4 ms·

I can't seem to resist the urge of asking, what was haunting about it?

josephg 3y ago
The process of learning clowning - at least where I went - was a process of getting up on stage, again and again, and being made vulnerable to the audience and to our own inadequacies. Which is a nice way of saying that the instructors were low key abusive. They encouraged us in the audience to yell “money back!” when the performers were boring us. Or the teachers would give feedback like (direct quotes): “I didn’t understand why women want to date other women until I saw you on stage. You are so unlovable that I understand abandoning men completely.”. “Do you not think he looks like a tub of yoghurt trying to dance?”. “This one is a cancer on the stage.” And so on. A few days after clown school my partner and I were chatting to a pair of American sisters from an army family on a bus. The older one had served. Before we mentioned clown school she said we had the same haunted look people had right out of basic training. It was definitely abusive. But we’re also definitely looser for it. 1 month of class and my social anxiety is basically gone. It feels a bit like I have an opportunity to relearn how I want to show up socially and on stage. It’s taken a few months to recover, but I’m so much more present with people. I don’t understand why, but I’m really not sure we could have learned what we learned without feedback like that. I’ve done improv comedy classes for years. But clowning at Gaulier melted so much of my bullshit. We spent a month being seen. And then told, honestly, brutally and repeatedly what people see when they look at us. Once you get over the shock of it, there’s a joy in that. A game. But it’s been months and I still haven’t quite put myself back together again yet. If anything, saying the experience was haunting is a massive understatement. For good and ill, that class will be with me until the day I die.

The process of learning clowning - at least where I went - was a process of getting up on stage, again and again, and being made vulnerable to the audience and to our own inadequacies. Which is a nice way of saying that the instructors were low key abusive. They encouraged us in the audience to yell “money back!” when the performers were boring us. Or the teachers would give feedback like (direct quotes): “I didn’t understand why women want to date other women until I saw you on stage. You are so unlovable that I understand abandoning men completely.”. “Do you not think he looks like a tub of yoghurt trying to dance?”. “This one is a cancer on the stage.” And so on. A few days after clown school my partner and I were chatting to a pair of American sisters from an army family on a bus. The older one had served. Before we mentioned clown school she said we had the same haunted look people had right out of basic training. It was definitely abusive. But we’re also definitely looser for it. 1 month of class and my social anxiety is basically gone. It feels a bit like I have an opportunity to relearn how I want to show up socially and on stage. It’s taken a few months to recover, but I’m so much more present with people. I don’t understand why, but I’m really not sure we could have learned what we learned without feedback like that. I’ve done improv comedy classes for years. But clowning at Gaulier melted so much of my bullshit. We spent a month being seen. And then told, honestly, brutally and repeatedly what people see when they look at us. Once you get over the shock of it, there’s a joy in that. A game. But it’s been months and I still haven’t quite put myself back together again yet. If anything, saying the experience was haunting is a massive understatement. For good and ill, that class will be with me until the day I die.