Reading Time: 1 Min.
“There’s a clown inside all of us,” another student told me when I first arrived. I didn’t understand what this meant, but it sounded like something a person from clown class would say. What did it mean to have a clown inside of me? And was that something I wanted? “Who knows?” she said. “When your clown comes out, you’ll be surprised.” She sounded post-clown, like she had met her clown and was happy with it. Meeting her clown had clearly done something for her. But I wasn’t here to meet my inner clown. I was here to take a break from working on the next novel. To have some fun. The instructor of the workshop promised I would “reclaim a sense of child-like wonder” and “laugh and collaborate with like-minded idiots”—and I needed that. Every morning, I stared at the blank screen and couldn’t figure out what to put on it. I was exhausted by the cycle of starting and stopping, the sheer monotony of questioning every idea I had. I impulsively signed up for something called “Tiny Bullseye: Red Nose Clown Workshop” offered by a local theater, despite not knowing exactly what a clown workshop was. The instructor of the workshop promised I would “reclaim a sense of child-like wonder” and “laugh and collaborate with like-minded idiots”—and I needed that. “Good to know,” I said, even though what I really thought was: if we all do have a clown inside of us, I’m pretty sure mine is dead. That first day of the workshop, the instructor did not start with an explanation of what clowning was. Instead, he put us through a series of theater exercises that were easy enough. He made us pass a sound around the room. He made us stare into another person’s eyes and mirror them. He made us crawl on the floor and do something he called “movement work.” But at the end, he asked each person to put on their red nose, come out alone to the center of the floor for the first time. He didn’t tell us why or […]
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