----------------------------------- Two Clowns in a Closet - Episode 03 https://circusfreaks.org/podcast Recorded on 2022-01-31 ----------------------------------- Russ: Ok, I thought this would be more graceful and I could do it quietly but I've now gotten into a deep squat in a very small closet. I'm here- Avalon: I'm so glad that we put that cushion there for the crash. R: For that little deep squat. My bottom has touched the floor. What a beautiful way to begin our day. Just up the stairs, around the corner through a door, and I crashed my butt into a floor for the third episode of- A: Two Clowns in a Closet. R: That's not a sound check. That's going in just like that. A: Yup. R: We are here. We are back. It is still very cold in the closet. We are upgraded to house coats and blankets and hats. A: I brought my hot water bottle again. It's a new one actually R: Our guest star hot water bottle. Congratulations on the acquisition. I'll give you a handshake. Congratulations on the- A: Why, thank you. R: -acquisition of a new hot water bottle. We've been slowly working our way through questions. We're approaching, I think, nearly the half way mark. A: I think by the end of today, R: yeah, A: -probably nearish halfway. R: And at this point, I guess it's- suffice it to say if anybody is listening to this and is interested, that if you would like to send us a question, head over to our website at circusfreaks.org and hit the contact form, send us a question. We'll add it to the pile and we'll get to it as soon as we can. A: Or send an email. Or if you already follow us on the Fedi. R: Oh, yeah, Mastodon A: Then you can reach us there as well and send questions. Just make sure you let us know that they're questions you'd like us to answer in the podcast, not questions you would like an answer to- R: We'll write you an email *laughs* A: -directly, 'cause we'll probably write you an email R: Because we're very lonely. *laughs* A: and while I'm sure you'd still get the benefit of receiving the answer to the question, it wouldn't have ended up being here. R: Yeah. A: The way we planned, R: But as it is- A: The way you planned. R: The way I planned? I planned nothing. A: Oh, I was speaking to the audience "you". R: Oh, yes. The microphone. Or I call it my special friend who's in the closet with me that is not you. Hello, special friend. A: The way that you said that inspired some level of jealousy. And I don't understand why R: You're also my special friend. A: Okay. R: As is that shoe behind you, A: I'm glad. R: Yeah. A: Good. R: And that coat over there. A: okay R: Your hat I'm a little sketchy on, however. A: That's fair. R: And I don't know the hot water bottle that well. A: It's alright. R: It's okay. A: It will get better over time. R: I hope so. Well- A: Shall we begin the questions? R: I was looking for a segue to lead us into it. I figure that was it. So, yes. Do you want to read? You took the cards. A: Yeah, I've got them. R: You took them away from me because last episode I had the entire stack and I managed to drop them in my lap and we were frantically- and there was some improvisation. Physical theater on audio recording is one of my specialties. A: But I managed to drop these during the sound check, so that's been taken care of. We've already put them back in the correct order, and we don't have to worry about it this time. R: I like how you're just admitting to all of your failures, too. So you're like, "I'm involved. I'm involved." A: No, I mean, it's done. We've done it. It doesn't have to happen- R: Oh, so now we're pre-disastered? A: Yeah. It doesn't have to happen during this recording now. R: Yeah, we're predisastered, like the Titanic. A: Oh, goodness. Don't go there. R: What, too soon? A: No, I just don't want that level of weird luck, bad luck, challenging the universe-ness going on. Don't do that. R: Yeah, good point, good point. All right, if you wouldn't mind. The first question, I am ready to receive. A: Fabulous. The first question for today "Was it, that is to become a clown, always your plan? Or did you discover it later? Maybe after some false starts?" R: You know, last time we were trapped in here, we talked about the fact that for both of us, it was kind of accidental. We sort of, A: Yes. R: We fell at it. But it certainly wasn't the first mistake I made. My previous career was as a commercial artist. I spent nearly 20 years as a graphic designer and a sculptor, and specifically, a jeweler is what I was known most for. And it was a lot of time locked in a little room, very lonely, slightly larger than this one, making beautiful things for people. I mean, they would come to me with an idea and said, "Could you do this?" And I was their talented collaborator, and I would make a thing, and I would give it to them. And we would all- it felt really good. It didn't feel so material as it sounds, because it was really about people making totems. That should have been an indicator that I was probably wrong for the industry, but right for the art. That said, somewhere along the way, the idea sort of wormed its way into my brain. One day, I remember I was working on some big project that was made of gold. And I remember sitting there wondering, "Is the idea good? Or is the fact that it's shiny, expensive metal good?" and "Is it pretty or is it pretty shiny?" And it got in my head. It really did. It started leading me to question, you know, "What am I doing?" Which is always a dangerous place, because if you're having a good time, you don't ask that question. You just keep going. In any case, I got the idea that I needed to know, and itched at my brain. About this time, I'd already picked up juggling as a hobby, and I was already starting to head in the direction I am now. But I wasn't this person yet. And while I was going, I got into- I sent a letter to an emerging artist show, and I said, "I would like to submit my work as an emerging artist." And they said, "Well, your resume says you've done art for a long time. What's emerging?" Other than an existential crisis? What was emerging was the fact that I had never done any 2D work. I was always a sculptor, a maker of some sort. I'd never done any drawing. And so I said, "I'd like to do a collection of digital illustrations." I said, "printed." And they were like, "Well, that's an interesting angle. We've got a child prodigy in the show. You could be a different type of emerging artist." And I said, "Awesome." and I went for it. Big shout out to Inkscape and free software people because I did the entire collection of pieces in Inkscape's calligraphy tool on a junky old tablet laptop that I traded some jewelry for. And so I did this collection, and I got to get into print work, and it was really cool. I'd never done any of that before. And I put the work on the wall, and it sold really well. And somewhere in the back of my head, the voice was going, "It's paper and ink. If at this point they like the work, validation successful. Your creativity is valid because they like the work, they like what you're doing." And because it was my ideas, it was me. There was no intermediary valued medium in the way. I felt a lot better about it. But unfortunately, that meant six months later, I was out of the jewelry industry. I like, exited in a flaming tornado of, "Oh, I get it now." And so it was sort of the decapitalization de-materialization, de-materialism-ation. That's a new word. I'm going to use it. Of all of those ideas. It was very quick, I sold- and I did one final show. At the end of the show, I committed the great dream of I wanted to- I sold the booth that I sold the art in. I sold all the art, and I sold the booth to another artist who wanted an upgrade. A: Nice. R: It was the best. And of course, it became instant legend that I literally just took a check, picked up my briefcase, and left all my stuff there for someone else to deal with. Not really the reality. I helped them pack it. I took my stuff, but you get the idea. And by that point, what was secretly true is that I had been progressively doing, not as a clown, but as a physical performer, doing more and more events and things. So I essentially had been quietly backing off from the jewelry art, all this stuff that I was doing and going more and more into physical performance. So what it really was is it was like the rocket was going into space, and this was just me dumping the booster engines and getting on with it. At some point, you pull the lever and you go, "Okay, I'm already doing this. Let's do it." And it was- Of course, it accelerated everything, because suddenly that was what I did. That was the world, and I am very lucky. I landed very well. And I've always been doing this since. What is interesting about that is they feel like, to my insides, two very different lives. And in fact, there was even a period where for about two years after I left jewelry and sculpture, I wouldn't turn a screwdriver. I was in sort of a healing- like I had done so much making that I sort of burnt out and if something was broken, I either let it be broken or I paid someone to fix it or I asked someone to fix it, which is very unlike me, especially to me now, who's very hands-on. So there was this long period where I had a big separation, and that created a real separation in my mind. But there are people who have known me through all of that and have watched that transition of, you know, identity as visual artist, as sculptural artist to identity as performing artist and say that there is a consistency to the work and I don't feel it. But I asked them about it I said, you know, "Outline that." They said, "Well, when you're a jeweler, it was very minimalist because it's small. It's- physically you have the width of a finger to define an idea, and you managed to create ideas that way. When you moved into illustration, it was a very philosophical sort of thing, but it also kind of had that really crisp choices. And as a performer, you do a lot of things that are very simple", which I think was them calling me stupid. I'm not sure, but I like to think they were saying the work was good physically, and I've been complimented on that before. So I guess from some angle, maybe I was doing it the whole time. I was very caught up in the presentation of the work. You know, when I was a sculptor, I was as much concerned with how it would be presented as I was making it. But that to me, it wasn't so much staging as it was part of that process. And now I realize that it was the beginnings of that seed growing where I wanted to create stage pictures. The other side of that is. And this is a piece of advice for anybody doing any endeavor. If you don't love the gross part of it, get out. Relegate it to something you kind of do occasionally. Because there came a point 15-18 years in to that process of sculpting where I loved the part where we sat down with a glass of wine and came up with a good idea. And I loved the part where I showed up with a thing, but I became the person who resented every step from getting off the couch and making it to the showing up and delivering it. I just started disliking it. A: Oooh, That's not good. R: It's not good. And the summary of that was there came a point where I was doing the wrong thing, which it's not about making, because of course, ironically, coming back around now that I'm performing and building and I'm a theater maker is the phrase that I like to throw around. I do make props. And, you know, part of the last year and a half of this time has been spent, a significant portion of it has been sculpting and returning to those skills in order to make theater masks. So it's been good and very healing to sort of integrate these things that were kept very separate to begin to integrate them. So I will say that it was certainly not my decision, my plan, my path, but how I got here, when looking at it with the wisdom of having gone through it, I go, "Oh, that makes sense." So, yeah, I'll say that makes sense. A: Okay R: So I'll turn the question on you. And this is the gesture where I realize we are halfway into a recording, and I did not bring a pair of reading glasses and so we are just going to go for it. The question was I'm going to get the exact wording wrong. So this is me- you're going to see me at a high level of vamp. A: Alright! I get vamp questions! R: Vamp version. Was this always your path, your plan, or were there false starts? A: There's no question there were false starts. As I mentioned last time, I kind of accidentally fell into clown while working on pursuing music. And I'm from a very musical family, and my family really strongly encouraged me to pursue music and helped me prepare to pursue music. There's the idea in a lot of the performance industry of "The Triple Threat", and that that's like a base requirement to succeed. R: What do you mean by triple threat? A: And the most classic combination of the triple threat is you can sing, you can dance, you can act. R: Wow. I am not a triple threat. Continue. A: Well, it can apply to different- it can apply to different things. But, like, that's the standard. The standard, like, to become an actor or to become a singer or to become a dancer is to be able to do all three of those things so that you can do- you know, take a role acting in a musical. R: What an awful pressure to put on you. Fortunately, you can do all three of those things. A: I was taught how to. I got put in dance classes when I was five. I was encouraged to go to a theater camp in the summer. And it was amazing, and awesome to get to do all of those things. And I was also in a family who is very musical, where many of them have pursued music as a career, and therefore, while on one hand, I was being handed "Here are the tools to go and use this as a thing that you do". On the other hand, I was being told, "Please, dear God, choose anything else as your career. Please do something that actually pays you." R: And so you made the responsible decision to become a circus clown? *laughs* A: No. So I made- So when I discovered I liked physics in high school, I pursued a college degree and I was hoping to go down an engineering route and this completely did not work out for me at all because I have ADHD and didn't pay attention in my early levels of math class because I didn't see how that would ever be something I wanted to deal with ever again. I was wrong. R: You do physics every time we do acrobatics, I imagine. I see you calculating the odds. A: Yes, to a certain degree. Yeah. I was completely wrong when as a young high school student, I assumed I would never need math. Unfortunately, I did not manage to correct for that. I did end up with a degree in German and then promptly got a series of jobs that had nothing to do with anything I had studied. R: Those aren't career paths, those were jobs. A: No, it was just a series of jobs. I'm just saying that that's what I was doing. During that period of time I met a friend of a friend who did flow arts and that was where everything turned R: Okay. A: And flow arts is a very wide ranging discipline. R: I was going to ask if we needed to do a glossary moment here. A: Yeah, I'll do a real quick glossary moment on that. Flow arts can include juggling, things like diabolo, poi spinning, staff spinning, all of the like, cool- seeing people out in the park- hooping, the people going out in the park and playing with objects and doing cool stuff. Almost all of it falls into the category of flow arts in some way. R: Okay. Well wrangled. A: And when I look back on it, though, for all that, I'm saying that I had these other directions I was going in. I loved the circus. I loved clowns. Growing up, I watched a lot of big comfy couch which focuses on this young girl clown and her adventures in around clown town with, like- R: *snort of laughter* A: -her family who are all clowns and all of that. R: It doesn't matter how many times you explain this show to me because I've never seen it. It always just sounds like you're punking me. A: I know, right? R: A clown getting off her couch and Clowntown getting her clown mail with her clown friends. Yeah, okay. A: But it's a real show. R: And apparently it was very instrumental in who you are. A: It was. And also I took those dance classes I was taking and the theater classes that I took all happened at the Annie Wittenmyer theater program in Davenport, Iowa. Gonna go ahead and shout them out because they're awesome and their mascot is a clown called Showtime Pal. Showtime Pal is the like, the MC for all of those shows. So where some theaters have some representative of the theater come out, makes a stuffy, "Please don't talk on your cell phone and thank you to these people who have donated funds" speech and then there's either somebody else or the same person comes out and walks people back after intermission. R: *Affirmative Noise* A: It was Showtime Pal. R: Got you. A: And Showtime Pal is based, design wise, very much off of the white face clown. She has the two colored jumpsuit with the big polka dots on it. So it's red and white, like red polka dots on white on one side and white polka dots on red on the other side and the big ruff and the weird little pointed hat and the white face style makeup. She's been portrayed by many different people, but the character of the clown continues to be the same one. And- R: That's a thing I have mixed feelings about. But- A: I have mixed feelings about it now. But at the time, I think that combination is a really interesting one to me because it was two girl clowns. R: Oh, Which are relatively- in American clown stuff is very rare that you came by that at all. A: Yeah. And so I had these two very early clown characters for me. R: Right. A: That I resonated with pretty well. More Loonette than Showtime Pal. But I love Showtime Pal. And I think there's a certain level to which as a kid, I didn't think you could join a circus. I know that sounds kind of stupid because obviously there are circuses and there are people performing in those circuses. And I thought circuses were awesome. I did get to go and see, you know, Ringling when they came through town. And I loved this children's story called "Put Me in the Zoo", where there's this undefined animal, four legged animal creature with these polka dot spots. And he's saying, "Put me in the zoo. I want to be seen by people, and people should see me." And these kids are like, "Well, why should we put you in the zoo?" And they say, "Oh, cause I can do all these things." And they do all these weird tricks and, like, their spots change colors and they do weird, bizarre things. And at the end of the book, they're like, "We're not going to put you in the zoo. The circus. The circus is the place for you." And then you get to see this animal getting to show off all of his tricks in the circus at the end of it. And it's all very happy. And I think I literally didn't think that that was a thing that you could just train and do. R: This is that moment where I've pointed out to you, you're one of my students. I've pointed this out to a couple of other people I have had trained with me that you've been you the whole time. A: Yeah. R: And it's such a radically different experience than my experience, which, of course, was to come into this late, which means I'm very much I'm a philosopher about it. I'm always analyzing it and dissecting it, and you're just living it. And it's so very much a different- it's such a different take. A: I mean, I am, but I didn't actually find it until for circus ages pretty late. R: I think it's interesting because it sounds like you're on your way and then you detoured off because you thought, you know, somewhere in- A: Oh, "Go do something responsible" R: Right A: Or "Go do something the way that your family did it, or hopefully not exactly the same way your family did it" but, like, all of those things. R: Sure, A: Definitely, yeah, I went just off on these other tangents, trying to find something that I was supposed to do, and then, like, found myself back here. R: Back here dressing like something from the comfy couch. A: Yeah. Yeah, Jane would totally fit on that show. R: Do you look- you know, side by side do they look the same? A: I have done a side-by-side- So I've had friends, saw a photo of my clown, of Jane, and immediately responded with, "She makes me think of Loonette." And- which is the name of the clown on the show. And I was like, "Oh, no."- R: Did you copy? A: Because I was really worried for a moment. Did I just copy this clown from my childhood R: *laughs* A: -and just decide to be that? And they have a lot spiritually in common. They have a lot- Their hats are very similar, but when you actually do the side by side look, they're not remotely the same. R: I'm pretty sure I'm wearing a similar hat. A: You are, in fact, wearing the same style hat. R: So, yeah. Okay, so maybe your brain and your inner child was bitten by the radioactive clown, but you weren't copying. A: Correct. R: That was the worst summation I could have given that really good answer you gave. A: Possibly true. R: Let me make it up to you. A: Oooh! Ohh! You get to just read one. I haven't said it. Good luck. R: I know. A: Good luck. Mr. I Left My Glasses in the Next Room. R: Must you mock the aged? A: No, I mock you forgetting glasses R: For forgetting my glasses. To be fair, it's still new to me, okay. Because a couple of years ago, I could see everything with great precision. And all at once, I started, like, playing trombone with everything I was holding. I was moving away. Moving it-. Oh, this is printed like garbage! I can't read it. And then one day, somebody handed me a pair of reading glasses. I was like, "Oh", yeah, that happens. I can still count your eyelashes across the room, and I can throw a knife at you and usually catch it. A: True. R: None of that is anything other than me vamping while I squint at this card, trying to use my little errr. Okay, if I'm reading it correctly, and if not, I'm mangling someone's question, "What is up with the clowns are creepy meme?" Oh, right on the back of the radioactive clown bite. A: Oh, well done. R: Thank you. I wish I had planned that. It would make me seem a lot smarter. A: Oh, well done. R: What you got? We knew- This, I think, could be an entire episode on its own, and it's not. So just do what you can. A: Oh yeah, probably. R: We're going to miss something. A: This is a complex question. I think there are multiple layers to it. I've answered this question for a lot of people at a lot of different times. And my go to answer as to why- It's not "Why do clowns seem creepy?" I don't answer that question particularly. I answer the "Why is it that it seems to be a known idea that clowns are creepy" and that like, "Why is it that every high schooler pretends that clowns are creepy, even if they don't think they're creepy until they get past that stage? Why is it that this happens?" And I think I have an educated guess as to why this happened as a phenomenon, as a meme, before these fast paced internet memes happened because it was before that. R: Oh, yeah. Before there was an internet, people were talking about this. A: And I'm sad to say this, but I think that largely it's due to an unfortunate side effect of a lot of people acting in good faith and the Ringling Clown College. R: Wow. Okay. So you are about to throw an American institution, now defunct, under a bus. Go. A: And what that Clown College did was it prepared people to be big top circus clowns as part of a large touring tent show. R: In an arena. A: In an arena. This is for the big show R: Here, yeah. A: In America at the time. R: You're talking Seventies and Eighties at this point. A: Yeah. This is 70s and 80s. And the way that they did this was at- maybe not every tour stop, but at the tour stops, as the train came through, you had the show and they put an ad out saying, "Come audition to be a clown with this big show." R: Do you know why they did that? A: Why did they do that? R: This is interesting. I'm just going to sidebar on this. At one point, you have to realize you have the, you know, living legends of clown traveling with these circuses. And one day, they looked around and they realized all the clowns, the youngest clown they had was over 50. And they had this moment where they said, "If we don't make some new clowns, we're not going to have any for much longer" So you were talking about noble intentions. It was to save what had become brought over here and transformed by these big arenas, what had become an American tradition. They were trying to save it. Yes, it was a publicity stunt, but to give credit where credit is due, the goal was to try to give people a chance to become a part of this legend and this legacy while these people were still alive, to share what they had learned. A: As I said, best intentions all around. R: And now you're going to tell us where it all goes wrong. A: Yes. R: *laughs* A: So people from all over the country auditioned. And if you auditioned and got accepted, you got to go and study at the clown college. And when you did, you developed a clown with a costume, with your props. You created your gags, you created your makeup, you did all of it to create this clown and audition at the end of that time, audition to get on one of the shows, to get on to the train. That was the goal. And like anything that has to train in order to have people take on a position, the vast majority of people didn't make it. You know, you have a class of X number of students, only so many of them are going to have spots on the show. R: Yeah. There's a certain size that they can handle logistically. A: Yeah. There's not going to be that many. So- R: One car full, maximum. A: I mean, and that could be a lot because they're clowns. But still. So what you then have is a bunch of people who have all been taught how to do arena clowning, R: Which is very different than what we do. A: Which is very different than what we do. A bunch of people have taught how to do arena clowning, and that's all they've been taught because why would they teach them something else? The goal- They have a specific goal. Who all go back home to their various small towns, at which point you now have a person who has spent the last significant period of time and often not an insignificant amount of funds, creating this clown, having the costumes made, making their makeup, making their props, coming up with their great ideas. And these are people who want to bring joy to children. That's why you get on that train. That's why you try for this is you want to bring joy to children. So the obvious next thing to do is start a very small entertainment company and try to sell to the people around you the idea that they should have a clown at their events, whatever those events are up to and including children's birthday parties. R: *sigh* Not a place I do well, sorry. A: It's okay. So we've talked a little bit about how when we wear our makeup, if we wear makeup and you don't wear makeup, but I do, you tone it down for smaller spaces. Nobody told these people that. And this may have changed later on in the program, but definitely not in those first couple of generations of students. No one told them, "Oh, and if you're in a child's living room, you should not be at this 120% larger than life, giant being. You shouldn't do that." No one told them this. So they brought the thing that definitely works. They know it works because they were told it works. And they may not have been- it may not have worked quite well enough to get on the train, but it still works. They went and took that and brought it to five and seven year old children's houses and backyards. R: And suddenly you've got something that big and 5ft away from you. A: And when you're five or seven and it's something that big and that unknown suddenly in your face and it's that much stimulus, it's scary. It's traumatizing. R: And the word we might use for that would be? A: Creepy. R: You nailed it. A: So the thing is, this didn't just happen once, you know, this isn't something that happened once. This is something that happened simultaneously in small towns all across the country. Because it wasn't one person who had this brilliant idea. It was everyone who didn't make it on the train. Not necessarily everyone, but like a large number of people who didn't make it on the train. R: I was going to say, I know people who didn't make it on the train because they had a big career of their own already and chose not to go. I'm not saying me, I didn't make it on the train because I suck. But- A: And from that point, I want to be really clear about something because I don't want people to say that I'm just like, that like, I hate party clowns or something because that's not true. This has shifted over time. People have learned more about how to do that. It's its own art form, and I respect it intensely. It's not what I do, but I do respect it. But what happened at this particular era was a large number of people trained for one thing and then tried to pivot it, and at least initially, until they got a handle on what was going on, scared children. And it wasn't intentional. Nobody was acting in bad faith here. It just was an unfortunate series of events that happened. But then you have those people grow up and they start to be responsible for media, for books and for television shows and for movies. And, if you were a kid in that era, if you didn't get scared by a party clown, you knew somebody who had been. At that point in time, it was that common. You knew somebody. It was a thing that a lot of people were traumatized by in their youth. And so it was a thing that was easy to reference back to because it happened across the whole country. So if you wanted to make media that sold to everybody, that was a sort of unifying experience as much as it was a negative one, it was a unifying experience. And so our country had this weird block of time where an unfortunate thing happened to a lot of kids in ways that were never meant to be bad. No negative intent on anyone involved's part, and yet still managed to happen. And then that became part of just the national zeitgeist is that clowns are creepy. R: I have never heard anyone put that line of reasoning together before. True story. I mean, like I said, I know people who didn't get on the train. I know people who didn't get on the train because the deal wasn't good or they were like me. And I said I sucked, but the truth of the matter was I was the wrong fit. And the best thing that ever happened to me was that that was not an option. But I will say the idea that you've created, where you have this, like, this is what a clown looks like. And then people just kind of riffing off that. Oh, that's a really you got a really good theory there. I hope they don't sue you because it's your theory. I'm not taking any credit for it. A: I mean, if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. R: You're going to get email and I'll forward it to you, I promise. A: All right. R: I'm not answering that email. But it's a great- A: I can print a retraction if I have to, R: No! A: -but it seems to line up with facts that I do know. R: I think you have an excellent theory about trauma. That is certainly a piece of that pie. And it's got my wheel turning. A: Well, while your wheel is turning, R: *Affirmative noise* A: I'm going to ask you the same question. "What is up with the 'Clowns are creepy' meme?" R: Oh, I've got no thoughts on that. I'm kidding. You know, I think anybody who gets into this work that gets asked about it. And it's funny because it is an American centric thing. It was not a thing I heard when I trained outside the US. It's not a thing that exists elsewhere, but it absolutely is here. And popular media has done it. And I have my own pet theory, and it doesn't involve taking down an entire circus' string of choices. A: Great. I'm glad we have another option. Let's hear it. R: *laughs* So my take has always been the clown at its core, outside of its possible shamanic roots, outside of its possible higher calling, is a creature of innocence. It's a very simple creature. It shows up, it wants to eat and wants to play. It's not- It's full of nuance, but it's- it's full of poetry but it's not very complicated. And the reality is it is very easy when you want to write shorthand for monstrous is to make someone comfortable with something innocent and pure and then scare them with it. We've seen this in so many horror films. It's a cheap shot. It's easy. It's easy to go moment of innocence- Here's the knife. We hate it, but it is also very good shorthand. And if that's the best you've got in your creative bank and you need to write something, that's what you write. And you know, I've seen twists and turns on this that are interesting. And, you know, but there's this idea that something pure is perverted for the purposes of fear. And where I'm from, the word for that is terrorism. To intentionally cause fear by perverting something? That's terrorism. There are much worse versions of it in the world. And if you have to choose one, no, really, make a scary clown movie. But I think you can do better. And I say that to everybody all the time. I think you can do better. I also say, and I got this from one of my teachers who was outside the States when this question inevitably came up. It was so dismissive. I loved it. It was "Clowns can be happy, they can be scary. They can be sad. They can be longing for love and sex. It's just one emotion. Don't over focus on it" and then just dismissed the entire conversation. And I wish I could do it that smoothly, A: Wow. R: -but that was it. It was just one in a pallet of emotions. Why are you focusing on it? That's one side of the coin, and the other side for me is its we're a bunch of perverts. And it's perversion, so, you know, we naturally go there. A: That was very succinct. R: yeah. A: I like it. R: I think the same could be true. You could replace the word "clown" in an innocent and pure thing. A good thing. If flowers were monsters, we would go, "oh, no." A: The doll rooms that you see in- R: Okay. I'm a mask maker and a room full of eyes. Dead eyes staring at me freaks me out. If I see a doll room. I'm- That's not okay. A: But it's definitely the same thing. R: It's absolutely the same thing. Beautiful, adorable doll with a knife. Yeah. Again, we get it. Tired old trope. But again, very quick, because you don't have to explain that. You get that? Boom, one step later, you're into the story. A: Yeah. R: And so again, it's a little hackneyed, but it works. So Yuck. My answer was not as good as yours. A: No, it was great. R: But mine might not end my career. So yours is probably better based on that. A: *laughs* Nothing ventured, nothing gained. R: That's the question? A: No, that was the thing that I said while moving the cards. R: Okay, so I believe you have a question for me now. A: I do have a question for you. R: Okay. A: And this should be a bit more upbeat than- R: I hope so, because I got a little- A: We knew that question was coming, though. Like it always happens. R: Oh, yeah. "Why are clowns creepy?" They're not. "Why do people portray them that way?" Because- A: We've answered that question. R: We've answered that. I don't- See our previous work. No, not our work, our explanation. A: Ooo R: Yeah, important. A: Good clarification there. R: Yeah. Quick, hit me, hit me. A: Okay. "Why do you do it?/What makes the work worthwhile?" R: Why do I do it? You know, I have a particular set of skills, and there are skills that make me useless for almost anything else, which I think is more accurate than I care to admit. A: No. R: No, I do. I don't think the skills of the clown necessarily would make me a good accountant. They make me a good human being, but they don't make me a good accountant. Truthfully, I've been doing this for a while now, and people keep telling me I'm pretty good at it. So part of it is I'm doing it, and it's good. And it's also what I said earlier. What I said earlier was, you know, the part between, "Yes, I'll take the work", and "Here's the work I said I would do". You have to love that part. And if you don't, it sucks. That every step of the journey has to be something you're willing to do, the invisible work, the work nobody sees. I complain while working out. I stab my fingers while sewing things. I, you know, complain about how much there is to do but I love every moment I'm doing it. And when I get to performing, who cares? It doesn't matter how."Oh, get up really early and be up really late?". I don't care, because I love it so much. As to the second part of that question, I remember when I was deep in the European clown training, there was a question, and DeCastro sat there like a wizened spirit listening. "Why do you do the work?" And the people would monologue for all this time and very carefully listening and sort of nodding and sort of stopping them, and then would strip off all the negativity invert the apologies and return a single sentence that was the core of what they were trying to say. And it can only be done- and I say this reverently, through decades of doing that. And I remember it was going around the room and like, this person is seeking hope. This one's this, this one's that. And it's coming to me. And I'm like, "Oh, no. I'm going to have to put my gut on the line." And so I started talking, and I wasn't 100% sure what I was going to say. It was very- You know, I felt naked, I mean emotionally. And I started explaining that there's this moment of emotional connection I have where I put energy out and the audience feels it, and they put energy back to me, and I feel it. And it's about the thing that's going on in the moment, and no one else is involved, and people care about it, but they'll never really get it because there's this moment that's going on, and it's this big, beautiful, bright, shining moment that we're sharing. And I feel connected and they feel connected and everybody feels validated. And it's great because we're all having that thing. And she stopped me in this long ranting, sort of trying to find the explanation and said, "You want to be loved", and moved on. That was all I got, because I want to be loved. I knew it was true, and I knew that ooh, there was a lot of therapy coming attached to that sentence, but there it was. Why do I do this? Because I want to be loved. And I'm not saying there isn't love in my life. I have a ton of love in my life. I have, you know, family and friends that are chosen and dear to me. And I feel that connection. Whenever I'm scared, I can feel it. But what I think it is is when I'm on stage, whatever combination of things I put in a box and say, "I'm not locking you away, but I'm putting you- you're not important right now because you're just my weird traumas and neuroses and compulsions. And I'm just going to put you over here so I can go do the thing." Whatever combination of that I do makes me capable of feeling that shared love experience in a way I don't fully have any other time, because I'm in my own way the rest of the time. And so the opportunity to feel that is- I joke about it being addictive and being like a drug. But the reality is it's probably the most human and unbroken I feel. And who's not going to want that? There's no one who's not going to want that. And I've taken that exercise back, and I have thrown the exact same idea at you. Only to be clear, I wasn't smart enough to go "Uh-huh, Uh-huh, U-huh" and rip it apart for you. I made you do that for yourself. And I had two reasons for that. And one was what you're about to say was your own thinking. And two, I could not be blamed for the damage I did to your psyche when you figured it out. Smart guy. So with that in mind, why do you do it? And what makes it worthwhile? A: So, you definitely still can be blamed. However, I- R: Less. A: I did write- I signed a- R: A waiver. A: A waiver when I took your class. R: There actually is a waiver- A: That says that I can't sue you for the mental help I needed after processing. No- R: No, no that's real- A: I mean, that's real, that's real. R: Why would you say no to that? That was totally a thing that I was required to do. A: but I also wouldn't anyway. R: It's my damage, and I love it. A: But when you put that question to me and the rest of the students in the class, R: They're not here in the closet. Let's talk about you. A: The sentence I came down to, and I've re-said it so many times, I'm not 100% sure that it's what I said that day. R: You could lie. A: But I like sharing the wow. R: The wow. A: The wow. R: Well, that's a really specific term. Why don't you unpack what the wow is? A: So, human beings are capable of so many amazing things. I mean, there are feats of strength and agility and bizarre skills that people have. There's their capability to love and to care for each other, there are so many things that humans do that are just amazing. So when I go on stage, my goal is to share a moment with the audience where, in most cases, it's that I've developed a skill, but there's another performer I know, friend of friend, who when they're on stage and they do a stunt and the audience does that inhale gasp that isn't even the applause part, that's just the inhaled gasp of amazement. They turn to the audience and they go, "I know!" R: I know you're talking about. A: And they do this so many times that it's a bit. But it's also coming from a sincere place because it's this thing where it's not about the fact that I do the thing. It's not about the fact that the performer does the thing. It's about I, as the performer, discovered that this thing was possible, and I thought it was really cool. So I'm here sharing it with you so that you get to see this really cool thing that I discovered. Whether I discovered that because someone else did it or because I was trying things and discovered it doesn't matter. It's me being there, sharing the cool thing with the audience, where we both get to enjoy it. We both get to enjoy the fact that it exists at all. And I love that moment. I love that moment where we get to share that. And when I'm performing off of the stage, when I'm doing, you know, stuff at festivals and events, one of my favorite things to do is to not just have it be about something that I've brought to the table and am showing people, but to see the things that people bring to the table and to share- have an immense amount of energy making- helping them be aware of how cool that is. Like how much that is a wow thing, whether it's a dance off with a kid because I'm doing a dance step and then they're doing a dance step, and then I'm doing a dance step, and we're both enjoying the fact these happen, or kids showing me that they can do a backbend because they saw me doing acrobatics earlier and like they've learned this skill and I rejoice in this skill they've learned. Or when a girl from a small town in the middle of Texas tells me that her friend who's a boy likes- has a crush on another boy. And it's in that "I'm questioning an adult to see whether that's okay and whether the appropriate thing for me as a friend of this person is either to tell them that that's not okay if it's not, or to tell them that it is okay if it is, and support them" when I get to answer that question with just being really excited about the fact that their friend cares about another human being and about the fact that they care enough about their friend to be talking about it. And I get to make that a moment that's intense and real and very much a full of excitement moment. But it's also not a "I've had to make a big deal out of this" moment because this same clown is going to be just as excited about the fact that a rubber ball can bounce five minutes later. And these two things are just equally true and equally exciting, thus making it both beautiful and amazing and a big deal, but also totally not a big deal and not something you need to worry about. That I get to do that. That I'm put in positions where I'm allowed to do that is absolutely beautiful, to me, because the day I got to do that was just- I went home and cried. R: I am now, a little bit. A: Like, played it off at the time, went home and cried later, and I love it, and I would never stop doing that. Like- R: So that's why. A: So that's why I do it- R: I like how your wow A: -for those options R: The range of wow is rubber ball and validation. There it is. A: All of them. R: All the same. A: All of it. R: Wow. What else can I say but wow? You have just answered what I consider a bull moose of an answer to a question. Are you up for another? A: Up for another. Let's do it. R: Okay. A: What do we got? R: "What's the most, quote 'serious' thing you studied for clowning?" And before I turn this over, it says clowning. I tend to think of the clown as like a verb that occasionally stands still. So I think this is redundant. But that's like, my personal take. But the question remains. A: The question is great. R: The question remains what's the most serious thing? A: Safety. So many safety regulations. Being a clown, you're allowed anywhere. Like, you're allowed to go and do things. And that means that sometimes- R: The word allow is a little vague. But I'm with you. I'm with you, I'm just- A: People will go with it. The important thing is people will go with it. R: You can get away with stuff A: Which means that sometimes you are exactly the person who has to be responsible for the safety of other performers. R: Because you know- you have the access to get anywhere. A: You have the access to be there and to- you have the option to protect people if they need to be protected. You have the option to- option/obligation to draw everyone's attention if something has gone horribly wrong- R: Ohh, a couple of stories of that are really tough when you know something bad has happened and you know to the core of your being, it's your job. No one else knows yet. It's your job to keep everyone smiling until they get out of the room so you can deal with the thing that's happened. Absolutely. That's very real. That's a tough, serious moment. A: It's a very tough and serious moment. And you have to know enough about the risks involved with the various skills, about how things are going to go wrong if they go wrong, to be able to recognize it when they do, in order to do that. And that is part of your job as the clown. I mean, this is, it just is. R: You'll learn, you know, you learn a little bit of everything because of it, though, which keeps it interesting- A: You do. Which is great. It's wonderful. But it's a very serious thing R: Yeah. A: Also, I mean, looking at it, one of the first things that makes me think about with- I see serious directly above the word clowning and it just seems to me a comparison between serious and silly and the number of like "real world" skills that I've developed, to some degree, normally to a very small degree, but to some degree, in order to enable the weird $%*# I do as a clown- You're making a face like I'm not allowed to swear. It's a podcast. R: No, it's the first one. I think. A: I don't think so. R: I think it was the first one and it wasn't me. *laughs* It's so rare. I'm just like "ding ding ding!" A: But, yeah. When you're doing this work, you end up learning a little bit of lighting tech, a little bit of sound tech, a little bit of- a ton of prop building. Like, just how things are made and how things are built and how much you can get away with just creating out of gaff tape. Like, all of those things are things you learn a lot of tech theater skills. Video editing, audio editing, so many things. Because, I've heard a quote, and I think it's a beautiful one, which is that "The clown is an entire production studio wrapped up in one red nose". R: I think you're dead right. I know the quote. I think you're dead right. And some of it is because you can't order the things we need from a catalog in order to create the stories we want to create. They don't exist. A: And if they do, they exist in a way that's, like, just off of what you want. So even if you buy them from a catalog, you're still going to make alterations when they show up. R: Yes. A: Because I'll admit that, like, there are now websites where you can buy just, like, weird, oversized objects. Some of this stuff now exists in a way that it has not in clown history. R: None of them are sponsoring us, so I'm not going to name them. But they're great websites. A: Yeah, but inevitably, it won't be able to do the weird thing you had the idea to make them do. R: We had an idea we wanted to make giant pies that we could throw for a pie throwing thing. A: Yeah. R: And we could find pies. We could find giant pies, but not one of them could be held up to throwing one across the stage. A: Not repeatedly. R: No. Which led us, my favorite part of this is, we had a graham cracker in a plastic bag, and we were in the paint store trying to match paint to a graham cra-. And we did it. We did it A: *Affirmative Noise* So that we could put it on pies made out of- pie shells made out of foam. R: That we can throw. A: Yeah. R: Don't give away the farm. That's our top secret recipe. A: Oh, my bad. R: No, they're foam rubber. We stole the technique from 100 other people. Nothing new there. A: Nothing is ever new. R: No. A: But at the same time, nothing is ever what you wanted it to be. So somehow you have to alter it in order to make it work. R: Hence, you learn a little bit of everything. A: You do. R: But your most important, you say, is you learned a lot of- the most serious was safety. A: The most serious, I think, was safety. But I think it's worth noting that, like, you just learn so much weird stuff. R: True. You never know what's going to be useful. Robert, who works with us and is not in this closet right now, is very fond of saying that he spent his life picking up little silly skills that he didn't know what to do with until he realized he was a clown. Once he knew he was a clown, he was like, "Oh, all this weird, silly stuff I've learned makes sense" A: Yeah. R: And I love that idea because it gives me an excuse to have a mind that wanders as it do. A: So then the question is, "What's the most serious thing you studied for clowning?" R: Well, you took the good one, so I have to come up with one. So one of the ideas I like in this work as a kind of emotionally driven physical theater discipline A: Yes. R: What a sentence. Is the idea that there are like, three pillars that hold it together. There's the mind, the body, and the heart or spirit. You'll hear this talked about a lot when you go reading. And the mind stuff is memorization, it's not- there's a lot of it. You got to study your history. You got to know who notable performers are. You got to learn theater technique. You're going to have to memorize a script. And let me tell you, that's the one I'm very bad at. But again, it's just, you just learn it. The physical stuff, there's challenges there that I never realized that my job was going to be to show up and clearly define the word "impossible" and then pick that heavy thing up and move it an inch so I could keep going. I never realized that that was going to be- I now do things I didn't know were possible a few years ago. And so that's a constant struggle and challenge. But it's not really the toughy, and it's not really "serious?" because I'm swearing and telling jokes while I do it. The one I think you have to do most seriously is that last category, spirit. And what I think about in that is that I am full of vulnerabilities, which, if carefully analyzed, provide my greatest strengths as a performer, and I am full of trauma that if I heal and adjust, have source material for every story I can authentically tell. The ability for me to dig in and objectively begin to analyze all that stuff that is me and to take it, don't mock it, don't knock it down, which is my instinct is to be very dismissive of all of it, but to just realize that's me and I need to get to know it. And that's why I think it takes a long time to become a clown, because you've got to get past all of your defense systems go, "Oh, no, you don't get to look in that box. The clown is this thing and this stuff over there that's not for the clown" And you know, yeah it is. Ultimately it will be at some point when you're ready, sometimes sooner than you're ready. That's tough. But the skill of doing that is incredibly difficult. And once you have it, you also develop a director's eye. My ability to create a stage picture, because it's very easy for me to look at you and arbitrarily go, "this is good, this is bad, this is good, this is bad" based on the knowledge I have about the work, "This is working. This isn't" it's judgmental. Good if you're in a teacher's seat, bad if you're in a director seat, maybe better to say what is feeling good and what's not. So it's useful, but it comes out of really digging into yourself. I remember watching video of myself, one of- a project I worked on, I had to review a lot of video footage of things we were doing to edit them and to learn about stuff and learn what I was doing. And I remember watching it and thinking you know, "How much of this"- you know, there was a part of me that was screaming, "Oh, I can't even watch this. I hate it. I hate this person." And then one day I made the decision, I go, "That's not me. That's this character that I'm watching" and that objectivity, it's not me denying it's me. It's me providing objective distance. A: Yup R: And in that, then I could go, "okay" without thinking, "Oh, I got tons of body image issues and body shame issues" but I can look and go- I'm not looking like, "Are the pants looking like there's too much in them?". I can look at, "Is it moving well or not? Yes or no". And that objectivity was incredibly difficult to begin to learn, difficult to sustain, and probably the skill I think is the hardest because it requires taking this really long look at everything you've done, good and bad, everything you are, good and bad, and just seeing it for what it is and just, okay, this is a life. Let's do something with it. And I don't think any skill really compares to that. Not even acceptance or loving it, just being able to see it without your delusions in play. Wow, it's hard. So that would be the most serious thing I will say on the word serious. A lot of people think serious is like a funeral. Funerals are sad and they're solemn. They may not be serious. I hope someone cracks a joke at my funeral. You know, I hope it's a long time from now, and I hope it's funny. And I'm hope I'm there to complain about how it was told. A: Well that's going to take some shenanigans. R: That's going to take some shenanigans. But I also think that we really overvalue the seriousness. I'm not a very serious person. A: You're an extremely serious person, not a very solemn person. R: That's a better way to look at it. And that's what I think I am. I'm very philosophic. I'm very analytical. I'm not very wired to put things up and revere them on pedestals. A: And beyond that, the clown is extraordinarily serious about everything. R: Oh, yeah, everything's a love letter and a heart attack at the same time. That's why they're hilarious. Because it's a big deal that there's a rubber ball or a sandwich. That's Earth shattering news, and we're very invested in that. Anyway, we're veering off, which we do A: Often. R: Often, without provocation, try to keep up, if not rewind. And yeah, that's my most serious. I think we answered that one. A: Yes, I think so. R: I think I did all right. Are you ready for final question? Because I want to hit you with a good one. A: Yeah, yeah yeah. Yeah. R: Okay. Clearly I'm reading that wrong because of the glasses. Hang on. No, that's what it says. Okay. I will try to do this question justice. I hope your answer is as serious as you can possibly make it. "Honk. Honk honk honk. Honk honk honk honk honk. Honk?" A: Honk. Honk honk honk honk honk honk. Honk honk, honk. Honk honk. Honk honk honk. Honk honk honk. R: I don't think I could have said it better. I think it's- A: And yet. R: And yet, and yet. A: I now put the question to you. R: You put the question to me. Put your back- A: Honk. Honk honk honk. Honk honk honk! Honk? R: I don't really think that works on a Thursday. A: Well, there you are. R: I'm not going to try to keep up with your answer. It was so good. I just don't think it works on a Thursday. Think about it. It'll come to you. In the meantime- A: That's the end of the question we have for today. R: We locked ourselves in with just a handful and here we are once again. Thank you for listening and every second that you either laughed or didn't shut us off and we'll be back with some more after a cup of tea and for now I think we answered the questions. A: Yes. So this has been "Two Clowns in a Closet" and we're allowed to leave it now. I think. R: I think so. Alright. I'll see you soon. *sounds of a closet door opening* A: You did it! R: First try.