Clown Through Mask

Clown through Mask is a technique developed by Richard Pochinko in Canada, and now taught by many teachers across North America. The principle of these is Sue Morrison, the artistic director of the Theatre Resource Centre in Toronto. Clown through Mask is a technique which blends a European clown training with the Native American concept of clown.

Clown through Mask is taught through an intensive workshop, normally lasting around 6 weeks. During this time participants make a series of six masks with their eyes closed. Each mask is made and then worn once only, while the wearer, through a series of improvisations, discovers the two facets of the mask: innocence and experience.

Each participants thus goes on a unique journey of self-exploration which results in the creation of his/her ownpersonal mythology and the discovery of his/her own clown. These different facets are then played out or released through clown turns (short solo pieces), one for each mask. But these are played not with the mask itself, but through the smallest of all masks , the red nose.

Once the Clown through Mask workshop is complete your journey is only just begun. Training may continue through other workshops, such as Joey and Auguste or Bouffon, or through the making of a clown show. Click here to go to Sue Morrison's website which has more information on the training available.

A short video about Sue Morrison featuring clowns from the New York Clown Festival including Barnaby King (Flawed Genius) and Erin Bouvey (Pam St Cyr).

Sue Morrison on Clowning

Clown and Native American culture

It's really hard in clown to make rules, because clowns are by nature anarchists...they exist as the conscience of society, every culture has a clown. Everybody. As far back as we can look, to prehistoric man, there were shamans communicating between the gods and the people. And clowns were shamans, because they were involved in transformation, and transformation is healing.

In native American concept of clown, they say that if you ever faced all directions of yourself at once you could just laugh at the beauty of your own ridiculousness. You're already not perfect. You are ridiculous. It's our struggle to be with some status in the world that is ridiculous. I'm fascinated by the flaws. Would you rather have dinner with someone that was perfect or someone that was flawed? I would myself be very bored, because I would have nothing in common with the perfect person but I have much in common with someone that was flawed. That's where people take their delight...

Clown and the Audience

Four elements have to be present for a successful clown turn. Present yourself. Take me into your world. Transform me. And bring me back with a new awareness. That will involve transformation and so it involve release. You should never be the same at the end of a clown turn as you were at the beginning. If you are, nothing happened. And your audience should never feel the same. They may not feel better, but they have to feel something. We're not snack food. A good clown show, you should feel disturbed in some way. In some way off balance.

Clown is about a conversation. If this is the performer and this is the audience, when these two energies connect, it's in that connecting place that the clown lives. That's the 'we', the 'us'.

I have a feeling when a clown looks at me. I think people love to be recognized. We are looked at all day long but once in a while somebody looks at you and they see you, you feel recognized, you feel an acknowledgement of your specialness, of your individuality. And that's something a clown does, whether it's for a huge audience or ten people, make people feel like they're being seen and recognised, they're being acknowledged, their story's being heard, their story's being told. We recognize ourselves. I feel like I'm actually allowed to experience something about myself that maybe I don't all the time.

In the circus after the high tension acts, like the acrobatics and the aerial acts, when people are nervous, they would send the clowns in to break the tension. Most typically you could say the arrival of the clowns breaks the tension of an environment, whether it's in the circus or in religious ceremonies or whatever.

Clown and Emotion

Clown is here to remind us of our extreme nature. When I watch you, when I'm involved with you it allows me to have that feeling, it takes me to that place and it validates me having that experience. You know, I feel devastated and I don't even know why. But I'm devastated and that's fantastic. And to get to the next place you have to go all the way through that place. People think of clown as a set of tricks that you learn like you can learn how to do a handstand or juggle. But it's much more than that. We have to learn how to manage emotions, how to work those as technique. Emotion is technique. But first you have to learn how to be comfortable with that. You have to know that these things are very empowering, that they make us bigger rather than diminishing us. When you share a feeling, you take me into that world. That's a huge experience,   that's a gift.

We are an accumulation of our experiences. And that's absolutely clown. We can't be anything else. And we should never try to be anything else. We should use everything that we have and know. Everything is available at any moment.