In which Our Hero demonstrates he visited a casino today.
“The person on your left determines how much fun you have.”
A friend said this about playing poker at a casino.
In poker, the player on your left acts after you. So in marginal spots—hands that could go either way—they get to decide how much intensity to apply. They can re-raise you (the aggressive choice) or fold (the friendly one). Since the spot is marginal, it doesn’t meaningfully affect their win rate; it just affects your experience.
Improv works the same way. Your job is to give gifts to your partner. “Pimping them out” (putting them in a tough or absurd situation) is the aggressive choice. Establishing clear relationships, objects, or stakes is the friendly one.
Does clowning have a similar dynamic?
Maybe the parallel is playing at versus playing with. Playing at your partner is fun for you, but it’s not oriented toward maximizing their pleasure.
And in clowning, the audience is a partner, too. That’s one of the big surprises of clown school: realizing that you play with the audience just as much as you play with the other performers.
In clown, maybe the major determines how much fun everyone gets to have. Can the major establish a clear, joyful game? That’s their job. The minor can always destroy the game, of course, but it’s hard for a minor to create a bigger game than the major has already laid down, at least not without stepping on the major’s toes.
So in clowning, just like in poker, the person on your left might still determine how much fun you have. The difference is that in clown school, you might actually enjoy being the sucker getting hosed for everyone else’s amusement.
Julian Wise 