Putting a cagoule on a fish: or how clown is about the way you pay attention to something

The word ‘clown’...oh ho ho, how so many people use it, define it…it’s a bit like trying to put a cagoule on a fish. (For any non-clowns reading this, I’m not going to be talking about floppy shoes.)

Here’s how I’m going to frame it: clown is about how a performer pays attention to the thing they are doing. 

LAZZI LAZZI LAZZI (AH AH AH AH AH…)

Typically, one label I have given myself is ‘improviser’ because I’m not a fan of fixing things, and I don’t like stable meanings. This mop? Now it’s a person. Nope, now it’s a barbel…nope, now it’s a…you get the idea…

But that’s only one way of dealing with the world as an improviser - only one relationship to meaning.

A lazzo (thank you, commedia dell-arte) is different. It is a repeatable action that can be done with some variation. So I created one as an experiment, a way of testing different clown logic on the same material (a sheet…ho ho ho…literal material)

I had a white sheet on a piece of rope. I stood to the side so the rope sat over my right shoulder, and concertinaed the sheet towards me so that the stage behind it would briefly reappear.

Here were the rules for this lazzo:

• it must always be the same action: pulling the sheet towards me;

• the only variables allowed were how I experienced the sheet;

• and how I felt watched - the unspoken contract with the audience
  

  1. Clown as exposure 

I concertinaed the sheet in while keeping eye contact with the ‘audience’ for as long as I could. With every pull I felt slightly more guilty. I felt shame and very exposed, like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t.

In that moment, I slipped out of the shared reality of the stage and into something more internal. The relationship with the imagined audience tightened. It felt charged. They weren’t just watching, they were catching me.

I love working in this space. It thrives on strong emotion, strong characters, on exposure, and the thrill of being inappropriate. 

2. Clown as expression of tenderness

I gave myself permission to enjoy the materiality of the sheet. Here, the action didn’t change, but the way I held it did. I wanted to stay with it: to hold it, to breathe it in, to be with it for longer than necessary, and there was a joy in that. Just holding it, it’s very human, very grounded.

In this state, the clown opens up rather than hides. The vulnerability isn’t exposure, it’s an offering. The audience isn’t catching me out, I’m inviting them to stay with me. It’s not a place I visit often. There’s a fear that if I open up too much, everything will spill out. But I also have a strong pull towards it.

3. Clown with object instability

OK, so here, in contrast, the sheet wouldn’t stay a sheet. In my arms it quickly became something else. It became a baby. Then a dance partner. Then someone standing in front of me. The urge was instant: to make something happen. To follow it into interaction, into narrative, then into play. The object didn’t hold still - it kept offering new possibilities, and I kept taking them. 

This is a very familiar territory for me. The improviser’s instinct to transform, to build a world from very little, to make a story happen, rather than sit with an impulse or relationship with the audience.

That’s it. No floppy shoes today.