Clown Musings - Part two of Clowning in Calgary
Time to read: under 5 minutes
I find there is an honesty demanded in clowning, a brutal honesty and a commitment to each fleeting moment- each fleeting impulse that drives the clown’s antics. You can’t lie in clown- well, I mean you can, but the audience will know, and they will not find you funny. They will not even find you sad. They will simply not connect with you, if you lie. You have only the truth, no matter how selfish, childish, ugly, or hilarious the truth is. The clown is the soothsayer, the rune reader of the immediate moment and present company. I suspect that this is what makes clowns both funny and scary.
The training I did as a clown has forever altered my approach to performing and to teaching, in remarkable ways. I learned, whether, in clown or not, whether on stage or not, that the audience or class needs to be ‘let in’ as if they are the other performer in the story. The deep listening in clown training teaches there is a way to listen to the many gathered as though they are one single complex entity, and for that bit of love and magic, I am eternally grateful!
Another Clown in the City
I’d like to introduce you to Jacqueline Russell, another Calgary Clown I had the pleasure of chatting with. Russell wrote her Master’s Thesis on Feminist Clowning, studied with John Turner (Smoot, of Mump and Smoot), as well as Jan Henderson.
She feels the clowning community in the country is tightly interconnected and, prior to the pandemic, there were more and more connections being made across different cities and provinces through festivals.
We chatted about how very few people know the clown community in Calgary. Russell suggests that there are two schools of thought on the topic of growing clown-lovers in this city.
There needs to be a sort of re-education of people to the ‘true love and magic’ behind Clowning
or
To maintain being underground – that you have to experience clown/s to understand and appreciate them
And of course, in true clown fashion she throws down a 3rd option, that maybe we just need to trick them into it! Russell sites Lucille Ball, Laurel and Hardy and Sacha Baron Cohen as examples of ‘clowns without noses’.
Clowning in this time
There is no avoiding the topic of Pandemic, when I asked her how this time is impacting herself and the clown community at large, she suggested that solutions are slowly being found and that this is a good time to pause and reflect on the more and more visible privilege’s and bias’ inherent in our current system, and magnified in such a boutique field. The silver-lining she pondered is that maybe, in this very theatrical pause we find ourselves in, we might take a moment and figure out what we are going to do about these inequities.
“The clowns come out when the world is ending”
Clown’ish Sentiments
I asked each clown, about this sentiment (I can’t help it, I’m both a Clown and a Poet!)
Russell responded that the common thread, in her various training, is ‘the more dire the time the more clowns there are to be found.’
Another Clown in the City
I also had a conversation with Kirk Miles, another Calgary clown who is both a Clown and a Poet - I may be biased here, but I think these two things go so well together!
Miles has been donning the red nose for about 35 years, with Calgary being his home base. Over the years he’s studied with Jan Henderson and The Green Fools but the greatest training he received was in roving through the crowds. This is where he developed his own material – it came from the experience of working the streets.
He’s performed on the streets of the Edmonton Fringe Festival, the Street Performer’s Festival, followed the Fringe Festival circuit across Canada and into the States, worked in huge crowds of Stadium-size proportions.
After many years living the street performers life, Miles opted to make a more rooted life in Calgary and entered the Birthday Clown Market. After a few, and I quote: ‘Chernobyl balloon animal creations’, he quickly mastered the art and found a home for himself and his Clowning skills.
Clowning in this time
He states, rather simply, that clowning is impossible on zoom.
Clown’ish Sentiments
When asked if he’d heard the sentiment of the clowns only come out when the world is ending, he laughed and quoted the song ‘Send in the Clowns’. Claiming that nothing relieves anxiety like laughter, and clowning can make people laugh - if it’s done well.
‘Laughter is so important, humour comes out no matter how dark things are.’ Kirk Miles
To find out more about Kirk Miles aka ‘Hamlet the Clown’, visit hamlettheclown.com. Reviews of his work can be found at gigsalad.com and while we wait the return of the post-covid Clowns, perhaps some poetry will warm your hearts.
As well as a poet, and a clown, Miles is also a published author. Moving Dust is an uncompromising book of poetry about the Holocaust.
…,and one more Clown in the City
I’d like to introduce you to Iam Coulter, yet another Calgary Clown I had the pleasure of chatting with. Iam is relatively new to clowning and you may know her better from her time at The Shakespeare Company, performing, directing, teaching and producing. She was accidently introduced to clown (aren’t we all?), during a 4-month dance, movement, and clown Conservatory program in the States. She describes spending an entire weekend living in her clown, going on nature walks, ‘how lovely it is’ she says, ‘to connect with the aging beauty of Autumn leaves’.... friends, we might have another Clown/Poet here!
Coulter wishes that work like mask and clown was more available to young actors in training. How valuable the experience and how powerful the impact on her as a performer.
Clowning in this time
When I asked her how this time has impacted her clowning, she spoke of the silver linings. That suddenly the small but scattered world of Clowns have found a forum online, to play and to practice, to train and to teach. Suddenly she can easily join a zoom training session without costing out the expensive cross-country ticket that might have previously been required. A global, virtual community of clowns- what a delightful thought!
She doesn’t know how it translates to an audience though, this online world. The necessity of eye contact, listening to breaths and laughs. How do you listen sensitively when your audience is on mute? A question I’m sure everyone in the Live Performing Arts is asking right now.
Clown’ish Sentiments
Coulter believes clowns helps us to see that we are all the same: struggling, sad and fu$king awesome seekers of delight.
“Are the clowns coming? Well, I certainly hope so - we really need them!”
When asked if she’d heard the sentiment of the clowns only coming out when the world is ending, she replied, ‘Are the clowns coming? Well, I certainly hope so- we really need them!’
For more about Iam, visit iamcoulter.com.
Clown Musings
I don’t know how to even begin to do justice to the many lovely words I’ve shared with these fellow humans in our conversations about clowning, in this city and in this time. I have, however, tried, and in my conversations they all sent my gaze elsewhere, asking me: ‘do you know this person? Or that person? Oh, you need to meet so and so.’ Fellow readers, the clowns are truly among us – seeking and spreading love and magic everywhere they go. Sometimes they wear a nose when they go, and sometimes they don’t.
