[Sticky] A New Clown Forum

This is partially untrue clowning will never go extinct anywhere in the world as long as there are people there is clowning. It's like saying music is going extinct. Maybe a subgenre or subset is but not completely. 

What kind of clowns do you want? Are you open to clowncore and circuscore people? 

There are fewer professional clowns in the United States than there used to be. There are also fewer circuses in North American than a couple decades ago.  Also, there are now large number of people who think that if they put on clown make up they are a clown. Yes, the word extinction is probably a bit dramatic. Granted show people are a bit dramatic. Ten, twenty, thirty years from not people may want to go back to the circus or have one at their kid's party. I want there to be some professional clown around when that happens.

The issue with people who want to dress up as clowns is when they compete with actual clowns for jobs. If you dress up as a cop to go to a costume party that is fine. If you start trying to enforce the law that is a problem. There are people who cannot juggle, make balloon animals or do magic who are trying to get jobs as clowns. When a kid is waiting for juggling or magic, and they do not get it, they do not want a clown at their party next time.

Now if that clowncore person wants to start doing parties. We want to be a place where they can learn the skills they need to be a working clown.

Why are you only judging if a clown can juggle, make balloon animals or do magic? There are many other clown skills besides that. Just because I clown can't do those skills doesn't make them an impostor clown. Getting a reaction from your performance and connecting with an audience is important too. 

The public are the people judging if we are clowns or not. When someone hires someone who claims to be a clown and cannot do basic things they are less likely to hire a clown in the future. There are several factors that have eroded our ability to make a living. This is one of the factors we have some control over. So we are going to try and teach these skills.

Clowning is one of the few professions that has layers of professionals and amateurs in it's ranks.  We have a young person who just started attending our juggling class.  She went out and bought a costume and makeup and listed that she was ready to do shows on gigsalad. Her act was basically telling knock knock jokes. She did three shows and got bad reviews. When she first came to our practice she complained about what jerks the public are for not hiring her. One of her reviews stated that she didn't know anything. That person also said she wasn't really a clown. 

We also have someone that marches along with us in parades. They are a retired seamstress. They can juggle just a little bit and do thirty balloon animals. They have a nice pension and have no interest in doing birthday parties. They love the circus and clowns in particular. In our troupe we teach kids how to be clowns and take them to the hospital to entertain those kids. We are constantly making costumes. In normal times they make ten or fifteen costumes a year. For the last two years we have been making face masks. They do not consider themselves a real clown. My troupe would have a hard time operating without them. I personally consider them a real clown. Those kids that get exactly the kind of costume they want are happy because of it. 

Skills for clowns also change depending on who you work for. My troupe entertains children in hospitals. So balloon animals are not that important for us. We still teach them because we do some shows for the public. Still, we start with juggling, magic, pantomime and puppets because they are useful to us. Someone who wants to be a party clown for a living should probably work on balloon animals because that is likely to be half their performance. 

There are other skills. In the circus horsemanship is important. It is not as important if you are only working in a hospital. The current list of forum subjects is where we are starting, not stopping. 

There is a line in clowning between professional and someone playing a part. There is no good way to show where that line is. The public will put you on one side of that line or the other. You are less likely to be called an imposter by the public if you can do the basic skills we are suggesting. We are going to try and find a way to teach those skills. 

I hope it will not end there. I hope others step forward with skills I do not have. This is the ride we are trying to start. 

The other clowns are also judging other clowns too. Saying about that a clown has a bad costume or their makeup is not applied properly. I see it all the time. I have been frozen in fear that my clown is not up to appearance standards. 

@punchanella Well there are always going to people judging you fairly or unfairly. You will notice that I don't spend a great deal of time dwelling on what a clown looks like. That is the easiest thing to fix with a clown. It is also one of the most subjective things about a clown. I would even go so far as to say it is the least important thing about building an act. I am not saying it is unimportant. It is just easier to fix than say bad habits with juggling or balloon twisting.

This is also something that joining a clown club or troupe helps with. Unfortunately, there are fewer local groups. That is one of the reasons we are restarting the Forum. We are going to try and fill that gap.

We now have private massaging on this forum. We should set up a time and we can have a virtual meeting. It is much easier than messaging in a written form. 

Great discussion. I think clowning may be seeing a resurgence, but it looks different than clowning of the 60s-80s. Then it was the traditional circus clowns. Now it seems stage clowning is gaining popularity, many people coming from improv, and not necessarily looking like circus clowns in full makeup. I think clowncore is not clowning at all. Unfortunately, it seems like it is also gaining popularity. Clowncore just takes one small side element of clowning and uses only that element without having the foundation of clown. A clown in a performer first and foremost. A clown is a type of comedian, like a stand-up or improv actor. You don't need the make-up to be a clown. If you wear clown makeup without performing, your just some person in makeup, you're not a clown.

Also, side note, I'm glad I found this forum. I was a clown 25 years ago and have been looking at getting back into it.

Couple questions that I'll throw here... first, am I the only one having trouble reading this forum? The colors make it difficult to read the text in the menus, the red text on blue background, yellow on red, the greyish text. I like the colors, but it's hard to read.

Question for Zeeppo, I think you posted something about an "Old Line Clown Brigade" recruiting at Congress of Jugglers at UMD this month. What's that? I'm in Maryland and interested. Is that a new alley for Maryland? Competing with Freestate #30? Backstory?