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

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

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.

 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.'
​

* 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.)

Life and Death ...
Gotta love Shakespeare - The Comedy of Errors (a ... comedy) starts with a man being condemned to death. (Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, is condemned to death in Ephesus for violating the ban against travel between the two rival cities). My dark imagination was engaged.

​Set-up = stage set
The great joy of directing a final year production at a Drama School means the Design Students can support the production. I decided on a bold premise. The whole play takes place on a television sound stage. Before the play proper begins, people with headsets and clipboards roam the set - at this moment just a large empty grey platform with a gentle rake.

Most of the play was played for comedy - there was, however a Dark Clown predicament in the opening scene, which I describe here.

Pressurised Predicament - Beat the Clock
A giant clock face (whose hands turned throughout the play) is suspended at the back. At certain moments, the names of the various shows* is projected onto it e.g. (towards the end): 'The Abbess knows Best'.

A sofa is brought on and we hear a classic undulating tones of an American chat show Voice Over: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, citizens of Ephesus, welcome to 'Beat the Clock', with your host, that provocative Prince of electrifying entertainment, Duke Solinus! 

Act 1 Scene 1 - bit of Implication
Canned applause and the production staff gee up the live audience applause too, using cue cards.

​Duke Solinus: Hello Ephesians! Welcome to the show where we find out: will someone be Frying To(morrow ) Night? (Badoom tish ending in a short blare of electrical fizz) But first, do you want to see the chair?  

Audience are encouraged by cue cards to chant 'Show. Us. The chair!'​ (supported by canned chanting)

A chair, somewhat reminiscent of an electric chair, is brought on. (Scary tick tick buzz sting and the chanting ends on a button)

Duke Solinus: So, Lance - who do we have in the chair tonight?
Voice Over: Well, Duke, today's illegal immigrant comes all the way from Syracuse. He's a small businessman, separated from his family. Let's give a warm welcome to our somewhat melancholy merchant from ... Syracuse!

Audience are encouraged by cue cards to boo at the mention of their rival town​ (supported by canned booing), as Egeon - in an orange prison uniform, handcuffed and hooded is frogmarched on by two operatives wearing attire reminiscent of executioners and differently masked.

Egeon's hood is whipped off and the poor man flinches and blinks, dazzled by the light. A studio crew operative has crawled on and, kneeling, affixes a lapel mic to Egeon, which unexpected action (and the fact that there are wires involved) startles and frightens the captive Egeon.

Duke Solinus: Speak, Syracusian! 
.... 'say in brief the cause
Why thou departed'st from thy native home
And for what cause thou camest to Ephesus.'

High Stakes and Enforced Performance
Egeon begins to tell his tale (the pressure is on because Egeon's tale is, not in the least 'brief'). Plus  not only is the poor man being forced to tell his tale, he finds himself in the ghastly position of being made complicit in the prostitution of his personal pain. No sooner has he begun, when smiling hired actors dressed as mimes come on with props to enact the events. Imagine the humiliation of your heart-rending tale being presented as prime time entertainment. Imagine recounting how sailors stranded you, your wife and your twin babies to a 'sinking-ripe' ship while smiling facilitators waft a rising cloth (to represent the sea) up to your neck and bind plastic baby dolls (representing your missing children and their servants) together. Imagine hearing audience laughter while this is happening.

When Egeon falters with stress, disorientation and emotion, the Duke says:
'Nay, forward, old man; do not break off so;
For we may pity, though not pardon thee.'
It's like those unscrupulous reporters who prod people's emotions: 'And how did it feel when (the disastrous thing) happened?'. Here it is even worse: 'You're still going to die, but let us have an emotional experience from your predicament'.

The cost
Egeon is forced to continue his account and he does, lamenting that
'by misfortunes was my life prolonged
To tell sad stories of my own mishaps.'

Whereupon, the Duke obliges him to recount more: 'dilate at full
What hath befall'n of them and thee till now.'

Once Egeon has been wrung out, Solinus makes (in this production) a show of cheesy magnanimity by posing the challenge:
'I'll limit thee this day
To seek thy life by beneficial help:
Try all the friends thou hast in Ephesus;
Beg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum,
And live; if no, then thou art doom'd to die.'

As in the plot of the film Run Lola Run, Egeon must raise a huge sum (in this case, a thousand marks) and he only has 24 hours to do so (... or 'feel the burn').

Duke Solinus then points in a showman-like manner at the large clock which sounds a few loud and momentous ticks, followed by the electrical buzz sting. 

Egeon is stripped of his prison uniform and begins his faltering steps off stage while studio crew rush onto the set with cue cards encouraging the audience to chant 'Beat the Clock!'​ (supported by canned chanting).

On to Act 1, Scene 2 ...

* Antipholus of Ephesus's house was played like Friends, with Adriana and Luciana discussing Adriana's problems over a tub of Hagen Daas. At the moments there were costumes and props for other shows passing through e.g. a war programme. Plus Teleevangelism (Pinch) and adverts for Angelo's jewellery business. The courtesan was portrayed as a successful Dominatrix. Voice Over: "In just a moment it's double your pleasure with the gang from 'Ephesus Bay' - it's the one where Adriana's miffed at Antipholus's tardiness, Luciana is obsessed by hot new boy in town and as usual, Dromio gets the wrong end of the stick ... Laugh? You will, but first a glimpse of late night low life - it seems local businessmen are seeking a little correction in 'Ephesus Vice'. Stay tuned!"

The Only One Action exercise 
This an early Enforced Performance* exercise, to encourage application of releasing the Marginalised Emotions and using the comedy craft. The player does not need to exercise their imagination in terms of generating ideas for the scene, but the Only One Action exercise does benefit from strategic play (or can train strategic play). Strategic Play is born from an adept ability to accept the (imaginary) predicament, clock and accept the audience's reactions and to mine the predicament over time.

Possible pre-steps 
1/ The player is invited to focus on 'Exposure in the space' i.e. playing with the anxiety due to being alone on stage and looked at. Sensitivity to group members is required, however. Some people have issues surrounding being seen, so I often, on a short two-day course, omit directly exploring 'being looked at'. For players who are ready for it, it is fun. 'What? what? What do you want from me? Stop looking! Your eyes, your eyes! All of your eyes! Seeing. See-ing. Look look looking. Stop it!' cover eyes 'Are you still looking? are you? I can feel you looking! Aargh!' Riffing with basic concrete words is a useful thing to do for clown work. We all know how often our minds will worry that they need to present a clever idea. 2/ A useful exercise to develop trust in the power of keeping it simple and concrete and being unafraid to mention the obvious  would be the 'Here and Now' exercise which I learned about in Oliver Double's excellent book Getting the Joke. The student/course participant doing the exercise faces an audience and may only talk about things that are happening in the here and now: the decor, the thoughts and feelings passing through his or her head etc. It helps reduce the ever-present temptation to be 'interesting'.**

The premise
One Action, as an Enforced Performance exercise - is based on the absurd idea that you are a prisoner in a regime where you are forced onto a stage and given the task of 'entertaining' an assembled audience (are they your tormentors, their assembled family?***). Your well-being (or that of your loved ones) is at stake. 
 
The prisoner is only allowed one action. For example, walking. In my controller voice, I say: ‘The Prisoner will Walk!’

How to make this interesting? When you have ‘nothing’ what have you still got?

Nothing is not nothing
In terms of the human body, what have you got to work with? Rhythm, breath, expression, doing, pausing, clocking (both audience reactions and guard), thinking, reacting, allowing the emotion of the moment, (rinse repeat, no particular order – that is based on awareness) – plus, trajectory and position in space. Plus planes of space. As a side note, this exercise also shows the importance of being able to work the stage area strategically. More on that perhaps in another post.
 
Work the predicament
Keep it simple, go step by step. The techniques of Red Nose Clown – looking, noticing the reaction, using curiousity, repeating the action, possibly a further repetition (choosing the right moment to repeat).
Gaulier said that the clown is always asking questions (e.g. ‘Did they like that? Will they like it again?’). Here the Dark Clown notes – ‘They are laughing – is that a good thing? Or a bad thing? Now they are not laughing. Oh no, what does that mean? They laughed at my desperation. What kind of people are these? What will happen if this does not go well? Is the guard looking at me funny? When will this be over?’ interjected by little beats of emotion – e.g. startle response, panic breathing, stifled sob, weeping.
 
Other one action prompts could be: coughing, sniffing, vomiting, singing, hopping running, looking, not speaking (make us believe that you are not speaking; prove it to us),measuring, pointing, yawning.
 
I have yet to use the ‘not speaking one’ –  it appeals because it is an 'impossible' instruction.
 
Optional extra - The Guard
To help players feel the High Stakes, in some exercises e.g. this one, I ask for someone to embody a guard. I find a water bottle that is half full. Held by the neck, a plastic bottle**** makes a satisfying audible, rounded thud in the left hand. The guard stands over on stage right – only just in the stage picture. They stand three-quarters on to the audience, feet apart and vigilant, the bottle resting on the palm of the left hand. The bottle is in place of a baton.
 
Side note: I am careful always to discourage people from over-investing in the role of the guard. The real work and point of interest, I remind people, is the person in suffering mode, the person standing in for the guard is serving the student who is doing the Dark Clown work. I also give this context to help the guard to be vigilant (it’s the Dark Clown version of complicité!). The guard could easily find themselves in the position of the prisoner. The guard needs to be as interested in the state and reactions of the audience and the overall success of their task. The guard is using the same key skill we focus on in the Peekaboo exercise – ‘are the audience getting closer to or further away from laughter?’ plus – ‘how is the prisoner doing in achieving that?’ I instruct the Guard that they can make only one thud with their ‘baton’ during the piece, so they have to choose their moment well. If the baton thud is over-used, then then the performer in prisoner role can work a beat of panic, but each subsequent beat will not raise the stakes, because after two, without any follow through, it presents a hollow threat. Also, and importantly, if the baton thud is over-used, it deprives the ‘prisoner’/player of the psychological anguish of not knowing when enough is enough and also of the horror of culpability – they themselves are forced to take the risks and make the decisions. 

 
* Enforced Performance is a term I use for Dark Clown scenarios using a prison or captive scenario and in productions, such as The Maids. 

** Keith Johnstone famously recommends resisting being interesting. Avner the Eccentric says 'be interested, not interesting.'   

***  These are thoughts in the head of the performer who is tasked with imagining themselves in the predicament - the actual audience is never asked to play a role.
 
**** As most of us bring re-usable water bottles now, I keep one for this specific purpose.

'Pretty girls in nice gowns - no.'

I was approached by the remarkable performing artist Ines Lua to direct a production of Jean Genet's play The Maids in Oporto, Portugal in 2003.

Playwright Jean Genet wished for the play to be performed by men. Here I would have three attractive young women to play the two maids and their employer, Madame. Although there is plenty of self-loathing in the play, there are also evening gowns and maids uniforms and I wanted to avoid any possibility of the audience's attention being de-railed from the bleakness of the situation portrayed. So I thought - Enforced Performance is the way!

I was introduced to the writing of Jean Genet when I was seventeen and a strong imprint was made. Genet inspired me with his underdog stance and his aesthetic of degradation. For those who do not know, Jean Genet was wrongly accused of theft when he was a boy in foster care. He decided that he would make the active choice to live as a thief, and wrote a long-form poem and a novel while in prison. He sought out and introduced himself to Jean Cocteau, who was impressed by Genet's writing and not only got Genet's first novel published, but, enlisting the help of Sartre and Picasso, petitioned the French President to save Genet from life imprisonment. Genet never returned to prison and spent the rest of his life as a writer and as a political activist. Theatre maverick Lindsay Kemp created his production Flowers, inspired by Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers.)

I offered my concept to Ines Lua and Micaela Miranda (co-producers) - that the piece be set in a women's prison. They, and the actor playing Madame (Lecoq-trained actor Sandra Salome) agreed.

Play within a play

When the Marquis de Sade was confined within the asylum Charenton, he was permitted to create plays using the inmates, to which members of the public were invited, as memorably explored in Peter Weiss' play 'Marat/Sade: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.'

Of course, setting something in a location (or time period) is not enough - you need a clearly articulated and delivered game. So - imagine a regime* presents plays for the public, performed by actual prisoners. For the prisoners, first night nerves combine with the humiliation of public scrutiny, plus uncertainty - what will happen if they do not perform well? Backstory: female cellmates are separated and rehearsed separately. 

​I had to check with the young company as to their budget, because performing in a black box would not do - we needed the audience to be presented with a space they (the audience) could believe (with the support of suspension of disbelief) was as secure as a prison space. Their set designer came up with an ingenious solution: there would be two angled walls, and a flat as a back 'wall'. The soundscape would provide loud metallic door slams to make viewers believe that unseen doors could be opened to admit the prisoners onto the stage area, and securely slammed and locked behind. All the furnishings - a bunk bed SL, a lidless toilet SR would be clearly bolted to the grey walls which were painted to appear sturdy. Also clearly bolted to the SR wall was a shallow little belle époque console, and above that a gilt-framed oval 'mirror'  (just the frame, as a mirror could of course be broken and used as a shiv). There was a peep-hole which connected to the guard's station and above that a surveillance camera pointed into the cell and streaming live feed to a monitor visible above the guard's desk. See below for a space plan.

​The audience would enter past a guard. She had a tiny office or station just inside the theatre doors.  She would solemnly nod at them, perhaps frisking the odd person or asking to see inside their bag. (Ideally she could have also pointed at a poster saying 'Do not speak to or hand anything to the prisoners', but we did not have the resources to do everything, and what we had worked well enough).

​A little bit of Implicating the Audience

As the lights lowered there were musical theatre announcement chimes, then a soft and pleasant voice said: 'Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. The performance of "The Maids' by Jen Genet is about to begin. If your mobile phone rings during the performance, the actors will stop - and wait for you to finish your call. Alternatively, you can opt to switch off any electronic beeping device. Thank you. Please remain seated for the Security Test.' This was followed by a a loud sound of crackling electricity - lights flickered, and an orange lighting strip embedded into the floor blinked - all giving the illusion of a kind of electric forcefield between stage action and auditorium. 'Teste de segurança terminado.** Attention guards, open the doors.'

​Black out lights up and loud airhorns, the sound of batons thumping along corridor walls, doors opening and closing*** (rhythm) and a female prisoner in an unattractive uniform (I think we chose a kind of catering uniform), arrives on stage as if she has been shoved - staggering and falling. She orients herself - bright lights, she sees the audience, feels self-conscious, looks about in disbelief (clear clocks) at the replica of her old cell presented as stage set. A second prisoner is also thrust out, less violently.

High Stakes

​The two prisoners regard each other - the horror of being surveilled - by the guard SR, by the audience. Imagine the way prisoners look at each other when they are being watched, careful not to endanger themselves or each other. In torture realms, uncertainty is part of the torment. You are never sure what the rules are, what the duration of time will be, what will be coming next. The trope of embarrassed non-activity at the start of a show has been done beautifully by a number of clowns (and Beckett) ****.

Here their anxiety is ramped, their breathing is activated. Their eyebrows are each telegraphing each other - immobilised, as if in a Mexican standoff. The second prisoner (Micaela/Claire) makes a gesture of urgency to her comrade. Ines/Solange is looking intently back at her, after all, Claire has the first line. So Micaela/Claire resigns herself to speak, in anguish: 'Those gloves! those eternal gloves!' Ines/Solange starts, looks at her bare hands, panics, looks at the audience, then sees, laid out along the front of the stage a row of plastic bags - like evidence bags in a police station, the props for the play are contained within them. Ines/Solange flings herself to her knees, crawls back and forth urgently along the front until she finds the correct bag, claws it open and frantically tries to get on the rubber gloves. The fingers are not fitted right and flop about. (real emotion plus touches of the ridiculous). 'Everything that comes out of the kitchen is spit.' Ines/Solange is nervous (the prisoner playing Solange is not a trained actor*****) and on reflex, she spits onto the floor.  Horror for Micaela/Claire. The classic clown trope of problem -solution leading to new problem - leading to new solution ad infinitum; the Clown's Sisyphean predicament. Ines/Solange starts to scrub frantically to clean it. 'So stop it!' By reflex, and in keeping with the principle of comedy nudges, Ines/Solange does one more scrub. 'Go!' Ines/Solange, has a problem ... there is no escape - she clocks the audience, the surveillance video, the entrance (which leads back to the cells and which is sealed now)  She solves the problem ... by standing with her face to the wall.  

Two lines were cut but, we follow Genet's stage direction where Micaela/Claire goes to the 'mirror' and touches the unfamiliar and absurd dressing table and the fake, securely attached flowers in the securely attached vase.  (We played Claire as more vulnerable, traumatised, given to hypnotic moments. Ines as Solange had a vigorous, nervous, courageous, protective quality).
Micaela now must say the lines 'Claire, Claire are you there?' as if her fellow player were not in view.*****

At this moment we had the prison guard (Sandra Salome) shunt open the peephole (it makes a sound). Ines/Solange is startled as the slit is right in front of her and she is eye-to-eye with the guard.
Sandra/Guard (stage whisper): 'Turn. Around.' Hesitating, Ines/Solange does so and Micaela/Claire says: 'Ah, you're back.' (For Ines/Solange this is a playing moment similar to the disorientation played by Pedrolino in Commedia dell'Arte, when everyone is pretending that he is dead).

​... and so forth. Important at the start to a/ clearly establish the situation and b/ create some comedy using contrast, rhythm, clocking etc.

Believable yet exaggerated 

The Prison Guard had an old-school cartoon-jailor-style large ring with keys around her waist. Her costume had a pleated skirt, like some ghastly headmistress.
She also has a thermos - I must have seen a film where a petty official had a thermos on their desk. (I's an intuitive choice - but if I seek to elaborate - although she is obnoxious it also brings a feeling of; she's harmless. Or does it? Somehow the thermos is creepy. She is too comfortable with her thermos - the obscenity/chilling reality that a jobsworth is a figure of power ... the banality of evil). The Controller in Hamlet or Die had a thermos. (Spoiler alert: beyond being a predilection of mine, the thermos turns out to have plot ramifications.)

Plot Twist - use everything

So the prisoners are reciting the play, performing it as best they can - they notice at one point that that surveillance camera is off - they investigate and realise that these are their actual, usual bunkbeds. They start to hunt in their hiding places and discover a vial of pills.

The Madame is due to return - guess who it is? The prison guard. She wears a wig hat and feather boa over her uniform. She suspects something is up and is violent with the prisoner playing Solange, pushing her around and forcing her head into the open toilet bowl. A beautiful red satin dress also gets pushed in to the toilet later in the play.

The plot of Genet's play has the sisters doing a role-play ritual that is intended to end with the death of one of them, via the preparation of a poison tea. In this version of the play, they sisters manage to place the drugs in Madame's thermos (she carries it with her, of course).

Follow through

Madam realises something is up and makes the prisoner playing Claire drink the tea. The guard leaves.
Death is here and she is watching us.' says Solange.
'Let me go', says Claire.
Micaela/Claire takes to her bunk.
Solange continues, distraught - a moment comes when there is no reply. Solange repeats her line, waits then says (inserted line) : 'don't worry darling, I'll do your part.'
Solange finishes the play, reciting both parts, poignantly.
C: Let's finish with this, Solange. I can't bear it anymore. Leave me alone.
S: I shall continue, on  my own, alone my dear? Don't move .... (she clock that by now Claire is completely inert ... but continues - out of grief, out of fear, out of divine hopelessness? 
The prisoner playing Solange tears off her prison uniform and strips to her knickers.
During the 'condemned to be mourning for my maid' speech she goes to the toilet, retrieves and puts on the damp red dress mentioned in the text: 'It's the red costume of criminals' ...
She is looking at the audience in disbelief as they continue to watch.

One evening Ines was having difficulty getting the red dress on and lost her way in the text and she started improvising. She looked at the audience, really eyeballed them across the now gently glowing 'force field' strip. It was brilliant!
'Oh you think it's funny do you? You sitting there in your seats and me here in my knickers!'
She used some of Genet also: ''Who, who is going to make me shut my mouth up? Who will be brave enough to call me "my child" ... I served. I did the appropriate gestures to serve. ...I smiled at you ... I bent over to clean the floor' (these sections of text wonderfully appropriate to our adaptation), ending Solange's soliloquy with: 'We are lost, Clara'.

And continuing, the dialogue all being spoken by the sole survivor.
'Clara you may serve the tea ... My lime tea, I ordered you, Let's finish with this ... this house is poisoned ...'
And she finds the damn thermos and drains it and licks the inside of the cup top, continuing: 'Madame should have her Lime tea ... Madame is having her Lime tea ... for she needs to sleep ... don't you interrupt me again ...But madame ... I said, Tea!'

And she crawls onto the bunk, spooning her dead fellow prisoner. 

Leaving it in their laps

Announcement by the same sweet-toned female voice at the start, a little more firm and official sounding now : 
Ladies and Gentlemen, a peça terminou ... the play is finished. Please leave the vicinity. Thank you for choosing our play and good night.

Black out.


* hm, one of the things that bothered me about Bouffon was that is was meant to poke fun at the beautiful people - I guess this model works where upperclass (wealthy) people are in the audience. In my experience of Fringe theatre there will be a good amount of your audience who are other performers (i.e. not really a privileged class) - of course we can all benefit by having our faults and privileges mocked. I wonder if this is why the idea of 'enrolling the audience' appeals to me. Jon Davison came and witnessed day two of my Clown & Dark Clown course years ago and said - 'so you put the audience in the role of the oppressors'. I was not sure at the time that that was correct, or possible. I feel that an audience know who they are - they are the ones who paid for their ticket and then walked in. Someone has to accept a role to play it, I thought. But perhaps what Jon meant was simply ascribing them this role, not synonymous with asking them  to play the role.  You can jolly audiences in to taking part, as many clowns and cabaret artist do. (Or entrance them into taking part as Lucy Hopkins did in her transcendent show 'Ceremony of Golden Truth').
As I reflect on the dramaturgy of this production of The Maids and also Hamlet or Die, I went to efforts to let the audience know what the situation was. The audience find themselves 'cast' as an audience witnessing oppression for their entertainment. It is not that I wish place the audience in the role of perpetrator. No. I aim for the audience to find themselves in a situation which they find unsettling and repugnant - and while they know it is 'only a play', due to the 'suspension of dis-belief' effect' they can experience conflicted emotions ('I witnessed it therefore I am complicit' or, as happened in Hamlet or Die 'I sang along with the Controller and afterwards I felt so bad.')
**actually, the whole play was performed in Portuguese. I can find no translation in English that satisfies as much as the use of the word 'terminado'.
***actually, on a page of notes for the sound designer I see I have written very specifically: 'aruga aruga (2 secs gap) aruga aruga (2secs gap) aruga aruga (2secs gap) aruga argua aruga argua aruga argua SLAM!!!!)
****The wonderful Australian clowns Los Trios Ringbarkus spoke with nervous high-pitched voices: 'Our band hasn't arrived yet ... so ... we'll wait.' And they got chairs and sat and faced the audience uncomfortably.
*****The actor acts a prisoner who is not an actor, trying to act the role of Solange, currently in role as her sister 'Claire' - phewph.

As part of my Drama School teaching, it is my great joy to be tasked with creating clown pieces.

Just before the quarantine started, I was working on a student production: Clowns perform John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. It's a theatre laboratory course so our brief includes deconstructing and responding to the original text.

The group were all on board with including a feminist point of view. They had recently created a scene to deal with the role of women in their previous module's production of Threepenny Opera.

John Ford actually writes well for women - the female characters here are spirited, feisty and wry, even so, the idea of the clowns coming out saying 'We have a problem with the title!' was in the forefront of my mind.

I developed a process for approaching classical texts to be played by clowns.

In previous years, we worked with The Revengers Tragedy. One year we used a #DarkClown concept: the audience entered to find themselves in a 'rehabilitation centre for clowns'. The concept was: sweet clowns are punished by being forced to present a vicious and violent play, so that they can better fit into society. Towards the end of the show, there was an alarm and an announcement - the clowns had failed at their task and had to depart as their identifying number was called. I had given this direction: 'You are leaving to your death. The prop you are holding now will be the instrument of your death.'

One character left with a haunted face, holding a cucumber before him ...

Another year, a different production/concept for TRT, an organisation of clowns were attempting to understand the 'sad normals' (regular people). The production was divided into chapters: The Clowns try to understand Power. The Clowns try to understand Flawed Humanity. The Clowns try to understand Grief. The Clowns try to understand The Plot ... etc.

I am always inspired by the underdog and for me clowning is a way to present neglected points of view. With The Revengers Tragedy, we included Vindice's dead girlfriend Gloriana as a speaking role. After the scene where Vindice dresses the corpse of his dead beloved (Gloriana), in order to trick and wreak a pointed revenge on the Duke, poor Gloriana, decked in a necklace of 'Magic Tree' car deodorisers (the text said 'raise the perfumes', we made a nod at the room for the sin of Sloth in the film SEVEN) broken-heartedly mourns to Vindice: 'You used me!' This was all the more poignant for by being played with wonderful sensitivity and vulnerability by a very tall male student.

Clown Dramaturgical Process 
​
​An early step is to check out what skills your group has - appoint a monitor and circulate a list. A skill can help inspire a scene. The act of making the list puts that elements in the group imagination. It's also a concrete invitation into clown thinking e.g. 'when can we fit acrobatics into this classical text?' One student was thirsty to use her mime skills which led to the idea of a play-within-the-play scene between relatively minor characters Philotis and Bergetto being played by a single performer in a half-and -half costume - check out RuPaul's Drag Race Season 7 Ep 10.

A key step in the devising adaptation is the Clown Council. We make a circle of chairs. Everyone takes a seat and enters clown state. I tell them that this is a meeting of the Clown Council and they are instructed to stand up when they feel the urge to speak about the themes of the play. I act as scribe to capture what the clowns say.

Later, back in 'sad normal' state, we discuss and find common ground / significant connections.

I encouraged students to put forward their favourite moments from the play, nurturing the emotional connection of clown through their enthusiasms for and reactions to the text.

Processes I used in earlier years included using Arnold MIndell's World Cafe process and the Marketplace Lazy Susan (more information on that process to come perhaps in another post).

Looking to the underrepresented led to the idea for extra scenes for Putana and Hippolita, and the acknowledgement of the point of view of the embryo produced from the love affair between Annabella and Giovanni. It is good to bear in mind that a clowns don't discriminate between the animate and inanimate the way 'sad normals' do. Annabella's heart is brought onstage in Act Five, skewered on Giovanni's knife. In our production, one clown eagerly volunteered to play the heart.

Taking things literally is another useful vein. A quick instance from one of the The Revenger's Tragedy productions - one clown played Vengeance and came on every time Vengeance was mentioned (once mistakenly coming on at the mention of Virtue) and when Vindice raised his sword and said: 'now nine years' vengeance crowd into a minute!' (3.5.124), Vengeance came on and stopped the show as he counted 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi ...' Yup, all the way to 'sixty!'

Another process consists is the theme ideas cloud: I pair students up randomly and assigning each pair a theme. I ask them to put their clown brains and hearts to this task - to think of metaphors and clown-logic ideas, and songs for possible inclusion. 

Making Metaphors concrete: working on this year's text: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, one student, working on the theme of Vows came up with the idea of a ring. Vows are binding. Two Clowns conjoin themselves by wearing a rubber ring in various unwieldy ways, hampering their joy and freedom. Another pair of clowns had the idea of costuming themselves as halves of a pantomime horse. The clown playing Annabella would have worn a horse's bridle, making visual Annabella's status as property which is being negotiated for. Intuition can bring extra comic grace notes. One clown was fascinated by the mention of Parmesan cheese in the text (which is set in Parma) - this would have been inserted as a choric running motif. Another clown was perplexed by the mention of melons in the play - the event where Putana's eyes are put out could have included a clown sitting quietly onstage using a kitchen utensil to make melon balls, while the clown playing Putana screamed.

Costume as dramaturgy. If there is an overriding concept - e.g. Clown Correctional Centre cited earlier - there will be a base costume (or base colour palette) serving that reality and indicating the prison costume or the prison atmosphere. Elaborate bits such as period ruffs would be permitted/supplied by the authorities and clown props (balloon, wooden saw) could work their way in to make a poignant contrast. For 'Tis Pity, I held conversations with each student regarding what their clown might be wearing. A Jacobean crinoline would be worn by one clown, mime apparel for another and two clowns chose cowboy gear. One clown was inspired to wear a rabbit headdress and costume (think Donnie Darko) - this came intuitively from their imagination being captured by Vasques' line 'let my hot hare have law.' This 'Punishment Rabbit' could have appeared intermittently, providing a wonderful irrational way to underscore the theme of hot-headed violence which erupts more than once in the play. There can be sense in nonsense.

The combined metaphors, prop, improvs and running gag ideas birthed a coherent (according to clown logic) approach and the whole would have come together something like this:

​'Tis Pity She's a Horse

The clowns found a script in the back of a Ford Fiesta. 
They were really impressed that, 
while singlehanded-ly revolutionising the automotive industry (yay horsepower), 
Ford (clowns get things wrong)
​had somehow also found the time to also write a play 
(and make some fine Western movies, too, apparently). 
The clowns felt that their presentation of ''Tis Pity She's a Horse' (sic) would be a great opportunity to show that clowns can do high-brow material.
Well some of them. A couple of them just welcomed an opportunity to dress as cowboys.
Or as Death (from The Seventh Seal).
Under the 'leadership' of a Peter Quince-like Company Manager,
this famous tale of incestuous love would have begun 
with a smooth, lively rendering of Sly and the Family Stone's 'It's a Family Affair', with a circular parade of pairs giving quick snapshots of innocent sibling jostling and, on a second circuit, snap-shots of physical less-innocent curiosity. 
The various suitors would have competed in a Derby for the hand of Annabella. 
Soranzo would have disqualified Grimaldi for unspecified reasons and 
Bergetto's horse would have been shot, and sadly not responded to any of the normal methods of resuscitation.
Hippolita would have made a splendid entrance with 
terrifying black-bin-bag wings and spoken of her betrayal with Valkyrie-like rage.
There would have been interruptive appearances by the 'Punishment Rabbit' (see above),
and a Public Service Announcement 
about how the stork arrives when he sees True Love.
There would have been a special appearance by the promptly conceived 
Clown of Shame, with an Oedipus-inspired monologue:
Whose tale more shameful than mine, 
whose lot more dire?
My motheraunt and uncledad 
Did beget me, commingled in one bed.
The fruit of sibling loins;
Monstrous progeny made in equal parts 
of sublimest love and darkest sin.
Ah me! ah woe! oh misery!
And my life short and brutish in the dark
To be murdered unclean and unborn  
by my uncledad’s blade ...
Was ever nephewson afflicted thus!
(lines mashed from Oedipus, Hamlet and TRT)
Annbella, Putana and Hippolita would have risen up from their various deaths to 
address their dead beloveds (using text from Oscar Wilde’s Salome): 
Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit ... There was a bitter taste on thy lips. 

It would have been edgy, elevated and stupid - with touches of pathos and just a little feminist rage.
Due to COVID-19, the production only exists now in the imagination. 
​But the imagination is a wonderful place.

​THE COMEDY OF TERRORS - Dark Clown and Enforced Performance
Observations on Dark Clown from the practical research work of director writer performer Peta Lily
 
Based on a talk presented at the LAUGHTER AND TRANSGRESSION SYMPOSIUM at Bath Spa University on the 13th May 2011
​(this was an informal Symposium and the paper is written in an oral delivery style)
 
What does she mean, Dark Clown? What does she mean Enforced Performance? All will be revealed.
 
Firstly ‘normal clown’.
Historically there have been many kinds of clown, but today most people know and study the Le Coq/Gaulier theatre clown who wears or doesn’t wear the small red mask. This clown is not exclusively so, but tends towards the innocent and the naive. It has no past and next to no memory. As in: 'Wow what a nice shiny red button!  bzzt crang ow! (shake of head, double take)
Say, what a nice shiny red button! bzzt crang ow! (shake of head, double take) Gosh look at that nice shiny red button. I wonder what it does?......bzzt crang ow! (shake of head, double take).' And we laugh. And we say ‘look at that idiot, s/he’s so stupid!’
 
Dark Clown provokes a different quality of laughter.
Dark Clown is where the audience laugh
but at the same time they ask themselves,
‘should I really be laughing at this?!’
It’s a laughter with a different feeling in your chest and your gut.
A laughter that at its height, makes you squirm
and can include the red cheeks of shame and projectile tears.
 
After a while researching the Dark Clown I began to think how strange it is - that when the Red Nose Clown trips and falls it gives us pleasure. We want him to trip and fall again, and trip and fall again, for our pleasure, until we are bored….and then we want
another clown
to trip and fall - or do something else for our pleasure.
And we feel totally okay about this. (1)
 
But with the Dark Clown, when the audience laughs
they feel implicated.
 
To explain my use of the term: Dark Clown. It was a phrase I plucked out of the air to make a distinction from the regular clown work I was teaching. (2)
 
Inspirations for the Dark Clown?
Back in the early 1980’s I went to the ICA in London one night to see a production of Pip Simmon’s ‘An Die Musik’ (the title comes from a beautiful German Lieder by Shubert). The piece was set in a prison camp, where the prisoners - musicians and entertainers - are being forced to perform for their captors.
 
But what really was unforgettable was one scene: a man very tall and gangly with a shaved head came forward danced strenuously, desperately looking right at us while simultaneously hitting himself on the head with a metal tea tray. He was singing Hava Nigila, dancing grotesquely and hitting himself on the head repeatedly. It was hilarious and awful, at the same time.
 
I started to add a session on Dark Clown to my Clown workshops. People seemed intrigued and excited by it. We explored extremity. I would ask the performer: could you make us afraid, could you make us afraid that you might hurt yourself, kill yourself, eat yourself?
 
I also explored a kind of cynical clown who has the attitude of contempt, where the performer says or thinks: ‘I knew you’d like that. I knew you’d laugh at that. Is that all it takes?’
 
And I also explored the idea of existential horror - the horror of being alive. Body Horror - the horror of having body parts.
‘Hand! I have a.. Hand! Why?! Hands?!’
 
Another source of inspiration was Lumiere and Son’s show Circus Lumiere. In one scene,
a big clown uses an electric cattle prod to administer shocks
to a small clown – to make us laugh.
The more we laugh the more they feel compelled
to give and take the shocks. And to turn the dial higher.
 
In the workshops I became more and more compelled by the idea
of the dark clown having to make the audience laugh…
or else….
so I began to add in the scenario of a torture camp:
imagine - people are back there being tortured
and then a bell rings they are
thrust out onto a brightly lit stage to perform for their captors.
 
This has become for me the most compelling application or flavour of the Dark Clown work I’ve been researching - the scenario of Enforced Performance.
This was something real that happened in the concentration camps.
Enforced acts of humiliation and confession no doubt happened in Argentinean torture prisons & other places.
Human-trafficked prostitutes have to pretend to be happy or other things for their captors and clients
and memorably, we saw the staged photo stunts as forcibly performed by the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
Now this is different because it’s elective, but not so long ago, I glimpsed on television a show called ‘So You Think You Can Dance’.
They showed tight close-ups of people being struck off the show. The humiliation, anger and desolation on their faces was being offered up to us
as entertainment….
 
So I want to say here that in both workshops and performance
I always set up the Dark Clown work very carefully. (3)
 
The intention is not to ridicule suffering or those enduring suffering, but
to offer the watcher the experience of laughing - and feeling troubled by that laughter.
 
Technique
The game of tension and release is one of the main components that underpins laughter. As is the game of contrast and surprise.
And another key factor in Comedy is the concept of truth plus pain.
 
In the red nose clown the game of tension and release has a bouncy flavour. He will scare and delight the audience with his clumsy attempts to ride a wobbly unicycle.
In Red Nose clown training, the teacher will threaten to send off a clown. ‘You’re appalling. Get off!’ The threat of being sent off is aimed to inject more energy into their performance….
Plus it gives them also the opportunity to acknowledge their failure, show us their feelings…
 
We love the clown most when he or she is in deepest in the shit… (4)
we enjoy seeing their humanity at that moment.
 
The Red Nose Clown in these moments sells its silliness, its disappointment, its bossiness, its enthusiasm.
Dark Clown sells its pain, its humiliation and its anguish.
 
In Dark Clown the stakes need to be high. People in workshops often find it hard to get the right degree of intensity - so I invented the shooting gallery exercise. (5)
 
First I teach a repetitive stamping dance that is slightly difficult to perform. The clowns must perform it together in perfect alignment. It’s a machine to create accidents and mistakes. If someone makes a mistake or is insufficiently invested in the situation (that they are performing under fear of pain and punishment), I ask the workshop participants who are seated, ‘if you had to shoot someone in this lineup who would you shoot?’
Now it’s an amazing (and slightly chilling) thing how quickly people get into this. ‘James is smiling, he’s not taking it seriously. Shoot James.’  ‘Alison looks bolshy. Shoot her in the leg. Shoot her in the knee!’ ‘Shoot the person next to her.’
A useful clowning principle is: ‘If they laughed once, they should laugh again’ (Philippe Gaulier). It’s the Clown’s job to create laughter for the audience. So, if the audience laugh when her arm goes funny, then it’s the performer’s job to produce the same exact sound/shape/rhythm to allow them to laugh again. Then a third time for the rule of three etc.
To accelerate the laughter (snowball it), we might even have to shoot her in the arm again. Or in the other arm.
 
And the performer must create a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress.
There is an important distinction to be made between Dark Clown and the Grotesque.
The Dark Clown performer must be open to showing the cost – delivering to the audience eyes containing a believable verisimilitude of horror, distress, pain, shame, guilt, humiliation or combinations thereof. It is this which keeps the audience implicated, keeps them on the hook. If the performer is somehow taking the pain lightly, or enjoying the shock effect they are having, if we are not seeing the ‘cost’ to them of performing some painful or humiliating action – then there may be a shock laugh but it will not be the troubled laughter this work aims at. The grotesque, I have found, may impact the audience, but falls short of implicating them.
 
The Red Nose Clown is like Wile E Coyote – run them over by a steam roller, they pop right back up…
The Dark Clown doesn’t re-inflate after a wounding – they get hurt, they suffer, they bleed and they die.
 
Red Nose is there for the audience, Dark Clown is there because of the audience.
Red Nose Clown is desperately trying to stay onstage.   
Dark Clown is desperately trying to stay alive.    
 
Like the Red Nose Clown the Dark Clown does live vividly in the moment - but in a different way
she is hyper alert because punishment or pain can come in anyway at any moment for any reason
and for no reason.
 
Dark Clown must face horrific uncertainty and impossible choices – psychological torture as well as physical and emotional – think of all the myriad moments when people sold out their relatives and neighbours under torture or under threat of torture – we, as the audience of Dark Clown, get to see that. In the case of the stamping dance - do I hop over or around or on my neighbour in the lineup who has fallen to the floor. Do I try to sing better than my fellow prisoner? Must I continue to dance while that person sobs?
 
All this – done correctly - creates laughter….
Part of this laughter comes from shock and absurdity
& the rest comes from a skillful and well-judged use of rhythm and breath…. People who play Dark Clown must finesse their ability to
play the game of tension and release
because the audience get tired more easily due to the quality of the laughter
and because the context is harsh.
Moments of silliness (and softer rhythms/textures) must be strategically interspersed to relax the audience.
The Dark Clown performer must also be able to access acting skills (specifically, the skills of concentration and imagination):
they must scream or cry in a way that is convincing of pain and terror
but which is also
so strategically rhythmic and musical that it provokes laughter.
 
(At the symposium in Bath there was a moment of audience participation here – call and response laughter, then sobbing, using rhythm and breath.)
 
The importance of rhythm.
Now, here’s a thing. You can create laughter over and above content - through rhythm and breath.
A good stand-up will say that you have to get your audience into the habit of laughter. For example: ‘Anyone in from Cardiff?’ ‘Yes’.
Call and response. I speak and you make a sound, ok? That’s how we’ll proceed.
 
But you see most people don’t know this. People will usually assume they laugh because of content
and this is where the ability to implicate comes in –
 
When you – or I - find that we have laughed at something shocking,
we question ourselves    (those of us who are sane)
and we get to confront our own humanity.
 
I suggest that The Dark Clown is useful, because it provides an opportunity for audiences and performers to engage with some of the dark absurdities and obscenities of this world, when drama and sentiment can fall short of touching us.
Because - the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, these are horrors of such magnitude and incomprehensibility that we are
in danger of numbing out even as we try to contemplate them.
Watching that character singing Hava Nigila – doing anything he could to survive, I could both see and squirm at the ghastly subtraction of his dignity.
And simultaneously
release the pent up energy of my own guilt through this vigorous form of laughter…..which at a physiological level shares something with the act of sobbing.
 
In Practice/Performance
In the year 2000 I was asked to create a production in the style of Dark Clown – I created a piece in Hong Kong called Hamlet or Die – where prisoners in a torture regime are compelled to perform Hamlet for their captors.
 
I am going to give now a much abbreviated picture of the show
(which includes something of the set up
required for an Enforced Performance piece).
 
The audience, on their way into the auditorium, must walk past a small cell-like room where the controller is sitting on the loo smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper.
 
Inside the theatre blacks are stripped out. (The walls of the theatre in Hong Kong were white ceramic tiles - the building used to be a dairy).
Over the exit sign a large NO was scrawled and ‘barbed wire’ looped round the door. It’s important that there seems to be no escape. On the stage left wall, a large almost cartoon-like switch to deliver electric shocks.
A guard in Wellington boots holds a long piece of rubber tubing as truncheon.
 
When the audience is seated, the controller enters across the stage, up the central aisle and takes his place at a desk specially installed in the audience. He leans fwd and taps on the microphone and he says ‘bring on the clowns.’
 
The stage has a trap door which is opened. Screams emit. The guard beats the floor with his truncheon. Figures emerge onstage.
 
We witness a ‘warm –up’ consisting of punishing and pointless ‘races’.
At a certain point: a drum roll and a small red velvet drape drops….
 
An announcement :
'For your edification, the sad story of Hamlet - the prince who thought too much.
Don't think too much.      
It can only end badly.'   
 
Panic ensues
incomprehension at the obscenity of this exercise
random acts of physical and mental cruelty are inflicted on the poor prisoners
who all throughout are aware of the heartlessness of the audience who continue watching everything that’s happening to them.
 
While the actor invested with the role of Hamlet is being beaten behind the little red drape for his resistance  boof ahh   boof ahh   boof ahh!
the Controller takes a moment to come down onto the stage. He sings a cheesy sentimental pop song and gets someone in the audience to sing along into the mike. We applaud the volunteer, the controller takes a bow….
then
turns back towards the damaged and shivering prisoners and says ‘See, that’s what the people want, they want to be entertained!’
 
A Dark Clown show needs to be as funny as it is horrific. I planned the next moment to provoke a gasp of shock, but found the call and response habit was so well-installed that it elicited a burst of laughter.
 
The beaten Hamlet crawls onstage in agony to join the scene where Ophelia is returning her letters.
The stage-manager prisoner has had to step in for an irrevocably traumatised young Ophelia…
The prisoner playing Polonius sticks his head out from his ‘hiding’ place and angrily prompts Hamlet: ‘answer her, you have a speech here!’
 
The female stage manager kneels with the text over the supine Hamlet…
She strains to hear his response… their faces are close,
the moment is quite tender…
And Hamlet, with difficulty, raises his head –
And coughs blood up onto her face…
And
the audience
laughs.
 
The Controller pats the mic
Act 4 Scene 7. Number 338, bring the bucket!
Ophelia. Drowns.
 
But Ophelia drowns by accident!      (says the translator, prisoner number 338, looking frantically through the book, finger on the page)
 
Controller: 'This is theatre, nothing happens by accident. Drown the girl.'
338, horrified:  'I can’t.'
 
'Number 338, do you want to take the role?'
The guard pushes 338’s head in the bucket. Holds it there.
(Pause. She emerges gasping.)
338: ‘No, I do not wish to take the role…’
 
‘Act 5 Scene 2. The queen drinks poison.’
The guard grabs Number 269 and a bottle of toilet duck.
‘NO NO! Let me dance for you.
Let me do it! I’ll drown the girl.’
 
The controller returns to the stage:
‘So, how would YOU have it end? Who would you have poisoned, stabbed, drowned?
Think about it....  (points at head)
but don’t think too much…’  (wags finger)
 
If tragedy offers us pity and fear to heal and cleanse the emotions, perhaps Dark Clown brings horror, shame and shock - to fully encompass the pain of watching, unharmed, the suffering of others.
 
 
© PETA LiLY May 2011 with revisions and elaborations 17 February 2013
 
 
(1) The Red Nose Clown performer must fall so skilfully that no concern of injury enters the audience’s mind. If a clown is dealt a blow, or traps his/her finger, then they must rub the spot or shake the hand. The Red Nose Clown must have an inner predisposition to optimism and recovery and in each moment an opportunity to be ‘born’ again. Comedy is regenerative. Life goes on, unstoppably. It is also useful for the Clown to value the audience’s experience over their own – what I mean by that is - that their sadness or hurt must be delivered to the audience while it’s fresh (because it’s the clown’s job to show its humanity), but the performer clown must be prepared to jettison that emotion when the audience needs something else. The Clown is like a healthy child who drops their ice cream, cries, sees a donkey and is all laughter even as the teardrops sit fat upon their lashes. The Clown needs to be an expert at natural emotional release.
 
(2) Someone mentioned to me when I was preparing this talk in 2011, that Dark Clown is a term already in use with regard to Samuel Beckett’s characters. I am not a skilled academic researcher but so far, I can find no reference to that – if you know about other important usages of Dark Clown, please let me know. Many expect Dark Clown to be Scary Clown, Halloween Clown. There is also what I would call Bad Clown (as in ‘Bad Santa’) – I have not seen them live but the fascinating Australian Clowns Blotto and Whacko seem to be to be well-described this way. (One day I’d like to explore this style of clowning more). Other practitioners may teach or perform other things under the title of Dark Clown. That’s fine. I just want to point out that when I refer to the term here in this paper, I specifically refer to the body or practical research I have been involved in since the 1980’s.  
 
(3) In a workshop, I always give a short talk that includes the inspirations for the work, the aims of the work and instructions on what to do in the case of someone becoming upset during the process. I explain upset may occur because a) performers sometimes become upset when shifting into certain emotional territory they have not yet exercised b) something personal might come up – which is pretty much the same as (a) and c) the material is dark – step one is to imaginatively understand the stakes of a life or death scenario sufficiently so that it can be played believably and skillfully. At this point in the process it may happen that there is no laughter – not until the performer adds to this the skills of openness, audience awareness, and laughter creation and control via rhythm, texture, inflection, vocal range, energy management and musicality.
A participant recently said, during a class ‘But it’s just horror!’ I replied: ‘Yes, horror, but with the skillful application of rhythm (and use of the ‘rules’ of repetition, contrast and suspension) so as to cause the kind of laughter where the audience laughs and at the same times questions themselves for laughing. That’s the aim.’
 
(4) Philippe Gaulier, Clown and theatre skills Master, said this, or something like it; ‘We love the clown the most when (s)he has a shit in the pants.’
 
(5) Please note that this is an exercise not a lazzi.  And it’s not how the audience is encouraged or intended to respond in a performance situation.
The seated students participate verbally in the decision-making in the interests of understanding the unpredictable and terrifying nature of the ‘world’. The aim of the exercise is to raise the stakes for the performer so they can release into the emotional spectrum of the Dark Clown.
 
 
General note
For me a key distinction is that I am not seeking the grotesque. That is why the Dark Clown performer must be open to showing the cost – delivering to the audience eyes containing a believable verisimilitude of horror, distress, pain, shame, guilt, humiliation or combinations thereof. It is this which keeps the audience implicated, keeps them on the hook. If the performer is somehow taking the pain lightly, or enjoying the shock effect they are having, if we are not seeing the ‘cost’ to them of performing the humiliating or punishing action – then there may be a shock laugh but it will not be the troubled laughter this work aims at. The grotesque, I have found, may impact the audience, but falls short of implicating them.