In which Our Hero proves that knowing is not the same as doing.
Yesterday, I wrote a taxonomy of clown-school terms.
Today, I flopped.
Intellectual knowing is not the same as embodied knowing.
We say “those who can’t do, teach,” but that’s too glib. Some teachers are former doers; some are doers making rent; and some—well, maybe they can’t do, but they sure can see.
My ability to coach clowning probably exceeds my ability to be a clown.
Partly because I’m a better theoretician than performer writ large.
Partly because certain psychological or emotional doors in me are still locked.
Today in class, our Head Teacher said it was obvious that I was still saying the text—in my head. Which is an insane read. She’s right, though: I was silently saying the words instead of placing them gently atop the game.
That’s fucking wild. How can someone see that? And what does that even have to do with clowning?
Maybe everything. Maybe the moment you’re “thinking” instead of being, you’ve already left the game.
Today we began Neutral Mask.
You wear a mask so we can’t see your face. You imitate water: you see a beautiful lake, feel yourself becoming water, then add text on top of the game.
Here’s what hit me:
Clown school is really fucking tough.
Denser than any Yale course I ever took.
Four weeks of relentless concepts, barely time to digest one before the next arrives.
It’s like going to art school and having one day on each primary color, one day on mixing, one day on three-point perspective, and then being told to paint the Sistine Chapel.
And when you mess up, they just tell you how you failed.
But it’s a brilliant method for a school that wants to produce a thousand different clowns.
The system that made Emma Thompson, Roberto Benigni, Sacha Baron Cohen (who all on his own has a host of diverse characters, including Borat, Bruno, and Ali G) isn’t designed to give you one formula. It’s designed to force you to find your own.
So now I shall learn the Neutral Mask.
Tomorrow, we become fire. Or air. Or despair.
And maybe one of my small discoveries from Le Jeu holds:
I love doing impressions, especially voices.
Maybe that’s part of my clown.
Maybe that’s mine to remember.
Because it’s all mine to choose. And all mine to learn.
🤡
Julian Wise 