What is a Real Clown?

Gosh I could spend an hour on this subject.

Costume and makeup are not as important because anyone can do it with very little practice and money. So we can just skip that.

The simplest way to look at this is who is paying? If the Circus is paying it's employee it is what ever that circus says it is. Usually juggling, balloon animals, Unicycling, riding horses, throwing knives you know the sort of thing. If you don't do what the circus wants you get fired. Then you are no longer a clown. 

If a parent is paying a party clown it is usually balloon animals, juggling and those sorts of skills. If you are no good at them you will not get hired again. If you can't get hired your not a professional.

There is also another debate that informs my view of clowning. That is the Artist vs Craftsman debate. A circus clown is a craftsman. We all do the same 3 ball cascade, the same balloon dog and so on. Essentially one circus clown can replace another in a show. Emette Kelly died a few years ago. His son who is physically similar to his dad, now performs as Weary Willy. Is someone doing an identical act an artist? Most would say no. Bozo has been portrayed by 3 different people. Most are unaware there is more than one Bozo.

Red Skelton by contrast created a character, Freddy the Freeloader. On the surface Freddy is your basic carpet clown. He looks like a run of the mill carpet clown if you are just looking at his picture. Now I would argue that no one but Red could portray Freddy. If you watch a video of him it is like an art piece. 

https://youtu.be/qhjPvMpEhm4

I consider myself a craftsman. Someone the same size as me with similar skills could be Zeeppo. I don't think there is any act that I do that should be considered a piece of art. I consider myself a pretty ok clown. I consider myself an authentic, real clown.

Is someone a real clown if they have none of those skills? I would argue not. Is Denzel Washington a cop? He won an emmy for playing one. Still, Denzel is not a cop. He had the clothes, the attitude, the gun and everything a cop has. Still, he is not a cop. He is just one of the best actors of our time.

This is why I dismissed the costume and makeup earlier. We could put a great actor in a clown costume. If given a great script they could even look like one on the big screen. How would they do if they had to make balloon animals and juggle for a bunch of kids? 

What about a free clown who is not very good at any kind of clowning? 

What about those European clowns who have those theater clown workshops they advertise online?

I see plenty of clowns who do nothing more than hand out items. Also the club clowns who don't really clown and just dress up in fancy costumes to win convention awards. If they can be clowns then why not me? I can hand out items. I can wear a fancy expensive costume. 

When I started I wanted to be a party clown or whatever. After I thought about it. I was not suited for that. I like the art of clowning the psychology of it. If I never learn how to use a dove pan or juggle with clubs I won't be sad. My character was born out of frustration of trying to become a clown and every other clown around me giving me strange unsolicited advice. Telling me what I can and can't do. Punchanella is a jaded clown. 

Ok, I have never told you what you have to do. I have been speaking in generalities and public perception of being a clown. You also directly asked my opinion, which I gave you. You, in fact, solicited advice from me. 

Incidentally there are people who wear white face and don't do any of the traditional circus skills. Those same people are often hired to hand things out. They are called mimes. 

Two things about the Theater Workshops online. A couple are scams and some are not very good. Google the people running them and see how past participants liked them. Also the good workshops are teaching several circus skills. Instead of starting with juggling and magic they start with pantomime. There are many pantomime artists who work in theaters and dress up as clowns some of the time. They also play, princesses, horses, witches and other magical things. Some people now call this physical character but it is just a more modern name for pantomime. Some people in Europe make very good livings doing that. So if you that is what you want to do then you are a Pantomime Clown. They have been around for at least three hundred years. 

Pantomime Clowns have a hard time getting work here in the states. Those that are great at it do other things as well. In fact a man named Bill Irwin is great example of this. He is also an actor on stage and TV, can juggle, and I think I have seen him make a balloon animal. But for a Pantomime Clown he is the best America has to offer, maybe the world. Incidentally, when teaching he starts with the pantomime and some simple props to form the character. For people like him the makeup and costume come after you learn how to move. Once again this is more a functional thing. You don't want to go out and buy an expensive walking stick and find out it gets in the way of your act.

https://youtu.be/AkBb4FWHxhI

I have been to a few conventions and do not recall there being one just for clown costumes. I recall hearing of an event like this in Japan. That was a Clowncore thing. If you live in a large enough city with a bunch of Clowncore fans this might be a thing. I live in a city with fewer than a million people, we don't have these events. Without knowing or meeting these folks I would not feel comfortable saying if they are or are not real clowns. I would suggest they may not be the best source of information of what clowning is. 

The Circus is always going to loom large in the definition of what clowning is. If someone strays too far from this many people are not going to think they are real clowns. That does not mean that opinion is always correct. Even so, this will always be the 500 LB Gorilla in the room.

I would suggest that you give some of the traditional skills a try. I hated juggling the first two months I was learning. I still do not like it very much. Even so, it can be fun when a bunch of us get together. 

@zeeppo

I know I like to see how different clowns interpret different things. I think pantomime is very important for a clown.  

Who cares if a clown type has only been around for 300 years? I don’t, it can be for 5000 thousands years, it could be 10 years. Why is it important how long a type of clown has been around?

The one thing I did a lot when first starting out was asking a lot of questions. And asking “Why?” Which annoyed the other clowns. Many times they could not explain why. It was just tradition or some nonsense like that. 

Yes they do, they have a clown type competition. Best white face, best auguste, best hobo, best character clown, etc. 

Why would I want to keep doing a skill I don’t like? That makes no sense to me. 

These people really have a point. 

https://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=225759&start=0

All you seem to concern yourself with is working clowns who know or learn party skills and any clown who does not do that is not clowning. That is like saying the only real painters are the ones who paint portraits in a realistic style, not pointillism or not cubism. You have a very narrow definition of what a clown is.

You started this by asking an opinion. I gave you my opinion. This is my job. I think of it as a job. If this is someone's hobby there is different set of rules if you do not need it to pay your bills. You are adding things that I did not say. At no point did I say that you are not a clown. I have not seen your act or know anything about your as a clown. You are implying judgement where none exists. 

You appear to be attacking me for my opinion which you asked for. If you did not want to hear what I have to say why did you ask? 

Your illustration about painting is apt. All painters need to apply paint to some kind of surface. Any of those painter no matter the style would suggest using brushes and canvas. Are there times when they paint a piece of plaster or glass sure. Do they sometimes use something other than a brush, sure. Still, the vast majority of the time you apply paint to canvas using brushes.

The vast majority of working clowns use a certain set of skills. Those are the ones I was talking about. Are there some that fall outside those basic skills, yeah. 

You asked a general question about clowning. I gave you a general answer. . If you want me to judge if you are a clown show me your act first. But do not attack me personally because I did not guess the question you really wanted answered. 

We are not going to run a forum where people are attacking each other, that means no name calling. That does not mean that everyone has to agree with you either. 

I don't think a clown needs to be a professional in order to be a "real" clown. I believe what makes someone a real clown is the ability to deliver an engaging and entertaining clown performance to audiences, whether they are paying you or not. I also believe that in order to do that - in order to be engaging and entertaining - we must take the craft of performance seriously, and we must take seriously our obligation to our audiences, because whether or not your audience is paying for your performance, they are giving you their time and attention, and that engenders a great burden of care. Ultimately our time on earth is the single most precious thing anyone has in this life, and in order to justify taking up someone's time, I think you need to have something well worth showing them in return!

I believe that all performances are a negotiation between what the audience expects of you, and what you want to show them. Each of these engender a responsibility, to our audiences and to ourselves. The first responsibility I call "entertainment", which is what the audience expects of you. If nothing else, audiences want to feel good about the time they shared with you. In short, they want to have a good time! And it is our responsibility as performers to fulfill that expectation, whether or not we are being paid anything more than attention. The second responsibility I call "art", and that has more to do with what we want to show the audience. Performance becomes art when audiences are somehow changed (hopefully for the better!) by having experienced it. This artistic responsibility is as much about being true to ourselves as it as about sharing something of real value with our audiences, but both sides of that coin matter a great deal.

Now, we *can* go out and just be entertaining and audiences will enjoy themselves, and maybe that's enough to put someone into "real clown" territory according to some standards. But the history of clowning, as a performance medium, includes a number of aspects above and beyond mere entertainment, including (but not limited to): speaking truth to power; the cultivation of a certain kind of pathos or empathy which allows audiences to see themselves through the clown; and performance skills which put audiences into a state of wonder or curiosity. Without including one or more of these artistic elements which set clowning apart from any other performance art, I don't consider any performance "real clowning". So we could almost think of this as a third layer of responsibility, which is a responsibility to the "genre" or "medium" of clowning, making sure we understand enough about the field to be certain that what we are doing in fact meets the criteria of what constitutes clowning specifically, versus any other kind of performance art. Because you can certainly create a very entertaining and emotionally powerful piece of performance art, but if it doesn't include any circus or clown skills, is it really clowning? You might be an excellent actor, or comedian, or musician, but simply putting on whiteface makeup and doing those things doesn't make your act a clown act. In order to truly be delivering a clown performance, you must incorporate something that sets it apart from these other well-established and well-defined media, which are adjacent to, but separate from clowning. This third responsibility is not so much to our audience or to ourselves, but to the memories of many thousands of clowns throughout history, and to the other performers who create in the same field as us. We must remember we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, by my standard, a "real clown" is one who takes seriously the responsibilities of using the specific performance medium of clowning to entertain and / or enlighten audiences, regardless of whether or not they do so professionally. These three responsibilities - to our audiences, to ourselves, and to our field - are what we must fulfill with every performance. And you can always tell which clowns take these responsibilities seriously, because audiences interpret them as "real clowns". Audiences (especially kids!) can always sense our authenticity and our level of engagement. If we haven't prepared enough, if we haven't cared enough, if we aren't taking our responsibilities seriously? That's when people wander away during the middle of a performance, and it is always a wake-up call to take our obligation to them more seriously!

I like the idea of a performance being a negotiation between the audience and the performer. I also like the idea of a performer having a responsibility to the audience. 

I would suggest there is also a responsibility to the craft of clowning. I use the term craft simply to be more general. I am not suggesting a particular performance cannot become a piece of art. This becomes a great deal more important when you are competing with other clowns for shows. 

Almost every professional in every profession agrees in a basic standard for their craft or job except for clowning. Clowning is at a point where some people think they can dress up an uncle as a clown for a birthday. They do this instead of hiring a clown. That uncle may have watched a bunch of youtube videos, practiced for hours, and give an ok performance. The goal of that uncle is to save the couple hundred bucks it would take to hire a person who makes their living as a clown. Is that guy, who's only goal is to save some money, a real clown? 

We are at the point where it is nearly impossible to make a living in a small town. Is it good for clowning to eliminate party clowns who do it for a living? Probably not. I live in a metropolitan area of 600,000 people. There are 4 clowns who make a living at in my area. When I first got into clowning 30 years ago there were at least a dozen. We had a COAI Alley that folded a few years back. My troupe is all that is left and we do mostly hospital clowning. 

I would suggest the idea that a clown does not need to practice a standard set of skills has been a major factor in this. Now does every clown need to be able to juggle six balls or know 300 balloon animal? No, probably not. 

Even so, I have watched a performer argue with an audience when they want to see juggling and the "clown" cannot do it. It is an example of a negotiation with the audience failing. It is a also a failing in professionalism. 

I will add to this that the solution is not to go around shamming people for not juggling or knowing magic tricks. The solution is to encourage the tradition crafts of clowning. We need to make it easy for people to learn them. By the way if you want to learn to juggle my troupe has an online class on Sundays at 4:00PM. 

https://meet.goto.com/189934429

When you think about it, 30 years ago was a long time ago. That was 1992.  Plenty has changed since then, not just in clowning. 

Where I live, which is also a big city, most of the clowns in the area are supplied by those party entertainment companies where you can request different characters to come. Not just clowns. I don’t see the solo clown/children's entertainers very much. I don’t follow that scene very closely. 

Most of these local clowns are weekend warriors who have a 9-5 on weekdays. Or retired people trying to make some money. They fizzle out quite quickly and all I find are abandoned facebook pages and dead websites.

The thing about the dressed up uncle is that sometimes situations like that are the nudge a person needs to get interested in clowning. I have heard many stories from people who were hired to be a clown with no experience for an event. They liked it so much, worked hard on their clown and continued. Some of these people are very respected in the clown community and have won many convention awards. Why is it so terrible? Is it because if this person decides to pursue clowning they will be more competition for you?

I think a clown is someone who is kind & loving and really cares about people and wants to make them happy 

We have to be careful not to veer off into an unuseful area when talking about these sorts of subjects. The idea of hiring a clown is not as popular as it once was. There are also fewer circuses traveling the US than there once was. One of the main reasons for restarting this site is an attempt to improve clowning and rebuild it's popularity. We want to be the resource that helps that uncle if they decide to learn the craft.

The idea of what needs taught to a new clown is not new. And most who still hire clown are doing so because an idea that it is a traditional entertainment. Juggling, Balloons, Magic, puppetry, pantomime and so on are considered clowning skills. Geometry, Brain Sugery, Automotive Repair and not really clowning skills. We do not need to reinvent the wheel here. 

The thing we want to avoid is people dressing up as clowns who harm the idea of clowning.