonnances in its depiction of oppression and abjection - expressive, existential  and soulful. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc7D_t5mtTc
 ‘Daughter of Spanish immigrants, her work is a joyful and furious punch in the face of barbarism. Her career and his political positions lead to audacity, courage, combat. The journey of the choreographer Maguy Marin, a vast movement of bodies and hearts, an adventure of our time, immortalized and transmitted in turn by the image of cinema.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8RLTh20Fow
 
There is also the sad true story of North American Native peoples having to perform their cultures in shows for the pleasure of the dominant culture, the people who had decimated their culture. Enforced cultural performance – people were offered the option of performance – or prison. Buffalo Bill hosted the shows. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds explains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRutY6Yy5WE
 
‘Son of Saul’ – not seen yet  By László Nemes. John Patterson in Guardian guide says it ‘abuses neither history, memory, nor the audience itself. That may be a welcome first in Holocaust dramas. He also said that Life is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar, which claimed to look yet saw nothing beyond banality, kitsch and false comfort.
 
There is a depiction of ghastly existential hopelessness for the character played by Gael Garcia Bernal at the end of the film ‘Desierto’
 
Someone recommended Peter Barnes play: ‘Laughter’
 
I included  Brecht’s 'The Baden Learning Play' in Portuguese company Meta-Mortem-Phase’s production of ‘Bertolt’. Wonderful clown vehicle exploring inhumanity.
‘… the interpretation is ‘clownesque’, spiced with erotic interludes. A genius moment is the mutilation of a man by two women, a grotesque scene which brings together the Brechtian art of the parable with the desperate laughter of Beckett.’ ARTES & ÓCIOS do PÚBLICO, PORTUGAL
 
Regarding the embodying of shame 
This is from wikipedia, about the Native American clowns Heyoka: "Principally, the heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviours to mirror others, and forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weaknesses. Heyókȟa have the power to heal emotional pain; such power comes from the experience of shame—they sing of shameful events in their lives, beg for food, and live as clowns. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair, and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are."
 
Recent historic events (continuing proof that 1984 is alive and well)
After the horrors of the Holocaust, The Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s regime, Argentina’s Dirty War… inhumanity continues e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Falun_Gong
‘At a police station in western Beijing, Ouyang was stripped and interrogated for five hours. "If I responded incorrectly, that is if I didn't say, 'Yes,' they shocked me with the electric truncheon," he said.
Then, he was transferred to a labour camp in Beijing's western suburbs. There, the guards ordered him to stand facing a wall. If he moved, they shocked him. If he fell down from fatigue, they shocked him.
Each morning, he had five minutes to eat and relieve himself. "If I didn't make it, I went in my pants," he said. "And they shocked me for that, too."
By the sixth day, Ouyang said, he couldn't see straight from staring at plaster three inches from his face. His knees buckled, prompting more shocks and beatings. He gave in to the guards' demands.
For the next three days, Ouyang denounced [Falun Gong's] teachings, shouting into the wall. Officers continued to shock him about the body and he soiled himself regularly. Finally, on the 10th day, Ouyang's repudiation of the group was deemed sufficiently sincere.
He was taken before a group of Falun Gong inmates and rejected the group one more time as a video camera rolled. Ouyang left jail and entered the brainwashing classes. Twenty days later after debating Falun Gong for 16 hours a day, he "graduated."
"The pressure on me was and is incredible," he said. "In the past two years, I have seen the worst of what man can do. We really are the worst animals on Earth." 
 
 
 
Peta Lily © 2013
Updated 2020
 
Appendix: Video links 
Peta Lily course teaching:
Dark Clown - http://youtu.be/lfipLaQ01AI
Red Nose - http://youtu.be/eO9LncnnRmk
2013 Degree Show at Circus Space – hosted by a Dark Clown ensemble – Strange Forces praised by Lyn Gardner http://vimeo.com/74054956
A Dark Clown inspired show I directed for writer Performer Robbie Gringras ten years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX650lWQZbI
Clowns and Power Symposium at Circomedia 2015  https://vimeo.com/143601205
Documentary: 'Dark Clown; Taking Laughter to the Limits'. The film, made by the remarkable photographer and documentary filmmaker Robert Golden is 26 minutes long and traces the journey of taking a group on the Clown & Dark Clown Course journey, from the light to the dark. https://vimeo.com/203375301
Peta Lily in performance – various clips, unrelated to Dark Clown on my youtubechannel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgEB33xdaSrP-MW7IGJM6g
From my Costume in Performance work at London College of Fashion, this piece The Government Inspector - Myrto Sarma designed and realised this Costume Design explored a marginalised, victimised character. ‘Her transparency and her continuous presence stand for the phantom- spectrum of a dead democracy. Her clothes have the colours of a wound, she has decorative elements of stitches , and ripped tights instead of lace.' Not clown, but a marginalised figure.