Clowning & Power
Dressing up in a costume and covering my face with make-up gives me a strange sense of power. I feel like I’m a super hero.
When I took Robo’s mop and swished the snow from my windshield and watched the Dog Pound drive away in fear, I felt triumphant! When you think like an artist, in my case a clown, you know that the possibilities are endless – not bound by space and time like our everyday lives. When I went back to university and researched clowning, I was amazed at universal experiences and traditions. Back in Wolseley, I learned about character power from Mrs. B. (not a clown) with her large girth planted on a stool by the cash register in Mrs. Lipton’s Restaurant. Mrs. B. made it clear that she was in charge.
Pierrot’s First Performance/Workshop
I was teaching Mime & Clowning with the Artists in the Schools Program (AIS) in Winnipeg. I was to go to the school as a mime clown and do a short mime performance for the students and then lead mime and clowning workshops for the rest of the day. This was the first time I’d done a workshop like this. It was to start right at 9:00 am but luckily, I didn’t live far away. The only thing was I still hadn’t figured out was what I could perform as a mime clown and what to do when the dog escaped.
Break for Freedom
We had an incident with the family dog. She was part black lab named Sadie and a long-time spayed female. But she met the dog across the street who was a highly spirited, intelligent, freedom loving, neutered German Sheppard. They became friends because this German Sheppard could open gates and doors. Yes, really. I would look out on the porch where my dog liked to spend much of her time and there would be this neutered dog blissfully humping Sadie in his own way. He had opened his gate to escape his yard and then opened our porch door to find his love. On one occasion he had opened the porch door for Sadie and they had gone chasing rabbits.
Now it wasn’t really much of a chase because the rabbits were in a cage, in a yard down the street. They were the pet bunnies of a girl in my daughter’s class at school. While the Sheppard had been tearing at the cage with his teeth, my friendly dog had growled and snarled at the owner who was trying to get out of her back door into the yard. When the pound arrived, the dogs had managed to escape.
The pound was quick to arrive at our door because the bunny’s owner knew who we were. They admonished me, as if it was me who was after the rabbits, and gave me a severe warning to keep my dog inside, as if I had let her out. I told them that her friend had come and opened the door, but they didn’t believe me. I cowered like a shamed dog in the face of their uniformed authority.
It was early in November when we had a great snowfall overnight. We woke to five inches of snow covering everything. It was the day of my first performance workshop and I had to be at Assiniboine School by 9 am to perform as a mime clown and then teach all day. Before I got myself ready, I needed to get my children fed, dressed and out the door to school. Because of the snow, they needed the snow pants, boots, mitts, scarves and hats for the first time in the season. I had to search through storage to find their winter outdoor clothes and help the younger ones get dressed. Finally, they were out the door and I quickly put on my costume and my full white face clown make-up.
I went to call the dog in from the back yard. She was gone. The snow had provided enough of a lift that she had been able to jump over the fence, following her friend, of course. The rabbits. I knew the dear bunnies were in mortal danger. I finished getting dressed and prepared to find the dog before I went to work. I was running out of time. As I opened the door, in whiteface, fully costumed and with hat and coat, and there were the same two dog pound authorities fingering their badges.
“Where is your dog?” they queried, stepping back.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling irritated. “That’s why I’m going to find it.”
Now, I don’t know if you have ever been a parent, but the expectation is that you will always behave in a cool and clear-headed way despite the stress and the emotional remonstrations of your child. In reality, it is not always the case. Suffice it to say, by this time I was feeling irate. I could see that the dog pound people were afraid of me in my costume and make-up. This was something new for me. I had the power.
“You won’t be able to find your dog,” they said. “We’ve tried.”
“What do you want me to do? Leave her out there all day?” I answered as they started backing away slowly down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.
“You shouldn’t have let her out,” they stated.
“I let her out to go pee!” I retaliated.
“She should have been on a lead.”
“A leash to go pee?” I yelled as I grabbed the mop (a clown prop from my friend Robo) from beside the door. As I started out my door, they walked backwards cowering slightly.
“If it hadn’t snowed,” I ranted as I walked towards my car. “If my husband had built a new fence….” I don’t know if any of you have husbands, but there is generally something that they have done or haven’t done that makes all the difference. “If that dog hadn’t shown her how to jump over the fence!”
By this time, they were at their truck. They hurriedly opened the doors and jumped into it. As I started to mop the snow off my windshield, I saw them lock their doors. They soon backed their truck away and were gone.
I drove around the block and found my dog with her friend in the back lane. She obediently climbed into the car and I got her into the house and was on my way.
As I was driving down Portage Avenue my mind was racing. I didn’t know what I was going to perform. It has to be black and white, I thought, like my clown. It has to be something that can come across in mime. I quickly envisioned my clown Pierrot blowing up a balloon, flying away and landing in some strange place where she is frightened. She sees a little cottage and knocks on the door looking for help. Inside the cottage there is a monster. The monster wants to eat her and ties her to a chair. Then he goes to sleep. While he is sleeping, a child rescues Pierrot. They tie up the monster’s feet, sneak out of the cabin and fly away with Pierrot’s balloons. Fifteen minutes, easy.
I parked the car and walked through the deep snow into the school. It was 9:00am exactly. The teacher who was waiting for me had just gone to get her class, so I had ten minutes to sit and compose myself. When the class arrived, I was ready to perform.
And how did it all turn out, you ask? The bunnies moved away. The dog across the street made his break for freedom and never came back. My husband built a new fence. The kids enjoyed winter. I performed that little mime piece successfully for years and the dog pound never bothered us again. My dog missed her friend and put on weight with her docile life.
Popcorn Philosophy - What is a Clown?
After many years of performing and roving as a clown, I went back to university and started to research clowning. I was amazed at the similar traditions and experiences from around the world.
This quote from Lucille Charles talks about the basic human need for the clown. The clown:
may function as a Fool, Jester, Buffoon, Comic; or Harlequin or Pierrot…. I see no reason for sharp lines of classification: humorous story, folktale, literature, joking relationship, cartoon, clown all stem from the same basic human need; and the clown ritual function moves among these many forms with their infinite number of variations, taking shape and impetus from particular human beings, in a particular culture, with their particular expression of the human need. (Charles 1945, 34)
As a performer I transition from my world with my perception into the world and perception of the clown. There is a sense of Pierrot that I feel when I embody her that is shared with the audience who see something beyond me, something that strikes a chord within them. When Pierrot is “on,” she pulls things out of the air to mime and they appear magically “real.” Pierrot is imagining (and imaging) her world. When I did shows as Pierrot in schools, children would draw pictures of Pierrot flying in the sky with her imaginary balloon. It was “real” to them.
Peacock Performance
Agnes introduces herself as Mrs. Lipton’s sister from Toronto who has visited Wolseley many times and seen much goings on. The tales need to be told before they are forgotten.
Wolseley Tales: Remembering Mrs. Lipton’s
Karen Johannsson sits beside her pot of wax with batiks hanging from her makeshift clothesline, Mrs. B’s Christmas cactus is in full bloom.
Mrs. B was the real Mrs. Lipton, comments Karen, at least people thought she was. Mrs. B was a big person with short, dark curly hair. She ran a family daycare with a strong hand. She talked about the wooden spoon that she always kept in the drawer. Mrs. B was as much a part of Mrs. Lipton’s as the Foundation stone in the corner. She was there every day. If you were a regular at Mrs. Lipton’s you knew Mrs. B and you knew what she thought of most things. When it wasn’t busy, the waitresses always chatted with Mrs. B about the other customers. She could usually give us interesting details about most of the people in the neighbourhood.
Now that makes them sound like a big bunch of gossips. Maybe they were. But the servers all found people’s daily lives very interesting. It was a bit like working in the middle of a soap opera – “Mrs. Lipton’s Revolving Door”
When new waitresses started working at Mrs. Lipton’s, Mrs. B sat them down and filled them in on how things were run. Karen Johannsson, the owner, was busy cooking and serving while Mr. B gave them information. It looked like she was working there because she’d roll up her sleeves and go behind the counter to do the dishes. Apparently, Mrs. B never did work there, although most people thought she did.
It is important to remember that this was a time when rules were less stringent than they are now. There was a casual atmosphere about how things were run. When Karen got a “real” oven, it was only a regular kitchen oven, before that she had been making muffins in a toaster oven. She didn’t know how much bread and muffins that she would be turning out of that oven. When rules changed Mrs. Lipton’s stayed open under the “Grandfather’s” or more accurately, “Grandmother’s Clause” which allowed for old restaurants to continue in the way they had begun without all the regulated equipment and bathrooms. The customers felt a sense of ownership at Mrs. Lipton’s. She had invited them into her kitchen and was feeding them– so they would take care of her. Customers and staff enjoyed laughing at Mrs. Lipton’s. Whenever something went wrong, they laughed and that was often!
Odds & Ends - My Take on Clowning
When you think like an artist, in my case a clown, you know that the possibilities are endless – not bound by space and time like our everyday lives.
On a windy day in Winnipeg, I drove by some brooms and mops in a stand outside of an old hardware store in the North End. Their fringes were waving like hair. I parked the car and went back to buy several. Dancing partners. An obvious use for those lovely clothes that didn’t fit me anymore, would likely never fit me again. They made gorgeous puppets, human size dancing partners for the clowns. But every time I opened my broom closet, she would be staring at me as if to say, “Have you forgotten about me? Is that it?’’ Recrimination. The show was done and she became undressed, dismembered, and now, remembered. She swept the floor.
I think that clowns and puppets meet in the art of transformation. I was excited by a package deal on cleaning tools at Costco. My kids thought that I was finally going to clean the house, but the dusters were a family moving in. My daughter was upset that her angora sweater shrunk in the washing machine. It magically transformed into a soft elephant, one of its sleeves becoming a trunk. When I was roving at a festival as a clown, I put chopsticks on the legs of my rubber chicken and he walked beside me. Pool noodles became a family for a show where they were confronted by the spaghetti boys, shammies with ping pong balls for eyes.
In clowning we can transform objects. A bowl becomes a helmet, a scarf becomes a snake. Like puppeteers, clowns can animate the world around them. Animating objects opens a window to the imagination that transforms our ordinary world.
References
Charles, Lucile. “The Clown’s Function”. The Journal of American Folklore. Vol 58. No 227. Jan. – Mar., 1945. 25-34. JSTOR. Web. Oct. 29, 2012.
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
Pierrot performing at a school in Manitoba. Part of the author’s personal collection.