For the RADA MA Theatre Lab 2024 Clown adaptation
of a classical play,
we chose The Winter's Tale. AKA Exit, Pursued By. 

You can find previous Clown Dramaturgy posts from previous Clown adaptations by searching in the Categories (see to the right).
All photographs in this post by @slycatempire

One thing I love about approaching Classical texts in Clown is the ability to reveal the absurdities of misused power (as well as the concurrent pathos of those on the receiving end of injustice). 

Also I love the ability to elevate the lowly characters, and the overlooked perspectives. We featured the sheep, the servants, the baby Perdita, Florizel, a tree (in Bohemia) and The Bear. The Bear's through line culminated in an Anger Management meeting  which Leontes attends.

Double up!
The large cast exigency of doubling characters doubles the fun of stage business as well as amplifying themes and emotions - for example: Hermione's pain; Leontes' Tyranny (and subsequent grief); and the Mama Bear ferocity and care of the plural Paulinas. 

​Set the theme
We began the play with a Country & Western song about a grieving man 'Statue of a Fool'  sung / spoken by the two kings. 

Set the scene
And then segued into an ensemble tableau of Leontes's court. See the image above. Enough time was spent here to enable to audience's eyes to take in the madness and clown genius of all the details. You'll see, on the right, a foreshadowing of The Bear. Missing from the photo above is a found prop (it was not in the room when the photos were taken). One person in the court tableau had chosen to mime fanning the King. 'Can we get a fan?', I asked? A large woven fan maybe? It needs to be big. Someone in the company indicated an electric standing fan in the room. The performer (who was one of the Hermiones) comes from India and she (as did we all) enjoyed the opportunity to depict injustice in an absurd way and, via the medium of clown, deliver an anti-colonial message. The Fan had a cord - 'can you put that over your shoulder'? And then Hermione #2 stepped forward and held it - 'oh, yes! can you plug it into your heart?' As she acted being drained/slightly electrocuted, a bit of Dark Clown suffering was added to the picture. 

Use humble magic
The titular concept of Winter was honoured at a few points during the 50 minute piece with tiny accents of tossed torn-paper snow provided by the framing ensemble - marking moments of weather, or emotion or magic. Our Rock-star Oracle sprinkled some over themselves to add pizzazz in their appearance in the courtroom scene. (In this image below, you get to see the fan!) 

Honour the through line of your props.
​'The fan needs a payoff', I said. At the end, for the miraculous transformation of the frozen Hermione, the fun was brought forward (now plugged in to electric supply) and handfuls of paper snow plumed towards the frozen statue of the double Hermiones. 

Find and love your Metaphors
Find your metaphors and honour them. The Statue of a Fool song presages and adds a bit more oomph to the statue(s) at the end, as well as serving a point on how patriarchy hurts men too. Both Leontes and Hermione endure a process of petrification.

Running Gags
​Running gags are a part of Clown Dramaturgy (they can either serve a function akin to that of symbolism in dramatic works, or simply assist the game of laughter nudges. Any time it was mentioned, the guards thumped their fists on their breastplates and chanted percussively: 'SI.CI.LY!' (later to be countered by Aloaha-shirt-clad guards from 'the seaside country of Bohemia. 'ALL. HAIL.BOHEMIA!')

Neglected perspectives
To continue the point of focusing on the neglected perspectives of the play. We enjoyed having a representation of Perdita as a baby - allowing us to highlight the anxiety over her abandonment. We used a baby body prop - made by the player who wore it - the likes of which used to appear in Vaudeville acts. I also used this prop device in Strange Forces. 
The actor played the baby with a sometimes sassy joie de vivre and sometimes a sweet innocent obliviousness (e.g. babbling a lullaby gently to herself as The Bear appears onstage). This created an effect that was memorable; ridiculous, hilarious, but palpable. Also slightly surreal and sad. It also allowed us to show the anguish of those who came in contact with her (adding a bit more Dark Clown flavour there also).

Double fun
​Doubling the characters brings double the impact (see the fierce four-armed Leontes below) and double the fun (the palace guards) plus a complexity of attitude and response to characters (see the two Hermiones here below). 

Make the pain palpable (and cathartically ridiculous)
​Other overlooked moments in the original Shakespeare text includes the fact that Hermione gives birth in a prison. Cue the Prison Birth Rap (imagine the beat underneath).
Prison birth - The bed was not comfortable
Prison birth - The equipment was not clean
Prison birth - No epidural
Prison birth - Nothing fit for a queen
Prison birth - No Pilates balls
Prison birth - No paddle pools
Prison birth - No whale music
Prison birth - It’s  just awfool

You can see here above the two Kings bearing witness to this (on the right, one sitting, one standing on a chair) - note their individual reactions to the moment.

Shared experience 
I love having all actors onstage throughout the piece (Shared Experience theatre company used to do this to wonderful focusing effect, albeit in drama, rather than clown). It requires a lot of focus from the ensemble during the devising and requires a lot of detailed focus from the directorial eye, but can add the power of choric moments (at one moment, the whole ensemble played Leontes' rage as a thrashing serpentine tail). It also certainly gives more playing opportunity to the clown players not in the centre space scene-play of the moment.

Ensemble means no small parts
Stanislavski said 'there are no small parts'. See the charisma and joy of this clown serving in the courtroom scene as 'Stenographer's desk'. 

Strategic Stupidity
And here, right, this clown serving in the role of 'Tree'. As well as evoking the country of Bohemia, the sole tree underscores the utter aloneness of the baby after the guard who delivered here there (yes we used a Guard, not Paulina's husband as in the original) makes an uncomfortable exit due to the arrival of - you guessed it - The Bear. The Tree character also keeps us invested in the thought that the clowns have decided to stage the play this way.

Follow through your stupid idea
​See here below left: the Shepherd, her stupid son and sheep. The shepherd and her son saved the baby and now we see (below right) the grown Perdita (alongside her baby-self for both fun and Clarity). 
​
The Shepherd's favourite sheep is beside her, although they are indoors. In this scene, after Perdita confides to her adoptive mother both her love for a 'very special boy' and the fact that he is - ta dah! - a Prince in disguise (as a sheep in our clown world) so as not to attract the displeasure of his father, King of Bohemia).

Beats and reactions
​Below - more joy of doubles, plus react, react, react. As Mamet said: 'Beat, beat, beat'. I don't think he ever said exactly that, but that is how the audience follows a story (this, then that, then that), and how the audience understands the stakes and follows the emotional arc of the story. Dramaturgy is built beat by beat. Is that true or does it just sound good because of the alliteration?

​Anyway it's worth saying because many new theatre makers can get trapped at the level of their ideas. How does your stage action play out over the duration of your stage time? What is the nub of your piece and how does that express itself into different threads? Keep us interested using variety and contrast from moment to moment. During the devising process, be sure to keep the mind in a state that's receptive and playful enough to pick up on the running threads. Is something bringing your process to a halt? ... do you need to incorporate something planted earlier? Or skip to another scene elsewhere in place and/or time, or just change mode (i.e. from tight action to a musical interlude?) 

The take on the story - Time, trouble and a moving tableau
Now that's timely (pun unintended but let it stand) - because there is a Time Out in The Winter's Tale that is about the passing of ... Time. 

Here we picked up on one of the statements that was harvested from the Clown Council process - one clown thought that Shakespeare must have been very depressed to write TWT. This Clown Council statement led me to research Country & Western music, famed for articulating heartbreak, which led to the fortuitous finding of the 'Statue of a Fool' song.

One clown states: 
We’re not here to tell you what to do …
We’re just researchers …
We’ve taken this disturbing artifact
And are trying to work with it, understand it 

(By the way, this drops a seed for the philosophical / quasi scientific investigation of the magical transformation at the culmination of our play.)
 
We see another (non-static) tableau of: time passing in abstract movement, the bear eating the dead guard. the KIngs in desolate torment, the Aloha-shirt-clad guards of Bohemia surviving their imprisonment, the growing and maturing Florizel and Perdita (placed edge of frame stage right and left)  transforming as if by time-lapse photography during the scene. Plus a few sheep living their sheep lives.
One actor almost broke my heart here as her sheep as she subtly but palpably moved through the seasons, shivering stoically in the winter because of the shearing (mentioned in TWT as well as our version of the play).

​Sung on a strummed guitar to the tube of Tom Wait's 'Time.' 

Well a king got a bee in his bonnet and his wife pays the price
And his dear son dies because of it all
And there's travel by sea to a landlocked country
Where a bear has a new arrival to maul
And the baby doesn’t cry ‘cos she’s known no other life
A fiancée’s growing up and they will meet
And the storm’s inside your mind and the rain is everywhere in life
And the king has nothing left
But a stack of regret.

​And it's time, time, time ...

Learning how to bear it 
Sadly on the photo shoot we got no images for the Bear Anger Management meeting scene, but here's a snippet of text:
​
Teddy: My name Teddy, I'm a bear.
Group: Rawr, Teddy …
Grizzly: My name is Grizzly
Group: Rawr, Grizzly …
Grizzly: I don’t know why I’m here – I’m not angry, I’m a bear.
Bear Facilitator:  It’s ok, this is a safe space. Remember our motto – anger is Bearable.
Group (nodding): Rawr ...
Leontes (seated): My name is Leontes
Teddy: You have to get up.
Leontes (gets up): ... Leontes, I’m a king ...

After Leontes gets in touch with his feelings and is given advice, someone else raises their hand: 
Bear Facilitator: And you, what’s your name?
Clown stands: Bozo the great. 
Group: Rawr, Bozo.

Funny haha
A funny thing (pun acknowledged) about playing Shakespeare - the clown speeches are not always laughter-provoking on the page. Humour does not age well. The antique phrasing, words and concepts don't easily split the ribs of a 21st Century audience. Speaking of words, in TWT, the Shepherd's stupid son is literally listed as 'Clown' in the Dramatis Personae.
We need to remember that the meaning of the word clown has changed since its inception. Wikipedia says: 
'c. 1560 (as clowne, cloyne) in the generic meaning rustic, boor, peasant. The origin of the word is uncertain, perhaps from a Scandinavian word cognate with clumsy.'
In the Clown Council process (this is the exercise where, the players, in clown state, reflect spontaneously on the original text and it's themes), a few of the clowns protested: '... 'and the 'Clown' isn't even funny!'

Bozo: I’m here to protest the level of un-funny of the character called "Clown" in 'The Winter’s Tale'.
Really he should just be called what he is – the shepherd’s son. It’s a crime, giving misrepresentation
to our trade.
(unfolds piece of paper)
Here are some of the "clown’s" 'jokes'. Which are really just – dialogue.
a/ Prithee bring him in; and let him approach singing.
b/ Comfort, good comfort! 
c/ Ay, by any means prove a tall fellow.
I don't even think that last one's grammatical.

In one rehearsal, the actor playing the Clown, said - does he think he is hilarious? Of course! Seated at the edge, he interrupted this scene by laughing in an inane high pitch after each of these underwhelming phrases. It was a nice follow through of the whole 'clowns approach the text' conceit.

Weaving themes through like a dance 
One more follow through was at the sheep-shearing party scene.  I asked the group for contributions for folk dance music. One person suggested Struttin', continuing the C&W reference at the very start of the piece and the upbeat rhythm of the track made it perfect for a line dance. See here below.

The full Pastoral
​In the image below this - note the shepherd's son's shears at the ready. 

Winding up
It was humbling bringing the piece to a close. These Clown adaptations (as part of the module I lead each year) are written/devised and rehearsed in about ten hours.

After playing fast and loose with certain aspects of the original play and story, I really got to appreciate at first hand how deftly Shakespeare would follow through and knit together all the threads.

We had to elegantly (while still stupidly), bring together all the parties and resolve all the problems and reconcile all the relationships and bring not only the plot, but the conceit of our piece to a satisfying close. 

​Conceit: Clowns encounter a play about rage and regret and loss and new gains, and in their playing of it, show the audience the role of humour and of wider imagination* in achieving it.

* The clowns have empathy for the bears and the sheep, as well as for the humans. Also the clown play holds the possibility for multiple views to co-exist. They can critique Shakespeare's poor or negligent grip on geography (Bohemia as a seaside country), as well as offering the perspective that those in power can absolutely be as stupid as they (the clowns) are seen to be by the 'sad normals'**.

** 'sad normals' is a teaching phrase I use (of course, there is, in life, no normal).

Addenda:

Metaphor and music 
Oh, one more thing - the storm. The harrowing event that causes the wreck of the ship aboard which was the guard bearing the baby. It's a metaphor for the storm in Leontes' mind (mentioned in the song 'Time' and both metaphor and reality of the wide-spread havoc his unschooled emotions have wrought. Imagine this photograph (below) in movement - not pictured is one clown who circled the group and made a leaping pantomime blanche crick-crick-crick crack of lightning on centre front each time.
We planned to use music here, but opted for the splish-splash/wind sound soundscape created by the clowns themselves.

The cohort was an international group and we used, at one player's suggestion, a brilliant Icelandic heavy metal track based on a folk song. This was used in the choric writhing serpentine tale created by the full ensemble that formed in the space at the peak of Leontes' jealousy.
Leontes:
I can see them in my mind’s eye
Making the beast of two backs – without me!
Emotions, feelings! What are they?! I don’t want them!
Ensemble form writhing Jealousy train covering whole stage
SFX: Icelandic rock music
Put her in prison!
Lock her up!
Ensemble chants: Lock her up!
Chant continues as ensemble forms prison scene.

Set pieces
The storm, like the courtroom is  a great set piece. Different to the original meaning of that word is the fact that the clowns use their own bodies to create the special effects. See also the image under the heading 'humble magic' where you'll see The Oracle appearing from behind the flipchart scroll, elevated on the shoulders of the tallest ensemble player. (I love that this player chooses to serve this function while simultaneously playing his role as the young son Mamillius). This seeming ridiculous, chaotic style allows for the richness of layers.
The prison was another such scene, with ensemble members providing physical support as well as restraint for the pregnant Hermiones.

Showing the usually un-shown - the pregnant Hermiones in prison. 

Prop check and quiet individual ​a l'italienne run before the invited audience sharing. 

When I teach the Clown & Dark Clown course it's most often a 2 day course. Occasionally I teach Clown & Dark Clown (this is the course where people learn Dark Clown at the entry level)* and Dark Clown Level 2 over 4 days. In the Level 2 days, we can cover as many of the Dark Clown scenarios as the energy and focus of the participants will allow.
 
I recently taught for the wonderful Escola Galega De Tempo Libre in northern Spain. The participants were courageous and full of fun. Many Scenarios were beautifully explored.

I have written before about the Consumer Guilt scenario. One participant was both adept with the mechanics of the tasks and also available to the emotion of the moment, that the exercise brought some sublime pleasure/catharsis to those of us watching. 
 
At the start, he registered high stakes of the predicament/dilemma (coming specifically clean about all the items one owns - the simultaneous needing to be comprehensive in direct conflict with the realising that each added item one also enlarges the possibility of punishment). He also accessed and conveyed the obscenity of possession. He accessed (released into) the shame and contrition, apologising to the metaphorical grandma. He opened to the upper space with weeping and regret. When prompted to say ‘oh god’ , he accessed a profound and spacious regret, conveying a dawning realisation of an irreversible life-long fault.

I then (in my alternating roles as controller / friendly coach) asked him to apologise to Mother Earth. He did this. Then I suggested he address all the resources used to make all the things he owned – and all the resources damaged in the process: ‘I’m sorry landscape disturbed by the excavation of coal’, ‘I’m sorry water used in the manufacture’, ‘I’m sorry air for the pollution of the vehicles that brought the goods to the store’… The audience's laughter was enriched.

After this, he turned to his own existence, his very being part of the horror of consumption. He regretted and apologised for the food he ate, for the cotton in the clothing he wore, for the litres and litres of water he had drunk, for the litres of sun screen he had used, for the carbon monoxide he had exhaled.
 
At the technical level, this is an example of how to build on laughter with the accumulation of detail, with the repetitive rhythm of lists, with the contrasting sobbing and moans of regret, with the escalation of stakes, with spatially employing the upper and lower performance space (in addition to the horizontal direct to audience space). And all of this done with the appropriate shifts in eye expression. And all of this interspersed with little adrenal surges and 
 
I now say at the beginning of teaching Clown & Dark Clown that the clown is an entity that has all the shifting emotions and fleeting thought processes that the ‘sad normals’**  would prefer to not have, or not to be seen having. I also point out how suffering is already part of the portrayal of Red Nose Clown. Dark Clown extends the palette of human expression on offer. 

Omg - what a highly technical blog post. I bet it made incredibly dry reading. But in the room, the scenario provided much Troubled Laughter, which is one of the key concepts of the work.

It is natural in the Clown & Dark Clown workshop that people are anxious about where the work is going. I fully acknowledge what a vulnerable place a workshop can be. People come with openness and are working with their psycho-physical being. Many return to review the C&DC workshop. Once the aim and ethos of the work has been assimilated (I speak about it on the workshop and write about it in the FAQ's and here on the blog, but people need to encounter the work in their own being), then people can really get to grips with the Dark Side Play. One of the sentences I now use is that a lot of the work needs the player to be 'a factory of noises'. At it's essence, the work takes a deep, and I always intend ultimately compassionate, look at humanity in extremis. But at a practical level, there is a lot that is mechanical and technical.

* To see the reasons for this – go here.
 
** I explain that ‘sad normals’ is my joke term (a teaching tool) for myself in the supermarket. There is no normal. I also explain that things I say are teaching statements, not overall truths. Sentences used in teaching serve as prompts – phrases and statements are collections of words that have proven useful in the teaching process to get a result or a shift.

Dark Clown Methodology 
If you know me, you know the old story about how, watching a particular scene in a play circa 1980, I was compelled by the particular quality of laughter I experienced.
 
I was compelled and wanted to recreate this experience of what I now call Troubled Laughter. I was already teaching Clown – and towards the end of the course I’d ask the participants whether they were interested to try an experiment and thankfully, they always said yes.
 
Early Exercises
And I’d try out various improvisations. Early provocations included: ‘do something extreme’ or ‘can you eat your own body?’ and ‘can you despair each time we laugh?’. One of the more successful exercises was ‘my body is full of holes’: a solo player explores the idea that they are horrified by owning a mouth, and nose holes – Where do those holes go? Why are they there? Am I hollow? What is this? Why? 
 
Over many years and workshops a step-by-step process is now in place. People’s bodies and minds are prepared for the work. 
The links to Red Nose Clown* are made overt and the differences articulated. You’ll see, for example, in the description below the principles of repetition, clocking, calibration and accumulation. 
 
We love to see the Clown think and feel. Clear body and eye movements indicate thinking and feeling processes. And breath of course. When you are devising Clown work and building a scene you create beats to tell the story.
 
There are a growing number of Dark Clown exercises and a growing number of Dark Clown Scenarios.
 
One of these is Body Horror.

N.B. Please note that the course is designed to lead up to the Scenarios. People's well-being is attended to along the way. There is an introductory talk on the aims and ethics of the work (perhaps one day I'll post that), so people are aware of where the work is leading. I have spent 30 years creating, devising and designing a teaching methodology for my Dark Clown work. As with many Dark Clown I describe the exercise so people can opt out if needed (no one has elected to opt out of this exercise - most people find it energising and fun to explore). Course participants in the audience have reported feeling the pain and pity, while still laughing heartily. Dark Clown represents Humanity in Extremis, so it can be witnessed. I always emphasise that the aim of the work is NOT to laugh at suffering, but to create laughter in a dark context. To implicate the audience with direct gaze (and other awarenesses and techniques). The aim of the work is to give the audience the experience of Troubled Laughter. The work is layered and needs to be done well to get the result. It's a rewarding, cathartic challenge and really boosts your awareness of the performer/audience relationship. 
 
It starts with players standing in the space. Players are invited to choose a body part. Use your intuition (Why did I choose my elbow?) – just go with it. 
 
Everyone tries in plenary.
Here are some suggested beats. Mapping beats is strategic. Well-plotted beats mean the play (the ‘game’)can go on for longer and the build and journey you talk the audience on are fully satisfying.
 
Start with sensing something is wrong. A feeling of dread and dawning horror. You must find the source of the unease.
You locate it! Maybe the aversion only lets you glimpse it. 
You want to look but are afraid.
Repeated attempts to see it.
You manage to look (body part permitting!) and are horrified.
You are repelled, lean or spiral away, maybe close eyes …
but you are compelled to see.
Is it still there? Exactly how horrific is it!
Does it make you gag? 
Do you touch with other hand? And now do you have the problem that that hand is infected? (Wipe the hand and now there are 3 spots of aversion! Ergh … ergh!  ERRRGH!)
Try to run away from it.
Try to shake it off.
 
Then two or three people can be chosen so the audience can learn by watching. Then one is selected to play further.
 
Once the body horror is established … the player becomes aware of the audience.
Take time to look and have all the unspoken questions – What is that? People on chairs? How did that happen? Why? Who are they? How long have they been there?
The shame of being seen (this can be vocalised).
Then - why are they not alarmed? Why are they not helping me? 
Look / show / calibrate understanding … 
What kind of world is this? 
Whether they have blank faces or are laughing – either way the player takes I to mean that they don’t understand.
So show them. Show them more clearly.
Then beg: help me help me 
Really look to see if audience are about to help.
Allow their inaction to affect you and add to your plight.
Why won’t you help me?
 
… then you can go the further step of begging them to chop it off.
Repeat the beat of horror and frustration that they do not do as you ask.
Sob in despair.
Look up and appeal to ‘God or the godless heavens’.
 
There’s more but that’s enough for this blog post!
 
* There are many kinds of clown but I use Red Nose Clown as a handy way to distinguish from Dark Clown (regardless of whether the little red nose mask is actually used).

The image below shows the power of costume. This is a creation of a then student designer in 2016. A woman wanting cosmetic surgery looks almost flayed.

Costume, Movement and Comedy workshop on Aristophanes' The Women of the Thesmaphoria, MA Costume Design for Performance at UAL:LCF. 
Performer: Ramona Metcalfe 
Concept and realisation by: Georgia Clark
Movement director: Peta Lily
Project leadership and photography by Donatella Barbieri for UAL: LCF

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 felt myself invisibly trapped in some ghastly alternate realm.


If you'd like to support the blog - or to help make possible the writing of the Dark Clown book - go here.

A list of Key Concepts (or frequently used phrases) for Dark Clown practice (as part of the 'Clown & Dark Clown Course' and the 'Level 2 Dark Clown Course').
 


It's a good-sized list and might feel like a lot 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 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.
 

 
​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).

Troubled Laughter
In the introduction I give into the Dark Clown work proper (on a course), I usually tell the story of how, watching a scene in a show I saw in 1980, 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.”
 
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.
 
A believable verisimilitude of pain and distress
Verisimilitude means a likeness or a portrayal of – if the clown 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’ by using rhythm, timbre, energy and imagination, using a set of given circumstances. (It is ‘believable’ because the Dark Clown player pretends well enough and the audience, when they enter a theatre space, are usually ready to become engaged in the world and are ready to ‘suspend disbelief’.)
 
Dark Clown as distinct from Philippe Gaulier’s Bouffon work 
I try not to mention Bouffon in the workshop because if people don’t already know what it is, it takes extra time to explain it and it may confuse people – but if someone asks, I make the distinction this way.
Bouffon plays Satire – Dark Clown does not have the luxury to play satire.
(The historical roots of Bouffon - it is said – are based on a tradition that the outcast had one 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.)
 
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), micropauses, spatial embroidery etc) that can then be applied to generate laughter in Dark contexts.
 
Clocks/ Clocking
A part of comedy craft - Clocking is when an actor (or player) looks straight at the audience giving them a chance to understand (or simply notice) what the character is (or might be) thinking. A player can also ‘clock’ an object or another performer. Comes from English usage of a clock face.
 
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.

Hyper-vigilance is a natural response to 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’.
 
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 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.
 
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’. Laughing gear is a colloquial Australian phrase for the mouth, but I use it to mean the lungs, heart, diaphragm (eyes and mouth/jaw are also important).
 
Carlo Boso Commedia dell’Arte Teacher - TAG Teatro di Venezia: ‘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’).
 
The 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.
 
Cost / Palpable cost
I may use the phrase ‘we want to see the cost’ (as in : what does it cost them emotionally?). 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 they must live with what they just did for the rest of their lives.)
 
Dark Side Play
Once players (i.e. course participants) are clear on the aims of the work – and then on the predicament, 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 regard to the audience’s state or reactions) with rhythms and vocal timbre / breath, space (where possible). Dark Side Play works the Comedy Craft together with the Marginalised Emotions.
 
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) – aka Desperate Predicament aka Pressurised Predicament (see also Impossible Choices below)
 
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 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? 
 
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 over there suffering.' 
Allied to this is the Dark Clown concept of Troubled Laughter (see above) 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 Performance 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 (see above).
 
Red Nose Clown – as mentioned above there are a number of Clown lineages and types of clown – as a convenience I use the term Red Nose Clown to make a distinction between Dark Clown and most other types of Clown.
 
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, 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’ a playful teaching phrase to encourage the compassion of the Red Nose Clown performer for the audience – The ‘Sad Normal’ is us in our normal life (in the supermarket, travelling to work having all our petty emotions etc). I say: ‘It is the Clown’s job to have all the emotions and thoughts the Sad Normals prefer to suppress or hide.
 
NOTES

*Raise the Stakes - Definition of 'raise the stakes'
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 e.g. ‘The Libyan allegations raised the stakes in the propaganda war between Libya and the United States.’ – Collins English Dictionary
 
**Priming 
(I use it to mean getting the ‘laughing gear’: i.e. heart, lungs and diaphragm nice and flexible/available, but this is the everyday meaning of priming 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 Pre-luber.
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.

From the web: https://help.summitracing.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/116/~/how-do-i-prime-my-engine-before-the-first-start-up%3F
 
***Tell – An involuntary micro piece of body language. ‘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
 
**** ‘Suspension of disbelief’ – ‘Suspension of disbelief, sometimes called willing suspension of disbelief, is the intentional avoidance of critical thinking or logic in examining something unreal or impossible in reality, such as a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoyment. Aristotle first explored the idea of the concept in its relation to the principles of theatre; the audience ignores the unreality of fiction in order to experience catharsis.’ – Wikipedia 
PL – I think we could say involuntary suspension of critical thinking – due to the audience’s change in physiological state when seated altogether and watching well-crafted theatre. The growing field of Neuroscience suggests mirror neurones and kinesthetic responses are at play with a theatre audience.

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.

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!

Trigger warning: genocide

Recently, after I posted a new instalment of this blog, a Clown & Dark Clown 'graduate' wrote to me.

She said: 
'I’m extremely excited about the Dark Clown book you are writing. Your workshop is still as vivid as ever in my mind and that was 10 years ago. Since then I’ve been deeply involved in teaching storytelling/theatre-making for social justice, a journey that has led me to Rwanda five times. I took an intensive course, the “Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma” (HPRT) through Harvard’s medical school. The course - which deals with trauma and recovery - had direct ties to storytelling and I needed to know more. 

'So much of what I’ve felt, stories I’ve heard - the absurdity behind fear, hatred and violence - has been processed into numerous dark clown scenes in my head ... I found it was useful to do that, just to process the insanity and learn to walk with it. Right now I am working on a Master in Education and I’ve been making loads of connections between teaching and red nose clown work, also. Thank you for your work, it’s left a lasting impression on me and became a tool in my everyday life.' - Ongoing-Learning Educator and Theatre-Maker who focuses on Social Justice Education and Kinesthetic Learning

The Course Participant has asked to remain anonymous – I am going to call her Sandra. The course she attended was set up by a host (Lyndi Smith) and took place in Coventry. 10am – 5pm Monday 12th to 16th April 2010.  Just a side note as I look at my files, I see that this was back in the days when I promoted Dark Clown with this description: ‘ A chance to play with a darker kind of humour … an experiment with the edges of laughter … a way to create clown characters and performing ensembles with more edge and relevance … a way to update the sweet and poetic image of the clown … a way to make a more exciting and demanding rapport with audiences ...’

After hearing - in a FB DM exchange - that 'Sandra' found the Dark Clown work helpful to  ‘process the insanity’, I was compelled to contact her and we set up a Zoom chat.

When we connected on Zoom, Sandra first spoke about the Clown part of the week-long course. With a photographic memory (or perfect note-taking and subsequent application)* she recalled techniques she learned on the course and now uses regularly, although not under the name of ‘Clown’: e.g. dancing with different parts of your body and the point-and-name exercise which I learned via the wonderful Niall Ashdown. She appreciated the benefits of the work, saying that for her these exercises ‘slowed down time’, enabling greater ability to appreciate how your body is sharing your story and how you are connecting with your audience. She mentioned, too, how memorable the work was – ‘you can’t forget about it and go back to the old ways’.  
 
Sandra said that the Clown & Dark Clown course provided her with ‘a way to look with an innocent eye'** even when in unsettling situations such as looking at the bones of victims in what was Nyamata Church and now is the Nyamata Genocide Memorial Centre.' (Remains are now being stored out of sight).

The Clown's curiosity was helpful too - Sandra found that ‘curiousity diminishes fear’ and felt that this allowed her to simply ’be’ with the Horrific.  She said: ‘I was asking myself – how does one respond in order to be with this? And I realised I had prepped for this. Clown work heightens the senses and slows things down and that made it endurable ... listening to the stories people recounted of rape, of being made to dig their own graves. Through the Dark Clown work, I had had the opportunity of experiencing in a safe learning space - a way to imagine and embody humiliation, despair and shame and fear.'
 
Like me, Sandra appreciates that the response of anger and outrage is the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and that underneath are the Marginalised Emotions*** such as self-loathing and mistrust. These are not emotions anyone would logically choose to experience, but they can remain life-sappingly trapped if one is unwilling to look at them, or, to use Sandra's expression 'walk with them'. 
 
'Through the lens of the Dark Clown work I was able to see the component parts of the situations, examine what I was hearing. The fact that I walked the Dark Clown scenarios helped me stay settled and grounded in the face of absolute darkness and look at my emotions in a curious way. I could see things, too, from a variety of perspectives, see it as theatre and imagine: what would be like as a performer to perform this? What would the victim do in response to the perpetrator’s actions, what would the bystander/onlooker do? And my training at Harvard supported this.’****
 
I was gratified to hear this, reinforcing my own instincts that being able to Witness the detail in the Desperate Predicaments of the Dark Clown work had a benefit and validity. The aim with the Dark Clown work is that the player is able to pretend well enough so that we in the audience experience the Palpable Cost of contemplating a horrific choice - for example: someone playing in the line-up exercise is given the instruction to decide who in the group will be punished. ***** In the playing of the exercise, the aim is that the audience see: how the prisoner/player looks being given the alarming instruction, their panic/conflict/desperation while considering making the Impossible Choice and then how they look afterwards - experiencing shame and horror that they complied. 

We get to see and feel these moments clearly, broken down -  as contrasted with, say, a horrific situation being delivered in an opaque chunk (e.g. as one might read or hear the fact that people were forced to select who died and survived). When presented with a ghastly fact / event / news / story, it is natural that the nervous system shies away, retreats. There is aversion and a level of numbness. (We might even feel that it might be morbid to take time to imagine such a thing.)
 
And as a side note – the audience of the Dark Clown is (via the comedy craft) is encouraged to make a sound – a laugh (albeit a Troubled Laugh) which provides the opportunity for some release as opposed to the hushed reaction ’don’t look’; an alternative to silence, shutdown and holding in. 
 
Sandra further values the contribution of the Red Nose Clown and its 'pulse of empathy'. She mentioned Rwanda's emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation and that she had encountered perpetrators who had confessed, experienced a process of contrition and who are in the process of making reparations. She found herself in situations with these people and she found that she was able to just be with these people, to humanise not demonise them - to imagine them in the darkest and scariest moments, making the regrettable choices that they made. Sandra said that ‘curiosity and the pulse of empathy had helped me connect to the darkness and joy in another, and learn that in spite of the Horrors, there is common ground: these folks were parents, grandparents, farmers, enjoyed jokes and dancing.’

Sandra also said that Clown & Dark Clown work has also played a part in her own healing (including therapy) from vicarious trauma, accrued over the years (by being able to use the Red Nose Clown’s ability to access joy, to find relief and provide a thinking and feeling space via curiousity). Sandra again mentioned the value of Red Nose Clown providing ways for her to ‘refill’ on compassion (many care workers experience empathy burnout).

Back in the context of my open workshops for theatre practitioners, I shared with her a new practice I have installed on the Clown & Dark Clown course (when I sense it is needed or might be about to become needed). I invite participants to enter Red Nose state and to find a piece of wall or furniture and to comfort it e.g. 'it will be ok, you're doing really well. Yes it's scary but there are still donkeys ...' etc. Sometimes I instruct them to reassure or apologise to the floor and walls: 'I'm sorry you had to see that. It was dark, wasn't it?'
 
Sandra again expressed her good fortune that fate had led her to the work ten years ago: ‘When else do we get the chance to encounter the Marginalised Emotions except when it happens to us?' In the workshop we have space and are encouraged to have flexibility and are called to employ a shifting viewpoint, and shifting modalities of awareness. She said she felt that the Dark Clown work was ‘bigger than a performance practice – it is a practice for life, giving guidance, a kind of map to navigate the Horrors.’ 

I currently do not and would not offer the Dark Clown work as anything other than a theatre arts practice although a couple of course participants who were therapists have commented on the value they felt the work offered and mused on its further potential. (It is not a goal I am aiming towards, but perhaps, at some point in the future, the Dark Clown work might find a place as a component contained within a larger training programme led by a care-worker programme or some kind of well-supported teaching  or psychological training programme.)

Like me, Sandra saw that this is not work for the already traumatised. They have had the encounter with Horror, they need different help to recover. But it may be possible that for future care-workers, the Dark Clown work may offer valuable benefits.

Meanwhile, there are those of us who, although we have not been as close to experiences of large conflict, are still being remotely affected by world events - in the news, on our Facebook feed and as we walk the streets witnessing people living in destitution. At a daily level, we are not given time to deal with any feelings we might have about dreadful events in this world that we know ourselves to be a part of. *******
​Many participants report gratitude for the side benefits of the work:

'I have learned to better recognise how and where these emotions sit in my physical body, to better label and understand their influence on my being. Once labelled and located, they are better explored with the opportunity for release or conscious use to transform. I now have a process allowing me to hold on to what is useful, work through and release what is not.' - Course Participant

I aim to hold the Dark Clown work as ethically as I can. Please do see the helpful FAQ's for the work. The work walks an edge. But, like many theatre practitioners, I have an interest in inner and outer humanity and I feel it is an edge better looked at than ignored. Hence my being gratified that this particular course graduate's felt similarly and articulated her thoughts so generously and well.

For clarity's sake, let me repeat: I currently do not offer the Dark Clown work as anything other than a theatre arts practice.  Read more here.
 
*I took copious notes on my first workshop with Philippe Gaulier and Monika Pagneaux – I was magnetised by the enlivening, mysterious, de-mystifying work these masters were offering and that influence has been enduring, even as I mixed it with other theatre forms and bodies of knowledge.

​** one could also say ‘beginners mind’

*** What are the Marginalised Emotions? Imagine a horizontal line. If human expression were expressed as a continuum, you might have joy way over there on the right, and, if we are talking Red Nose Clown, we might have expressions such as silliness, loveliness, pride, bashfulness relatively nearby. As we near the centre of the line there may be grumpiness, crossness, even anger. But what about the other half of the line? Now we are heading for the expressions of the Dark Clown, what I call the Marginalised Emotions – such as: hyper-vigilance, fear, distress, shame, anguish, regret, guilt, humiliation, indignity, disbelief, grief, shock, absurdity, desolation, despair, physical pain, horror, terror and existential dread. (Listed in no special or incremental order).


**** Having had some access to Holocaust training, I avoid any role play focusing on Perpetrator / Victim scenarios. Where there is a player representing a guard, I limit their participation strictly. I say: In this work we are not interested in the Perpetrator, we are interested in the person being given the opportunity to release via the Predicaments into the Marginalised Emotions and to believably but strategically play there in order to affect the audience. If the person representing the guard needs extra clarification, I invite them to imagine that they need to ‘do their job’- they need to vigiliantly watch the audience and the prisoner otherwise they could easily be in the prisoner’s place. I read in that Maria Alyokhina (Pussy Riot Member) in her book Riot Days  describes how the guards had found it very effective to delegate certain prisoners to police the others (in order to gain back privileges - 'privileges'- which had been inhumanly denied them).  

***** Line-up exercise – see the post on vulnerability.

****** Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘Banality of Evil’ articulates people doing beyond dreadful things in the name of doing their job.

******* In her excellent book, The War Hotel, author Arlene Audergon points out that the world has a tendency to want to separate off and see countries where ghastly conflict has taken place as ‘tribal’ or ‘civil’ war, rather than being situations where people were manipulated and divided by politics towards unthinkable ends.

What happens when Red Nose Clown and Dark Clown meet?

A good number of years ago I was teaching at Central School. The Acting Collaborative and Devised Theatre students were approaching King Lear and I was hired to teach Clown & Dark Clown.
One student asked 'What happens when Red Nose Clown* and Dark Clown meet?' I said 'Let's find out'.
I setup a 'world cafe' where a group hold a conversation by circulating round a circuit of small ‘table’ groups with one person at each ‘table’ staying in place to hold the previous conversations. A group feedback revealed a few main options with some ideas as subsets of those main options. I then asked for people to volunteer as the holders of a particular idea and we held a marketplace where those people 'sold' their idea (again with rotating groups), then at the end, the individuals self-selected into groups to explore each idea.

An Enforced King Lear
I am only going to describe what happened in one of the groups here. Leaning on the idea of Hamlet or Die, and using the concept of the line-up exercise, with someone in place as Controller, one group decided upon the idea of a group of Dark Clowns being forced to perform King Lear, with the unfortunate twist that, as for Hamlet or Die, the deaths and injuries stipulated in the play would be enacted and would be actually painful or - erm - fatal.

'Curtain up'
They began with a line-up of prisoners all with their backs to the audience. Slowly they turned around. They were all terrified, but two of them exhibited a particular fresh breed of alarm. After a few feints and beats, the person in between them revealed themselves. In stark contrast to the others, whose clocks and eye flicks were snatched more nervously, this 'idiot'** was thrilled to be there, delighted to be in company of others and, uniquely … wearing a red nose. For the others in the line-up, the situation was already frightening. Now they see they will have to deal ongoingly with this added unpredictability - a Red Nose Clown who is excited about the games to come – their fear is ramped up, and somewhat coloured with the horror of the uncanny.

Everything we love about the Red Nose Clown - their playfulness, their spontaneity, their good-heartedness, their desire to connect, their mistakes, their delightful capacity to misunderstand, their inability to learn - each quality presents a threat to the poor, hypervigilant Dark Clown players. (Imagine being on a mountain climbing expedition with a prankster.) In the absurd torture realm of an Enforced Performance scenario, The Red Nose Clown’s positive expectations, curiosity and relative invulnerability to pain – bring a terrifying cocktail of uncontrollability, compounding the stressful uncertainty of the line-up Predicament.

As part of the set-up of the line-up exercise, I say - 'The rules in this regime are unknowable, unpredictable. Sometimes they want to punish someone and they shoot your neighbour by mistake. Or sometimes they decide that in order to punish you, they will shoot the person next to you deliberately.' For a fuller explanation of this exercise and the careful set-up for it look at the post on vulnerability. More info in this footnote from the same post.***

The Dark Clown player in a line-up is trying not to attract attention, not to make a mistake, all the while keeping an eye on their neighbours because a wrong step can cost dearly. (Side note: for the Dark Clown, this hyper-vigilance replaces the 'complicité' of the Red Nose Clown. Interestingly, I have often seen that people who have found it hard to notice the other in Red Nose mode, gain a marked improvement in their ability to respond to their fellow players in the Line-up exercise.)

Different rules
Think about Roger Rabbit in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where live actors and animated creatures co-exist. The poor, grieving human Eddie Valiant (played by Bob Hoskins) is wary of Toons. Toons operate by different rules:

Eddie Valiant : You crazy rabbit! I'm out there risking my neck for you, and what are you doing? Singing and dancing! 

Roger Rabbit : But I'm a Toon. Toons are supposed to make people laugh. 

...

Roger Rabbit : What could have possibly happened to you to turn you into such a sourpuss? 

Eddie Valiant : You really want to know? I'll tell you. A Toon killed my brother. 

‘Funny Games’
Coming back to the Red-Nose-meets-Dark-Clown improvisation - I can't remember exactly the beats of this prepared improvisation but I can see the many possibilities - e.g.:
The Controller announces: ‘Act 3, Scene 7! Give out the spoons!’
The Red Nose Clown might rush forward to collect the spoons that are being given out and enthusiastically play them - perhaps urging others to sing 'Old Macdonald had a farm! ... come on everyone, dance!' The poor prisoners, though appalled by Red Nose’s exhortations to dance, comply either out of a nervous reflex or perhaps as a desperate urge to buy time, thereby causing themselves to experience the shame of voluntarily jettisoning one's own dignity. 

The Controller could then call a halt to this: 'Get on with it!' - and there could be a poignant (for the audience) tussle as the prisoners who are being forced to step forward to play Cornwall and his servant find themselves in the desperate and ridiculous predicament of having to get the spoons off the Red Nose, who'd either be petulantly protecting his toys or gleefully enjoying the 'no it's mine' tussle. Even though the Dark Clown players would not be relishing what they were being called to do next, they would feel compelled to take possession of the spoons. Maybe Bozo might raise the spoons above ‘Gloucester’ play-acting dramatically and maniacally laughing, this horror would redouble the efforts of the others to claim the spoons. Once successful, a series of takes and clocks would register their satisfaction at prising the spoons off the infuriating Bozo and then continue to map their dawning horror that they have fought, only to find themselves brought abruptly to their ghastly appointed task.

During the preceding tussle, the prisoner awaiting his role as Gloucester would have no choice but to watch in horror. A special horror to have hurt imminent, and to have the threat of hurt prolonged – then on top of that, to have the preparations for the ghastly event of being blinded happen in an atmosphere of child-like chaos and squabbling. 

Perhaps, once spoons have been ‘won’ and that painful beat clocked, 'Gloucester' might make a break for it. Red Nose would love this new game of chasey and wrestle the poor Gloucester to the ground, giggling. Maybe Bozo might even tickle poor Gloucester who might then have the humiliation of giggling in response, and segue on to repeatedly call 'stop! stop! stop!' Only to be faced with the inexplicable horror of his command being heeded - and being bundled by all assembled (‘the show must go on’) to be tied to a chair. Before using the rope, Red Nose might do some skipping with it, even pop it into Gloucester's mouth like reins for a quick game of horsey ...

Perhaps with a prompt from the Controller, the ghastly deed is done, at a devastating cost to ‘Cornwall’ and his ‘servant’. They in turn face their deaths. 

Each plot event brings games for the Red Nose Clown and that brings ghastly,  absurd and exquisitely (painfully) layered predicaments for the Dark Clown players. Bozo misinterprets bodies that fall to the ground or are dragged off - he applauds the dying and wounded, thinking they are play-acting and that he is being a wonderful co-player. Some deaths are seen as a game: "Ashes, ashes, all fall down", he might join in with a falling down lazzi. 

So while, in most contexts, the Red Nose Clown provides a ‘pulse of empathy’, in this context, and seen in the light of ‘normal’ reality, Clown antics can be horrific. Roger Rabbit - handcuffed to Bob Hoskins - has preternatural speed and agility and very effectively escapes from danger with his human attached. Bob/Eddie Valiant is slammed into walls and at one stage is dragged down stairs, with his head hitting every step. Only when they are settled and making a plan, does Roger, slip his wrist easily from the cuffs.

Eddie Valiant : You mean you could've taken your hand out of that cuff at any time? 

Roger Rabbit : No, not at any time, only when it was funny.
 
A judicious use if the ridiculous
Adding a skilful touch of the ridiculous to a ghastly situation is a useful technique to release the Troubled Laughter. For example, in the Buzzer exercise, 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.’
 
Before we continue to the end – a bit of a side note here on how ‘nice’ the Red Nose Clown is (actually a bigger conversation than this post can deal with)
The great clown Joey Grimaldi performed for adult audiences, but in the years that followed, Andrew McConnell Stott, author of The Pantomime Life Of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comediannoted, Clowns increasingly became more deemed as a children's entertainment. Following the wonderful re-invigorating of physical theatre styles by Jacques Lecoq, the practice of Clowning has had a renaissance, finding again adult audiences. Sometimes a legacy of the innocence and sweetness of ‘the clown’ remains in people's thinking and/or is debated. Fear of clowns started to become palpable (due to the film It and also to the crimes of John Wayne Gacey. The situation was worsened in 2014 by the ‘creepy clown’ pranking in UK and USA and the regrettable incidents of thugs disguised as scary clowns in France in 2014. I was tracking articles on this rising wave of Coulraphobia as I prepared to make the adult Clown drama The Death of Fun in Hong Kong in 2017. 
 
With more recent events, the whole conversation about Clown is even more complex. Dr Justin Thomas, associate professor at Zayed University in this article  takes Jung’s lead and mentions the Clown’s link to the Trickster archetype, saying: 'The positive attributes of the trickster include being wise, funny and intelligent. However, the more negative aspects include being a malicious rule breaker, a cunning thief and a cruel prankster. A psychiatrist might consider such a person a psychopath, diagnosing antisocial personality disorder.' Sadly a couple of notable politicians display a less-than-statesperson-like style which many have described as Clown-like, in early efforts to mock them. Ineptitude may indeed be laughable, but the laughter dies when ineptitude plus power = harm. ******
 
Another side note - Dramaturgical thinking
If, in the scenario being described here, the Red Nose Clown was portrayed as vulnerable and tender-hearted, it would evoke too much pathos. One of the basic rules of comedy is Contrast – in this Enforced Performance Line-up scenario, any hurt to the Red Nose would eclipse the suffering of the Dark Clowns or bring us to tears and take us (the audience) off the hook. Once in the voice of the Controller, I commanded a Line-up participant to sing. He sang too beautifully. It was exquisite. So exquisite, I had to call the exercise to a halt. We all transcended and felt sorrow (not one of the Marginalised Emotions). It made a moment too poetic for this particular Dark Clown exercise, where compassion is forbidden because it is too humanising. The predicament of the line-up scenario in particular is designed to create conflict (and awful choices), which helps the players release the Marginalised Emotions and which helps to provoke the conflicted Troubled Laughter in the audience. The above scenario works well because the predicament is awful – a playful Red Nose Clown is making it worse for the Dark Clowns.
 
‘And my poor fool is hanged’ … 
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. Wonderful if the pathos still keeps the audience on the hook, though – take a look at 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.) 
 
Finally, only the Red Nose Clown was left on stage. A noose was thrown on stage. Disobeying the chronology of events (do leaders of such a ghastly regime care if the script pages are all present or in order?), we are at the death of Cordelia. Red Nose gleefully put the noose around his neck. Everything is still a game.
 
I side-coached this excellent young acting student to arrange that the Clown discover by increments that he can actually feel pain after all. Delightfully, he enjoyed playing the fun of wearing the noose like a fashion scarf, the problems, failures and triumphs of stepping up on the chair, then the great feat of standing on the chair! Next the repeated upward throwing of the rope but finding no place to support it. Not to be bested, the resourceful Red Nose tightens the noose, expressing surprise that it in fact pinches a bit - ouchy! - but he laughs and repeats, then whoopsy, losing balance; best sit for safety; oh look it’s a neck tie, I’m a business man; musn’t get sidetracked, the business in hand! etc. He reprises the game of pain and release, sharing all his thinking and emotions with us. New game! A lazzi of suffocation. He really makes the lack of breath look painful, but manages still to telegraph to the audience: ‘What fun!’ A game of pressure and release, game of puffed-out cheeks etc. He keeps delivering all sorts of beats of perplexment, curiousity, pain, the fun of the new, surprise, and fear. Next, a game of how hard it is to keep up the pressure on the rope – he mimes: ‘Phewph, hard work!’, shakes his arm out, tries again. With clown optimism and determination, he redoubles his efforts. Lots of funny little sounds, good rhythm play plus delivering ‘believable’ levels of pain and sharing all the micro-emotions with us, then … the inevitable. 
The actor / clown went limp and flowed headfirst onto the floor from his seated position like one of Salvador Dali’s timepieces. A final frozen thumbs up holds, then drops.
 
‘Men must endure
Their going hence even as their coming hither.’
 

* For the sake of simplicity, whenever I refer to Clown or Red Nose Clown in these posts, I refer to my own understanding and conception of the form, informed by Clown work as I experienced it with Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier. There is no one style of clowning. Just to add too, that for me (and some others), actually wearing the little mask of the red nose is not absolutely essential to clowning. I mostly teach without it – especially on short courses.

** A word I use with love and respect in context of the clown!

*** To be specific, if people are not looking like they are really responding to / investing in  / embodying the imaginative situation, they are 'shot'. There is an ethical procedure for this - I address the course participant inside the Dark Clown exercise player and say - I am going to shoot you in your hand (or elbow) - do you, the player agree? Do not come out of the situation,  just nod so I know you understand ... thank you. I will say "bang" and you will make the appropriate noise.’ The group will have already practiced specific sound-making for a 'believable verisimilitude of pain' in the 'Torture over Ten feet' exercise.
 
**** Always with the help of the suspension of disbelief.
 
***** As for *** above - ‘a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress’.
 
****** ‘Clown’ in common usage, serves as an insult. Clowning as a conscious practice shows a generosity and courage – a practice whereby dignity (at least for the moments spent on stage) is voluntarily jettisoned in the interest of others i.e. in the hope that the ‘sad normals’ may feel, even for a moment, relief: (‘I’m not that stupid’ or ‘Thank heavens, I’m not the only one that stupid’ or ‘Oh how stupid we all are.’) Professional clowns can also can bring: wonder, a slowing of time, poetry, a critique of hierarchy. Someone in power and privilege, with a ‘winning formula’ of a ‘loveable’ clownishness – and who is behaving in ways that cause harm and difficulty to those in their care - is masquerading. They are charming but ultimately conniving.
 

implicate verb [T]   
UK   /ˈɪm.plɪ.keɪt/ US   /ˈɪm.plə.keɪt/
to show that someone is involved in a crime or partly responsible for something bad that has happened.

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'. Although all audiences know that they paid for their ticket and walked in to watch a composed portrayal, 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 implicated by their laughter.

Inspiration for Implication
In 1980, the seminal Lumiere & Son Theatre Company created a show called Circus Lumiere.* It was performed in a custom-built five pole tent. The whole show was memorable and ground-breaking, but there was one particular scene which left a marked impression.

What follows is an account of how I remember the scene ran. 

Two clowns appear in the ring. A big one and a small one. The show so far has been action-packed so their stillness is intriguing. They wear rather traditional clown costumes. They are looking at us, the audience, and they exchange looks between themselves. The audience laugh because the clowns seem non-plussed; inert, nervous and indecisive. Aren't clowns meant to somersault and bound out into the ring?

Whenever we laugh they turn to us and back to each other again, with some alarm in their eyes. They are intent, alert. It is only in retrospect that we realise they are making a difficult decision.

The tall clown turns his head but he is not looking at the small clown. We now notice there is a trestle table onstage (in the ‘ring’ of the circus tent) and on it is a large rectangular item with gauges and dials. It looks to be a piece of electrical equipment. The little one is looking at it now, too.

The audience has been nicely set into a habit of laughter and each head turn is a laughter nudge. The big one walks slowly towards the machine and picks up something connected to the machine. He returns to his position beside the small clown. We realise the item is a cattle prod.

We laugh and think ’oh no!’ But we have laughed and that is clocked by the clowns. (Had we made any other sound or no laughter, they still would have clocked us - we are still sitting in our seats and they still would have been obliged to continue -  ‘the show must go on’).
 
The little clown receives an electric shock and jitters about in a startling but ridiculous way. He composes himself afterwards but it looks like it was not a pleasant experience. We laugh – out of surprise at what happened; as a release from the cleverly built up suspense; and in unconscious mirroring of the rhythm of the little clown's movements.
 
The big one looks at the little one, in some discomfort. The little one looks at the big one. We laugh again, nervously. The little one clocks this and the little one looks at the big one with an expression of some urgency. (‘If they liked it once, they should like it again’**) – the little one is now in the absurd predicament of using his eyebrows to actually encourage the big one, who looks a little traumatised. The big one hesitates but again applies the baton to the small one, who again receives the shock and jitters about. According to the rule of three, all this happens again. With repeated laughter from us in the audience.
 
The clowns look at the audience, calibrating. They look at each other. With some head turns their eyes don’t connect because the other clown is looking at the audience. The uncertainty is prolonged. Eventually they share a look. 
 
The big one walks again to the table. Will he put down the prod and do something else?
 
No, his hand reaches out and he touches a dial … Why did we not imagine this? ... and turns it up. And we laugh. We are 'on the hook': because of us, the small clown will suffer more. We did not bray for it ... but our laughter (and the clowns’ submission to their role) means the small clown must suffer because of us. Our 'guilt' and gut-punch groans of 'remorse' makes our laughter richer. We laugh through multiple shocks. It is truly hilarious. It is not a cruel laugh, it is a conflicted laugh - we know it's a piece of theatre but the clowns are played so well that we feel somehow guilty.***
 
Performing Pain 
Hilary Westlake, co-founder of Lumiere & Son Theatre Company (working closely with writer David Gale) was very astute at finding the essence of the thing she was exploring. With the Big and Little Clown segment they had asked 'What Are Circus Clowns?' and decided that, as traditional Circus Clowns perform a lot of slapstick (the giving and receiving of hits, slaps, pushes and falls) that their job could be in essence to  'hurt and be hurt for the audience's pleasure'. When Hilary directed a piece called 'Wounds' for Three Women Company (the theatre I co-founded in 1980 with Tessa Schneideman and Claudia Prietzel) she decided that what makes women different from men. That we bleed. We performed in white costumes and boxing boots and the stage action was punctuated by the appearance of blood. From a breast, from a mouth, from a crotch, finally raining down from inside an umbrella. 

*Director and company founder, Hilary Westlake has archived Lumiere & Son's work. You can see the programme for Circus Lumiere here.

** Philippe Gaulier, live London course circa 1984

*** Associated with Implication, is another key element of the Dark Clown work - Troubled Laughter which I first experienced while watching a specific scene in Pip Simmons' thrilling and devastating production An Die Musik. I mention it in a footnote to the recent Trigger post  and also in the Comedy of Terrors post. I think it was the same year I first saw Circus Lumiere.

In the image here below, recently forward to me by Hilary Westlake, I see a section of the piece I did not remember! Here the little clown shocks the tall clown, possibly by mistake (as he fiddles with the controls) . They are both armed with prods and battery packs.