Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
Finding Ones Own Clown
This paper examines the exchanges and transmissions taking place
between the teacher and students in the clown workshops of
Philippe Gaulier. Simon Murray suggests that the clown mask allows
students to come to terms with the more ridiculous and therefore
vulnerable dimensions of our personality (2003, pp.

63). To

come to terms with a dimension of the personality describes a

process of self-reflection, and the understanding of this side as
vulnerable evokes an emotional experience. I want to draw a
distinction between the ridiculous and the vulnerable in Gauliers
clown training, because I believe these traits are identified in
different places in the classroom, and transmitted in different ways
to the student.

The word ridiculous, derived from the Latin

ridiculus, meaning that which excites laughter. I draw on this term,

which suggests an action that provokes an embodied reaction, in
order to depart from the concept of vulnerability as central to clown,
as described by Leabhart and Felner. I suggest that Gaulier teaches
students to find what is ridiculous about their own body, or in other
words, in what ways their body can be used to make other people
laugh.

The

term

ridiculous

describes

the

response

of

the

spectators, and thus this skill is developed through practice of

listening to the oral communication of actual audiences, in the form
of fellow students.
Listening to the Audience
On his clown courses, where success is measured by laughter,
Gaulier can base his own feedback on the verbal and facial
expression of the students around him. A laughing audience
indicates that the audience found the performance funny, and a
silent audience provides the feedback that Gaulier then puts into his

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
famously acerbic words. Lynne Kendrick describes the centrality of
games and play in Gauliers pedagogy, particularly drawing on the
group games at the start of Gauliers workshops, which I know as
Balthazar says and Mr Hit (2010; 2011). While Kendrick draws on
the rules of these games for her analysis using play theory, I
understand these games to begin the process of students watching,
responding to and laughing at each other. 1 As people are out of Mr
Hit they sit and watch the game play out, laughing, groaning and
cheering the final winner. I maintain that it is the feedback of the
student audience that is prioritised in the classroom, even though
Gauliers mode of transmitting feedback gains much attention.
Students are told to listen for laughter in this workshop:
How do you find your clown? By following this saying to the
letter:
When laughter breaks out, the clown isnt far away. When
laughter dies down, the clown goes away (Gaulier 2007, p.
289)
Here the spectator knows better than the actor, and the student
must always pay attention to their (directly transmitted) feedback.
Spectators are present throughout the class and provide all the
feedback, the judgement and the meaning to the students
performance. The student on stage does not know whether he or
she has done well unless she listens to her classmates and teacher,
and takes their feedback seriously.
The language used by Gaulier and Lecoq has led some to
understand clown as a normally hidden, pre-socialized part of the
performers self. For example, One's 'clown' is inextricably related
to one's essential weakness (Leabhart 1989, p. 99), or, The
individuals clown is the repressed self, repressed because its
1 Kendrick focuses her attention on the performing students experience

of play and pleasure, though she does acknowledge that for Gaulier,
performing students must experience pleasure, but also communicate it
within the realm of the game - to fellow players, and within the theatrical
frame - to the spectator(2010, p. 121-122).

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
expression would entail socially unacceptable behaviour (Felner
1985, p. 164). Here, then, there is assumed a process where the
student is psychologically or behaviourally liberated by the red nose
mask, and by extension, by the practice of clowning. Personal
weakness is connected to emotional vulnerability and the sense
that the clown performer is revealing something usually hidden by
social masks. These writers understand social masks to be removed
using the training tool of a physical mask the red nose.
Purcell Gates finds this understanding to be a logical extension of a
twentieth century understanding of the location of the self.
This shift in the language used to describe the archaeology of
the self from underneath in Freuds unconscious to behind in
Lecoq can likely be attributed to the mask work that forms the
foundation of Lecoqs pedagogy: from Neutral Mask through
Larval, Expressive and Character masks and finally the Red
Nose, the strongest signifier of the performers identityher
faceis located behind the mask, leading to a logical slippage
that positions the presence of the performers true self
behind the mask of the character she is performing. (Purcell
Gates, 2011)
If the student has been present, but hidden, behind masks thus far
in the course, it would follow that she is (almost completely)
revealed by the clown mask, which only covers a small area of the
face, leaving the eyes and mouth visible. As a result, the students
revealed self is a major part of how the clown body is understood
and discussed at Gaulier and Lecoqs schools. In her 2011 article,
Purcell

Gates

understands

the

discussion

of

clown

students

revealing their authentic interiority to be the continued circulation of

conflicting ideas of selfhood and authenticity from 20 th century
mime practice, re-affirmed and disrupted by Gaulier. Purcell Gates
concludes, the performers body signified a self that caused the
spectator to respond with laughter, even as the performer was
unaware of this communication (2011, p. 241). The audience thus

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
read the students body and partially covered face to be a signifier
of authentic self, even when this self were not recognized by the
performer - the signal was external and dependent on the other
people in the room (Purcell Gates 2011, p. 239). Although the small
mask has been understood as one that reveals, leaving the clown
student distinct, idiosyncratic and personal, Purcell Gates findings
demonstrate that the revealed self does not need to be authentic,
or recognized as such by the performer; it merely needs to be
greeted with laughter by the audience.

Post-Lecoq clowns and the Red Nose

Lecoqs pedagogy of clowns was developed around the idea of the
red nose as a mask, a tool that has come to signify a quest for
authenticity and revelation of self in contemporary clowning,
despite its origin in counter-auguste, grotesque clown (Davison
2013, p. 197). For Murray, the red nose and neutral mask are tools
that frame Lecoqs pedagogy. Leabhart illustrates the significance of
the red nose as mask by pointing out the stage occupied by the
clown workshop in the pedagogical journey the two year course
concludes with, the experience considered by all to be the most
difficult and rewarding in the Lecoq method, the search for 'one's
own clown' (Leabhart 1989, p. 99). The red nose is the smallest,
most difficult and final mask to be studied at Lecoqs school, it
occupies a climactic place in the pedagogy which suggests that the
previous mask work informs it. Davison dismisses the understanding
of the nose being a mask, neatly slotting into Lecoqs series of
masks (2013, p. 197). Davison, believing that one can clown
without a red nose (ibid), aligns himself with the teacher Mosche
Cohen, who blogs that the nose is superfluous and misleading to
students, who may be tempted to rely on the nose to do the
clowning for them (Cohen 2012, cited by Davison 2013a, p. 197).

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
Despite this rejection of the red nose as mask, Davison uses the
same plastic noses in some of his own workshops, as pictured in
photography project Clown Phenomena' (2013b). Perhaps this
teacher also finds that the red nose mask has a visual function.

Clown Students at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Summer 2009

Gauliers students, like Lecoqs, wear plastic red noses, along with
individual costumes. In Gauliers practice, the red nose seems
intended for use in performance, as well as being a teaching tool. In
the second year clown course, there is a public performance, in
which students wear red noses and costumes in sketches they have
prepared in small groups (Jarmuz, 8th December 2012). Further
evidence of the red nose being used in performance can be found in
images from Gauliers own performance work (Leabhart 1983, p. 43
and 69; Gaulier 2007, p. 296). Gaulier emphasises what is visible
around the mask, when he echoes Lecoqs phrase,
This nose, the smallest mask in the worldreveals the
students face, their body, their dreams, their foolishness and
their shyness (or arrogance) when they reached the age of
seven. (Gaulier 2007, p. 293)
Here, he suggests that the small mask, by drawing attention to the
students physical face and body, can reveal the less tangible
dreams and foolishness of the wearer. In the images above, the
faces look different from one another, and Gaulier would say that
the viewer could imagine the different ways in which the clown

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
students may dream or be foolish. Felner offers an interpretation
of Decrouxs neutral mask, which also applies to the way in which
Gaulier uses red noses. She says it creates a degree of abstraction
that removes mime from the literal realistic plane (Felner 1985, p.
61). If we consider this function with respect to the faces above, the
small masks indicates a removal from the literal, realistic plane as
we recognize the cultural symbol as a signifier of the intention to
make us laugh. Simultaneously, the differences between the faces,
reactions, and expressions of the students shown above are highly
visible, but removed from realism the faces are abstracted, and
made the site of fantasy. In the classroom, and in performance,
students learn to play with this distortion that does not fully
disguise. If the red nose is a mask, it does not have to suggest a
magical revealing power that will do the clowning for the student,
or make them suddenly visible in a different way. The mask serves
not only as a signifier of the cultural knowledge attached to
clowns, but also as a way of abstracting the face, distorting and
reimagining the face as a fantastic, or ridiculous, object.

Weakness and Ridiculousness

I propose a reading of weakness, which prioritises the moment of
performance. According to Lecoq, the students confrontation of
their repressed self is an action that improves their performance for
the audience:
We are all clowns, we all think we are beautiful, clever and
strong, whereas we all have our weaknesses, our ridiculous
side, which can make people laugh when we allow it to
express itself (Lecoq 2002, p. 154).
Lecoq explains that this laughter is the reason to search for ones
own clown. If Lecoqs statement is read alongside Purcell Gates
understanding

of

an

externally

negotiated

self

in

clown

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
performance, we can understand the clown to be presented in order
to be ridiculous, and so the students weaknesses are laughterinducing actions identified with the help of transmitted responses
from an audience. The weaknesses that Lecoq sees in a clown
student can be understood as her ridiculous side or, that about
her that makes people laugh. As a result, the personal weakness
that is understood as Lecoqs most important ingredient for clown is
focused outward, toward the audience, the observers and laughers.
Lecoq describes a transformation of weakness (a personal problem)
into ridiculousness (at which people laugh). It is the presence of
laughing student peers that enables this transformation, and the
transmission of amusement in laughter that indicates its success.
It is the audiences laughter that identifies the students ridiculous
side.2 Immediately following this observation, Lecoq provides an
example of students finding their ridiculous side, located in the
body.
there were students with legs so thin that they hardly
dared show them, but who found, in playing the clown, a way
to exhibit their skinniness for the pleasure of the onlookers. At
last they were free to be as they were, and to make people
laugh (Lecoq 2002, p. 154)
Here

the

thin-legged

body,

previously

experienced

as

embarrassingly imperfect, becomes ridiculous when it is shown off,

demonstrated to onlookers. Lecoq complicates this idea of the
ridiculous body by adding the last sentence, which places making
people laugh as being parallel to being as they were. This reapplies
to the ridiculous body the concept of the authentic self, with the
authenticity located in weakness. Nonetheless, perhaps Lecoqs
aims were not to create an introspective, therapeutic action, in
2 The first line of this quote is also significant. Lecoq compares clowns to a
universal human condition of being weak/ridiculous despite the belief to
the contrary - we all think we are beautiful, clever and strong. This selfimage, of strength disrupted by the emergence of weakness, is a
component of the ridiculous, and a component of the comic according to
humour theorist and philosopher Marteinson (2006).

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
which students come to terms with an aspect of their body or
personality, but merely to allow students to find the thing with
which they can make an audience laugh.
The externally negotiated self, or ridiculous side
Both Purcell Gates externally negotiated self and the ridiculous
side described by the pedagogues and practitioners point to clown
performance skills
audience.

being

negotiated

and developed

with

an

Although a student might laugh at herself, Gauliers

classroom prioritises the laughter of fellow students, and the

student must pay attention to what it is about her that causes
laughter in her peers. The word self, even when externally
negotiated, indicates authenticity, and perpetuates a discourse of
interiority and even weakness that could be unhelpful in deepening
an understanding of the negotiations in the classroom. Furthermore,
the term weakness is misleading, suggesting a personal revelation
that would induce pity for the performer in their vulnerable state
an emotion that would extinguish the desired response of laughter.
For this reason, the term ridiculous side is more critically useful to
an understanding of clown pedagogy than notions of authentic self
or personal weakness. The value of the ridiculous side is decided,
and communicated by the audience, and the student learns to
follow and respond to the verbal cues of the audience.

Despite

Gauliers use of the phrase your clown, which continues to invoke

ideas of personal vulnerability, he gives to the audience the
responsibility for finding the ridiculous side to his clown students.

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

TaPRA

2013
Bibliography
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Jarmuz, Mark, 2012, Moi l'cole Philippe Gaulier, Retrieved 14 May
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Thesis, University of Minnesota

Lucy Amsden, University of Glasgow

2013

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