Clown thinking changes your brain

These stories are from the lived experience of being a clown. And surviving to tell the tale.

Clown thinking changes your brain. I can’t quite explain it. These stories are from the lived experience of being a clown. And surviving to tell the tale. I have found that my clowns take my things and leave a creative mess behind. I’m always trying to sort out what has happened and how. Could I repeat the same bit? Do I want to? Answers are slow in coming, I’m still sorting, but the puddles are getting bigger. It’s like shoveling rain. Oh, oh. Is that a mixed metaphor?

Pierrot: A Poet of the Heart & Hands

I never intended to be a clown. I found Pierrot in a summer session Commedia dell’Arte class when I was only fifteen years old. She amazed me. She was like a spiritual being that enveloped me physically. Playing Pierrot filled me with all kinds of emotions that I didn’t know I had. The emotions became so big that they were funny. The clown was so sad, or so afraid or so delighted.

Author as Pierrot blowing mime bubbles in the Yukon, 1998. Part of the author’s personal collection.

Balloons, Balloons

I started to get phone calls for Pierrot to appear at different places, one was to make balloon animals at some conference dinner for an association. All I knew how to make was dogs or mice but I thought I would go prepared. I asked some friends to blow up two garbage bags of balloons for me so I would be ready. I took the pump and an extra bag of balloons in case there were a few more children. I got fully dressed in make-up and costume as Pierrot the mime clown and drove to the University of Winnipeg. I parked on Spence Street, the other side of Portage, where there was more space.

I took the balloons and pump and started across Portage Avenue, but it was very windy. The cars were lined up facing me and waiting when the wind picked up the balloons and started blowing them around the road. As I tried to gather them up, others blew out of my bag. The people were staring from their cars. The light changed and I was still chasing the balloons but finally, I had to hold on to what I could and watch the others blow away. The eyes in the cars followed me as I staggered against the wind clutching my balloons.

Eventually I made it to Riddell Hall. Those of you that have been in Riddell Hall at the university know it is a very big room. Usually there is a divider and it is split in half—it is still a big room. When I got there, or Pierrot got there, there was no divider and it was full of people. There were hundreds of people. Immediately I heard over the loudspeaker, “The clown has arrived. Gather the children for the show.” Remember, I thought I was there to make a few balloon animals. All kinds of children started to swarm around me. I backed along the wall until I came to the edge of the room, but as the children crowded around me, I noticed that I was beside the slightly over-ripe garbage.

I quickly twisted the few pumped up balloons that were left in my garbage bags and then I looked at all the children. It was clear that they all wanted balloons. So, I took out the balloon pump and tried to blow up a balloon, but I had never used the pump before, and I couldn’t get it to work. I frantically tried every way that I could think of, but nothing worked. I would have liked to move away from the smell of the garbage but it was too crowded.

I looked up in despair at the children and they were laughing. They thought that trying to blow up balloons and failing was part of the show. They thought that Pierrot was pretending that she didn’t know how to use the pump. I kept trying. I knew the pump had worked for my friends. I tried a different balloon. I tried it upside-down. Nothing worked. The children were laughing.

In desperation, I handed the pump to a teenager standing beside me and reached into my bags of balloons that weren’t blown up yet and started throwing them at the kids—all one hundred and forty-four of the balloons in the bag. I thought that the kids would take them and then I could do something else. I didn’t know what, but something else.

The children grabbed the balloons and then held them in the air and yelled, “Balloon, balloon.” Apparently, they were not satisfied. They chanted in unison, “Balloon, balloon, balloon.” Well, Pierrot just didn’t know what to do next. Then I looked over and the teenager had figured out how to use the pump! She was blowing up balloons! She handed them to Pierrot, I tied one and twisted two ears and gave it to a child. It took me a whole hour until every child had a balloon mouse.

My time was up. I left my spot by the pile of garbage and went to find the woman who would give me the cheque. The woman sat me down and gave me some food. She said to Pierrot, “you have made many children very happy.” I was stunned. Then a small child climbed up onto the chair beside Pierrot and whispered in my ear, “I know that you’re really a human being!”

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Popcorn Philosophy

Discovering a Traditional Character

When I discovered Pierrot, magic came into my life. A healing path opened that I followed as I became “a poet of the heart and hands.” Sorrow became joy, as it played itself in my clown.

Irene Mawer, an artist who performed Pierrot in Britain in the 1920s, describes Pierrot:

Pierrot is akin to the immortals, if not of them. Every generation loves and laughs, suffers and despairs. And in every generation there rises some poet of the hands and eyes, some silent witness to the eternal rhythm of the human heart. Some creature, half boy, perhaps half woman; or, perhaps, some man with the heart of a child, will don the motley once more, will whiten his face till it resembles the secret face of the moon, his foster-mother, and he will creep in at the door at the Last Theatre but One. Perhaps he will steal on to the empty stage, and, calling together those ghosts who hide among the forgotten scenery of lost plays that didn’t play, begin once more the Divine Comedy. And perhaps the empty stalls will fill again with lovely ladies, the gallery with poor students…. Till even the cinemas are empty and the talkies fall silent, because a whisper has gone about “Pierrot is come again.” (78)

When I discovered Pierrot, magic came into my life. A healing path opened that I followed as I became “a poet of the heart and hands.” Sorrow became joy, as it played itself in my clown. Sickness became health, as I began to laugh again. Children around the clown found themselves described in the clown’s emotions. My body found rhythm in Pierrot’s movement to music and her articulation of the poetry of song. I knew that I was encountering something sacred and eternal. I felt that Pierrot was “akin to the immortals.”

I think of performing in terms of energy. In my body, there is a surge of energy like a magnetic force that pulls energy from the audience and channels it through my body, which articulates the energy back through the art form. It is a love relationship with the audience, a receiving, a giving, and a receiving again. Together in the space, audience and performer are actualizing themselves through the role of the clown.

The clown has a direct connection with the audience because there is no fourth wall, so wherever she is on stage, she’s moving with the audience. For me as the clown, some moments have felt eternal, as if the energy of performer and audience had entered the forest of dreams and struggles where renewal and hope persist.

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Peacock Performance - A Look at Wolseley, with Tales to come

Wolseley is my neighbourhood of choice. Characterized by huge elm trees, locally run shops and a ground-breaking approach to the natural food’s movement, it turns out to be a good place to live and clown.

Wolseley Tales: Remembering Mrs. Lipton’s

Over 20 years after Mrs. Lipton’s Restaurant closed and Karen had turned it into Mrs. Lipton’s studio where she made her batiks, Karen asked me if I would tell stories at her art opening at the Lacosse Gallery. Together we reminisced about characters and events from the early 1980’s. She had hired me as a waitress in 1978 and the lunch counter gave us room to entertain the customers and hear their stories. I was studying mime at the time and liked to do my chicken walk while serving chicken noodle soup. Karen thought to herself, “That girl has talent”. Once, customers looked up to see Karen marching with the celery like a soldier with a bayonet.

Wolseley is a distinct community in the center of Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. In the 1970’s and 80’s there were lots of rooming houses, well-educated hippies, Grain of Wheat Church, house sharing, Harvest Collective food co-op, University of Winnipeg students, welfare recipients, yuppies, intellectuals. Grand family homes that were turned into rooming houses are now being turned back into beautiful places. Wolseley has changed over the years and is moving up, but concern for healthy food remains the same. Wolseley led the movement to whole foods and organics in Winnipeg and attracted people interested in the changing trends in food. First Caroline Ackerman started the “Wheat Song Bakery” where you could buy whole wheat bread from stoned ground flour. Karen Johannsson started Mrs. Lipton’s restaurant where you could buy lunch made with stone ground buns and pitas, and then Tall Grass Prairie Bakery pioneered creating a direct link with the farmers and sold delicious whole wheat cinnamon buns. Wolseley became known in Winnipeg as the “Granola Belt”.

When Agnes told her stories at Karen’s opening, all three women were there. The night before, I had panicked, “Who was I to tell these stories? I needed a persona. Maybe the mythic Mrs. Lipton? No, that was Karen’s. I decided to tell the stories as Agnes, Mrs. Lipton’s sister from Toronto who had heard these stories for years. So, Agnes was born and has continued as my ‘old lady’ clown. I later performed Wolseley Tales as a Fringe show and now will tell you the stories as a sequel, with the pictures of Karen’s batiks.

A sense of community like Wolseley is made from so many unique individuals. It is strong, and it regenerates itself.

Only in Wolseley, would a mom who was coaching her son’s soccer team, be running up and down the field and breast feeding at the same time.

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Odds & Ends - My Take on Clowning

There are a million different kinds of clowns, the word is used to represent many sorts of traditions and characters. My clown is about the heart, situated in ‘all ages entertainment’ and like the circus, tucked into the corner of diverse artistic skills like music, acrobatics, juggling and for me, mime.

For some reason, since I was in the commedia dell'arte troupe in my university days, I have been fascinated with the format of circus-like theatre.  I see the format of this theatre with clearly defined, exaggerated, clownish characters; music; mime/movement; audience interaction (there is little fourth wall) and audience participation. This is generally the format for the Christmas Pantomimes in Great Britain. In my point of view, this is where the clown, commedia and the music hall meet. Much of the audience participation in Pantomimes is traditional and joyfully anticipated by the audience of all ages.

Although current content in this form of "musical" theatre is often fluff, at one time it was a significant social, political vehicle for change and still has that potential today. In my work, I would like to create a social and political forum for theatre in this genre. I think that comedic theatre doesn't need to be devoid of connection to the darker parts of life. In fact, it can illuminate the darker side, while making it more palatable and transformative.

I think that the dark clowning in horror movies is socially destructive. I think that here a creative, life affirming art form (the clown) is turned around and used as a destructive force. The clown becomes demonized. This is tragic on two counts. We lose the healing archetype of innocence, joy, forgiveness and acceptance. As an audience we are taken into a joyless, bottomless, fixed world.

Recently "Aga Boom" came to Winnipeg. This is a theatre performance of clowns who perform with the Cirque du Soleil in Los Vegas. At the end of their show (which was masterful, simple, physical clowning) they threw confetti, then big pieces of paper, then balloons, then bigger balloons into the audience. Families went wild throwing paper and balloons at each other with exuberant laughter. The audience exploded with joy and then the performers brought them back with rhythm, audience clapping and music. 

"Aga Boom" was a life affirming show that illustrated that true control is not about oppression. There is room for disorder within the order. There is room for joy within sorrow.

References

Mawer, Irene. The Art of Mime: Its History and Technique in Education and Theatre.
London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1932.

Proctor, Sue. The Archetypal Role of the Clown as a Catalyst for Individual and Societal Transformation. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/977096/

Old Photos

Author as Pierrot blowing mime bubbles in the Yukon, 1998. Part of the author’s personal collection.