CLOWN: Loving the flop and being married to a dentist

Day 1 of clown Philippe told us we must be funny otherwise we are just tragic mimes. After all clowns are paid to make the audience love them.

Clown was born in London. How you ask? Ai ai ai.

A guy - Andrew uuuugh let’s see… Smith was on a horse. This commander was the best in the regiment. He was always on time and professional until one day he was late and fired due to a hangover. That night he went home to his wife, drank whiskey, made love and announced his desire to buy a circus.

On the opening night his 2 assistants Jim and Joe were mocking each other whilst trying on some of the actors costumes back stage. Caught up in the game Jim accidently ran onto the main stage while Andrew was performing a difficult feat of dressage.  Overcome with embarrassment he just stood there. The audience roared with laughter. The laughter redoubled when Joe ran onto stage a few seconds later. They felt they had done something wrong and the audience laughed even more. The 2 idiots left the hall to great applause. Expecting to be fired, Jim and Joe were amazed when Andrew asked them to repeat their entrance at exactly the same point the next night. And so two great clowns had been born. Clowns always turn up at the wrong moment. They are the foster brothers of tarte tartin, penicillin and so on. No one was ever expecting them.

To start the workshop Philippe made us get up one by one and say our name, country and scale ourselves from: not funny - middle funny - funny. Spotting the students who had been at clown school for a while was easy as they all confidently said NOT FUNNY. You’ll soon learn that the greatest compliment Gaulier will EVER give is “Not too shit. Suprizing. We like you a bit. Now get off before I become bored.” Normally it’s something along the lines of “I did not like you. In fact I hated you from the bottom of my heart. Awful. You can’t be more awful. Class, do we buy an ikea gas chamber to put them in now?”

I myself have had my fair share of insults. “Florid your face was ugly like wellington on a boring Sunday afternoon.” Or “When we see this women in yellow do we feel our heterosexuality is fragile? Ai ai ai. My heterosexuality is fragile! I pity the dentist.” My notebook is now full of comic insults and blunt advice. Tragically I completely forgot to write down all my important feelings… How will you cope? We’ll just have to pretend I had a whole bunch of them and that they were really really good. THANK GOD FOR THAT.

If I got nothing else out of training with this mad French clown, it is that I discovered a new way to have fun on stage again – PRETENDING. I found my pleasure in lying truth. Not actually vomiting out my own sad emotions on stage. So if you were ever hoping to see me relive break ups and daddy issues on stage you will be sadly disappointed.  In the words of Gaulier: “People who look for the real truth in the theatre, rather than the not-real truth, are fanatical preachers and true (not pretend) arseholes. The truth kills the joy of imagining.”

I finally found a place that it is ok for your peers and teacher to say that what just happened on stage was so bad it should have gone down with the Titanic. And instantly I am liberated. I hear he is about to bang his drum and I must change immediately and discover something light and new to survive. The whole class is a game. Who wants to see people without their pleasure on stage? Or more importantly who wants to be the person performing with no pleasure? Gaulier is so much more of a genius than I ever anticipated. He flattens certain clowns to reveal their beauty while for others he stirs and stirs until you finally fire up and threaten him to a fight – and just like that you are beautiful, alive and funny on stage. He teaches people to be beautiful idiots and how to make the audience love you,

To discover ‘where is my clown?’ Gaulier had us turn away from the audience, count to 3 then jump to scare the audience. It was crucial to show your pleasure and be pleased with the job you just did of scaring the audience afterwards. From this simple task Gaulier glimpses the student’s face, their body, their dreams, their foolishness and their shyness (or arrogance) when they reached the age of seven. One student is Tintin. The other is a boy scout. A priest. A Macho. Marilyn Monroe. May West. A star. A Daddy’s girl. Tarzan. Dracula. Actors. King Kong. A baby. Teachers. Lucky Luke. Asterix. Jane. A Buddhist. A girl taking first communion. (Or even on some rare occasions – A Dentist’s Wife.)

Which costume to suggest? Gaulier told us it is the one, which suits the character glimpsed beneath the red nose. It depends on the student’s humour but the costume is not the character. Its only aim is to make the audience say: ‘look at that idiot. They are trying to make us believe they’re Zorro. How stupid! They really are thick. I love them.’

NB: We were not able to negotiate or question his choice on our clown characters. Even if my mother had died at the dentist, I would have had to provide hard evidence.

So far it is difficult to get my head around the rhythm of being a clown as the laugh comes when you don’t expect it. Quite the opposite to being a comic character. As a clown you smash a plate thinking “oh how funny I am, the audience will definitely laugh at broken china!” …and then they don’t. You are confused as to why your master plan didn’t work ??? and then the laughter comes! As a suffering perfectionist it is certainly a mighty feat to learn to love the flops and use them in my quest to being a lovable idiot on stage.

One week to go. Millions more flops.