HOW HIGH ARE YOU, CLOWN

HOW HIGH ARE YOU, CLOWN

Clown highness: a crucial state—

a flow, a direction—

a pathway.

Once you know how high you truly are…

everything falls into place.

You make sense.

The world makes sense.

You go far.

Ok, are you hooked into this blog post yet, you reefer addict, you maniac?

I’m not talking about what you think I’m talking about. But what I’m actually talking about is so theater-nerdy and boring I didn’t know how to get you any other way.

And yet, this boring, theater-nerdy concept feels CRUCIAL to me. Before I understood this concept, I was okay as a performer, but once I was using it powerfully, I became (dare I say? sure I darest!) unstoppable. And in my quest to give the people I train real keys that empower them—keys to unlock elevated performances—I have come to this concept as maybe one of the biggest tools—it unlocked something deep in me, and I want this for everyone.

I’m actually talking about the concept of status, as it is often defined in theatrical dramaturgy.

WAKE UP.

WAKE THE FRICK UP.

Every acting, improv, and clown teacher—so, roughly 420,000 theater dorks— will tell you that the concept of status is in their curriculum. It’s at least scrawled on 42,000 dirty napkins in back pocket of said acting/improv/clown teachers as they head out for class. Forget about what “status” means to people just living their lives, and believe me they have opinions about status too. Everyone knows that word, it has a lot of meanings. And actually it’s all relevant, kinda.

If you’re an average Jill on the street and someone asks you what status means, you will say MONEY. Economics, class warfare stuff, keeping up with the Joneses. Rolex watches. Who has how much. You’ll feel confident in your definition. That’s a widely used definition in the world outside of dark theaters, and so you will be justified in your confidence.

But if you say that definition of status to dorks in dark theaters, you will be greeted by only disdaining faces.

Dorks in dark theaters gave up the concept of money long ago.

Status is about POWER, they’ll tell you excitedly. Who has the power in the scene on the stage. Who has CONTROL. It doesn’t have anything to do with money. Hypothetically speaking, it could be the person with the least economic status. SO STOP TELLING ME TO GET A REAL JOB MOM.

Status in a theatrical sense is about human dynamics and who is best positioned to get what they want.

And why does that matter? Now you’re really got our theater dork going! Spittle soaring from lips!

Because now we can’t just talk about who has what power in a theatrical setting, we have to talk about character, story, arc of action. If we’re talking about status, we actually are talking about currency, a kind of currency, anyway, but it’s the kind of currency that will inevitably shift as a story progresses—it’s the currency that’s made to shift.

Theater is story, and story is a dynamic, directional flow of status. If you think about most stories, characters are always in the process of either gaining or losing control.

It’s all connected, man.

Status is us.

We are it.

Exhale.

Okay, inhale! Next section. We’ll call it, CHAPTER 420: STATUS IN CLOWNING

In a lot of clown pedagogy, you’ll see the concept of status, especially as it relates to a group of clowns performing together. I have seen teachers in the Pochinko lineage especially teach the concept of Joey and Auguste, high and low status clown.

The “white clown”(careful!) aka the “Joey”, named after Joseph Grimaldi, a famous “white clown” (apparently, because he often had white makeup on his face, but… power and control? Whiteness? You see where my mind is going here…). This white clown thinks they are the leader of the clown pack (that’s easy to remember). This is the one who choreographed the clown number, wrote the clown script, told the other clowns, “I’m in charge.”

The Auguste is the more “typically foolish” clown, more of a sidekick, more of a natural anarchist. This is the one no one thought should be “in charge.” This is the one who typically “messes things up.”

When I first got into clown, I thought that being an Auguste was what one should aspire to be. Chaplin-esque. A bit Farley-rific. Wide-eyed, kinda dumb in a beautiful way. Simple. Free as the wind.

My early attempts at clown, before I found my thing, were toying with that kind of joyful dumbness and openness. I remember early clown turns flailing around in a pair of very fringey red pants, and maybe some sort of clumsy play with whipped cream.

These attempts might have been cute, but they weren’t funny.

Now here’s a truth about me: I’m pretty controlling, as a maker of theater art. This is why I am a director and teacher. I’ve spent my entire life obsessed with theatrical performance, and I have a lot of opinions about how performance “should be.” This works well in my directing/teaching gigs, but getting on stage as a performer—shouldn’t that be different than directing or teaching? And, certainly, shouldn’t that be different than CLOWNING?

Maybe, but maybe not. Early on in my clown career, I noticed that when I actually allowed the audience to see how much I love artistic control, and how flustered I can be when things don’t “go my way,” BAM, THERE was the laughter. They loved me like that.

And so I learned that I might be a high status clown. Not the little tramp, not Chris Farley. Fuck.

Honestly, it felt hard, at first, to let go of the idea that I could be “free” like those characters. But then I fell in love with being a high status clown. I fell in love with embracing the truth about myself, and clowning through that. It felt therapeutic, correct, successful, and, for a while, the key to my understanding of myself as a performer.

But stay tuned, because status is a long and winding road.

Twists, turns await.

Inhale. Or, exhale.

Basically, whichever one you’ve just done, do the other one.

CHAPTER 420 420 420: STATUS AND STORY AND LAUGHS AND STATUS AND I FORGOT WHERE I WAS BUT AM I THERE YET

A clown’s primary scene partner is the audience. So even if you are the only one on stage—especially if you’re the only one on stage—you have to know what your tendencies are in terms of power and control—what kind of a status player you are, generally speaking.

When I see people clowning and it’s not working, I think a lot of the time the problem is one of Status Confusion. I see performers who give more high status energy trying to pretend like they don’t know what they’re doing, and I see more low status performers trying to act like masterful impresarios. And these people might be nice enough to watch, but there’s no CLICK.

There is a status terrain you probably occupy most easily (can it ever shift? Oh, stayed tuned!), and it’s definitely in your interest to figure out where you tend to be status-wise. It’s when you are aligned with your natural status tendencies that the audience feels like they’re really watching vulnerable, authentic demonstrations of who you are. That’s when the love flows.

Knowing your natural status inclination doesn’t just CLICK you into place in the audience’s heart, it also gives you a clear path for how to get laughs. First, you establish what your relation to control is: the audience needs to understand if you’re high or low status at the beginning of their introduction to you. And then, they can be on the ride. A high status clown gets laughs by losing control. We see the pedestal that the high status clown thinks they are on, and we delight in the journey of that clown tumbling down off their high horse. A low status clown gets laughs by taking over control. We see how “dumb” or “clueless” they are at the beginning of the show/act, and we delight in seeing them acquire—through accident or chance or luck—the power to do what they want.

I’ve used the concept of status a lot in my teaching, and I think it’s been helpful to some extent. But I don’t think I’m done working through what it means or how to use it.

After all, it has been said by the ghosts of clown teachers past that the clown IS a story—that the clown emerges into our consciousness as a story unfolding before us, a flow—that the reason why we love the clown instantly is because we sense the fullness of their story in an instant. We can see, all at once, what ridiculous ride they are on.

I’ve recently come to the thinking that, no matter what your general tendencies are as a status player, a great clown character probably needs to be both high and low status, in varying degrees, in different moments. High at times: in control, in command, full of ideas and (imagined?) brilliance and (delusional?) competence. AND low: confused, lost, out of control, directionless, anarchic. We need both flavors. The proportion of these flavors is of course unique to each clown. You could be mostly high status with a serious touch of low. Or mostly low with fever dream moments of high. I just think we need to see both ends of the power/control spectrum in a character, in order to feel a full story.

Not that that’s the end of this story. This status story. Oh no.

Remember the control freak who learned to accept herself and play high status characters on stage, and then go on to write a too-long blog post about it all? Could she ever fall off that high status pedestal, or is she destined to rot there for eternity?

A few months ago, I played D&D in a drag D&D show at Comic Con. I am very inexperienced at D&D. It is also true that my cheat sheet, which was lovingly printed up for me by the Event Producer, was in a light-yellow font that I absolutely could not read through my bifocal contact lenses. I was clueless, I was lost, but I am a clown. I knew what to do. And that is, to own my utter idiocy. I established how much I didn’t know about D&D first thing, and the audience cheered and laughed as they watched me continue to play regardless.

Sounds pretty low status, no?

I was watching videos of myself as Butt Kapinski recently and had the revelation that that character is also kinda low status. The speech impediment, the inability to tell a focused narrative, the dependence on the audience to get it all done—but he thinks he’s high status. He thinks he is a conductor, a leader. And in moments he is. So which is he? And what am I actually saying about power and control? Am I just too high to know for sure?

These days I guess I’m wrestling with status: where I sit with it as a performer and what it all means for my curriculum development. I think I’ve got several characters in my wheelhouse now who, let’s tell the truth, are just total low status idiots. I thought I was high, and maybe that’s true, but it’s obviously not all true, or maybe it’s shifting. And sometimes I think it helps my students to click into a specific status terrain, but “low” or “high” is not the full story. Maybe it’s just the beginning.

Here’s what I think I know.

As clowns we probably need to contain it all, somehow:

Over-confident brashness

Bumbling idiocy.

High and low.

Low and high.

Control.

Chaos.

Perfectionism.

Zen.

That’s all I got so far.

Pack THAT in your clown bong.

And Toke ON.here