Clowns

We’re standing in a circle. Twenty grown people. We’re all asked to say our names, state whether we’re local or from out of town, and describe our emotional state of being. We are to accompany each of our statements with a silly gesture and a funny noise. Everyone looks very serious and we all try very hard.

The teacher is a renowned master from Paris, and we do not wish to disappoint. The workshop is part of a larger festival, The New York Clown Festival, and many among us are professional clowns. I am merely an actor, but I have been taking clown classes and I have dreams of one day putting together my very own eight-minute clown act. I watch the professional clowns do their hat tricks with outright envy. In general, I love clowning, but I worry, like many others, that I’m just not funny enough. I know that not being able to do a single hat trick doesn’t help.   

The Master from Paris is tough. He rarely thinks anything is particularly funny. He shoos people offstage with insults. “Horrible,” he cries, “This is horrible! Who likes this clown?” No hands go up. “Who would feed her to the piranhas, or send her to Afghanistan?” Almost everyone in the class raises their hands. I’m appalled. It’s a joke, yes, but sending someone to Afghanistan is, I think, not funny. And frankly, I’m not sure I’m up for this kind of ridicule.  

This is a particularly bad week for me. My father is dead only two weeks of a sudden heart attack. I’m in my thirties, but I feel orphaned. I’m so confused that it doesn’t occur to me that going to a clown workshop at this time is, perhaps, not such a good idea. On the first day of the workshop, my husband gently suggests I stay home. I tell him that I only know how to keep going. That my father, a German engineer and certifiable workaholic, would have wanted me to keep up all activities. I have forgotten that my father thought that being an actor was ridiculous, to say nothing of being an aspiring clown. When my father was working with people he deemed incompetent, he’d laugh and say, “These people are really Mickey Mouse, they’re just a bunch of clowns.”