Friend: “We’re looking for ladyfingers” Grocery store employee: “What are those?” Me: “They’re like chicken fingers but made out of women.” Employee: “I can’t stand men, but that’s a good one.”
A friend told me I’m funnier now than before clown school—that I tell jokes for other people more than I used to.
That’s nice.
I do feel myself joining other people’s worlds more readily. It feels more comfortable, somehow safer. Like I’m less afraid of being hurt by them. Like I’ve internalized the fact that the pain of rejection is both temporary and unreal.
And I am still unquestionably afraid. But the fear is now useful. It’s a companion. A friend. I just need to embrace it, befriend it, and place it properly so it doesn’t own me.
At dinner, my dad asked me to do an impression I’ve done before: one of the teachers from my Le Jeu course this summer. I did it, and it was fun. The fact that sharing pleasure is more important than the impression’s accuracy put me at ease. Historically, I’ve refused in spots like this. Maybe because doing someone else’s game felt uncomfortable. But why? Who cares? Might as well give pleasure. Spread joy.
I was more open and comfortable and relaxed in general.
And noticing the spots when I wasn’t. And releasing them.
My roommate and I carpooled to Paris today. En route, we discussed improv and clowning. Some students at our school want to be clowns. Others want to be actors or performers of a different stripe.
This school teaches pleasure-finding and pleasure-sharing. That’s it. Everything else is downstream.
Lately, I’ve had much less ability to share pleasure. Since around July, something’s been off. It’s not that I’m more self-conscious (I’m not). It’s not that I feel less pleasure (I don’t). It’s that my ability to give it—my pleasure-sharing skill—has dipped from where it recently was.
At an alumni gathering for my university, people asked what I do. I told them I’m in clown school. They asked what I plan to do with it. I had simple, light conversations. Most of it felt uninteresting. Like I had no ability to use the skills I had just learned to find and share pleasure.
Why was it so hard? Where does this difficulty come from?
One: a cough. I’ve been sick the last few days.
Two: a fractured foot. Not exactly peak performance mode.
¿Three: the weird-ass mental state this school induces?
¿Four: just not doing this thing well?
Five: [redacted, personal]
—
Last night, I went to a cabaret, watched friends perform, and talked with them afterward. We discussed clowning and performance. We connected easily. Pleasantly. Full of spark. Despite having trouble with this the last few weeks. With the same people, no less.
Why does this turn on and off without my permission? This ability to connect with others—to care, to be curious, to find pleasure and give it back?
It’s odd.
It feels, currently, out of my control.
I guess that’s why I’m studying it. To gain control of giving light.
For weeks I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer what we’re actually doing in clown school.
There are moments in class when something works—a laugh, a tiny eruption of joy—and the teacher says, “Yes, that.” And then there are moments when the entire room goes still and we all collectively realize the joy has petered out.
Our teachers keep highlighting the importance of the game. I kept wishing there were actual rules. Not to restrict play—but to name what’s already happening.
So I wrote them.
This document is the clearest articulation I’ve managed so far of how the “game” of clowning works in the Gaulier school of thought: the goal, the metrics, the tactics, the traps, the physics of pleasure, the difference between Major and Minor, how to avoid killing your own play, why dignity matters, why heaviness kills the audience, and the one rule that seems to underlie everything: maximize total pleasure without harming yourself.
If you’re in clown training, or theatre, or comedy, or anything requiring presence and sensitivity, you may find this helpful. Or validating. Or confusing in a way that becomes helpful later. That’s typically how this school works.
Here is the full writeup. Comments are enabled in case you’re curious or want to poke at any element:
How to avoid hurting yourself—physically, emotionally, professionally
If you’re not a clown and don’t plan to be one, it still might interest you. Clown logic rhymes with life logic more than we admit: be sensitive, be generous, be open, don’t force things, play the game that’s actually happening instead of the one in your head.
And share your pleasure. People open to you when you do.
In which Our Hero explains how to tiptoe text ‘top the tulips.
I spoke today with a close friend who reads my blog religiously. He told me he was this close to calling and saying:
“Dude, maybe you should take clown school less seriously.”
But then, he said, he was relieved to see I’d arrived there myself this week.
I taught him something I learned: put the text on top of the game. (Don’t let the text strangle the game.)
He’s a musician, so here’s the analogy I used:
When you play a song on piano, you can think: C major, F, G, C-flat. Technical, correct, literal.
Or—you can visualize a volcano erupting. Or summon some vivid, private memory.
The game is that image/memory/emotional source. The text is the notes—or the words.
If you play the game and let the text sit lightly on top of it, the audience receives two tracks at once. We receive both the notes and something of the image.
A common mistake is to use the game to “underline” the text.
If you’re imagining Jesus while playing a hymn about Jesus, the audience gets the same information twice. It’s flat.But if you’re imagining a volcano erupting while playing a hymn about Jesus, the audience receives two different tracks. It becomes richer, stranger, more alive. They can’t necessarily name the image, but they can feel its charge. It evokes something personal in them.
For someone who has historically liked games—loved games, spent thousands of hours inside them—it’s a surprising question to ask.
There’s no question I like games. And play is what we do in games. So I suppose I like play?
This explanation feels insufficient.
I like lighthearted engagement in low-stakes, real-world-mimicking activities. In that sense, I like playing.
But often when others play with me, I generally don’t experience it as mutual play. And often when I try to play with others, they don’t experience it as playing together. (They sometimes experience it as me playing at them or against them, which has its own problems compared to us playing with each other.) It’s rare for me to find someone with whom play becomes mutually satisfying.
This isn’t necessarily about my love of play. It may be about my skill at play.
Eight or so years ago, a friend told me I didn’t know how to play. It was one of those moments you remember: if not for the bluntness of the comment, then for the proximity of his anger to a fist arriving at your face.
Learning to play requires paying attention to others. It’s a feedback loop: you stoke their fires, they stoke yours. And with rare exception, I’m not interested in stoking fires. The pool of people I like is small; my interest in socializing outside that pool is also small. So perhaps I simply have less experience in social play—either from lack of historical interest or poor methodology.
This, to be clear, is about social play.
Only two (three?) weeks ago did I first play a game to play rather than to win.
Historically, my engagement with games has been more optimization than play. Perhaps that’s why my win rate is high: if most people play, the one who optimizes will win. I analyze, comprehend, break down, and rebuild. These are fun for me, thus part of my play. But how many people do you know who approach a casual board-game night like this? And how many people want to rejoin someone who plays a board game night like this?
My clown teachers say I need sensitivity. I think they mean gentleness, and sensitivity is one route to gentleness. Sensitivity is letting experiences permeate you. Those who know me—family especially—would say I’m already very high in sensitivity (i.e. sensing the world around me, including the experiences of others). My teachers may mean a specific flavor: gentle sensitivity with lighthearted reactions. Not that I lack sensitivity, but that I lack lightness of spirit and gentleness of response.
Yesterday at 4 a.m., a bird flew into my apartment window. I learned this at 11 a.m., when my roommate showed me the box he’d put it in. We called French animal rescues; none were helpful. I made a joke about how the French might simply eat this sort of injured bird. He said (paraphrasing), “Come on. This is an opportunity to be sensitive, man!”
As a classmate, he knows I’m working on this skill. What he might mean is that the joke felt heartless. Some people don’t like dark humor; some don’t like cultural humor. Perhaps what they really mean is: give what your audience wants.
I used this skill when running sales at my previous company: give them what they want; say less—always less—as less is more.
And perhaps my teachers are saying that almost no one wants me without gentleness.
In competitive games, my strategy is often to use my strength against the opponent’s weakness. It’s a good way to win. But it only attracts people who love competition.
So if I want cooperative relationships, I’ll have to learn to play.
(Closing the loop on that earlier story: I have never been punched in the face. I’ve only been punched once, by someone experiencing a very different reality. I have, however, been threatened with face-punching roughly five times. I’d like to keep that streak—and ideally reduce the threats.)
—
Today I watched a clown show. Afterward, I left the theater to go home. And upon stepping outside, I realized that part of sensitivity is patience. So I went back, stood outside, and let myself be sensitive. Two people I enjoy talking with emerged, and we walked to the train together. It was lovely.
Today, our class succeeded. Five of us earned fives, two earned sixes, and many of the rest pulled in strong marks. Even I received a “not bad” for one of my two performances. (The other got a zero.)
Why did today work so well?
First, we were all pulling for each other. Cheers before and after each performance. We didn’t previously do this. It’s very helpful to your peers.
Second, the exercise was fundamentally fun: embody an element (earth, fire, water, air). Enjoyable to do, and powerful enough to allow for layering the text gently atop.
Third, the exercise was simple. Embody an element. Low stakes.
My first element was fire. One line in, I lost the text. They kicked me off for it: six hours of memorization, gone. The takeaway: start memorizing on Monday. Use sleep cycles for the memorizing. Earlier, lighter memorization beats late, intense memorization.
My fire received these notes:
“This is not fire. This is fire with petrol.”
“When he starts to speak, we see something. He is sensitive. I think, ‘Ah, something is coming.’”
My second element was snow.
I began with the same image as yesterday. I watched it. I barely moved. I started saying the text (the same text as we used for fire). The teacher yelled: “Shut up!” then “Move!” then “Snow falling down from the sky!”, then repeated these three over and over. (Said one friend: “It seems funny to me that you’re asked to memorize lines but then she doesn’t actually want you to say them”.)
My favorite part was that she said “Shut up” and “You talk too much!” after nearly every sound I made—and several times when I wasn’t speaking. She’s freakishly skilled at spotting when I’m reciting text in my head. This is an impressive superpower. I need a big, strong, vivid image to overpower my love of text. Or maybe to make myself brilliant enough to be dumb: know the text well enough to forget it, but still have it when I need… #writerproblems
A few notes from the day:
The exercise that gives you the breakthrough isn’t necessarily the one you should perform. (I possibly should have done Earth, not Snow.)
When the rhythm of the lines matches the rhythm of the movement, it becomes boring.
What I like doesn’t always matter. The audience tells me what they like.
Head Teacher’s comments on my snow:
“Not bad, but this is not snow.”
“You need good humor always. Something funny in your mind.”
“Even when you aren’t speaking, we see you speaking text.”
“You were sensitive.”
Teacher comments to others (because they’re funny):
“This is ‘theater de mi cajones.’ You know what it means? It means theater of my balls.”
“It’s a good image but it doesn’t arrive to us because of your shitty voice.”
Memorizing the lines isn’t actually that important. Being able to say the lines is. If you only know the first three, you can still earn great marks if you perform them well (*cough* one of my roommates *cough*).
I over-invested in learning the lines. I under-invested in being able to do the lines while doing the exercise. That’s the part I should have practiced. Or visualized. Or practiced and visualized.
Just because the assignment involved memorizing lines does not mean the assignment is to share the lines you memorized. Ain’t clowning great?
My goal this week was sensitivity/openness/gentleness. Today showed more glimpses (I opened briefly during Fire, and on-and-off during snow). I’ll keep working on this. For now, it’s nice to be landing it more often.
I received a zero and a “not bad.” The zero came with a comment that I was sensitive and open. Win. The “not bad” came with the same comment. I’m improving at this key trait.
Not “You’re being a fascist.” Not “You’re pushing again.” But: You were sensitive. You were open. You were beautiful.
This has been my quest for the last four or five days: trying to soften without collapsing, open without weighing down, give without pushing. So when the assistant teacher said she could tell I’d been trying to be sensitive, something in me loosened. Like the wall I’ve been kicking finally cracked.
They then called “Julian and four others” onto the stage. And somewhere in that transition, I started crying. I don’t remember the moment. The whole experience became one.
The exercise was “snow.”
The teacher gave a confusing description of snow. Something like: “It’s the kind of snow that shuts down a city.”
Which… is just a quantity of snow. That’s not an image; that’s an amount.
So I asked a question that she didn’t answer. And then I started being snow. I grabbed an image that moves me: Lorelai in the first season of Gilmore Girls, stepping outside as the first snow falls. That little gasp, the cup of coffee, the anticipatory thrill, the “I smell snow.”
That image speaks to me. So I used it.
They asked for lighter. I moved lighter. They asked for less movement. I slowed down. And then the crying came—like a release of walls I didn’t even know I was holding.
I felt open. Present. Immersed. And I tried to stay there as long as I could. Even after class, I tried to keep it alive. I wandered to a café because it felt like “the present thing to do.” Then I left, because that also felt present. Then I ran into classmates outside the café, so I went back in. Presence, it turns out, has a sense of humor.
Then, I called a friend. That was hard.
It felt like I came home excited that I’d thrown a baseball for the first time—look, look, I did the thing!—and they said, “Careful not to break a window.”
Not malicious. Just… a mismatch. And when you’ve just cracked open a new emotional door, mismatches hurt more.
After class, one of the teachers said: “You were very sensitive, and very beautiful. You had an intensity—but it wasn’t bad.”
I laughed at that. I’m glad it isn’t bad, because my intensity ain’t going away.
Later, I asked the teacher, “Did I do it? Did I actually finally successfully give?” She didn’t answer directly. She asked, “Were you sensitive? What did you feel?”
Here’s my experience: On stage without my glasses, I am legally blind. I couldn’t see anyone. I didn’t listen to them either. The audience was mere shapes. Just the snow and me. And once in a while, a teacher’s comment.
So if the question is “were you sensitive to the audience?”, the answer is no. I was literally senseless. Ah clown school: you ironic farce.
They don’t mean sensitive. They might mean gentle. One way to arrive at sensitive is to notice that you’re too much for the audience. Another, apparently, is to channel the perfect childhood you never had in idyllic smalltown America.
Sometimes total silence is a good sign, the teacher said. It means the audience is engaged. “A quiet room can be as good as a laughing one. No one doing this [shuffling around, moving in their seat]”.
Earlier in the day, I channeled a storm. They told me I looked “obsessed with the game.” I laughed. “This was the least obsessed I’ve been in days. I literally set myself the gentle mantra, ‘This is for you[, audience]‘”. Light. Open. Giving.
The feedback wasn’t about my intention; it was about my appearance. They saw obsessed. I must change that appearance.
Perhaps I need extra lightness to counterbalance my baseline intensity. Some people need more power or voice. I might need 10x the gentleness.
After class, a fellow student said to me: “Good on you for staying up there. You could have sat down.”
My brow furrowed. Sat down? Why would I sit down? That made zero sense.
This is bottom of the ninth and I’m pitching a no hitter. I will remain here until you drag me off this mound.
It’s funny what other people reveal about themselves when they comment on you.
Somehow, after I left the stage, the right person knew I needed a hug. He gave me one. And, lo and behold, it was good.
All afternoon I kept trying to hold the feeling: café, walk home, phone calls. I wanted to stay cracked open. Even though it’s uncomfortable? Especially because it’s uncomfortable.
I did my first cartwheel today. I went up as the guinea pig because I wanted more than anything not to.
Somewhere in all of this, I realized: This experience with snow is a metaphor of the friction I’ve been having with the social life of clown school. Pushing instead of being sensitive. Wanting to give but not meeting others where they are. The effort to be open met with a congratulations about remaining on stage or a warning about windows.
What next? Maybe the answer is simply: more on-stage openness. Maybe I’ll find some new challenge.
But today, for a moment, I did it. I gave what they’ve been telling me to give. I didn’t perform emotion. Nor pretend. Nor simulate. Nor mimic.
I was open. Light. Warm. Gentle. Like the first snow And it’s You.
Because this snow. This tiny, infinitesimal flake of snow. If you do it enough. Could cover the world.
For a good time, bring a cake to a gathering of friends. Cut slices for each person. Ask how big they want. Invariably, they’ll say “Just a small slice,” or “Just a little one.”
Then, if you move the knife slowly and ask them to “say when,” you’ll find each person’s little slice is different. In some cases, it’s twice the size of someone else’s small slice.
When they say, “Just a small slice,” for whom are they speaking?
They’re not communicating in your language. If they were, small would mean the same thing. Instead, they’re saying something like: “I’m signaling that I’m not greedy.” Or: “I’m allowing myself pleasure, but a restrained version of it.”
Maybe I’ve always found moments like this confusing. Maybe because I’m autistic. Maybe because I never learned the unwritten grammar of appetite and permission. Maybe because the cultural norm to be small and not enjoy yourself is dumb.
On stage, the same puzzle repeats. How much of myself is the right-sized slice to offer?
I have a great and powerful energy in me. I can give a lot. I have given a lot. My teammates, my teachers, and I all agree: when I was fire today, I burned.
But still—I didn’t burn for them.
Fuck.
I have so, so much pleasure. So much deep, physical intensity. And goddamn it, how do I transmit this to you? So far, I’ve tried:
Give it directly. Too pushy.
Increase my own pleasure. Too self-contained.
Recommendation from friends: play with oscillation—me-pleasure, then share; me-pleasure, then share again.
Complicating factors: (1) I can’t see on stage (I can’t wear my glasses with the neutral mask). (2) I don’t find myself beautiful.
The teacher’s aid begrudgingly gave me her speculation today (directness like this isn’t really part of the pedagogy). She said she senses that I have beliefs about how I’m perceived, and that my behavior on stage is an attempt to offer those perceptions, then shatter them. Which isn’t the same as showing myself—it’s showing my idea of myself, or how I imagine others see me.
Maybe she’s right. When I was beautiful, they loved me. Subtle. Gentle. Open. I remember it dimly: tears streaming, face unguarded, giving.
I want to find that again. Tomorrow, I’ll try.
When the Head Teacher told me I was insufficiently sensitive, she began with: “Not bad.” And when I raised my hand to ask a question, she added: “When you have done something good, it is better not to ask questions, no? It is better to think about what you have done.”
Maybe I’m harder on myself than they are. Or, as a friend put it: “It’s nice to know you’re harder on yourself than the teachers are. It’s nice to know you’re not just failing over and over. Or at least that you’re failing over and over—but it’s working.”
Tomorrow, instead of trying so hard to give that I push, I’ll try so hard to open that I break. And I’ll give that to the audience. Maybe they’ll love it.
I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to reverse-engineer the game we’ve been playing at clown school.
If we think of clowning as a game, what are the rules of that game?
I’ve started building a taxonomy — a kind of manual of play — mapping what seems to make pleasure multiply on stage: impulses, generosity, major/minor dynamics, how to avoid destroying your play, and so on.
It’s still a work-in-progress (I’m sharing it with classmates to stress-test it before publishing the full version).
But the process of writing it has already clarified a few things for me:
The clown’s “goal” isn’t to win — it’s to maximize total pleasure (without harm).
Pleasure is contagious; it’s the currency of play.
When you’re failing, contribute to the game and share your pleasure (don’t try to be funny or clever)
I’ll publish the full taxonomy soon. For now, there’s a little taste of what’s coming — and a reminder that even codifying play is, itself, a kind of game.
P.S. If you’ve ever tried to articulate something that resists articulation, you’ll understand how funny this exercise becomes.
Or, put another way: sometimes people ask me, “What is the point of your Yale philosophy degree?” Now I can say: “I made you a taxonomy of Clowning!”
Julian Wise 