The longer you clown, the more your clown character AND your real personality grows together. I’ve been clowning for over 40 years and didn’t really put this together until our alley meeting last week. We were planning to have some improv games and work on situations to help our clown characters, to see what our reactions as a clown would be versus our reactions as a person. It sounded like a good idea and I brought a list of experiences you might have. It turned out that everything I thought would expand our thinking had already actually happened to someone there and it turned out to be an evening of stories and laughter. Here are some examples.

1. You’re sitting at the dining table when a large spider crawls out from under a plate and comes toward you. What do you do? It seems everyone has had an encounter with a spider and the reactions ranged from scooping him up and putting him outside to whacking him with your hand (ooey gooey!) to whacking him with a dish on the table (breaking the dish but not killing the spider) to taking off your shoe and whacking him on the table multiple times with a shoe. Can you see the potential for some clown skits in this simple experience?

2. Someone spills something on you, accidentally. What do you do? One of our clowns was at a ball game when the person behind her got excited, jumped up and spilled a cold beer right down her back into her slacks. But then her husband turned around, saw a bunch of tough tattooed bikers behind them and insisted she not turn around and confront them. One time I was in an Italian restaurant with some friends and had my coat open on the back of the chair and my purse open beside me on the floor. The waitress delivered my spaghetti, tipped the plate and the entire serving of spaghetti fell down the inside of my coat and directly into my open purse, not even getting anything on the floor! My co-workers were calling for a manager and very upset but my reaction was pure clown – I laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more, seeing the mess, watching everyone scurrying around to try to clean it up, watching the other patrons in the restaurant, and actually watching it all in slow motion. It’s still an experience today I vividly recall, and it makes me laugh every time.

3. And one of my favorite stories from our alley meeting  – remember we are professional clowns so DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! I read the scenario that you are baking a cake and have the batter in the mixer but when you go to shut off the mixer, it won’t turn off and continues, getting faster and faster. It turns out this had actually happened to several of our members and our Cupcake grabbed the beaters, getting her fingers stuck. Another member tried to shield the stuff flying out of the bowl with her body. But the best story (and the worst!) happened to our Trixie as she was baking. The electric cord to the mixer fell off and fell into the batter so she grabbed it and stuck it in her mouth to get the batter off it. ZAP!!! When she woke up on the other side of the room, her husband was standing over her as she was still holding the electric cord. He said, “Tell me you didn’t stick that in your mouth” and she had to admit her  clown character just took over. We had a number of other stories, including forgetting your  ukulele when going to a performance, several incidents while sewing a new clown wardrobe, and spilling a jar of honey. Seinfeld made his entire comedy career around everyday incidents he dissected for the “funny”. It was an interesting workshop and I would suggest your alley give it a try some evening at a meeting to get some fresh comedy bits for your next skit performance.

By Janet Tucker