Being Yourself in Clowning

In clowning there is a kind of expansion of the self, a limitless sea of possibility of the self. And this sea can only be explored through the opening up in the moment to the interaction with audience. A way of explaining clowning, that I cite directly from Sue Morrison, is to think of it as existing not just in one’s own self, or just in the audience, but “in the space between: in the we, the us, the collective.” The relationship between performer and audience thus become the crucial identifying aspect of clowning. It represents a dialectical play between individual and group, specific experience and universal experience, this moment right now and the whole history of humanity. To understand this is to understand how clowning allows every audience member to identify, not with clown as a “character” but as a placeholder for a sense of universal human experience. I look at you, you look at me, and in this moment of unique specificity in space and time, a universe rolls out in front of us which gives access to all space and all time.

By Professor Teddy Love