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

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.

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.
 

 A learning experience 
On my open Clown & Dark Clown courses, which are for 'beginners as well as the more experienced idiot', I work with physical theatre performers, circus performers, theatre directors, designers, therapists, actors, improvisers, and people with no performing experience. It's a joyful thing. Often the newcomers bring a freshness of approach. Those with more experience inspire the newcomers by showing what is possible and occasionally those with more experience have habits to undo. Everyone is there to face the new, everyone is at a growing edge.

I salute the courage of all learners. All those who choose to come on a course are opening themselves up to new learning. And learning new skills has the risk of failure built in.

​Until you've done it you don't know what it is
I have a little social media post I sometimes use: 'Until you have done it, you don't know what it is.' I guess that statement could come across as a nice little marketing ploy, but, really it's a helpful piece of information. 

The post 'Comedy of Terrors' gives a snapshot of my Dark Clown work.* And there is extra information on recent posts such as the one describing an exercise called Selling Yourself out to your Enemy and the one on Consumer Guilt.

So what actually goes on in a Clown & Dark Clown course?**
I am in the process of writing a book on my definition of and approach to what I call Dark Clown. The other day  was aiming to succinctly sum up the learning journey on a Clown & Dark Clown course.
​
Here is what I got:

'The complete beginner will learn play state, how to play with the other, clown state, audience awareness and the beginnings of audience response and the 'more experienced idiot' reviews this early material. Building on from that, the group learns to develop an awareness of principles and techniques of comedy and then to develop an agility with these principles and techniques.
With this established, the student/performer of Dark Clown is trained to create and to release into believable and engaging representations of Marginalised Emotions – then to play and experiment with the representation of these Marginalised Emotions while simultaneously using comic principles and techniques.
Right from the start, in parallel with the above, awareness of and response to the audience in each present moment is also being trained.
Next, we move on to the exercises and scenarios of the High Stakes Predicaments and Dark Clown Scenarios – where the student/performer is tasked with putting all of this together in order to affect and hopefully Implicate the Audience, so that the audience get to experience Troubled Laughter i.e. to be surprised into laughter and to feel troubled by their laughter.'

It's a lot to get through. It's a tight curriculum for a two-day course. 

Preparing for the  learning experience
 At the start of the course, I remind course participants that any new skill comes with challenges and unknowns. I aim to (and have been told that) I 'teach with a good mix of encouragement and challenge.' I seek to empower, for example, by aiming to demystify the 'rules' of comedy. I expressly dedicate the course hours as a learning experience and also as a human experience.*** In both the Red Nose and the Dark Clown sections fo the work, I am transparent about occasionally stepping in to the role of the 'Grumpy Clown Professor' or using my voice to shout out commands as if from a darker authoritarian voice.
Once we have covered Clown State, I say, 'In this exercise, please do stay in Clown State. If you pop out of state, no shame, but the exercise may come to a halt and you can have another go later. You the course participant are allowed to leave the exercise if you choose but you will get the most benefit by dealing with the Grumpy Clown Professor's hectoring while remaining in Clown State.'

When we make the segue to the 'Dark Side' part of the work, I give a talk which outlines the aims and ethos of the work. I emphasise their will be no emotional recall - the work is not at all about people being  called on to search in their own inner darknesses. The talk also explains that we will progress through a series of tasks which develop various aspects needed for playing Dark Clown. I also give frequent explanations of the purpose of each exercise or task, and with some exercises check - 'Are you still willing to do the exercise?'

Always articulating the work 
Over the many years of teaching my definition of Dark Clown, I have incorporated extra steps and clarifications in order to keep the teaching space a clear arena for the aims and vision of the work as well as to create and maintain a worthwhile learning experience for practitioners.

When advertising my open courses, I aim to be clear about the outcomes on offer and to articulate both the fun and challenges of the course. I prefer people come to the work with an open mind (beginners mind), but over the years it has become necessary to include an extra level of clarification regarding the Dark Clown work.

I now include FAQ's about the work with the booking information. As I say in the post titled Resisting Vunerability, - ''Dark' describes the work rather well.'

Opening up and the possibility of upset
Over all the years, the vast majority of course participants have found and reported the work enlivening and many say, 'I have never laughed so much on a course'. But every so often, someone has an upset while on a course. 

Anyone who has taught acting or been an acting student knows that there may be confrontational moments for the student. The actor (and the performer) needs openness and when we open, when we let go of holding patterns - there can be stuff that has been contained which may leak out. Upset is not a required step in the process, but occasionally (comparatively rarely) it happens and so I have put in place a basic and practical methodology for dealing with upset. ​****

I worked at a Clown school in Europe and was articulating the 'Upset process' I use to the course booker. They suggested that I might work with people's upsets (they, in their own practice, had a methodology to do that - also a course time of much greater duration).

The Dark Clown work is dependent on the creation of laughter and it is crucial to maintain the conditions for laughter in the room. So while I encourage openness, unmasking and spontaneity, and while I deeply value personal growth, while teaching a Clown & Dark Clown course, my energies are pointed on the discipline and technique of the work rather than the inner journey of the participant.

While there may be an individual experiencing a confrontational moment, there will also be 15 - 17 other people on the course, who are ready and raring to move on to the 'Dark Side' and get a full introduction to Dark Clown work.

Who gets upset at what?
Over all the 30 years of teaching this course - the moment of upset and the precise cause of the upset is always totally unique and personal. 

Here is the amazing Jack Halberstam (author of the brilliant 'The Queer Art of Failure') speaking On Behalf of Failure at the Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics (organised by IPAK Center, held in Belgrade August 2014). 

I love Jack because he understands the function of humour and its role in presenting or crafting viewpoints that are not part of the reigning paradigm. he also speaks of his belief of the value of surprise as an element of pedagogy, but that's a side note here. 

At 20.41 in this talk he begins to speak about Trigger Warnings - while he applauds sensitivity he also asks whether we being 'careful in a way that is absolutely squashing our ability to also be creative and to communicate.' He then goes on to talk about the origin of the term Trigger Warnings, from its usage in the early online community, and how the term morphed as it segued into a new context. It is now something that (in the USA in particular) students request that professors put on their Syllabi.
Jack finds this problematic because:

1/ to be warned about content in an aesthetic context goes against his pedagogy of surprise (learning is an adventure). As I understand it he means that reveals can cause memorable paradigm shifts - real learning is an experience, not a list of facts.

2/ it's not easy to predict a Trigger - Trigger is usually buried content - and unpredictable, not obvious or linear, for example a random sound that accompanied a traumatic event. He gives the example that one would need to list unforseeable, incidental details e.g. 'a sound screeching tyres'. Jack says that to equate trauma and trigger is a gross simplification.

3/ JH teaches a class on the Holocaust over some several weeks. 'I can't warn you about content in the Holocaust - you should be disturbed by the content of the Holocaust'. The Holocaust was an event of uncountable and unrepresentable horrors.
JH recounts how there were complaints of lack of Trigger Warnings when he showed the film 'Night and Fog', but when he showed 'Triumph of The Will', which shows Fascism played out - there was, unnervingly, if you think about it, not a single complaint.
Jack quips that 'the seduction of Fascism should come with a warning' - and goes on to muse how modernism has represented symmetry as good and right - so, again unnervingly, the crisp formation of marching fascist armies contain an unconscious appeal because symmetry is embedded as an aesthetic form inside our consciousness.
JH quips that he would really like to see a Trigger Warning about 'the seduction of Fascism.'

Coming back to my own Dark Clown work, I wrote in Rehearsing for Darkness:
'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.'
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* My vision for Dark Clown has key inspirations - one scene in Pip Simmonds' breath-taking and courageous show An Die Musik in the early 1980's. The big and little clown scene in the seminal Lumiere and Son's Circus Lumiere, and the devastating film They Shoot Horses Don't They? (albeit the film is neither clown nor comedy). Often people think the work I do follows a lineage. It doesn't. It began with experiments and developed via teaching and a few theatre productions, for example this one, over the last thirty years. As there are many types of Clown, there can be many expressions of what people might  explore under the name of dark clown. 

** I have now standardised that my specific approach to Dark Clown work is taught in the first instance on a course called 'Clown & Dark Clown'. There are many reasons for this, and I now always bill the course this way, even when the participants all have a pre-existing Clown training. One basic reason for this is that there are no guarantees that everyone has the same Clown training. Another reason is that, while Clown practitioners can be well-trained, they are still unacquainted with many of the comedy craft techniques necessary to the Dark Clown work. Another reason is that any group needs to relax and develop the ability to play together first, and this works well in Red Nose Clown mode. A further reason is that the imparting of key comedy principles can be accomplished more efficiently in Red Clown mode also. Also, I find it helpful (I could even say essential) that the group establish a sense of ease, trust and fun in working with both teacher and other group members, before we move on to the Dark Side and I find that the Play State/Red Nose Clown exercises are efficient for this. 

*** I usually begin courses saying: 'for the next several hours you are in the safest place you can be ... bar floods or other natural disasters ... (I aim to read the room before making that little joke and I add clownish body-language and light and modulated voice and smile clearly making this a joke and also adding a gesture with palms forward that reassures and eyebrows and mouth corners that acknowledge 'oops, was that scary?') ... because Comedy is all about making mistakes. And Clowns are born under a big hot-pink-neon sign saying "Born. To. Fail" - so, if, at any moment you feel you might have done something you are unsure about then give yourself a big tick! You are on mission!'
I often also ask - 'Do we give each other permission to be different from our normal selves?' and wait for and acknowledge the mutual assent. 'We are all humans here and we are all learning and any new learning necessarily encompasses making mistakes.' (I refer to the steps in the unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence model).
I also say - 'If I mention anything any one of you has done, I thank you in advance for the teaching opportunity! I figure any one of us could have had that (miming quotes) success or (miming quotes) failure - but, it was a something that happened live in the space, and we all saw it, and we can learn from it, rather than only having theoretical examples.'

**** While the Clown & Dark Clown course is a lot of fun, it requires a level of resilience. The FAQ's on the Clown & Dark Clown workshop are aimed at helping people who may have underlying issues identify whether the course is right for them to undertake. Just as a side-note, There have also been, a few instances where a course participant experiences upset in the Red Nose part of the work (again, rarely). This is not particular to my teaching and it is not surprising in general. Red Nose Clown work de-masks the individual - some of the normal ways of presenting oneself are unnecessary and unhelpful to clown work and need to be released. When I studied with Gaulier in 1984 - there was always someone crying in the pub at the end of the day after class. (Another side-note: for those more experienced, the work on the self is ongoing. Red Nose Clown work, at its best, requires an opening of the heart, which can bring forward the need for self-examination.)

A step-by step approach helps the participant really engage audiences and to develop expertise in the important comedic use of rhythm and comedy craft.

We start in Clown mode to build the play and connection in the group, but also importantly in Clown mode we can cover physical, vocal and rhythmic techniques for creating, growing and building laughter. (In order to create the Troubled Laughter of the Dark Clown, we need to be able to create laughter relatively reliably).
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We then move on to exercises promoting and supporting a portrayal of the Marginalised Emotions. Other exercises grow the particular flavour of audience awareness that supports the Dark Clown work (see Implicating the Audience below). Then we get to layer these elements together.

Don't worry about the terms used here - all is revealed and learned experientially step-by-step on the course! 

Then we turn to the Dark Clown Scenarios. There are a growing number of Scenarios including North Korean Competitive Crying, Consumer Guilt, Body Horror, Makeup Rabbits, Somalian Pirate Hostages, Eco-Horror, The Beloved, Kidrophobia and many more. 

There is a rich range of reactions possible when witnessing the compelling Dark Clown work. 

The work is carefully set up in an ethically held space - performers get a chance to invest imaginatively in High Stakes, where energy and expressivity is released. 

We are aiming for what I call 'Troubled Laughter' in the audience - laughter happens but it is not a laugh at. 'Troubled Laughter' does not trivialise or dismiss the suffering. The performers (course participants) -  aim to learn to implicate the audience. Done correctly, the audience laugh in a way that is either troubling or cathartic and often both at the same time.
Sometimes they veer between laughter and tears (and occasionally both at the same time).

The joy of connection is nurtured during the process.

Many return to repeat the course - describing it as 'challenging and rewarding in equal measure'.

Maybe also have a look here.

These images by Robert Piwko Photography - highly recommended.