"Finding One's Own Clown"

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow TaPRA

2013

Finding One’s Own Clown

This paper examines the exchanges and transmissions

taking place between the teacher and students in the

clown workshops of Philippe Gaulier. Simon Murray

suggests that the clown mask allows students to “come to

terms with the more ridiculous – and therefore vulnerable

– dimensions of our personality” (2003, pp. 63). To

‘come to terms with’ a dimension of the personality

describes a process of self-reflection, and the

understanding of this side as vulnerable evokes an

emotional experience. I want to draw a distinction

between the ‘ridiculous’ and the ‘vulnerable’ in

Gaulier’s clown training, because I believe these traits

are identified in different places in the classroom, and

transmitted in different ways to the student. The word

‘ridiculous’, derived from the Latin ridiculus, meaning

‘that which excites laughter’. I draw on this term, which

suggests an action that provokes an embodied reaction, in

order to depart from the concept of vulnerability as

central to clown, as described by Leabhart and Felner. I

suggest that Gaulier teaches students to find what is

ridiculous about their own body, or in other words, in

what ways their body can be used to make other people

laugh. The term ‘ridiculous’ describes the response of

the spectators, and thus this skill is developed through

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practice of listening to the oral communication of actual

audiences, in the form of fellow students.

Listening to the Audience

On his clown courses, where success is measured by

laughter, Gaulier can base his own feedback on the verbal

and facial expression of the students around him. A

laughing audience indicates that the audience found the

performance funny, and a silent audience provides the

feedback that Gaulier then puts into his famously acerbic

words. Lynne Kendrick describes the centrality of games

and play in Gaulier’s pedagogy, particularly drawing on

the group games at the start of Gaulier’s workshops,

which I know as ‘Balthazar says’ and ‘Mr Hit’ (2010;

2011). While Kendrick draws on the rules of these games

for her analysis using play theory, I understand these

games to begin the process of students watching,

responding to and laughing at each other.1 As people are

‘out’ of Mr Hit they sit and watch the game play out,

laughing, groaning and cheering the final winner. I

maintain that it is the feedback of the student audience

that is prioritised in the classroom, even though

1 Kendrick focuses her attention on the performing student’s experience of play and pleasure, though she does acknowledge that for Gaulier, performing students must experience pleasure, but also communicate it “within the realm of the game - to fellow players, and within the theatrical frame - tothe spectator”(2010, p. 121-122).

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Gaulier’s mode of transmitting feedback gains much

attention. Students are told to listen for laughter in

this workshop:

How do you find your clown? By following this sayingto the letter: ‘When laughter breaks out, the clown isn’t far away.When laughter dies down, the clown goes away’(Gaulier 2007, p. 289)

Here the spectator knows better than the actor, and the

student must always pay attention to their (directly

transmitted) feedback. Spectators are present throughout

the class and provide all the feedback, the judgement and

the meaning to the student’s performance. The student on

stage does not know whether he or she has done well

unless she listens to her classmates and teacher, and

takes their feedback seriously.

The language used by Gaulier and Lecoq has led some to

understand clown as a normally hidden, pre-socialized

part of the performer’s self. For example, “One's 'clown'

is inextricably related to one's essential weakness”

(Leabhart 1989, p. 99), or, “The individual’s clown is

the repressed self, repressed because its expression

would entail socially unacceptable behaviour” (Felner

1985, p. 164). Here, then, there is assumed a process

where the student is psychologically or behaviourally

liberated by the red nose mask, and by extension, by the

practice of clowning. “Personal weakness” is connected to

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emotional vulnerability and the sense that the clown

performer is revealing something usually hidden by social

masks. These writers understand social masks to be

removed using the training tool of a physical mask – the

red nose.

Purcell Gates finds this understanding to be a logical

extension of a twentieth century understanding of the

location of the self.

This shift in the language used to describe thearchaeology of the self from underneath in Freud’s“unconscious” to behind in Lecoq can likely beattributed to the mask work that forms thefoundation of Lecoq’s pedagogy: from Neutral Maskthrough Larval, Expressive and Character masks andfinally the Red Nose, the strongest signifier of theperformer’s identity—her face—is located behind themask, leading to a logical slippage that positionsthe presence of the performer’s “true self” behindthe mask of the character she is performing.(Purcell Gates, 2011)

If the student has been present, but hidden, behind masks

thus far in the course, it would follow that she is

(almost completely) revealed by the clown mask, which

only covers a small area of the face, leaving the eyes

and mouth visible. As a result, the student’s revealed

self is a major part of how the clown body is understood

and discussed at Gaulier and Lecoq’s schools. In her 2011

article, Purcell Gates understands the discussion of

clown students revealing their authentic interiority to

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be the continued circulation of conflicting ideas of

selfhood and authenticity from 20th century mime practice,

re-affirmed and disrupted by Gaulier. Purcell Gates

concludes, “the performer’s body signified a self that

caused the spectator to respond with laughter, even as

the performer was unaware of this communication” (2011,

p. 241). The audience thus read the student’s body and

partially covered face to be a signifier of authentic

self, even when this ‘self’ were not recognized by the

performer - “the signal was external and dependent on the

other people in the room” (Purcell Gates 2011, p. 239).

Although the small mask has been understood as one that

reveals, leaving the clown student distinct,

idiosyncratic and personal, Purcell Gates’ findings

demonstrate that the revealed ‘self’ does not need to be

authentic, or recognized as such by the performer; it

merely needs to be greeted with laughter by the audience.

Post-Lecoq clowns and the Red Nose

Lecoq’s pedagogy of clowns was developed around the idea

of the red nose as a mask, a tool that has come to

signify a quest for authenticity and revelation of ‘self’

in contemporary clowning, despite its origin in counter-

auguste, ‘grotesque’ clown (Davison 2013, p. 197). For

Murray, the red nose and neutral mask are tools that

frame Lecoq’s pedagogy. Leabhart illustrates the

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significance of the red nose as mask by pointing out the

stage occupied by the clown workshop in the pedagogical

journey – the two year course concludes with, “…the

experience considered by all to be the most difficult and

rewarding in the Lecoq method, the search for 'one's own

clown'” (Leabhart 1989, p. 99). The red nose is the

‘smallest’, ‘most difficult’ and final mask to be studied

at Lecoq’s school, it occupies a climactic place in the

pedagogy which suggests that the previous mask work

informs it. Davison dismisses the understanding of the

nose being a mask, ‘neatly slotting into’ Lecoq’s series

of masks (2013, p. 197). Davison, believing that “one can

clown without a red nose” (ibid), aligns himself with the

teacher Mosche Cohen, who blogs that the nose is

superfluous and misleading to students, who may be

tempted to rely on the nose “to do the clowning for them”

(Cohen 2012, cited by Davison 2013a, p. 197). Despite

this rejection of the red nose as mask, Davison uses the

same plastic noses in some of his own workshops, as

pictured in photography project ‘Clown Phenomena'

(2013b). Perhaps this teacher also finds that the red

nose mask has a visual function.

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Clown Students at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Summer 2009

Gaulier’s students, like Lecoq’s, wear plastic red noses,

along with individual costumes. In Gaulier’s practice,

the red nose seems intended for use in performance, as

well as being a teaching tool. In the second year clown

course, there is a public performance, in which students

wear red noses and costumes in sketches they have

prepared in small groups (Jarmuz, 8th December 2012).

Further evidence of the red nose being used in

performance can be found in images from Gaulier’s own

performance work (Leabhart 1983, p. 43 and 69; Gaulier

2007, p. 296). Gaulier emphasises what is visible around

the mask, when he echoes Lecoq’s phrase,

This nose, the smallest mask in the world…revealsthe student’s face, their body, their dreams, theirfoolishness and their shyness (or arrogance) whenthey reached the age of seven. (Gaulier 2007, p.293)

Here, he suggests that the small mask, by drawing

attention to the student’s physical face and body, can

reveal the less tangible ‘dreams’ and ‘foolishness’ of

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the wearer. In the images above, the faces look different

from one another, and Gaulier would say that the viewer

could imagine the different ways in which the clown

students may ‘dream’ or be ‘foolish’. Felner offers an

interpretation of Decroux’s neutral mask, which also

applies to the way in which Gaulier uses red noses. She

says it “creates a degree of abstraction that removes

mime from the literal realistic plane” (Felner 1985, p.

61). If we consider this function with respect to the

faces above, the small masks indicates a removal from the

‘literal, realistic plane’ as we recognize the cultural

symbol as a signifier of the intention to make us laugh.

Simultaneously, the differences between the faces,

reactions, and expressions of the students shown above

are highly visible, but removed from realism – the faces

are abstracted, and made the site of fantasy. In the

classroom, and in performance, students learn to play

with this distortion that does not fully disguise. If the

red nose is a mask, it does not have to suggest a magical

revealing power that will ‘do the clowning’ for the

student, or make them suddenly visible in a different

way. The mask serves not only as a signifier of the

cultural knowledge attached to “clowns”, but also as a

way of abstracting the face, distorting and reimagining

the face as a fantastic, or ridiculous, object.

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Weakness and Ridiculousness

I propose a reading of ‘weakness’, which prioritises the

moment of performance. According to Lecoq, the student’s

confrontation of their repressed self is an action that

improves their performance for the audience:

We are all clowns, we all think we are beautiful,clever and strong, whereas we all have ourweaknesses, our ridiculous side, which can make peoplelaugh when we allow it to express itself (Lecoq 2002,p. 154).

Lecoq explains that this laughter is the reason to search

for ‘ones own clown’. If Lecoq’s statement is read

alongside Purcell Gates’ understanding of an externally

negotiated self in clown performance, we can understand

the clown to be presented in order to be ridiculous, and

so the student’s ‘weaknesses’ are laughter-inducing

actions identified with the help of transmitted responses

from an audience. The ‘weaknesses’ that Lecoq sees in a

clown student can be understood as her ‘ridiculous side’

– or, that about her that makes people laugh. As a

result, the ‘personal weakness’ that is understood as

Lecoq’s most important ingredient for clown is focused

outward, toward the audience, the observers and laughers.

Lecoq describes a transformation of weakness (a personal

problem) into ridiculousness (at which people laugh). It

is the presence of laughing student peers that enables

this transformation, and the transmission of amusement –

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in laughter – that indicates its success. It is the

audience’s laughter that identifies the student’s

ridiculous side.2 Immediately following this observation,

Lecoq provides an example of students finding their

ridiculous side, located in the body.

“…there were students with legs so thin that theyhardly dared show them, but who found, in playingthe clown, a way to exhibit their skinniness for thepleasure of the onlookers. At last they were free tobe as they were, and to make people laugh” (Lecoq2002, p. 154)

Here the thin-legged body, previously experienced as

embarrassingly imperfect, becomes ridiculous when it is

shown off, demonstrated to onlookers. Lecoq complicates

this idea of the ridiculous body by adding the last

sentence, which places making people laugh as being

parallel to being ‘as they were’. This reapplies to the

ridiculous body the concept of the authentic self, with

the authenticity located in weakness. Nonetheless,

perhaps Lecoq’s aims were not to create an introspective,

therapeutic action, in which students ‘come to terms

with’ an aspect of their body or personality, but merely

2 The first line of this quote is also significant. Lecoq compares clowns to a universal human condition of being weak/ridiculous despite the belief to the contrary - ‘we all think we are beautiful, clever and strong’. This self-image, of strength disrupted by the emergence of weakness, is a component of the ridiculous, and a component of the comic according to humour theorist and philosopher Marteinson (2006).

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to allow students to find the thing with which they can

make an audience laugh.

The externally negotiated self, or ridiculous side

Both Purcell Gates’ ‘externally negotiated self’ and the

‘ridiculous side’ described by the pedagogues and

practitioners point to clown performance skills being

negotiated and developed with an audience. Although a

student might laugh at herself, Gaulier’s classroom

prioritises the laughter of fellow students, and the

student must pay attention to what it is about her that

causes laughter in her peers. The word ‘self’, even when

‘externally negotiated’, indicates authenticity, and

perpetuates a discourse of interiority and even

‘weakness’ that could be unhelpful in deepening an

understanding of the negotiations in the classroom.

Furthermore, the term ‘weakness’ is misleading,

suggesting a personal revelation that would induce pity

for the performer in their vulnerable state – an emotion

that would extinguish the desired response of laughter.

For this reason, the term ‘ridiculous side’ is more

critically useful to an understanding of clown pedagogy

than notions of ‘authentic self’ or ‘personal weakness’.

The value of the ridiculous side is decided, and

communicated by the audience, and the student learns to

follow and respond to the verbal cues of the audience.

Despite Gaulier’s use of the phrase ‘your clown’, which

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continues to invoke ideas of personal vulnerability, he

gives to the audience the responsibility for finding the

ridiculous side to his clown students.

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Bibliography

Davison, Jon, 2013a, Clown, Palgrave Macmillan,Basingstoke. - 2013b, "Clown Phenomena", http://www.jondavison.net, Accessed 31/7/2013.

Felner, Mira, 1985, Apostles of Silence: The Modern French Mimes,Associated University Press, London and Toronto.

Gaulier, Philippe & Ewen Maclachian, 2007, The Tormentor: lejeu, light, theatre, filmiko, Paris.

Jarmuz, Mark, 2012, Moi à l'École Philippe Gaulier, Retrieved 14May 2013.

Kendrick, Lynne. 2010, Acting to Actuality: The impact of the ludic onperformer training, PhD Thesis, Goldsmiths College,University of London

Kendrick, Lynne, 2011, A paidic aesthetic: an analysis ofgames in the ludic pedagogy of Philippe Gaulier,Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2:1, pp. 72-85.

Leabhart, Thomas 1989, Jaques Lecoq and Mummenschanz, inModern and Postmodern Mime, Macmillan, London, pp. 88-107.

Lecoq, Jacques & David Bradby, 2002, The Moving Body,Methuen, London.

Marteinson, Peter, 2006, On the Problem of the Comic; APhilosophical Study on the Origins of Laughter, LEGAS, New York,Ottawa.

Murray, Simon, 2003, Jacques Lecoq, Routledge, London.

Purcell Gates, Laura, 2011, Locating the self: narrativesand practices of authenticity in French clowntraining, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2:2, pp.231-42.

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Purcell Gates, Laura. 2011, Tout Bouge [Everything Moves]: The(Re)Construction of the Body in Lecoq-based Pedagogy, PhD Thesis,University of Minnesota

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"Finding One's Own Clown"

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