notes from clown school

okay okay, "clown school" isn't quite accurate, it's just a weekend class on clowning and physical comedy at Citylit. and i've only done one session (I missed the first session from illness). but the session I just did was great.

this post is me writing down some stuff that I'm thinking about on the bus home, so don't take it as too definitive a statement on anything. I give you this warning with the utmost seriousness: I am not a professional clown.

in a previous post I wrote about the magic circle, holding the game and also the context within one's head. clowning talks about playing multiple games within each other: there's the thinking about the performance and the being a clown within that, and then the clown also has stuff that they're trying to do within that. or, there's the game you're playing, the scaffolding of the performance. and then there's the bit that you find within that game, which is also a game. you hold onto the game for as long as there's something there, and then let go afterwards. learning how and when to leave the game is one of the most important parts of the game. thinking a lot about Bernie DeKoven here.

there was a bit where the teacher was talking about how what we're trying to do is play until we find the funny, and then we can develop that further. and it felt like, if you just deleted the "-ny", like I was in a production stages 101 talk at GDC.

it is so weird to try to interact with other players and also perform for an audience. I mean, not weird as a thing, but as someone who has been doing either roleplay/larp or public speaking, but never both... it's a lot to hold attention to!

and actually that holding and understanding attention is a lot of it. where is the audience attention, when do I take focus, how do I project focus (how narrow or wide is that focus). the idea that there is an audience focus is... well not an entirely new concept but it's not something I've had to play with directly in this way. I've done a lot of thinking about pointing attention places (eg doing the thing of inserting a blank slide when I want to do some important talking and I want the audience's attention. or designing the Beasts of Balance UX so the screen only demands your eye when something important happens), but that's typically planning ahead for where the attention ought to be, not responding to the shifts in attention. not seeing the attention as something that can be played with, dynamically.

or, maybe another way to look at this is that I'm used to the outer frame being care for other players and the experience they should be getting. and inside that frame there's the character and what they want. and now there's an extra layer in there of whether the thing we're making is funny, and funny for this audience specifically, and I don't know where to put that extra frame, and i'm not used to it, and it's hard to do other things while also holding this brand new frame, it's so big and awkward. and yet of course, nothing works if you only use one frame at a time, these are games that only work if you play all the games together at the same time.

also, yes, finding the bit, those smaller games - doing something that gets a response, setting up a dynamic between players. and that dynamic is often about wanting something and not getting it. this is something i feel in larps, often. how can i find something for my character to want? how can i find a way for them not to get it?

there's a thing which I kind of came to this to find and I don't know that I will - the experience of holding a strong feeling in my body. it's something I have loved a lot when I have found it in larp and wanted to find elsewhere and understand it more. but clowning is maybe not that, because it's something so focused on audience. the feeling is not in the body, but in the room. between the other performers and you and the audience, in, maybe, the tension between those places. we have not yet (i have not yet) been a clown on my own - maybe that will feel more natural, with one less frame to carry.

I like the teacher a lot - as you'd expect, he did a lot to try to lower the stakes, and accept failure as an outcome to be celebrated. good practical work on that, which I've not seen to quite the same extent elsewhere - when you fail the game, you have to own the moment of failure, you have to accept that attention and acknowledge it before withdrawing. he made a point of learning people's names and trying to get everyone else to learn them - building that into the games - which is a lot for a 18 person 2 hour class (I have to assume he'd prefer to be teaching half that). if I had to think why he'd focus on that, it'd be building that sense of community within the class - mutual trust, lowered stakes, etc etc. i am no longer surprised by this, but it is definitely worth saying how much you can make a room full of strangers feel like a community in a few hours.

anyway, like I said, this is like one class in. but I thought these notes might be interesting to someone else. and for me, later on.