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


It's a good-sized list and might feel like a lot but it all flows together in the room - the Clown & Dark Clown course progresses in a way that is fun and enlivening – there are practical exercises for each principle and we get there step by step.
These principles and techniques become understood and assimilated experientially. The Level 2 Dark Clown Course builds on ground gained and gives more opportunity to play with the Dark Clown Scenarios e.g. this one.
 

 
​Clown/ Red Nose Clown 
There are many different types of Clown, for the purposes of teaching on the Clown & Dark Clown course, I use ‘Red Nose Clown’ as a handy distinction from Dark Clown. (I use Red Nose to refer mostly to the Lecoq-lineage of clown regardless of whether a player uses a painted or rubber nose or different coloured nose or no nose at all in their clowning).

Troubled Laughter
In the introduction I give into the Dark Clown work proper (on a course), I usually tell the story of how, watching a scene in a show I saw in 1980, I first experienced what I later came to call Troubled Laughter. From my book-in-progress: “I laughed, while at the same time thinking 'I shouldn’t be laughing at this’. I laughed with a particular sensation in my ribs and lungs. I laughed with hot cheeks. That ‘shouldn’t’ wasn’t simply the transgression of naughtiness, it was something else. I felt awful and I was somehow glad to feel awful because what I was witnessing was a depiction of an appalling predicament. As much as it was ghastly, it was somehow a relief to sit there and make a noise, to find a noise being released out of me; to give expression to a conflicted response via this rhymical release of the breath, to physically and vocally resonate with the stage action.”
 
Marginalised Emotions
Imagine human expression were expressed as a line or continuum. Say that on one side we have the expression we might most often see in the Red Nose Clown, e.g. joy, silliness, loveliness, pride, bashfulness … near the centre of the line there may be grumpiness, crossness, even anger. But what about the other half of the line? Here we are heading for the expressions of the Dark Clown and what I call the Marginalised Emotions – such as: hyper-vigilance, fear, distress, shame, anguish, regret, guilt, humiliation, indignity, disbelief, grief, shock, absurdity, desolation, dread, despair, physical pain, horror, terror and existential dread. (Listed in no special or incremental order).

N.B.: No emotional recall is used in Dark Clown work.  (Emotional recall is a technique used by some Stanislavsky teachers whereby the performer deliberately recalls an upsetting moments from their own life in order to summon emotion – we do not do this).  The Dark Clown work relies on the natural human ability to pretend in a set of imaginary circumstances.
 
A believable verisimilitude of pain and distress
Verisimilitude means a likeness or a portrayal of – if the clown looks like they are enjoying their pain, the audience cannot experience the Troubled Laughter which is one of the defining characteristics of the Dark Clown. In order to Implicate the Audience (see below), the Dark Clown player needs to create / present ‘a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress’ by using rhythm, timbre, energy and imagination, using a set of given circumstances. (It is ‘believable’ because the Dark Clown player pretends well enough and the audience, when they enter a theatre space, are usually ready to become engaged in the world and are ready to ‘suspend disbelief’.)
 
Dark Clown as distinct from Philippe Gaulier’s Bouffon work 
I try not to mention Bouffon in the workshop because if people don’t already know what it is, it takes extra time to explain it and it may confuse people – but if someone asks, I make the distinction this way.
Bouffon plays Satire – Dark Clown does not have the luxury to play satire.
(The historical roots of Bouffon - it is said – are based on a tradition that the outcast had one day of the year to enter the church or village and mock those who had privilege. The Dark Clown does not have the luxury to mock. The Dark Clown is concerned with how to survive the next 30 seconds.)
 
Comedy Craft 
This is a collection of principles and techniques (rhythm, phrasing, musicality, timbre, clocks, beats, contrast, repetition, call backs, nudges, alternation, acceleration/deceleration, escalation (snowballing), micropauses, spatial embroidery etc) that can then be applied to generate laughter in Dark contexts.
 
Clocks/ Clocking
A part of comedy craft - Clocking is when an actor (or player) looks straight at the audience giving them a chance to understand (or simply notice) what the character is (or might be) thinking. A player can also ‘clock’ an object or another performer. Comes from English usage of a clock face.
 
Enforced Performance: 
For some exercises we imagine a prison scenario – the purpose of this is to Raise the Stakes* to help the release into the Marginalised Emotions. I may also mention Life or Death Stakes.

Hyper-vigilance is a natural response to fear. It’s when you are highly alert to any movement or sound, perceiving it as a potential source of threat. In Dark Clown work, this replaces the 'complicité' style of eye-contact and responsiveness of the Red Nose Clown. In an enforced performance scenario, the player will give ‘a believable verisimilitude of hyper-vigilance’.
 
Extraordinary Physiological Response
With sufficient (imaginary, of course) pressure, logical thought stalls, emotion short-circuits and the player can find themselves releasing into a panicked amygdala response, allowing the audience the possibility to witness a  spontaneously-released extraordinary physiological response (a pulsing brow vein, an involuntary twitch or flinch ... ). This is one of the compelling features of the Dark Clown work. 
The EPR is in fact a motif. This is something you can see in Clown, comedy and Commedia work where the performer creates motifs (succinct, repeatable gestures, often combining sound and movement, and aimed to charm the audience or be a laughter nudge for the audience.) The EPR is a motif of a different flavour, but still designed to create laughter, or prime the laughing gear for future potential laughter.
 
As part of Comedy Craft, I emphasise that laughter is a physiological phenomenon – I speak of priming** (priming as you prime a  motor – see below) the ‘laughing gear’. Laughing gear is a colloquial Australian phrase for the mouth, but I use it to mean the lungs, heart, diaphragm (eyes and mouth/jaw are also important).
 
Carlo Boso Commedia dell’Arte Teacher - TAG Teatro di Venezia: ‘It’s easy to make people laugh, all you need to do is to control people’s breathing and their heart rate.’ (nowadays I prefer to say ‘affect’ rather than ‘control’).
 
The Cost
In a Red Nose Clown exercise, we love to see the Clown thinking and reacting - for example, when another clown in the scene/exercise is being praised. We love the micro expressions, the tiny momentary reactions or 'Tells'*** of humanity which the ‘Sad Normals’ (see below) take considerable pains to mask or suppress. In Dark Clown I call this the Cost. The psychological Cost, the visible processing of thoughts and emotions of humanity in extremis.
 
Cost / Palpable cost
I may use the phrase ‘we want to see the cost’ (as in : what does it cost them emotionally?). With the Red Nose Clowns, we love to see their humanity, their emotions. We specially enjoy seeing this in the eyes: the micro-expressions of pride, affront, surprise, confusion, disappointment or other thought processes. Also in tiny head turns or spontaneous micro gestures, or the breath. (In Dark Clown work, the audience gets to see how the Dark Clown player responds to a command or predicament where they must make a terrible choice, how they look when they are wrestling with themselves in the moment before they must jettison they dignity, or betray a fellow ‘prisoner’, and how they look when they must live with what they just did for the rest of their lives.)
 
Dark Side Play
Once players (i.e. course participants) are clear on the aims of the work – and then on the predicament, context and stakes, the play can begin. At this point we are looking for physical and verbal motifs, as well as the player being strategic (with regard to the audience’s state or reactions) with rhythms and vocal timbre / breath, space (where possible). Dark Side Play works the Comedy Craft together with the Marginalised Emotions.
 
High Stakes Predicament – course participants are invited to imagine ghastly or highly constrained / oppressive circumstances in certain exercises and scenarios in order to help fuel release into Marginalised Emotions, using Dark Side Play (comedy craft) in a way that hopefully produces laughter-provoking text or sounds and motifs (including Extraordinary Physiological Responses). (See below for explanation of Stakes) – aka Desperate Predicament aka Pressurised Predicament (see also Impossible Choices below)
 
Humanity in Extremis
Dark Clown is in extremis or trying to survive. It is a more existential look at the human condition (yes some other kinds of Clown can go there too, but usually via moments of pathos).
The Dark Clown work I teach resonates with life-long personal questions: Come torture or duress, what choices would I make?  When given appalling choices, how does one feel as one continues to exist after whatever ghastly choice was made? When oppression is so great that courage is punished by death (or worse) - what are the options? When exactly does one succumb to force? What does the word 'force' really mean? 
 
Implicating the Audience
I use the term Implicating the Audience to refer to the Dark Clown practice where the performer or ensemble manage to create the conditions whereby the audience feel that they are somehow 'on the hook'/at cause/somehow responsible/or that they just feel guilty watching/or that their comfort is in stark contrast to the player onstage portraying the suffering. Although all audiences know that they paid for their ticket and walked in to watch a composed performance, they can, via the ‘suspension of disbelief’****, feel conflicted or shamed in their witnessing and even to a degree, culpable. While no one may actually think: 'Oh my, I must rush on stage and help these people', they feel compelled and conflicted that 'It is not me over there suffering.' 
Allied to this is the Dark Clown concept of Troubled Laughter (see above) whereby the audience laughs and at some level feels troubled or shamed or conflicted in their laughter.
 
Impossible choices
As with Enforced Performance, or inside an Enforced Performance scenario, the player/prisoner may have to make a choice. We will see the Cost and we will witness Marginalised Emotions, possibly some Extraordinary Physiological responses (see above).
 
Red Nose Clown – as mentioned above there are a number of Clown lineages and types of clown – as a convenience I use the term Red Nose Clown to make a distinction between Dark Clown and most other types of Clown.
 
Ridiculous (a judicious use if the ridiculous)
Adding a skilful touch of the ridiculous to a ghastly situation is a useful technique to surprise the audience into Troubled Laughter. For example, in the Buzzer exercise, players employ clocks and beats and express the appropriate Marginalised Emotions (strategically, using comedy craft and with audience awareness). It’s helpful/an extra level of skill to add something ridiculous - e.g.: a feigned electric shock, presented believably, yet which causes the Dark Clown player to spin in a circle like a wind-up toy. Another example: in the setup for The Somali Pirates scenario, I give the players a back story where there is a small past niggle between the two hostages. They are instructed not to play this niggle, but to allow it to bleed into their reactions to the other within the larger predicament. This layering can produce compelling results – a portrayal of a genuine predicament of suffering, inflected with little micro-beats of flawed humanity – which, once released, can in turn release a further micro-beat of Marginalised Emotion- i.e. ‘Oh no, I was just selfish, in such an awful situation! I feel shame at my own behaviour.
 
‘Sad Normals’ a playful teaching phrase to encourage the compassion of the Red Nose Clown performer for the audience – The ‘Sad Normal’ is us in our normal life (in the supermarket, travelling to work having all our petty emotions etc). I say: ‘It is the Clown’s job to have all the emotions and thoughts the Sad Normals prefer to suppress or hide.
 
NOTES

*Raise the Stakes - Definition of 'raise the stakes'
a. to increase the amount of money or valuables hazarded in a gambling game. b. to increase the costs, risks, or considerations involved in taking an action or reaching a conclusion e.g. ‘The Libyan allegations raised the stakes in the propaganda war between Libya and the United States.’ – Collins English Dictionary
 
**Priming 
(I use it to mean getting the ‘laughing gear’: i.e. heart, lungs and diaphragm nice and flexible/available, but this is the everyday meaning of priming an engine.)

1. Fill the oil pan with a quality Break-In Oil.
2. Prime the system by turning the oil pump with a power drill and Priming Tool, or with an external Engine Pre-luber.
3. Rotate the crankshaft by hand, while priming the system. This ensures that oil gets around all the bearings and into all the internal oil passages.

From the web: https://help.summitracing.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/116/~/how-do-i-prime-my-engine-before-the-first-start-up%3F
 
***Tell – An involuntary micro piece of body language. ‘A tell in the card game poker is a change in a player's behaviour or demeanour that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. Sometimes a player may fake a tell, hoping to induce their opponents to make poor judgments in response to the false tell. More often, people try to avoid giving out a tell, by maintaining a ‘poker face’ regardless of how strong or weak their hand is.’ – Wikipedia
 
**** ‘Suspension of disbelief’ – ‘Suspension of disbelief, sometimes called willing suspension of disbelief, is the intentional avoidance of critical thinking or logic in examining something unreal or impossible in reality, such as a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoyment. Aristotle first explored the idea of the concept in its relation to the principles of theatre; the audience ignores the unreality of fiction in order to experience catharsis.’ – Wikipedia 
PL – I think we could say involuntary suspension of critical thinking – due to the audience’s change in physiological state when seated altogether and watching well-crafted theatre. The growing field of Neuroscience suggests mirror neurones and kinesthetic responses are at play with a theatre audience.

If this document raises questions about the way the work unfolds on the course – go here.

If you'd like to support the writing on the book, please go here.

In 2018, I had the joy of leading a Clown & Dark Clown workshop in Oporto, Portugal. The venue was the basement of Campo Alegre Theatre complex in Oporto. I think the building qualifies as a piece of  Brutalist architecture. These courageous souls signed up for the experience.

We found ourselves in a concrete bunker, in the basement of the building, several flights down. While offering an atmospheric 'backdrop'/environment, the space was also a blessing in that it had a spectacularly high ceiling, and, ingeniously natural lighting (windows very high up), so there was room for the sometimes intense energy of the work to disperse.

It was a sentimental journey for me as the theatre above had, in 2003, been the home of the Enforced Performance production of The Maids. I mention Enforced Performance in a number of places on this blog  - you can use the categories under the ko-fi bit on the right, or you can take a look at this post.

You can also see the amazing Ines Lua who played 'the prisoner playing the role of Solange' in the 2003 production of 'The Maids'. Ines is fourth from the right in the image above.

Since 2020, due to the global pandemic, I have been delivering the Clown & Dark Clown course online.  There is much joy in teaching a group that includes participants from Bangalore, Costa Rica, California, Uruguay and New Zealand. I have found many pluses in the adaptation from the studio space to the Zoom-room. I have invented new iterations of the exercises, explored new scenarios and discovered that we can still clock and implicate online.

There are minuses on not having a physical 3-D shared space, but, on Zoom, we still have light-giving windows and the energy can still flow between us. Plus, the Marginalised Emotions (see the footnotes to this post, or scroll down the Categories on the right) might perhaps be more in need of a workout than ever.

Nigerian writer Elnathan John , when asked ‘You have a reputation as a political satirist. Has your writing ever landed you in hot water?' said: ‘The sexy answer would be to say, ”Yes, it is dangerous.’ The real answer is ‘No.’ The tragedy is that people are so numb. Satire depends upon people’s ability to feel or respond to shame. We live in a post-shame world. There is no political shame. The president can say whatever comes into his head and walk away. There is no shame to make people act here. When you write satire, the worst that can happen is that people laugh it off.’
In The New Review The Observer 03.04.16 Q&A 
 
I wish satire could bite hard enough to affect those high up in power, give them a new perspective, to awaken their hearts towards justice, to point them away from inflicting suffering on others or denying or dismissing the suffering of others.

Satire can be elegant. A bold concept, clever keen language, well-articulated reversals. A single satirical cartoon can awaken awareness of an issue. Or even be a channel for emotions. I am thinking of a number of cartoons involving a weeping or violated Statue of Liberty some few years back.

From time to time people ask about the difference between Bouffon and Dark Clown. I was electrified when I first saw Philippe Gaulier leading a class on Bouffon. He walked amongst the course participants, their bodies made strange with hoods and stuffed clothing belted into place and huddled in to a choric clump. Philippe stood there tickling the tops of their heads to help them relax their surface tension and find the requisite sweetness which would allow them to thrust metaphorical daggers into the 'beautiful people' watching them.

I realise in retrospect my character, Muriel from 1984 show 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'* had aspects of the Bouffon about her, but she was mainly too kind-hearted to skewer her audience. The statements she made at the end of the piece were a kind of tough love - she had an ardent message to impart, a wake-up call rather than a shaming. 
 
This site nicely articulates Bouffon, quoting Lecoq: “The difference between the clown and the bouffon is that while the clown is alone, the bouffon is part of a gang; while we make fun of the clown, the bouffon makes fun of us. At the heart of the bouffon is mockery pushed to the point of parody. Bouffons amuse themselves by reproducing the life of man in their own way, through games and pranks. The parody isn’t directly offensive with regard to the public; there is no deliberate intention to mock—the relation is of a different order. Bouffons come from elsewhere.”
Jacques Lecoq  – “Theatre of Movement and Gesture” 2006 (Trans. David Bradbury)

The site's writer then goes on to say that what Gaulier taught was a 'stripped back, purified version of Lecoq’s Bouffon style'. From the class notes of Aqueous Humour's Artistic Director Tom Hogan: “making the beautiful people laugh is the weapon and its aim is to kill by asphyxiation in the laughter or by turning the joke so that they realise that they are laughing at themselves and in the horror of their reflected image they have a heart attack and die”.

Tom Hogan goes on to say: “We came to the understanding that the Bouffon represents the outcast, the one who fails to uphold the social etiquette expected from an integrated and fully functional member of society. They speak for the excluded, the shunned, and untouchable: those that we ignore because of our embarrassment and guilt. We realise that our position in society is upheld by those we consider to be lesser or greater than ourselves. Bouffons challenge our position in society through parody and satire, holding up a mirror to moralising, judgmental, social airs and graces.”

Though admiring Bouffon, I felt my attention called to not just the outcast but the oppressed. I was inspired (as frequent visitors to this blog will know), in 1980, by a scene in Pip Simmonds' unforgettable and disturbing production 'An die Musik'. Later a scene in Lumiere and Son's Circus Lumiere added extra resonance to the feeling of 'implication'.  The work I do under the title of Dark Clown has other, non-clown inspirations including George Orwell's 1984 and Sydney Pollack's 1969 film 'They Shoot Horses Don't They?' - works which portray humanity in extremis.

The Dark Clown work I teach resonates with a life-long personal questions: Come torture or duress, what choices would I make?  When given appalling choices, how does one feel as one continues to exist after whatever ghastly choice was made? When oppression is so great that courage is punished by death (or worse) - what are the options? When exactly does one succumb to force? What does the word 'force' really mean? 

The work I do under the title of Dark Clown provides a way to witness humanity in extremity. For the Dark Clown, playing satire is an impossible luxury.

Although compelled in many ways by Bouffon work; as a theatre maker in the 1980's, touring small scale venues, I could not, personally, see my way to being too scathing towards the people in the audience who had actually made their way out to a small Arts Centre to watch an evening of niche, fringe, physical theatre. 

Dark Clown (especially in the Enforced Performance scenarios) provides opportunities to witness. The Dark Clown as a prisoner in an Enforced Performance scenario allows an audience to see the cost of making an impossible choice under duress and the self-reflective horror and shame and indignity of carrying on existence after such a moment. 

Historically, the Bouffon had a day of the year to enter the church and mock those who had privilege. The Dark Clown does not have the luxury to mock. The Dark Clown is concerned with how to survive the next 30 seconds.

Over time, scenarios not dependent on an Enforced Performance predicament have emerged. The Seal or Eco-horror scenario must be played with a sweetness of approach, similar to the Bouffon but the player cannot follow it up with a spit or the puncture of an insult. The Seal dies slowly, and apologetically in front of the audience. Dramaturgically, taken as a whole - performance and presented predicament - the piece serves as critique, similar to the function of satire, but in the playing of it, satire or mockery must not be employed.

I am interested in giving the performer the experience of embodying Marginalised Emotions and allowing the audience to witness them. 

I celebrate those doing Bouffon work. Audiences get a tremendous amount from the form. And I salute satire. This post is dedicated to making a distinction between the forms.
 
One Clown & Dark Clown Course Participant wrote this, which captures the distinction nicely:
 
‘Regarding Bouffon - I saw a few similarities with the Dark Clown in the seeing humour through pain ... from what I understand, the Bouffon was created as a survival method almost, where people with disabilities and deformities would have normally been persecuted, so to escape that persecution they created characters to make their persecutors laugh, and made them laugh by cleverly parodying their persecutors. The Dark Clown is more desperate and seems to come from a more life & death situation. The main difference I see is that where the Bouffon parodies, the Dark Clown implicates.'

This person went on to say: 'The Bouffon makes you laugh without realising you may be laughing at yourself. Whereas the Dark Clown makes you laugh knowing that you really shouldn't.' 

I would like to finesse that final statement - done correctly, in Dark Clown work, the audience laughs but can still see the horror of the predicament. They get to witnessing themselves laughing in the presence of a dire predicament. The Troubled Laughter the work aims at is not the snigger of transgression, it is a sound-making while witnessing. A sound which is surprised out of the audience by adept rhythm-work and comedy craft (and sound dramaturgy). When laughter happens, the Dark Clown performer swivels their face to clock the laugh, and responds (from within the reality of the portrayed situation) with an added level of shock / fear / alarm / horror / disbelief - done correctly, this allows the audience to experience a feeling of being Implicated (due to the phenomenon of 'suspension of disbelief' they feel at cause, they feel an agency in the suffering of the Dark Clown. 

Going back to Elnathan John's quote at the start on this post ... regrettably, It seems that we have many in power at the moment who are immune to feeling shame.

However, there are many of us who daily witness or contemplate suffering, and find it troubling, but who often find ourselves with no time or dedicated outlet to do anything with it except put it to one side as we get on with our day.** Today, at the end of a Level 2 Dark Clown Course, a practitioner who works in the field of Social Services mentioned their gratitude for the work. In the course of their work, the trauma of a badly treated child is kept 'at arms length' and for professionals in the field, the risk is that 'empathy is blunted'. Having opportunity to embody the Marginalised Emotions, provides a kind of grounding, they said, an experience less fatiguing than keeping the emotions at bay.

Most of us want to keep the feeling of shame at arms length, it's a natural impulse. One of the character-forming and ego-reducing effects of clown training is to jettison resistance to the emotions surrounding failure. The day I realised: 'Ok, being in the 'bide'*** is somewhere I have been before', it left me free to carry on. It gave me courage without bravado, dignity in being ok with having no dignity.

I doubt many world leaders would ever enrol on a clown course - but in the meantime for those of us living with the inequities they create and sustain, perhaps Dark Clown might provide us with a bespoke moment to honour the uncomfortable emotions.

* No relation to Alain Resnais' film - screenplay by Marguerite Duras.
​** Of course there is tireless petition-signing and donating and of course many courageously devote themselves to activism.
*** Gaulier's word for failure, flop.

In the post Resisting Vulnerability, I quote a course participant:

'One other idea I find extremely useful is that emotions like anger and resentment have the potential to be obstructive. In the workshops we were steered away from anger, self-pity, indignation etc. in favour of less defensive emotions like shame, sadness, despair ... Knowing that the territory of slightly more egotistical or aggressive emotions is liable to put up a barrier between the performer and the audience, to create antagonism, rather than letting vulnerability build pathos and evoke empathy, is invaluable.'

I have been listening lately to Brené Brown's Podcast: Unlocking Us. In the episode I have just linked, Brené speaks about using awareness of Shame as a useful step for white folx to avoid any reactivity which may arise during discussions about racism. Brown mentions the value in being able to recognise the symptoms of shame - the hot cheeks and the tunnel vision and the sweating palms. And then Brown gives some handy mantras to reframe thoughts which otherwise risk to get channelled into reactivity, defensiveness, denial and blame.

Generally in life, we normally try to escape uncomfortable emotions. The Dark Clown work has an exercise where course participants do what I call Dark Side Play, where they do a kind of Lazy Susan exercise (an inner circle facing an outer circle). (The outer circle does the exercise and rotates to a fresh partner after each turn.) Those doing the exercise are all given a Marginalised Emotion* to portray (to pretend into). The 'do-ers' have three aims 1/ to create 'a believable verisimilitude of pain and distress' 2/ to employ as many of the comedy crafts as they can remember to employ in the service of 3/ making their partner access Troubled Laughter. Emotions worked include (among others) panic, dread, grief and shame.

When I reach Red Nose Clown, I mention proprioception. I may need a more precise word - science friends, please email me! What I mean is when a spontaneous moment of play has created a sound, gesture, timbre, rhythm, phrase-length that has caused laughter. I encourage students (course participants) to develop the hunger to grow the sense-ability to take an inner snapshot so that they can reproduce what they just did. Then it can be tried again, impartially, like a scientist. Possibly, they might employ the rule of three. No harm if they don't - they can practice the 'fail', accept their emotions of the moment, or just be the presence of that new moment (play the ball where it lies) breathe, await the incoming impulse, and do something else from there - it's all good for the Clown. 

This skill, or understanding of being able to feel what is manifest in your body and voice in the moment, this 'knack', once learned in Red Nose mode, can be employed in Dark Clown mode. To create Troubled Laughter, the Dark Clown performer must nurture the audience's responses and seek to stimulate and recreate laughter where possible (by recreating the physical/vocal/energetic moment which caused the laugh in the first place. It is important in Dark Clown that the duplicated sound appear to be reproduced 'involuntarily': 'The amygdala made me do it', as it were.** Why? Because, in order to keep the audience 'on the hook', the Dark Clown must sustain the 'truth' of the situation (by situation I meant the Imagined Predicament).

So there is this practice to emulate, to portray and to do this over some duration - to stay in the discomforting emotions. This is in pursuit of creating the Implication of the Audience and the Troubled Laughter. But it may just be that this exercise has, incidentally, a further (or bonus) value.

When I first encountered Clowning with Philippe Gaulier (alongside John Wright, John Lee, Phelim McDermot, Rick Kemp, and Annie Griffin) - many of us had a crunch moment. It was totally new, this being exposed, defences down, the 'bide', the 'fail', the 'shit in the pants'. The very thing that one normally wishes fervently to avoid. After Gaulier, sometime in the late 80's/early 90's I attended a workshop in Stand-up. Ivor Dembina stomped into the room where all the chairs were stacked and we, the participants were standing about. Ivor said, 'When you make me laugh, you can sit down.' Discomfort, pricking cheeks, a soupçon of fear. But I thought: 'Oh, this. This is ok. I have been here before.' And I was able to work, to try.

It is a strain, avoiding discomfort. One clamps down. Flow is compromised, or stopped completely. Life force is lost. I wonder if the visiting of the Marginalised Emotions - playing in them as one might play in mud*** - was the experience a recent Clown & Dark Clown course participant was indicating when they said: 
'What surprised me was how very alive I felt after the weekend with the Dark Clown.'

* A list of the Marginalised Emotions is given in this earlier blog post Rehearsing for Darkness.
** There is another tactic (should the moment be right and not too close to the start of the scene). A repeat of the sound could be done as if, from within the ghastly Predicament, The Dark Clown is 'testing' reality in hopeless hope of getting an answer to the unanswerable question: 'What kind of a world IS this? ... Where my pain is being discounted and even laughed at?!'
​*** playing with a portrayal  of the Marginalised Emotions I call Dark Side Play (it incorporates the foundational skills of Comedy Craft which are imparted and drilled in the early part of the Clown & Dark Clown course).

Trigger warning: genocide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​** one could also say ‘beginners mind’

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


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

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

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

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

Sobbing for the fun of it
To prepare for this exercise, there are two steps.
First in full group I give a short demonstration of me talking about a happy day, but while sobbing. ‘Choose a happy moment, a real one – no you don't have to choose a moment that is very precious, just a nice simple happy day.'
​ 
The group pair up and take it in turns to do this task.
 
After each turn there is usually a lot of laughter. Most people can remember an instance of crying in childhood and at some level enjoying the rhythms of one’s own sobbing and breath patterns.
The laughter is about the incongruity (happy story told sobbing), but the laughter is also a response to a release of energy. There is also fun to be had in being given permission for rhythmic vocal play.
 
List your possessions
Step two. Find a new pair partner. (I find it advantageous to keep the energy circulating in the room).

This time, the first one to try the exercise will list their possessions, just as they come to mind, actual possessions, starting with something small. Each thing named needs a small piece of mime or gesture and the object needs to be created and or placed somewhere specific in the air around the performer, i.e. to the or right or left, higher or lower. For example: a pencil could be held up vertically, or measured between two forefingers; hands could make four quick tiers for 'towels'; a pillow could be held in two curved hands and given a little shake. People can use pantomime blanche, where a rectangle drawn with forefingers can represent a TV. Or it can be quick mime i.e. typing fingers on a keyboard for laptop. Each time each object is mentioned, the accompanying gesture needs to be in the exact same place. If the do-er of the exercise omits the mimetic gesture, the partner should urge: 'show me!.

Their partner’s role is to put pressure on them, hector them (to help create a sense of High Stakes), asking 'What else?', ''What else have you got?', and once there are a few things, the partner will shout 'LIST!" - and the do-er of the exercise must list in exact order each thing they mentioned complete with the exact gesture and location in space. Of course any mistakes are to be welcomed. If there is brain freeze, the performer can make a sound to voice their anxiety. Dark Clown work represents the Marginalised Emotions. Any dithering or tongue trip can be voiced. If they can't remember the list or get something out of order – great! The doer can feel the embarrassment or other emotion of the wrong gesture or wrong order and to express that with inflection of voice, breath and/or gesture. 

Swap - the other partner lists and the first do-er hectors. I ask people whether they give each other permission to put a bit of pressure on them, for the sake of providing the momentary adrenal surges which bring syncopation to the exercise. 
 
The Consumer Guilt Scenario – basic setup 
Now – the Consumer Guilt Scenario. The group line up chairs ready to sit and watch as audience. This is a solo piece. I ask who is willing to be the first player and I add more information: 'Imagine that you are standing before some kind of Tribunal (think of ‘self-criticism’ in the Stalinist era, or a less violent version of a ‘struggle session’ during the Cultural Revolution in China).'
 
The player needs to invest in something at stake – even if it’s at a simple level of nervousness and uncertainty as usual in any panel interview: 'What will the outcome of this interview be? How many items must I list? Is my list long enough? Is my list too long?'

Remember, Dark Clown uses a High Stakes to release the impulses for Marginalised Emotions. I play my part in offering stimulus to raise the stakes.
 
Transparent teaching
I let the group know that when I raise my voice or speak harshly, that I am taking on the role of a power figure. The player of the moment is invited to pretend in the proposed predicament as well as they can, knowing that they also need to avail themselves of any moments of naturally arising impulses and to give them shape and sound. The work on the course leading up to this exercise lays a lot of ground work, so course participants know what the methodology is and why things are happening. They have also had a preparatory talk laying out the aims and ethos of the work.
 
When I give a sharp command, the aim is to startle the physiology – most people’s intonation will rise when given a sharp instruction, some people stutter (these form part of the rhythms and timbres we play with as 'Dark Side Play'). Those who have worked with Gaulier or a Gaulier-trainer Clown teacher, will know that the teacher's interventions in role as grumpy Clown Professor are there to give the (Red Nose) Clown a skip in their step, or to release an emotion (the Red Nose Clown’s unmasked humanity which we love to see), or to allow the Clown to release some élan, to ‘save the furniture’ (save the situation).
 
As stakes-raiser, I say, or shout, ‘What have you got?’ And they are off.
I switch to my coaching voice to remind them to give clarity and simple precision to each item they mention. I also use the prompts 'show me!' and 'list!.'
 
The mechanics of responding to the audience within the Predicament
From the start of the course, I have been encouraging the participant to look and see (‘when you look, remember to see’). The other way I phrase this is to emphasise ‘noticing’. Each audience reaction can feed the performance of the player.
 
The performer needs to work the audience as a comedy player needs to work / respond to an audience, while in their imagination, they see and respond to the audience as the panel.
If the audience laugh, it is useful to imagine that perhaps they did not understand, perhaps some of the ‘panel’* don’t speak your language - this gives the opportunity for the player to repeat it (exact timbre, rhythm, volume, using proprioception) you say it again (usually another laugh occurs) - the player can then allow this to unnerve them and therefore take the opportunity of a further repetition (as if due to nerves), and say the thing a third time (usually someone else in the row of watchers/class audience with laugh then  Rule of Three). Then the player can react with anxiety to the fact that they are being laughed at. This serves two purposes: a/ the logic of the predicament - 'is laughter a good or a bad thing?' serving the stakes and performed emotional state of the player and b/ the comedy craft - 'laughter an interruption that must be dealt with’ as Avner the Eccentric says.
What, in this moment, does the interruption do to the figure in the improvised predicament? Does it put them off their game, shame them?
Ongoingly, there is the pressure to keep more items coming, and of course to ramp up the rhythm by responding to the command: ‘LIST!!’
 
Raising the stakes again - the importance of imaginative investment
Ok – let’s go back to the set up for the exercise – because there are a couple more elements to it.
 
The name of the scenario is Consumer Guilt. I remind the player of the moment that they can begin the improvisation crying or they can work the items / list game first, then do the list citing or break out into sobbing as a counterpoint / contrast / escalation. I remind the player where necessary to avail themselves of different rhythms and timbres.**

Combined with this, I invite us all to reflect on our privileged lives and the obscenity of what we own in comparison with many in the world.
 
To activate this further - one more thing is set up. I mention the ghastly earthquake in Haiti, and invite the player to see, over to the left (metaphorically, In their mind's eye) – a little grandma - to imagine a poor little aged woman who has lost everything … every thing … I say. She is there, naked, under a piece of plastic supported on sticks, next to running sewage.

'Ok now – what have you got?'
 
Every so often, if people are not allowing the emotions of guilt and shame to surface, I prompt them to look at Grandma.
 
And to say: ‘I’m sorry Grandma.’ And to say it: 'Again!'
If needed, I invite them: ‘can you sob a bit?’
'List!! What else have you got?! Look at Grandma, say: "Sorry Grandma."'
 
If people can segue into sobbing, a further level yet can be added where they look up, appalled at themselves and say ‘oh god!’ and play with what timbres and rhythms of that game - or use 'oh god' as punctuation / counterpoint / alternation with the game of listed objects interrupted by the apologies to Grandma.
 
Trouble shooting - noticing and sounding the arising emotions
People can, understandably enough, focus on coming up with the next item. There is zero need to come up with anything interesting, in fact, the more banal the better. People tend to be task-oriented rather than being-oriented. What's key in clowning in general is noticing, accepting and including any passing emotion that may arise. While the list is necessary and important to get a rhythm going (as well as provide the content for the contrast, the obscenity of plenty and the picture of inequality), what we really enjoy are  the little flinches, the flecks of pain that read in the eyes of the player who is immersing into the pretended (but heck, let’s face it, fully grounded in reality) Predicament. Any anxiety about a delay in finding the next item, or fear of not being able to think, or nerves about standing in front of other - all these are impulses to be experienced. All Clown students would do well to allow themselves to express the micro-emotion of the moment in sound and movement. Wonderful, strange, little quirks can affect the face or the voice under even a modicum of stress.
 
Resistance and the accidental extraordinary physiological response
People sometimes resist looking at Grandma. (Thereby cheating themselves of the opportunity to escalate their playing energy).
Working in Holland in January***, despite several reminders ‘Look at her!!’, the player was resisting doing that.
‘Look at her!!!!’, I insisted, and she did start to turn her head ... but before her neck fully turned, it snapped back. It was this wonderful, compelling, unplanned flinch of aversion!

We laugh with delight or incredulity or just plain surprise when the Red Nose Clown does a spontaneous something that is quirky and fresh-minted from the impulse of the moment.
For me – that involuntary flinch was a similar gem - eliciting a gasp of Troubled Laughter. 22/9/2024 I call this an extraordinary physiological response - see this blog post of DC terms.

These unbidden gestures (accidents of the moment and of physiology) are the nuggets of the joy / pain / catharsis of the Dark Clown. The wonderful performer who plays The Seal in the ‘Eco Horror’ scenario shown in the Dark Clown documentary (Hospital Clown Faith Tingle) has done the Clown & Dark Clown course three times. She surrenders her physiology to the imagination and the impulse of the moment. In Dark Clown the impulse can be an ongoing (pretended) stress situation. Once, doing the ‘Horror Is’ exercise, she invested magnificently in imagining her phobia/object of dread and her forehead veins bulged and danced in a compelling way. And because her rhythms were in place, laughter was released. A sound could be made in a moment of witnessing stress – cathartic nugget.

Let's go back to the player in Holland and that wonderful flinch! What we saw in that moment was a human who would not look. Her very body resisted the direct command. It was such a human response – we all know in ourselves that knee-jerk will, that aversion, that refusal to look at pain - those moments when we really do not want to look on hurt or ugliness, when we want to live our lives as we have arranged them, not accept responsibility for others, and not have our status quo threatened. Arrogance, denial and fear mixed – how is that for a Marginalised Emotion! And I love it all the more because it is not coming from reason, it's coming from the body's primal instincts, the Amygdala response (if talking about the Amygdala in that way is still good science).
 
Shame - another memorable moment
In December 2019, there was a wonderful iteration of this exercise. The player of the moment was a talented actor and dancer. 
In his list of possessions, he mentioned shower gel and a loofah. Something about this, about the way he said it, had a quality that attracted my attention. He is an intelligent person and was no doubt alert to the particular combination of privilege to be able to afford the healthy natural and rather exotic product (the obscenity of owning items which invest us with a touch of smugness) and also the vanity of it too - like the Beckhams, we exfoliate.

I said, 'Ok you are going to take that loofah and that shower gel and have a shower, and apologise to Grandma while it is happening' (Just so you know - I have a rule that course participants can choose to break and leave an improvisation if they so wish at any moment of their choosing). He took the invitation / provocation and began to shower (fully clothed, just to be clear!) and he did something I did not expect. He remained in relationship with (aware of) Grandma as he started to come showering, and then there was this little instinctual shift of his body and he turned the front of his body away from her. We saw a human being ashamed to have the luxury Grandma did not, ashamed to affront Grandma with his nakedness, and also ashamed on his own account of being naked in front of Grandma. So poignant, so ghastly. I am no stranger to the emotion of shame and it is so – I don’t know the word … liberating, reassuring, the opposite of alienating? Validating? Healing? Thank heavens for Brené Brown doing her risk-taking work in the field of Shame. To be able to see these awful moments of life in a ‘safe’ setting in the ritual space of theatre or theatre making or theatre training.
 
*To be clear, the player looks at and is tasked with reading the audience as 'panel' (while attending to their laughter and other responses according to the techniques of comedy craft, as audience). The audience when watching exercises or scenario improv’s are instructed to be a normal audience. When I say panel – this is the reality of the predicament of the performer. The performer is playing someone standing before a panel. The performer responds to the laughter and silences of the audience from within the pretended predicament. Occasionally one needs to coach participants sitting in audience (either in Red Nose or in Dark Clown exercises) to avoid the impulse to coach fellow course members - i.e. to call things out to them that you think they should do. The work at hand is training how to work a normal audience. If people are calling out as peers/would be coaches, how is that helping their fellows train to work a normal audience?
 
**When we do a very early Red Nose Clown exercise ‘Moving Around the Room Like’, I land this point: ‘Clowning is not intellectual. It is often a shape, phrase, sound timbre rhythm that we like … so much that we’d be happy to see it again … and again (the Peekaboo exercise reinforces this, so does the example of playing with a baby ‘LookatthePanda ….’). We see how laughter can wane or fail if people have not built sufficient proprioception skill to accurately reproduce the thing that happened just before the laugh. If they do it softer volume it’s a disappointment and can remove the possibility of a rule of three; if they forget what they did, tumbleweeds may ensue.

***'Comedy can make people aware of what is going on in a way that is easier to digest than the news. It engages people more. I got what I came for and I a lot more fun, playfulness and laughter than I expected, given the subjects are ‘dark’. What surprised me though, was how very alive I felt after the weekend with the Dark Clown.' - Course Participant Jan 2020 Utrecht

The first time I was told to 'Sing as if your life depended on it' - it was in a workshop situation, happily, not IRL - 
and I gave it my best shot.
But I remember, at the moment of hearing the instruction, feeling dumbstruck and demotivated.
For most of us in the Western world, our lives are blessed to the degree that having to actually sing for one's life is something difficult to imagine. 






​High Stakes Predicaments and Marginalised Emotions

You are standing in a hole you were forced to dig. It is wartime and it is clear this is going to be your grave. War films I saw as a child had heroic behaviour. The clown can be courageous but the clown is mainly there to show human failure. In Dark Clown terms, failure is less of a personal failing/flaw but a result of circumstances being so strong and oppressive that we are forced to jettison our own values and dignity. Later in this post I will describe an exercise I call 'Selling Yourself Out to the Enemy'.

With the Red Nose Clown, we enter Clown State and the spontaneous play follows (having greased the wheels with exercises enlivening the body and derailing the control brain, of course).

With the Dark Clown, I set up predicaments for people to imagine themselves in - Predicaments with High Stakes, so as to help people release imaginatively into the Marginalised Emotions. On a the Clown & Dark Clown workshop, before we approach the Predicaments we prime the body; visit the Emotional Zones with voice and breath; and open up awareness of patterns of rhythmic play. 

A Dark Clown Level Two Course Participant reflects

On an early Level Two Dark Clown course in Oldham 2012, I inaugurated a couple of what were at the time new exercises. One Course Participant from that course answered my recent* questionnaire* and wrote this:

'Dark Clown is an exhilarating opportunity to embody devastating emotions and to admit the inadmissible in a safe environment. Two experiences stand out for me – one I watched and one I performed. I wept with deep humiliation and guilt as I laughed, whilst watching an exercise where a workshop participant was being asked to recount what he was going to have for Christmas dinner to a child in famine-struck Ethiopia.

How could it be possible to experience two such contrasting experiences at once? How freeing it was to be able to admit to experiencing emotions that would be condemned by my upbringing?

The one I performed was the following: I was playing my cello in a concentration camp and not only my life depended on it, but so did that of all my fellow inmates. And a small detail - I did not have any instrument to play either. I relive this from time to time. I remember feeling authentic rage at the abuse of me, my instrument, my art and the co-sufferers for whom I was responsible. That experience shone a laser mirror into my soul - reflecting back a sheer and bitter bloodymindedness - of which I can now feel proud.’

Saving Private Ryan - the Steam Boat Willie Scene 

There is a scene in Saving Private Ryan - I sat and transcribed it from the film (you're welcome!)

A German prisoner with a shovel standing in a hole is handed a cigarette by his American captor. He inhales, looks at the cigarette appreciatively.

German Prisoner: American? I like America - Steamboat Willie. Toot toot!
 
Steamboat Willie’s American …
 
More soldiers come with their guns at the ready. He stops smoking the cigarette he was given.
 
Ich bin gar nichts fertig. Es muss noch mehr tiefer geworden. (trans: I'm not ready. It's got to be much deeper.)
 
US Soldier: That’s what you think.

One soldier grabs the Prisoner.
 
German Prisoner: Nein (it’s a sob)
 
He jumps back in the grave and starts to dig vigorously.

 ... noch nichts fertig ...
 
He looks at gun and begs:
 
Please…

Resumes energetically digging.

I like America! Fancy Shmancy, go fly a kite, Cat got your tongue, cool beans! Betty Boop, what a dish! 
Betty Gable, nice gams ... sings: "I say can you see, I say can you see, I say".
... Fuck Hitler ... FUCK HITLER!

'Selling Yourself Out to the Enemy' Scenario

Giving the example of this scene from Saving Private Ryan, I asked the group: can you think of  a person or group whose values are in opposition to yours?

The Course Participant I quoted earlier threw her hand up. 'The Taliban! I'd like to do the Taliban!'
So she did. The improvisation went something like this:

I love your approach to justice! I agree with you. Women should be covered up, women should not speak - not like me, now, speaking to you. Gah! Speaking to herself, shouting: SHUT UP! See?! And women, women should be covered, Yes, Silent. Silent! SHUT UP! 
And invisible! Yes!
She held her hands in front of her face, she desperately tried to hide her uncovered areas.
Speaking about herself: Gah! Disgusting! beating her own bare arms: Disgusting!
Western women are disgusting! Let me show you - Beyonce, yes? Skimpy leotard. Give me a machete, I'll show her! Take that, Beyonce!
She waved an imaginary blade about as if hacking at Beyonce. Gah! Take that! More hacking.
Singing: 'Single ladies' No! no singing. Death - death to western women ... Death to Beyonce!
She held her arms out pleadingly:
I can help you. Gahh, my arms sorry about my arms - I'll chop them off, look ... look ... look!
Death to women who speak! And think! Gah! Beyonce! Oprah, Mary Beard. More hacking. At the imaginary women, at her own arms.
​'Who runs the world?' You! You the Taliban. I'll ... I'll grow a beard, yes! Let me join you, please.  Please?
​Please!

See here the many comedy craft games involved to make this Dark Clown scene work (aiming to generate laughter even while generating a believable portrait of desperation and fear): physical games, the games of repetition (of words, of movement motifs), the game of solution/new problem and the breath and emotions all employed with variety and calibration i.e.responding to the audience (reacting hopefully or anxiously to laughter or other audience reactions as if responding to the reactions of the enemy). All with the aim of generating  the experience of Troubled Laughter for the workshop audience.

The talented comic performer Trixie Mattel said in an interview somewhere: 'Comedy is the intersection between specificity and exaggeration.'

The more vivid and specific the predicament is, the more the Dark Clown player can launch off into the Marginalised Emotions and flights of fancy caused - not by wonder (as for Red Nose Clown) - but through the imaginative investment in a high stakes predicament and the cathartic joy of employing and enjoying an agile vocal and physical play to depict extreme desperation, fear, alarm.

The Dark Clown performer needs a good predicament,  and then to be able to Mine the Predicament - choosing things to say that make logical, emotional, dramaturgical sense; things that will keep the audience on the hook. To Mine the Predicament, the Dark Clown performer also needs to find agile changes in rhythm, timbre and emotion in relation to the audience's reactions, or in reacting to the previous thing they themselves did. Things can be extraordinary (in extremis, we do not cry or flinch in socially inflected ways), but the suffering must be believable - there can be no sense of the clown enjoying shocking us by appearing to relish the pain or enjoy the exaggeration for its own sake. As soon as the Dark Clown performer comments on or adopts a self-indulgent grotesquerie, the audience is let off the hook, and the laughter is no longer a Troubled Laughter - i.e. a laughter born of / or containing conflict.

* The questionnaire is for 'graduates' of the Clown & Dark Clown course  and or the Level Two Dark Clown course. Any 'graduates' reading this I welcome your contributions! Write to me and I'll send you the questionnaire.

Work on the book has begun - I will be writing the book throughout this year.

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).
​ 
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.