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Letters of Disappointment & Journeys of Hope: Falling Through the Cracks of Our Perfect Society

GAULIER

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Part Three in an investigation into Clowns and Failure
Female Clowns / Personal Archive

Letters Of Disappointment & Journeys Of Hope: Falling Through The Cracks Of Our Perfect Society

  “Life is hard isn’t it? And the pressure. The pressure to make it all work out and to be happy and successful and for it to all happen with “ease”. Fuck. I’ve tried. I have the books – 2 shelves full of the books that tell me how to make my life work. I followed the plans; tried all the steps; did the workbooks; daily affirmations; visualized love; gave thanks for what I have; worked at being positive; seeing the cup half full; everything for a reason; setting goals; loving myself; and believing – really believing – that if I want it, then I can make it happen. But I’m still sitting in the same place I was before – except now I don’t just feel like a loser because I’m not happy and successful and in a loving relationship with a wonderful person – NOW I feel like a loser human being because ‘The Secret’ tells me that if my life is crap, it’s because I didn’t do it right. It’s my fault. If I haven’t become the superstar that the universe was willing to support me in being, then it’s because I did something wrong. It’s so humiliating. I went to visit a friend recently because things weren’t exactly going perfectly in my life and I thought it would be nice to be with a friend. So she says to me on the phone: “OK you can come, but you have to be positive.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, you have to be 100% positive if you are here because my home is a center of positivity and I can’t allow anything in that will interfere with that.” I was panicked. I was going for three days. I didn’t know if I could keep it up that whole time. I was pretty tired already from trying to be positive just on a sporadic basis whenever I would feel myself slipping into the void, so this demand for unwavering, full time positivity caused me great anxiety. You know those moments when you are teetering on the edge, when you’ve had enough of whatever world it is that you exist in? Well those moments, those “challenging” moments, had already exhausted me in my attempts to be positive. But I went anyway. And I thought I did Ok. I was exhausted when I left her ‘centre of positivity’ from the effort I made. But when I got home, there was an email waiting for me from my friend, telling me she wouldn’t be accepting any more house guests for a while…So I guess I didn’t pass the positivity test. I was mortified…So I choose to work here [a needle exchange in the downtown lower east side of Vancouver]. I like it here. No one is 100% positive here. Ever. It’s comforting. A relief. To be around people who are sitting in their shit and making no attempt to pretend it doesn’t stink. No one is trying to pretend they are any happier than they really are. Everyone here knows life is just hard. And no one judges me for fucking it up. No one here is going to cast me out because I’m miserable. I fit right in. Right into a community of other unhappy people. Other people who couldn’t make the ideas of ‘The Secret' work for them. Other lonely, lost people falling through the cracks of our perfect society.”
                                                            - Sonia Norris, The Famous Remains of Piggy Palace
                                                            (Nurse Sue Monologue, 2009)

Life is difficult and disappointing and for many people it is simply adding insult to injury to demand that they always successfully rise above these challenges and discover how to be happy, or if they can’t, then accept the blame for a failed existence. Philosopher Pascal Bruckner in his 2000 book ‘Perpetual Euphoria: On The Duty To Be Happy’, asks us to consider, “How can we know whether we are happy? Who sets the norm? Why do we have to be happy, why does this recommendation take the form of an imperative? And what shall we reply to those who pathetically confess: “I can’t”?” (2). My first clown show, ‘The Big Poop in the Sky’ (1989), was my pathetic confession that I couldn’t be happy. It was written about my disappointment in myself for not being as successful in life as my friend and searching for a way to become more like her. She seemed to have more luck and more ease in her life. She had a boyfriend, a long-term acting job in an on-going show, lots of friends, critical acclaim, a great apartment, nice possessions, pretty clothes, a car, and money for vacations in the sun, getting her out of the depressing greyness of Vancouver. And, not surprisingly, she was happy and smiled a lot. I did not smile a lot. I cried and ate apple fritters alone in my bachelor apartment, trying to submerge my shame and disappointment at my failures within mouthfuls of sugar. Writing ‘The Big Poop in the Sky’ was a form of survival for me, a place to publicly admit my failure and despair and search for answers about how to more successfully negotiate life, as I clearly couldn’t figure it out by myself. I didn’t know it was a clown show, as I was simply writing my truth. I had no idea how familiar my fears and struggles were to an audience, nor how ridiculous I would seem to them. One of the reviewers at the Edmonton Fringe Festival said of my character, “if you’ve ever caught yourself viciously exhorting, ‘BOY-YULL!!’ at an indefensible pot of water, you’ll recognize Sonia. Life’s most minute hurdles render her apoplectic. Worse still, she believes she’s been saddled with the disposition that makes her so disagreeable.”[1] I was overjoyed others recognized themselves in my character, but also ashamed at being viewed in this manner. Another reviewer at the Victoria Fringe Festival said that our show was posing a poignant question, “are chronic complainers really to blame for their unhappiness any more than happy souls can take full credit for the sensible upbringing and balanced values that shape their personalities?”. This disparity of distribution of the good in life was at the heart of my disappointment with life, while my disappointment with myself was due to my own failure to shift this disparity and become one of the lucky ones in life. The musical Godspell written by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak, based on the life of Jesus Christ, has a song, All For The Best *, that addresses the unfair reality that affords ‘the best’ in life for those deemed ‘The Best’ and most deserving by society. I was well aware I was not living life on the sunny side of the street and due to my lack of a sunny disposition I was not considered “The Best” or deserving by my society, but what I was supposed to do about this situation eluded me.

Performing this show, The Big Poop in the Sky, written from the truth of my own failures and disappointments, was an epiphany as it became evident how many people related to my fears and my confusions and appreciated seeing them on stage where they could communally laugh at both my character and themselves. This was a story about failure people wanted to engage with and needed to laugh about - apparently I was not alone in my predicament. The description on the back of Bruckner’s book describes our relationship with failure and happiness: “happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly. Happiness has become a religion--one whose smiley-faced god looks down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn't yet attained the blessed state of perpetual euphoria. How has a liberating principle of the Enlightenment--the right to pursue happiness--become the unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy? How did we become unhappy about not being happy--and what might we do to escape this predicament?”. This could have been the program notes for the ‘The Big Poop in the Sky’, which was my name for the “smiley-faced god” Bruckner references. A reviewer in Vancouver summed-up my dysfunctional relationship with this rebuking god: “The Big Poop in the sky is a big blob ‘up there’ with a moustache and glasses and no eyes. It is watching her and laughing every time she yet again screws up her life. She constantly feels the pressure to succeed and accomplish and she constantly fails.” From audience response to this story it became clear to me that I was not alone in feeling this pressure to conform to prescribed norms I did not understand or in the burden of disappointing a ‘god’ or others simply by being myself. My public admittance of my disappointment, shame and confusion created an opportunity for acceptance and recognition for both myself and the audience members, which resulted in communal celebration of our foibles through laughter and joy. We all went home feeling better about ourselves, even though we were the same “failures” who entered the theatre. Brazilian clown Angela de Castro * (1955-) believes this is the purpose of clown, “you put yourself in this position to represent people’s mistakes, or people’s difficulties, to expose that.” (LeBank, Bridel 152). Consequently clown became the vehicle for my storytelling as it was a place I could truthfully present myself in all my faulty glory. Over the years, I have explored the power of clown to expose issues of the human condition requiring hope and courage: failure, fear, despair, loss, isolation, shame, depression and disappointment. These are not funny human conditions, but when I have presented these rather dire realities as a clown to an audience they always laugh, which made the situation more bearable and less isolating.

Barbara Ehrenreich in her 2009 book ‘Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America’, explores the national compulsion towards positivity amidst overwhelming depression and distress within the United States. She states, “[i]n another potential sign of relative distress, Americans account for two-thirds of the global market for antidepressants, which happen also to be the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States…positivity is not so much our condition or our mood as it is part of our ideology - the way we explain the world and think we ought to function within it.” (3). This method of functioning demands a denial of the very real distress experienced by so many within this consumer culture that “encourages individuals to want more…and positive thinking is ready at hand to tell them they deserve more and can have it if they really want it and are willing to make the effort to get it.” (8). The problem with this ideology is that “if optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure…the promoters of positive thinking have increasingly emphasized this negative judgement: to be disappointed, resentful, or downcast is to be a “victim” and a “whiner”.” (9). It is no wonder depression is so widespread in a culture that disallows acknowledgement of, and condemns, the truth of human experience because it is not aligned with its ideology of optimism.

I am interested in acknowledging the truth of disappointment. It is a fertile place of discontent, broken dreams, and the undeniable presence of absolute failure. It is a place of human truth worth contemplating. But Western society doesn’t encourage this pause for reflection of failure and disappointment unless it is immediately turned around by a positive attitude. Yet such a speedy turnaround cancels the possibility of looking failure in the face and feeling the full impact of disappointment. Ehrenreich maintains that “[t]he practice of positive thinking…requires deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out unpleasant possibilities and “negative” thoughts.” (5). This optimistic outlook does not allow us to feel the loss of hope before the search for new hope begins. Clowns allow this space. They land in “the shit” and don’t know immediately what to do next. It is a horrifyingly empty place before the brain of the clown bounces back with the next idea to survive. It is a radical hope that is needed to believe in the possibility of survival when experiencing the utter hopelessness of failure.

In his book ‘Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation’ Jonathan Lear investigates the improbable possibility of hope in the face of the destruction of our lives and our happiness. He asks us to consider the relationship between hope and courage, proposing that hope is an essential element in the development of courage when people are living “life at the horizon’s of one’s understanding.” (Lear 105). Challenging times, he states, require not a simple hope but a “radical hope” as an ingredient of courage and survival when the situation seems overwhelmingly hopeless. He clarifies that “[w]hat makes this hope radical is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is. Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.” (Lear 103). Clowns are buoyed by an endlessly radical hope that allows them to continually bounce back from the fall of failure. This is not a simplistic hope but a deep-seated commitment to life, even when it is not possible to see the ‘good’ at the end of the tunnel, which is what makes it relevant when working with stories of despair and disappointment.

The “positive thinking” epidemic Ehrenreich speaks of is optimism, which she clarifies, is not the same as hope - an important distinction when considering clown, as the form of clown I am referencing is one which is eternally hopeful but not blindly optimistic. “Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice.” (Ehrenreich 4). Many of the clown shows I created over the years have dealt with the disappointing outcomes of attempting to develop a practice of optimism as instructed by society. The shows are written as the clown emerges from the wreckage of this failed optimism, desperately seeking hope in order to find another way forward.

Comedy comes from tragedy. Master teacher Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999) believed “laughter comes from the tragedy of living […] clowns bring to life the tragic and absurd world.” (Lecoq 116). Laughter helps us to survive the unbearable, offering an alternate perspective from which to view life and, by making us laugh, reminding us that joy is still possible. When clowning is performed well it lives in a space that is fuelled by play, joy and laughter as necessary responses to the overwhelming reality of the tragedy of the human condition. It is not a frivolous denial of this tragedy but rather a revealing of it through the witnessing of the indomitable human spirit, rising again and again, against all odds. This kind of clowning is a demanding art form that has the potential to challenge both performer and spectator with its revealing intimacy and precarious relationship with failure. Clown can be perceived as a light, comedic style of performance associated with children’s theatre due to its child-like qualities of innocence, play and joy. Renowned French clown teacher Philippe Gaulier (1943-) dismisses this style as “extremely irritating […] a devilishly poetic little character […] a tear drawn beneath their eyelid […] this beloved clown walks through the world like a nice, happy, well-dressed little chap who smiles like an idiot.” (Gaulier 289). Gaulier’s irritation with this style of clown work addresses the false optimism that results from a lack of truth or depth of humanity, both of which must be present as the starting point for the clown. Gaulier’s belief that “the work of a clown is to make the audience burst out laughing” (Gaulier 289) is inextricably tied to his understanding of the universality of human tragedy and stupidity (in the best sense of the word) and our collective need to witness the ridiculousness of both in order to endure our own absurd reality. Clowns are particularly well situated to embody these tragic stories of disappointment and loss because of their positioning within society as the embodiment of failure. The stigma of such a position can be either a limitation or a liberation, depending on the attitude of the individual. Clowns find liberation through their hopeful attitude that pursues the next possibility.

In his book ‘Stigma’, sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1983) discusses the difference between society’s perception of the stigmatized individual and the individual’s self perception. Depending on the attitude of the stigmatized person, this can either insulate or create conflict for the individual. “It seems possible for an individual to fail to live up to what we effectively demand of him, and yet be relatively untouched by this failure; insulated by his alienation, protected by identity beliefs of his own, he feels that he is a full-fledged normal human being…He bears a stigma but does not seem to be impressed or repentant about doing so…His deepest feelings about what he is may be his sense of being a ‘normal person’.” (6). The clown’s ability to believe in themselves and relentlessly pursue joy; to hold onto a radical hope within a hopeless situation; and to believe amidst the failure of today that she will succeed tomorrow, comes from an attitude of radical hopefulness that she will be loved, if not now, then for her next action. She believes she is good enough. These beliefs insulate the clown against total defeat and afford them the ability to find the next action rather than giving up in the face of failure. This attitude of self belief ensures that even though she may “flop” and “fall into the shit”, as Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier reference the essential moments of truth occurring for the clown when something fails in front of an audience, she will eventually bounce back.

The clown is not unaware of her failings or in denial about them as her belief is not an optimistic outlook, as outlined above by Ehrenreich, but rather a perception of herself as capable regardless of her challenges. The clown experiences the negative judgement and social failure of an audience not ‘approving’ of her when she fails because she is fully aware of the social standards she is trying to fulfill. Goffman identifies how a stigmatized individual believing they are a “normal person” will none the less perceive when they are not accepted because “the standards he has incorporated from the wider society equip him to be intimately alive to what others see as his failing, inevitably causing him, if only for moments, to agree that he does indeed fall short of what he really ought to be. Shame becomes a central possibility, arising from the individual’s perception of one of his own attributes as being a defiling thing to possess.” (Goffman 7). This experience is the equivalent of landing “in the shit” for the clown and this exposure of shame is one of the greatest gifts the clown has to share with society. Shame is debilitating and destructive when it is hidden as it erodes our belief in ourselves and isolates the individual from community. The clown offers the opportunity for us to witness what happens when the individual stays publicly present with their experience of shame, allowing us to observe the struggle as they search for the next hope to sustain their belief that they are loveable and therefore acceptable to society.

Essential for sustaining the clown and the audience in this journey through human failure is laughter and the joy of play. These elements ensure that “the emotional undertow” (Weitz 86) of the human condition does not drag us irrevocably down when we are taking “failure and disappointment unflinchingly to heart in an attempt to explore existential refusals of the ‘happy ending’ that Western culture dangles before our eyes, even after the try, try again, which it guarantees as the path to eventual success.” (ibid). The essential element needed to sustain the soul of clowning is this spirit of play, Eric Weitz believes, serving as “psychic buffer for life’s willful vacillation between elation and despair, fortune and disaster, success and failure.” (ibid). Without it we are doomed to fall into the abyss and never find our way out. This is the difference between an actor in a non-clown play telling us a tragic story and a clown telling us the same story - it is a difference of attitude, focused on finding joy, regardless of whether that joy is ultimately found or not. Clowns show us the possibility of a way out of the abyss of hopelessness - but this does not guarantee we actually get out.

There are clowns who are not obviously funny in their failure or their attempts to find hope. Clowns who do not immediately make us laugh, as Philippe Gaulier states is the purpose of clowns, but rather they make us think, as German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) believed was a primary purpose of theatre. These clowns do not noticeably bounce back. Their resiliency is in not pulling the trigger when they have no tangible reason not to. Their bouncing is seen in their persistent engagement, continuing to be visible inside the darkness of life. They do not hide, instead they speak. They talk to us from inside the empty, bleak abyss of their own uncertainty and confusion, hurling words into the void. They reveal the impact of the fall by surviving and their presence is an insistence to be acknowledged; to engage with them in their place of failure. They continue to hope when it seems hopeless to do so. The master of such clowns is Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). In ‘Happy Days’ Winnie exists isolated and immobilized in her mound of dirt; in ‘Waiting for Godot’ Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo and Lucky relentlessly believe in the arrival of someone who never comes; in ‘Endgame’ Clov and Hamm cannot seem to move forward yet never give up trying; in ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, ‘Worstward Ho’, ‘Company’, ‘Unnamable’ and ‘Malone Dies’ Beckett’s characters deal with the disappointment of their lives, endlessly searching for meaning or a reason to carry on. All of these characters speak from this abyss of uncertainty and isolation, living in desolate landscapes of hopelessness, yet finding actions to sustain hope amidst their disappointment.

I am interested in what keeps people alive in the face of seeming hopelessness. I am fascinated by the hopes, dreams, and fantasies that help us endure the reality of life. My interest is due to my own struggle to find hope amidst disappointment with myself and my life. For the past twenty seven years since writing ‘The Big Poop in the Sky’ I have continued to write scripts for clown characters based on my own disappointments and confusions, mirroring my attempts to create a successful life as I searched for hope amidst despair. Some of my disappointments are universally human and others are specifically female. I have written clown shows about both, turning to the ridiculousness of clown to provide a counterpoint to tell these stories. Australian female clown Nola Rae * (1950-) says, “clown plays take a really sad and tragic subject and turn it around. It remains tragic though…I think that good clowning should have elements of depth and sadness in it at times. If it’s ‘ha ha ha’ all the time, it’s very tiring.” (LeBank, Bridel 19). Conversely, without the ‘ha ha ha’ of clown, the tragedy of life becomes unbearably tiring as well.

In 1994 I wrote a clown show, ‘What’s Going On?!?’, with Vancouver director Sherry Bie based on my disappointment with aborting a child I wanted. I was disappointed in myself, my choices, and my options. I felt I had lost my footing in life and I didn’t know how to find solid ground to step forward any more. So I didn’t. I stood in one spot, inside a small box for the entire show as I tried to figure out what had gone wrong and what to do to put it right. The show contained letters of disappointment which I had written to various companies sharing my deep disillusionment with their products. Campbell's Soup, Hostess Snacks, and Hershey’s Canada amongst others. Clearly I was deflecting my disappointment in myself onto these companies, but I was unaware of this at the time. Instead, I was aware of my failure to live up to expectations, my own and society’s, and that this failure to succeed was shameful and not a subject for discussion. This is why I wrote the letters, as writing to the complaints departments of major corporations was a socially acceptable avenue for discussing my confusion and disappointment. In my letter to Hostess I stated, “Perhaps my disappointment is not with your company after all. Perhaps it is with this world where people willingly buy an illusion over the truth because of what it promises.” I outlined how Cracker Jack and Hostess were possibly offering hope to people in the form of their promise of prizes and more chips, but the problem was, this hope was often misleading: “The difference between the Cracker Jack promise and the promise of your larger chip bag is that Cracker Jack delivers - the prize is always in the box. Perhaps not a prize I want, but next time it might be. Your bag on the other hand, lures me in with its promise of ‘more’ only to leave me staring into an empty space. The void is something I expend a lot of energy avoiding - I do not need to find it when I open a bag of chips.” The letter to Campbell Soup Company shared my disillusionment with their products, admonishing “This simply wasn’t good enough […] mediocrity must not become acceptable - for all our sakes.” Hershey Canada received a letter asking “Can I no longer rely on even a chocolate bar to live up to my expectations? This is very disappointing, not to mention disheartening.” These letters were read throughout the show, culminating in a response letter from Campbell Soup Company that acknowledged and understood my disappointment. This provided the conclusion of the show as it was a tangible moment of recognition and understanding for my clown: “We appreciate your taking the time to share your concern with us […] We know the disappointment of looking forward to enjoying something, then not having it meet our expectations […] We are sorry that you had this experience.” (Norris, What’s Going On?!? 10). It was an acknowledgement of the disappointment of life thereby proving I was not alone in this experience. Someone heard me, and this gave me hope.

It is a tragedy of our world that amidst such intense over-population there is such overwhelming loneliness and isolation. This is a theme clowns are extremely well-positioned to embrace as they exist as the ‘other’ of society, living in altered realities which separate them from the ‘normal’ world, and yet they enter the stage in search of connection with the audience, hoping for love and engagement with others. They embody the universal human desire to be included, recognized, welcomed into the tribe. Consequently loneliness has been a continual theme at the heart of many clown shows I have created since ‘What’s Going On?!?’. In 2005 Toronto actor Becky Johnson and I created ‘Flood!’ based on our mutual disappointment at being alone. Ruby the clown equated her recent abandonment by her boyfriend to being shipwrecked in the Thailand tsunami and as she attempted to find hope for the future, she spent the show running through a list of tips for surviving a flood, “there are a lot of things out there trying to sink you and you have to keep your head above water.” (Johnston, Norris 4). The show ends with Ruby pulling out musical greeting cards she has bought to send to the people of Thailand so they won’t feel alone or abandoned by the world. She sits surrounded by the music of twelve cards, still alone, but finding hope in the thought that, “if nothing bad ever happens to you then you won’t be a very interesting person. At least now I’ll be more interesting at dinner parties. It’s something anyway. A place to start.” (Johnston, Norris 8). The radical hope of a clown is often nonsensical and very small.

In 2008 I created a third solo female clown show exploring this theme of survival and disappointment with loneliness. ‘The Best Place To Be’ was created with Vancouver actor Sharon Bayly developing an older female clown who found herself alone in a rapidly changing world requiring adaptation. “‘Origin of the Species’…Darwin says: Adaptability has alway been the key to our survival. That’s it Mavis! You have got to adapt. It may be your only hope.” (Bayly, Norris 1). This show explores the fantasies Mavis creates to survive her fear of being alone and becoming extinct. To counteract her disappointment in her alone state, she finds hope at the end in deciding she could become the next Virgin Mary, conceiving new life through immaculate conception and thereby ensuring her continuation as part of the species. “Now that’s what I call a change in perspective! See what a little belief can do?”. (Bayly, Norris 2). Illogical and ludicrous, but tangible hope for a clown. This need to find something in life to believe in, no matter how small or illogical, is what draws certain performers toward clown. Angela de Castro acknowledges the high degree of depression present in the clowning community, “I know so many clowns, good clowns, the real clowns, that are depressed, very, very depressed. I don’t know if it’s a kind of sensibility that we have, or how much we give of ourselves all the time out there for who ever comes…It’s not always funny, you know?” (LeBank, Bridel 152).

These three shows searching for something to believe in were specifically female stories developed by women, but disappointment, despair, fear, loneliness, the need for hope and a desire for love are part of the human condition, not exclusively female stories. In 2004 I developed a one-man clown show with Toronto actor Wesley Connor to explore these themes through three different characters played by Connor. ‘When You Stand Alone’ was written in response to the 9/11 attacks and focused on the disappointments and the life-sustaining fantasies of an agoraphobic young man, a middle-aged housewife and a disillusioned teenage boy. It examined where we find hope and how we use it to survive. “If faith can move mountains then why can’t it catch you when you’re jumping out of a falling tower? Imagine knowing that you are going to die in that building and looking down 120 floors out the window at the pavement knowing that if you jump it will most definitely kill you but forcing yourself to believe that there is a tiny possibility of hope in jumping out the window because maybe, just maybe, the fall will only crack your skull and break some bones, but not kill you like the building caving in on you most definitely will.” (Connor, Norris 26). In this show, hope was exposed as the illusions developed to survive in a crumbling world that presented no tangible hope for the future. The games of the clown provided the joy of playing which sustained the first two characters, but the last character had lost this playfulness in his disillusionment and therefore was not living in the world of clown. “It just seems to me that God uses the same fear and intimidation tactics as dentists. It’s never clear exactly what might go wrong if you don’t do what they tell you to do, but its really clear that whatever it is that’s gonna happen, it’s gonna be painful.” (Connor, Norris 23). His hope arrived at the end of the show as a last resort, deciding that although hope was potentially stupid in the face of the facts, it was essential for surviving in a devastating reality: “We put so much energy into proving how smart we are when really the smartest thing we can do is be stupid enough to hope. Maybe all we need right now is really overly active imaginations, so that we can see what hope could possibly look like in this world.” (Connor, Norris 29).

This ability to imagine what hope might look like when it is not immediately apparent in our world, as earlier discussed by Jonathan Lear, is a crucial aspect of the clown’s imagination. It is what develops the clown’s logic as different from the performer’s ‘normal’ brain logic. Angela de Castro clarifies that clowning is “a state that you put yourself in to be able to play” (LeBank, Bridel 148), requiring “a different intelligence […] To develop the clown’s intelligence and not your own intelligence - that is the most difficult thing for people to understand.” (ibid). It is this clown intelligence that can show us what hope can look like when we don’t see it in the world around us.

In 1997 I developed a two-hander clown show ‘Dreams of Reality’ based on Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano’s (1940-2015) novel ‘The Book of Embraces’ which explored his imaginative response to the loss of his world due to a brutal military regime and exile. Galeano’s writing has a clown sensibility in its magic realism and poetic imagination and lends itself easily to the development of a clown world of extraordinary possibility. Throughout the show, Eduardo and his wife Helena engage in the struggle to not give up when “your heart has broken from so much use.” (Norris, Tait, Aguirre 43). They contend with disappointment, disconnection, dislocation, isolation and loss, yet what Galeano continually turns to is the human heart, the collective need to embrace others to counteract isolation. This eternal belief in the power of love is also at the heart of clown, part of the “radical hope” which sustains them when love is not immediately visible in their world. To believe in love is to also believe we are not alone; a clown’s perspective on the human condition. This is the hope offered by Eduardo and Helena on their journey of exile at the end of the show, “Like San Fernando’s little ass, we travel the roads partly on foot, just walking. Sometimes we recognize ourselves in others. We recognize ourselves in those who will endure, friends who will shelter us, beautiful holy fools of justice and flying creatures of beauty and other bums and vagrants who walk the earth and will continue walking, just as the stars will continue in the night and the waves in the sea. Then, when we recognize ourselves in them, we are the air, coming to know ourselves as part of the wind.” (Norris, Tait, Aguirre, 43).
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This need to imagine a hope that is not necessarily justified in the reality of the world was the impetus for the clown show ‘I Have A Dream!…’ created in Zimbabwe. It was developed with twenty-four Zimbabwean youth living in a high risk community threatened by severe social, economic and political upheaval, similar to the military dictatorship experienced by Galeano. Their world was intensely precarious and clown became their vehicle for expression as it provided a world that matched the ludicrous reality they were living in, while transforming it through heightened style and the ridiculousness of clown logic. With its ferocious pleasure to play in the face of the instability of its existence, clown provided a new possibility for making sense of the illogical. It is a style that understands and embodies the precarious balancing act of survival. ‘I Have A Dream!…’ was created by investigating the hopes, fears and dreams of the participants living within a failing system which did not recognize their existence and offered little hope for the future. In a society that does not allow freedom of speech, the playfulness of clown allowed the performers to speak their truth couched inside the metaphors and ‘otherness’ of the clown. There is a safety afforded the performer through this positioning as the clown is undeniably identified as ‘different’, as reinforced by Lucy Peacock in her book ‘Serious Play’, “there is always something of the ‘other’ about clowns […] they look different from ordinary everyday people, but the most striking feature of the clowns’ ‘otherness’ is their attitude to life as expressed through their performance.” (14). This altered attitude to life allowed the performers to use clown to reveal the oppressive power structures that were dominating their lives, in a way that was impossible in reality. Ezra LeBank and David Bridel identify this as a recognized function of the clown through history, stating “the clown’s function remains […] to turn established protocols (societal, political, cultural, logical, linguistic or otherwise) on their heads, and to provoke a new understanding and appreciation for the human condition through a celebration of foible and a mockery of power.” (LeBank, Bridel 1). The issue of whether clown, through this celebration of foible and mockery of power, does actually amount to any real shift is up for debate, but for the participants the show provided a tangible opportunity to be heard and acknowledged, both by their own black community and the largely white audience at the Harare International Festival of the Arts. This did not result in social reform but it altered the participants self perception, which is something, in a society that had silenced them through marginalisation. “By examining our lives from nonsensical and chaotic perspectives, clowns through out time have given us a most vital permission, the license to laugh at ourselves and our beliefs.” (LeBank, Bridel 1). The absurdity of clown provided an opportunity to examine the truth of reality, exposing the impact on the individual, and the resiliency of laughter helped us survive the confrontation.

In 2009 I again used clown as a vehicle for telling a deeply challenging story which confronted the audience with the impact of marginalisation. ‘The Famous Remains of Piggy Palace’ was devised over a two year period with an ensemble of ten performers, a composer, and myself as director, investigating the story of the women in Vancouver murdered by Robert Pickton from 1983-2002, on his pig farm in the barn he called Piggy Palace. This show is about the murdered women ignored by the police department and society, but also about the police officer, Inspector Kim Rossmo, who fought the police department unsuccessfully for years to take action and investigate what became the largest serial killings in Canadian history, as well as about a fictitious unknown murdered woman, Girlie, who terrorized his dreams trying to guide him to her dead body on the farm - no one noticed her in life, so no one noticed she was dead. The intention of this show was to explore the stories of people who are marginalized or ostracized by our society, along with the human need to be known and the horror of being forgotten. I used clown characters to lift the material out of realism and expose the horrific absurdity of the situations. By using clown and laughter, we were able to intimately engage the audience with difficult subject matter, challenging them to consider the question of which is worse: the atrocities inflicted on the women by the Pickton brothers actions, or the atrocities inflicted on these same women by society’s disinterest, lack of action and marginalisation? The heightened theatrical styles of clown and cabaret made it possible for the audience to engage with the unimaginable horror of the events in Piggy Palace, a place where women were hung from meat hooks, chopped up by wood chippers, fed to pigs, dismembered joint by joint, frozen in freezers and made into pork products. Because violence, abuse and horror are already extended beyond the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ behaviour or ‘normal’ situations, telling stories about these subjects demands a performative style extended beyond the bounds of ‘normal’ reality in order to encompass them. All of the characters in this play struggled with disappointment, and clown provided a vehicle to lift them out of despair. The necessity for joy in facing a tragic world is acknowledged by artist/educator Julie Salverson, “What is demanded of us is not only our willingness to acknowledge horror and sadness, but our sadly unfamiliar capacity to feel, trust and recognize joy. In the face of the unknown and the desperate, we need the courage to be happy.” (Salverson, 254). Clown offers us this courage to be happy.

Russian clown Slava Polunin * (1950-) has spent his career investigating clowning by “exploring metaphysics, tragedy; to explore what it is to be a human being.” (LeBank, Bridel 53). He says this investigation into human tragedy has been fuelled ironically by his interest in “how to make a human being happy, or what makes a human being happy.” (ibid). He believes that clowns can guide us towards happiness in life if we apply their clown logic to our daily lives. “I am interested in how to transfer the principles I have found in clowning into the principles of our daily lives. How can you capture and hold onto those incredible, illogical moments in your life? Because they bear happinesss.” (ibid). In a world that demands adherence to an accepted logic and sees variance as deviance punishable by marginalization, it is a significant goal to pursue the illogic of our individual happinesses. Is it possible to allow ourselves to accept our “undesirable attributes” (Goffman 3), which are “incongruous with [society’s] stereotype of what a given type of individual should be” (ibid), risking the stigma of being considered ‘other’, rather than striving to fit into social constructs that do not work for us as individuals? Canadian clown Mooky Cornish recognizes how challenging, yet also how essential, this task is as stated in an Outlooks Magazine article: “We have such potential but mostly we’re squelching our spirit with our own concepts of what life is and how it should run. We have to have dinner at six o’clock, whether we are hungry or not. But we made up dinner and we made up six o’clock! Why don’t we just eat when we are hungry? How do we become free? How do we find a sense of liberty? This is a challenge for people in this world. Clowns can show us - they can liberate us from our confining concepts of reality and acceptable behaviour.” (Norris, Outlooks 53).

The theatre has always been a place of dreaming for me. I have turned to the artificial world of theatre to find hope amidst the seeming hopelessness of my real life. Although clown is not a solution for the challenges of life, it offers an opportunity to view our problems from an altered perspective, to see our ‘failures’ as acceptable human folly and to find the joy in embracing the truth of ourselves, as Philippe Gaulier describes is one of the pleasures of a good clown, who “loves selling themselves as a ridiculous being who is happy to take the piss out of their own fat arse and who laughs like a drain.” (Gaulier, 295). Such joyous celebration of our faults and foibles in a world that causes us to stumble, teeter, and fall as we navigate its tragedies and challenges is potentially transformative to the human spirit by offering courage and hope through joy. We live in an extraordinarily beautiful world that is overwhelmed by cataclysmic tragedy and suffering. Many people are falling through the cracks of our neoliberal societies which embrace only the ‘successful’. We need opportunities to embrace our collective humanity; to acknowledge the truth of “the people that don’t know where to go, the homeless, the hopeless” (LeBank, Bridel 150), and to assist each other in laughing like drains at our own fat arses.
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[1] These reviews are from 26 years ago and I do not have documentation of either dates or the newspapers they were taken from.