In October 2019, something was bothering me. It had been bothering me for a while. Br*xit. Writing this blog post in COVID-19 days, it seems a dim memory, albeit an event which is still unfolding.

I was hired by a Drama School. I had just a few days in which to teach a group of acting students Clown, and to also create a Clown performance.

The teaching was going well and on Day Two, as time was short, I decided to offer the idea that was visiting itself upon me. I would, as ever, ask for the students' improvisations, ideas and contributions but it's good to have a framework to glue it onto. I checked that they had no other ideas to put forward and that they found the idea appealing to play inside.  

Title: Klown-zit. It's a twist on, but not an allegory for Br*xit. It would also follow a recurring interest of mine in the marginal nature of Clowns, by which I mean Clowns under threat.* 

The Clowns are leaving - they have prepared this presentation as their last show, before taking themselves away and leaving us Sad Normals without them.

For the first show-oriented exercise, I divided the group in two and set them each to improvise a Clown Funeral (classic clown trope - there is a lovely take on this in the 1924 film He Who Gets Slapped). I thought I'd choose one improv or perhaps amalgamate the best ideas from either group into it. They were both strong ideas and the two groups had each worked well together. Great, a problem - two versions of a funeral, yes, we'll use them both and make that work!

One boy was ill and absent for a day or two and on his return, I wanted to find a way to let him feature. I asked the group if they could find a cardboard box - or any kind of box. Ultimately, on show night, he was stationed on stage as the audience waited for the show to begin, holding a shoe box, wearing smart black pants, a white shirt and a sombrero.

Sombrero Clown: Hello Madam, would you like to make a contribution?
You sir? Would you like to make a contribution?
All contributions welcome.
Thank you Madam. Thank you there. Thank you.
Whenever audience members laugh – he opens and closes the box lid to ‘capture the laugh’. The inside of the shoe box reads ‘Laughter Bank.’ He holds it like it's precious.
 
A group of clowns enter. They are singing the Wedding March. They carry aloft a bear who has a red nose and big shoes (red trainers on its feet). They gather in a small U shape around the bear which is now on the floor.
 
Clown with an air of authority: Any last words?
Spotted Clown: Words.
Minnie Mouse Clown: Words.
Clown with an air of authority: (a touch long-sufferingly) Thank you. Any more last words?
Pyjama-clad Clown: Yes. 
They turn to look at him.
Pyjama-clad Clown: Oranges … (they nod, with varying degrees of certainty) Dave …  (they nod as before) ... Knees. (they nod - either touched, or relieved it's over).

Another group enter, including two angel clowns – they are singing the Death March.
 
Minnie Mouse Clown: Oh no, we ‘ve been singing the wrong song!
 
They hold a clown aloft with a gurning death face (tongue out). She opens her eyes and winks at the audience as they cross the stage in front of the first group and resumes her death face. The Death March goes into double time. They place the Goofy gurning clown on the floor and circle sombrely. Someone places a rubber chicken on her chest like a flower. The angels throw tinsel. Group two start to cry. They huddle to cry. The first group of clowns, who have been feeling inadequate and wrong, are suddenly also overcome and join the crying circle too. 

The 'dead' clown raises her head - looks at the group. Her interest is piqued. She approaches, then is overcome, wailing louder than them all.

Clown with an air of Authority notices, congratulates the troupe of clowns: 'Well done, well done!' Shakes hands with Goofy, then turns to the audience to address them. He is flanked by Spotty Clown and the Goofy 'dead' clown.

​The Authority Clown:  Good Evening and welcome to Klown-zit.
A colourful cardboard sign with Klown-zit written on it is unfolded and held up.
 
One of the angel clowns who is actually quite curt and bossy takes over: 'People think that Clowns are stupid and can't do anything properly.' This prompts a series of ridiculous routines including spaghetti being cooked with one clown contorting herself into everything from sink to stove to kitchen table.

The curt Angel: ... And some people think Clowns are Scary ...
​PJ Clown has a moment of terror when his shark slippers come alive. He runs around the stage and clings to another clown for safety - when he looks up, Spotty Clown is doing her best impression of the balloon-holding 'Pennywise'. The moment is defused by the balloon being released and farting round the room.

The curt Angel: But mostly people think clowns are just a big Joke.

​The clowns come in pairs delivering lame jokes (one does the set-up and the other
does the punch).
A man goes to the doctor because he has a clown growing out of his neck.
- The doctor tells him, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.” Boom tish
Why don’t cannibals eat clowns? - Because they taste funny. Boom tish
How big is a clown’s hard drive? - 50 Gigglebytes. Bada ba flop
Two cannibals captured and killed a clown. - They made a laughing stock
out of him.
What’s left of a clown after a bear attack? - Just his funny bone.
Clowns can no longer afford their balloons… - Because of inflation.
Did you ever hear about the unlucky clown? - He tried ten times to make
​the audience laugh, but no pun in ten did. Get it? No pun in ten did … No pun in …
 
What is the gooey red stuff between an elephant’s toes?

... Slow clowns.

There is an act that combines juggling and percussion with a metal tea tray.

There is a sweet interlude when the PJ clown and Minnie Mouse do a version of the leaving song from The Sound of Music with the Teddy bear animated like a puppet: "So long farewell, adieu adieu adieu ..."

Authority Clown returns with his henchmen.
So - we bring you all of this (indicating the stage) - music, surprises, colour.
Will you miss us?
Because we're going now.
Klown-zit means Klown-zit.
We've had enough.
We see the way you look at us. We hear you thinking:
'Their hair is too big, their shoes are too big.
Their voices are too squeaky.
Their clothes are all wrong.'

He starts to speak as if in a big tunnel and the henchman clowns make an echo effect.
People think Clowns (clowns clowns clowns)
Are chaotic (otic otic otic)
But it's you, (oo oo oo)
the Sad Normals - (ormals ormals ormals)
You (oo oo oo)
are the Chaos (aos aos aos)
Bringers (ingers ingers ingers)
and 
we 
are going (going going going)

Carousel music starts to bleed in and they make a double circle, beautifully gliding up and down like gorgeous horses on their shining brass poles ... after a few circuits, they peel off and leave, still in merry-go-round mode ...

The lights dim - the Sombrero Clown is last to leave - he pats his laughter bank as if comforting it and hugs it close as he goes.

Applause.

Bright lights up and joyful circus music and the clowns cascade one by one back onto the stage with a dazzling display of acrobatics (and the odd rather lame roly poly). In a line they wave, and lead again joyfully off with kicks and kisses

There often comes a point in a Clown & Dark Clown workshop when someone says: 'It's really dark, isn't it?'

Well, yes.

Once a participant on a workshop blurted: 'But this is Horror!!'

I replied: 'Yes, Horror - but Horror plus the skilful application of rhythm, contrast, timing, musicality and audience awareness in the service of creating, for the audience, the troubled laughter (which can potentially help them question the nature of humanity and which can help them experience a certain kind of catharsis).

When I say 'Horror' - I don't mean stabby-stabby- scariness but horror in the sense of an opportunity to see an depiction of humanity suffering under oppression (force); to see a human-being stripped of dignity and stripped of all but the most appalling choices. These, sadly, are things which have happened, and which, sadly, continue to happen daily in our strange and troubling world.

When I say catharsis...In Tragedy, the catharsis is delivered via the experience of pity and fear, or compassion and dread. Perhaps it goes like this?: pity and fear being experienced by the watcher - and embodied to a degree by this audience member whose breathing and heartbeat are affected by the visuals, music and action of a well-produced Tragedy - through this act of embodiment, might pity and fear move towards the higher vibration of compassion and dread?

Some describe catharsis as purification, but F.L. Lucas (so my friend Wikipedia tells me), believes 'purging' to be a better word. Purging is unpleasant but good (I think of a documentary I saw where monks were successfully treating drug addicts by, as a first stage, giving them a herbal concoction which caused a lot of vomiting). It seems to me that in therapy, the aim is not solely intellectual clarification, but a change for the whole being. Certainly Arnold Mindell and Dina Glouberman use physical movement in their practice, seeing it as being beneficial to bring stagnant or stuck energies into view and into flow. In my experience, the juddery laughter that we aim to create in the audience of Dark Clown work can provide a literal 'shaking up', a shifting of energy. Wikipedia quotes the scholar F.L. Lucas in Lucas, F. L. Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics, p. 23. Hogarth, 1928: "In real life," he explained, "men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean."Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy, the audience learns how to feel these emotions at proper levels." Those last italics are mine - the 'proper levels', I like this. Is the fall of a tear the 'proper' response to horrific events? As I say in the soon-to-be-released Dark Clown Documentary 'Taking Laughter to the Limits', the absurd and obscene events of horrific torture regimes seem to be better matched* by the shocked 'bwah huh huh', the sob-like laugh which is the aim of the Dark Clown work.

It is natural that attending a workshop can bring some fear - and in the case of the Dark Clown work, some people may feel fear once they start to see the depiction of human suffering. Fear that they shouldn't be watching it? Fear that they might fall into it? Fear that they won't be able to bear it? Fear that a depiction of suffering is being associated with laughter? This last fear can arise quite naturally, at an instinctive level, prompted by human decency and compassion. That is why I take care to repeat a number of times that the intention the work is not to laugh at suffering or at those who have suffered, but to provide an opportunity to witness that suffering in a context where laughter is produced - and a specific kind of laughter - not the released scot-free laughter often prompted by the Red Nose Clown, but Troubled laughter. I believe (or hold the possibility**) that laughter (even the Troubled kind) can serve the flow of feelings. The Troubled laughter is not a 'laugh at' but a laugh springing from the helpless witness (we are usually surprised into laughter***) and containing a healthy experience of shame (I recently looked for a list of negative emotions and found this website, where Karla McLaren makes a helpful distinction between 'applied' or 'foreign shame' and 'appropriate' shame). 

The very nature of laughter is movement and breath. The experience of trauma has been linked to the experience of immobility (read Peter A Levin's books 'Waking the Tiger' and 'In an Unspoken Voice'). 

I have faith in the power of human expression (not acting out, but 'authentic' - this can be a difficult word - expression). I believe that theatre practice has the ability to help dedicated practitioners open to more of humanity in general and to their own humanity - in all its complexity.

Recently I have had two invitations to offer the Dark Clown work in a personal development context. Despite my interest in personal development and in the developmental aspects of Dark Clown work and theatre practice in general; that direction is not for me.  I am not a trained therapist and have no appetite to be one. I prefer to work with people who are on a trajectory which goes beyond but includes personal development. When we work within the discipline of and commitment to theatre practice, we realise, or are taught that opening the self is necessary, and that a healthy curiousity and courage to encounter the full breadth of humanity is part of the journey with the work. When leading a Clown & Dark Clown workshop****, I aim to hold the space for the Dark Clown work with hygiene, professional discipline, specificity, compassion, and the joy that comes from courageous play. Plus a healthy sense of humour. Humour for our human failings, for our ridiculous plight. I like this quote: “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” - Mark Twain. And I have long admired writer Kurt Vonnegut, who had known personal loss and pain and who had also survived the horrific bombing of Dresden. He would describe terrible things then leave a line and then write: 'Heigh ho.'


*in the NLP sense of 'matching' 
** thank you Grayson Perry: 'Hold your beliefs lightly.'
*** is this a useful distinction with evil laughter? Is evil laughter a laughter, not of surprise, but of relish, of intent, of geeing the self on to unkind deeds?
**** Dark Clown work is taught at the first level in the Clown & Dark Clown Course – Clown work (openness, rhythm, rules of laughter, audience awareness & audience engagement plus the experience of a shared play atmosphere for the group) prepares the ground for the Dark.  Advanced Dark Clown Courses are in development and will be available to Clown & Dark Clown course graduates.

In my paper ‘The Comedy of Terrors, Dark Clown and Enforced Performance’, I suggest that ‘the Dark Clown is useful, because it provides an opportunity for audiences and performers to engage with some of the dark absurdities and obscenities of this world, when drama and sentiment can fall short of touching us. The Holocaust, Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, and more recent events are horrors of such magnitude and incomprehensibility that we are in danger of numbing out even as we try to contemplate them.’


When I introduce Dark Clown, I always describe to groups a particular scene of Pip Simmonds’ 1980’s production An die Musik, where a performer plays a man in a prison camp dancing for his life. He is humiliated, desperate to stay alive and horrified to see what he has been driven to.  Watching this scene, I had the privilege of being able to both squirm at the ghastly subtraction of his dignity, and also to vividly witness it. Simultaneously I was able to release the pent up energy of my own guilt through this vigorous form of laughter - which at a physiological level shares something with the act of sobbing.

 
Dark Clown is a performance style, not a spiritual practice. It is a challenging yet rewarding work to teach. Because of its dark content and unusual nature, sometimes people become upset and sometimes questions are raised. I have created an introduction to the work that explains that upset may possibly happen and how to proceed if it does. I have also found a way to give the right information and framework for the work, making it clear that the work is best experienced rather than described – we progress towards it step by step. Until all the work has been done, discussion is too hypothetical to be useful. Once the work has been done, most would-be questions been resolved.


It is natural that some people sometimes become upset. 1 the content is dark, 2 the work requires a certain extremity of physicality 3 the work requires an imaginative investment in circumstances chosen to create sufficiently high stakes for the performer to release into the rhythms and states of the Dark Clown 4 sometimes people have events in their lives that get triggered by a detail of the work. Usually a glass of water and a breath outside the room is enough for people to be able to return to the work.


Sometimes fear arises from people’s horror that they might be making light of the terrible suffering of others. And that fear can be manifested in a question or a resistant statement. I always clarify, with emphasis, when teaching Dark Clown, that my intention is not to make fun of suffering or to make fun of those who have suffered. It is my intention to give audiences the experience of finding themselves laughing and at the same time - or a beat later - to feel terrible that they have laughed.

 
But occasionally, a course participant’s emotions surge, and despite the information in introduction – they verbalise a reaction along the lines of: 'but this work is wrong!’ or 'you / I cannot laugh at this’.

 
In these moments the conversation has to become wider still. And last year it occurred to me to mention to a troubled course participant the possibility of a resonance with Tantric contemplation of horror. I found this blog entry on 'Disgust, horror, and Western Buddhism’ – edited here by me (with apologies and credit and thanks to the author - please see the link to the full blog below). There's a preamble then it mentions 'tantric transformation':

 
‘There are two fundamental approaches in Buddhism. One is renunciation…you lessen the defiled emotions …by avoiding the things that provoke them. Then you use meditation to cut off the remainder.

There is a clear Buddhist logic to this; you can understand how renunciation ends suffering by extinguishing negative emotions.

The other approach is tantric transformation. Externally, you avoid nothing. Internally, you don’t try to get rid of negative emotions; you might even deliberately intensify them. Instead, you transform your relationship with them, so that they cease to be problems.….

Again, there is a clear Buddhist logic. If you enjoy everything, there is no suffering.

…Horror (is) as important in Tantra as in renunciate Buddhism.

The key is the realization of emptiness—the fact that things have no inherent nature. Nothing is disgusting on its own account. Disgust is just your emotional response to it. With practice, you can break your habitual perception-emotion linkage.

The most commonly-known tantric corpse practice is chöd. Ideally chöd should be practiced in a charnel ground. There you visualize your own violent death, as horrifying as possible. Then you serve your dead body as a feast for all beings, who find it utterly delicious. Chöd transforms horror into fearlessness, and transforms revulsion for death and corpses into generosity.

Chöd is just the tip of the iceberg. The tantric scriptures are full of horrifying stories and images. Tantric Buddhist art often depicts corpses or parts of corpses. Human bones are used in most tantric rituals.

....Death was taboo in the West during the formative years for leading Western Buddhist teachers. You were supposed to pretend it didn’t exist. The traditional rituals that had made dying a community event were abandoned. Death became a private, hidden, shameful matter....

Resistance to corpse practice is a Western cultural thing. Corpse practice is directly aligned with the essential principles of Buddhism. It is a powerful tool for either renunciation or tantric transformation.’

see the full blog post here:
http://meaningness.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/disgust-horror-western-buddhism/

There is an other spiritual practice that is worth mentioning here, for people who become distressed, or fear becoming distressed doing Dark Clown work.

I came across the practice of Tonglen in a book I read by Pema Chödrön, ‘When things fall apart’. She mentioned that when we suffer, we often make it more persistent and painful by resistance and / or efforting to escape. I was shocked when she advised to breathe in the mental or physical pain – ‘won’t that be harmful to my body?’ I worried. Then I tried it. Chödrön advised to breathe it in on behalf of others who are suffering something similar and to breathe out relief for them.

In this video she advises you can go straight to the suffering of others – breathe it in and then breathe out the appropriate relief for them.

 People report the Dark Clown work is compelling and liberating to play – and often report that it is cathartic to witness.

In the terrible regimes mentioned in the first paragraph, psychological torture goes hand in hand with physical torture and deprivation. People have been called to make  terrible choices, or reduced to the point where under pressure and shock they act out of self interest – we can only imagine their suffering. But rather than numbing out because the horror is so great we can at least see these events, these terrible moments of humanity, the beats of shame and guilt and horror that happened to people whose stories may have been lost or never seen. We can, albeit long after the fact, dignify this suffering by being a witness to its verisimilitude. And just maybe that counts for something. As Rust Cohle said in Series One of True Detective - 'and I will not look away’.


...I know I've mentioned this quote before - it's too good not to repeat.