How do you find your clown?

Early in my clown practice, I heard it said that you only have one clown. I didn’t agree for a long time.

I didn’t like that idea because I consider myself a character comedian, I like to play a lot of different characters. It is my pleasure to be many types, with many references. I saw aspirational Chaplin-esque clowns all around me just trying to be that tramp with a bindlestiff, and I chafed at the sameness of the aesthetic. Not me! 

So now I’ve got a veritable stable of clown characters, each different from the next. 

But now I think whoever said that was right. Maybe you only have one clown, deep down. 

Your physicality, your voice, your references and inspirations might vary from character to character, but there is a core thing in there, and that’s you. 

This is all very un-Meryl Streep. This is not about disappearing into a character. Your character always reveals your clown. 

How do you find your clown? 

Your clown is an elevated cocktail of your most wonderful and terrible qualities. AND YOU NEED BOTH. You cannot find your clown without having clarity around both what’s wonderful and what’s terrible about you. 

Your beauty, your talent, your skills, your goodness, these are necessary. 

Your faults, your flaws, your bad impulses, your ugly, these too. 

Your clown puts the good and bad in the blender, adds a generous helping of DEEP ACCEPTANCE, and blends blends blends. 

Your clown must also include DEEP ACCEPTANCE of your good and your bad. 

Acceptance is being able to see a quality that you possess, know that it is yours, and just be okay with it. Do you have any sweaters that you accept, not love, but just kinda know they’re your sweaters, and they’re just fine? Can you accept what is yours without judging it? Can you simply say, Yes, that is mine, I own that sweater. Sometimes it’s not warm enough and sometimes it’s okay. 

That is a practice, it is not easy. We are so trained to judge what we own. We constantly evaluate ourselves, rate ourselves, try to improve ourselves. I wouldn’t ask you not to do any of that. You’re hard wired to do it, so go off. 

But when you are investigating and practicing clown, you want to cultivate that this-is-my-sweater with your good and less-good qualities. This is the root of your power as a clown. 

ABRUPT SUBJECT CHANGE THAT WILL CIRCLE BACK: I tell all my students that the most important thing you can do when you perform is breathe. Breathe enough so that the audience can see it, can receive the visual information that you are respirating. 99.9% of everyone doesn’t breathe enough. But breathing is contagious. When you breathe so that the audience can clock your breathing, they will start to breathe more too. And then they will subconsciously love you a bit more, because you’re helping them, in that moment, live more fully. 

NOW LET’S CIRCLE BACK. Self-acceptance is contagious too. A good clown spreads self-acceptance like an enticing aroma through a crowd. You smell that? That’s the sandalwood of I accept myself. That’s the jasmine of you can too. When you accept yourself in front of an audience, they can witness what that looks like, and experience it in their bodies. They can breathe in your acceptance of self, and it will make a little bubble of self-acceptance-possibility inside of them. 

What are we all doing here, if not to create little bubbles of betterment in the bodies of our audience. 

And little bubbles of betterment in our own bodies. 

Knowing your good and your bad are necessary for your clown. 

Start making a list. Then eat the list. 

Better yet, make the list out of vegetables. And then savor the salad of self.