Here follows my response to a recent request that came to me via the website, regarding a 2015 blog post about working with audiences:

Although I teach Clowning, I also teach a course called Comedy Toolbox, aimed at actors delivering comic text, devising theatre makers and improvisors. I also teach Commedia dell'Arte, Physical Theatre, Mime and (now!) Archetypal Mask.

I have for many years been interested in comedy and the phenomena of laughter. I have a number of books on comedy on my shelves - I have also read Oliver Double's book Stand-Up! I found Robert R. Provine's book Laughter: A Scientific Investigation very interesting.

In my Dark Clown work, understanding of the mechanics of laughter is key.

When I perform I cross-over genres. Since 1999, (and in a 1984 show called Hiroshima Mon Amour - no relation to the film) occasionally earlier, my shows have used/use direct address to the audience. In 1987 I performed with Claire Dowie in All over Lovely. She and her collaborator Colin Watkeys described their work as "Stand-up Theatre.' My shows from 1999 onwards include, in various combinations aspects of story-telling, spoken word, comedy, long-form standup, clowning and physical theatre. One audience member described my show Imperfection as 'non-linear drama'. Dave Spathaky (ex- Ra Ra Zoo Circus Company) who set up the Facebook page 'Clown Power', recently described me this way: 'Peta Lily...is in a liminal world between clown and theatre. She has really invented her own genre.'  Thank you Dave!

I love the craft of comedy and am fascinated by the skills involved in creating and managing audience engagement. I enjoy reading about the business of laughter making, so the work of standup comedians is of interest to me. I appreciate very much that Oliver Double has made a methodical and yet still practical study of comedy. I appreciate his investigative approach - I was struck in 'Stand-up!' that Double had identified that the cultural stereo-typing of old-school style comedians was partly influenced by the environment of the working man's club - noisy, full of distractions and highly social - so jokes needed to be in a vivid short-hand to have impact.
​

 How can I stop laughing, they ask me …

Of course a clown can provoke feelings of sadness, pity and wonder, but, as Philippe Gaulier once said: 'A clown is someone who is paid to make the audience laugh.'

When it comes to comedy in general many professional funny men and women succumb to laughter* during film and television takes - usually (but not always) due to something a fellow performer has done. Blooper reels provide ample evidence of this and I remember watching vaudeville as a child and seeing my parents delight in seeing performers taken by something unexpected in the moment. 

But the clown is different to a comedian. The clown is um, different in general.
​Clowns  operate by alternate rules. They inhabit a different state of mind and spirit.
Whether or not they wear the red nose they are a mask, no?
Even hybrid clown / comedians like Jim Carey or Steve Martin stay in state - if they laugh or smile it's at something happening within the reality of the character /clown they have created - see this Steve Martin video.

Occasionally students ask how they can stop laughing at their fellow 'trainee idiots'. Or at the reaction the audience is giving.
It strikes me that a better question is: 'how can I stay more securely in clown state?'. How can I not 'pop' out of clown state?

One answer: practice.
Spend longer in clown state. Immerse. Feel it in your body. Inhabit it.
Feel the differentness to normality and savour that state more.
Enjoy otherness.
Develop a taste for non-plussment. 

An investigative / trouble-shooter answer:
We are always surprised into laughter - so, once you are back in your chair after the exercise, ask yourself what surprised you ...
Then - see if you can interest yourself in making your wonder greater than your surprise.

Another version of the 'practice' answer might be: stick with training and have a few substantial failures, then you will have gained some more gravitas. It's natural for energy to run high when you are in a playful group and enjoying your first experience of learning clown.

Another tactic - learn to interest yourself in the audience's experience more than you own. If factors conspire adversely, or if skill is lacking, laughter can evaporate from an audience as quickly as moisture in a desert. Practice humility. Keep your stakes high. When doing an exercise - aim to see the class audience as a real audience, not your classmates on the course. 

As the wonderful Avner the Eccentric says in his 15th principle: Be interested not interesting.
Be more interested in what's happening.
Be interested in any audience laughter, not not infected by it.

Be more often in a  state of curiousity.
Use the Buddhist story I mentioned in my previous post - adopt the mental attitude of 'I don't know if that's good or bad'.

Other thoughts:
Which bit of your ego can you release?
The wonderful Jeremy Stockwell says that 'nerves' are vanity. 
Is excitement at having fun something that you can notice, and release?

Cultivate the joy of not-knowing.
Buster Keaton looks other-worldly in this image. Impossible to read his expression as either despair or hope. It's like a face in a Giotto fresco. A divine mystery. Sublime. That's how it can affect an audience.

But as practitioners, we need to be practical, so let's demystify:
Master Cabaret performer, Compère and teacher Paul L. Martin uses this as his clown mantra: expect nothing, accept everything.
I love it - so Buddhist. Contact your inner existential 'one-flavour'.

If the clown is to be a true mirror for humanity, then they should be as well acquainted with despair and desolation as they are with mirth...
Jeremy Stockwell invites his students to think of the yin yang symbol - there is a seed of tragedy in comedy and vice versa.

Clowns have their own thought process, they are sincere at seeking solutions, but ultimately ready to see all possibility. Circumstances can change on a dime.

Hm what about the Clown in  Trickster  mode - well, might it be that they are sincere in wreaking chaos, curious to see the results of their actions...? Tricksters exist liminal-ly - also refusing polarised opinions with their mantra 'maybe...maybe not'. 

About Buster Keaton's deadpan. His parents had a variety act. they played a couple who fought. They told their son to sit at the edge of the stage, expressionlessly. Water would be spilled amongst all the onstage roughhousing. Keaton's father would pick him up by his braces, and use the boy to mop the floor, then dump him back on his seat.

*It's called 'corpsing' in the theatre.

this started as a FB post on the Workshops page  but got big so here it is on the blog:

...recently taught a four day Clown workshop at RADA - wonderful participants and we worked with Clowns delivering text, too.

I had a sudden inspiration to ask them to make their personal Clown Coat of Arms. I did a rough one myself that day on the back of my notes. Today I sat down and made this - different to the first one (I think there are so many different versions I could make).

This in the shape of a star because an actual shield shape is in the vernacular of war and defence, no? The clown works best with no defences. Not defenceless, but flexibly resourceful and responsive - as in Aikido. Like a good facilitator, the Clown needs to be able to include responses. Jean-Claude Audergon - who works using Arny Mindell's Process Oriented Psychology in many contexts including Conflict Resolution - used to say that a good facilitator needs to be like Swiss Cheese i.e. full of holes 'the bullets go straight through'. The aim is to take nothing personally - it's best to take the point of view that even the person taking the 'shot' is just channelling a spirit of the moment, making a cry for an unmet need, giving voice to something that is not yet present in the room. 

Genuis is the clown's genius - I could have equally written creativity or creative spark or intuition. 
Imagination is separately present here - but I see the genius as the plug into the collective flow which we could call Imagination (like Wordsworth's way of using 'imagination' I guess, but funnier).
Equanimity (not having a polarised, strict value-driven point of view*) is in a triangle which looks to me like a visual representation of Avner the Eccentrics advice to put the weight on the under surfaces of the body (something achieved nicely by working with the Hara - the hip area centre of gravity, near/same as? the sacral chakra) - in Aikido, Chi Gung and Tai Chi this gives a flexible stability - a responsive strength, not a brittle state of 'resist', or uncharitable and effortful state of 'in spite of'.
I've already mentioned the value of flexible viewpoint - and best if that is added to a physical Flexibility or agility as well. One of the greatest leaps forward you can make in Clown training or practice is to gain the skill of agility to be in the moment. This moment, now, no, this new moment, no, THIS moment (you get the point).
Failure is a handy word to differentiate the Clown's alternate / contradictory / flexible viewpoint. The 'sad normals' modus operandi (in the main) is to to regret, hide or deflect attention away from their human failings.  When the clown allows her/himself to be seen in the moment of failure - it's an act of generosity. Being able to be with 'failure' - or not place a value judgement on events that might normally be perceived as failure - is equanimity.
Ah how it all overlaps. 
Failure is a moment that, with a bit of comedy craft, can be turned into success. It's an opportunity to show humanity, to release the pressure valve the 'sad normals' keep screwed down.
Generosity could have been love - but the word 'love' is so loaded...this represents for me the fact that the clown is there for the audience, with the audience.

The motto in Latin would be: dignitas indignitas which sounds kinda classy (and has a joyful rhythm and repetition - plus points!) which would in direct translation be: 'dignity in indignity' - but it looks to me less clumsy (also easier to hear - the principle of Clarity ! - see my list of C-words elsewhere in this blog) as 'Dignity in no Dignity.
(no diggity)

*look up the Buddhist story about the Farmer, the stallion and his son. The Farmer met every event with 'I don't know if it's good or bad'. You know how that dreadful thing that happened and how you railed and hurt and wept and then, years later, you are dancing with glee and gratitude that it did happen...? No? Just me?

The Fringe Mime and Movement Laboratory are a small and enduring company of mime-trained practitioners based in Hong Kong, about to celebrate their 30 year anniversary.

Mime Lab, (as they are know for short) have mounted shows directed by the highly respected veteran mime /physical theatre practitioner David Glass, and also invited me to direct them a number of times. 

In 2000, they were courageous enough to invite me to create a show for them in Dark Clown: Hamlet or Die.​ (Audiences were, in the main, shell-shocked: ‘Electrifying…It set a new benchmark for me’ ; ‘hilarious and disturbing’ ; ‘troubling and powerful ;  ‘it was very good….ruined my Friday evening’ ; ‘full of power and commitment’ ; ‘wonderful and awful’ ; ‘I sang along with the prison guard and afterwards I felt so small’ ; ‘we felt so totally implicated and yet none of us got up to leave’ ; ‘horrifically, hilariously fascinating!’) It allowed my thinking and teaching of the body of work I was developing under the title of Dark Clown to develop to a new level.

Mime Lab have invited me back to direct a new piece. I knew I wanted to do something on the seeming rise of phobia about clowns. Also to deal with the hijacking of clowns by thugs. And the sorry fact that daily in satirical cartoons and Facebook posts the word 'clown' is bandied about as an insult. And it's unsettling to see some people in positions of responsibility adopting an air of bluster and rascality as a kind of misdirection - i.e the ex-Lord Mayor seems to want to give a message : 'I am harmless, forgivable'. To make a lame joke - it's giving clowns a bad name. 

But of course, it's more complicated than that. Not all clowns are sweet - they unsettle, their have their roots in the tricksters of ancient times - deceivers, mischief-makers, creators of chaos (for example the  Norse god, Loki). 

Many have written on this subject, and spoken on it. You can check out the Clown Symposiums held by Bim Mason*.

Here is what I wrote a while ago as a short mission statement/preliminary vision' to myself: Coulraphobia (fear of clowns) is on the rise. Who is at risk? What is at risk? When is funny heartwarming and when is it threatening? Can you venture to the Uncanny Valley and survive?  If horror movies make us fear clowns, then who do clowns fear? Thugs masquerade as clowns. McDonald’s ‘enslave’ a clown. Politicians are colonising nonsense. When chaos and unpredictability is everywhere – what happens to the clown? And what happens to the human heart? And if clowns were to rebel – would they resort to mischief or mayhem?

Grateful to Mime Lab and also grateful to fellow theatre practitioners and other valued friends who took time time today to reply to my request for feedback on copy towards advertising the show.

I knew 'Coulraphobia' would not work for the piece as show title in English or in Cantonese. Mime Lab delighted me with the title: The Death of Fun’ Chinese Title: 樂於嚇人 (translates as 'Pleasure to Scare You').

A journalist friend supplied finessing and a satisfying last line for the brief poster copy: 
The Death of Fun
What would life be like without laughter?
The clowns of the world are worried. 
No one is taking them seriously...
Horror meets humour - but the absurd has the last laugh.

A fellow theatre practitioner challenged the 'mission statement' above: '...too many big questions. They're all valid but they feel disconnected: is it about what the clowns fear? is it about them being annoyed that thugs, politicians and mcdonald's give them a bad name by masquarading as clowns? Who is going to the Uncanny Valley?  Also some questions feel like they could relate to the show and others like they're a commentary on the outside world. How do the two fit together?

I can see that there are strands inspiring my original thinking e.g. Uncanny Valley and allusion to political events and corporate power which will serve better as driving the spirit of the piece (external context rather than overt content).

I am aiming to explore:
...a kind of ‘Huis Clos’ for Clowns – an assortment of clowns find themselves gathered together in an unspecified location. A mime clown, a Chaplin lookalike, a Cantonese Opera Clown, a scary masked clown, a traditional western circus clown. Are they here for a celebration, for an audition, for a funeral, for questioning? Or worse? They find themselves compelled to perform: acrobatics, plate spinning, balloon animals. What if they fail? Existential problem – Clowns are born to fail. And if Failure is not an option what is the appropriate punishment? Surgical removal of the Funny Bone?


*Bim Mason’s Clown Power Symposium 2017
1/    https://vimeo.com/202070978
2/    https://vimeo.com/203435027

(you can also see Bim Mason’s Clown Power Symposium 2016 – where I spoke about my Dark Clown work
 https://vimeo.com/143601205)

'The mask made me do it', said one participant at one of the Summer Schools I recently taught.

Again and again, as each improvisation came to a close participants resumed their normal selves with a distinct feeling of having been 'other'. I have seen this happen with the Commedia dell'Arte masks I work with at RADA.

I have been working with a set of eight Archetypal Masks (not like the one pictured, that's an atmospheric photo-collage image) - plus one carnival Death mask. 

In my  years of performing and teaching physical theatre I am passionate about opening up the body to more freedom of and delight in expression. The mask demands more physically from the masked performer (the face needs to be visible, the body needs to harmonise and respond in the moment,  and an awareness of how to use the performing space is important).

But it was remarkable to see how people's focus and ability to mime invisible objects was enhanced by the masks.

I am planning a course in Archetypal Mask work in 2018 - stay tuned to hear about that.