We’re all Usefool: A Tiny Reflection on Clowning

This is one of my all time fave quotes and moments in a film. It sums up for me the profound sentiment I have following a clown workshop; it’s a feeling of stupefaction and awe at each person’s capacity to share something usefool with the world.

The Fool: I am ignorant, but I read books. You won’t believe it, everything is useful… this pebble for instance.

Gelsomina: Which one?

The Fool: Anyone. It is useful.

Gelsomina: What for?

The Fool: For… I don’t know. If I knew I’d be the Almighty, who knows all. When you are born and when you die… Who knows? I don’t know for what this pebble is useful but it must be useful. For if its useless, everything is useless. So are the stars!

– Excerpt from La Strada

As I get ready to run a morning weekend clown workshop I watch new students roll in donning their adulthood overcoats. When they arrive some hang back politely happy to make small talk sharing timid smiles, there’s the slightly perplexed face of ‘somebody who doesn’t know’, and others who are excited raring to go.

One of my greatest pleasures is observing the loosening of the presentable and acceptable version of adulthood into disarming playfulness within minutes as we engage in one of our first games called ‘Soul Train’. Music is a fabulous motivator; I’ve seen some jaw-dropping situations. There are particular songs that transform us even if it is for just a moment – they can make us strong, brave, sexy, completely savage, etc… and the best part is that it’s totally okay if that’s what we think we’re being at the time!

We play these types of games not to prepare you for an audition on The Voice or to demo what an accomplished professional dancer or singer you are, rather it’s to discover something about yourself and ultimately about your clown. It’s a real joy to watch a person’s willingness to crack open their bodies, voices and hearts and trumpet their unabashed creativity alongside a bunch of strangers elevating their stupidity to the next level.

It’s a reciprocal ride of generosity and tuning in to one another, what French acting instructor Jacques Lecoq coined during his pedagogic journey as ‘complicité’. There is a shared understanding and a real sense of connectedness in the room; everyone’s rooting for you and there’s a desire for one to succeed.

Let’s face it adulting can be pretty combative and pressurizing sometimes; ‘get a job’, ‘stand up straight’, ‘eat with your mouth closed’, ‘love me!’ and so on, and clowning is one way to flip that on its head. It’s like a huge empathetic boost inviting us all to unleash our fun on and anarchic ways. A shared laugh is a shared feeling after all.

It is the end of the morning weekend workshop, as people say their goodbyes and thank yous it’s plain easy to see that some of us are reluctant to take our adulthood overcoats back home.

Make yourself usefool in Alicia’s Term 3 Clown class!

I’ve realized I teach others in order to learn myself. It is tricky to identify as a teacher, in fact, I am simply there to guide and shine the light in the direction where your clown wants to go. It’s a process of mutual discovery and I’m very fortunate because it is one of the finest ways to learn about the human condition, which I find usefool. I don’t know for what but it must be useful. Be honest. Be Stupid. Be interested. Play. Be vulnerable. Play. Play. Play.