Tag: Theater

An Art (Apr 4 2026) 

JulianLeave a comment

An off-off-off-off Broadway day. 

I attended an art today. A very Burning Man-ish art. Listen: 

You knock on a door in Brooklyn. A clown-not-yet-in-costume opens the door. She tells you the show starts when she dons her hat. But now, she is hatless, so the show must not have started. 

You introduce yourself to the other attendees. There are five of you: you, your partner, a couple (she’s from Bulgaria; he’s a stand up comedian), and a woman of about 80 who formerly performed voiceover work for the Muppets. 

The host dons her hat. She provides you a passport and divides you into groups: you’re with the Bulgarian and Muppet; your partner is with the Standup. The host introduces you to the town: five stations, each themed around a custom topic for you. (Mine was Consistency & Stability.) 

You visit the five stations in sequence. At one, you marry your theme. At another, your theme writes you a letter.
At the beginning of the experience, you ask yourself, “Why am I here?” You imagine yourself leaving to go to a park. Getting some much-needed rest away from the world. 

At one station, the Muppet tells you of how she was engaged to a man in L.A. A beautiful man, an incredible musician. But he had a nervous breakdown and moved back to Las Vegas. And she moved back home to New York City. And had she not done that, she would never have been the in-demand voice over artist she ended up being. 

By the end, you have found in this activity a bit of solace, peace, and comfort.
You met some people who enjoyed the time they passed with you.
You learned a small bit experientially.
If you generally had positive memories, you would have positive ones here too.

After the experience, the clown host mentions she previously studied in France, under the same teacher who founded the clown school you attended.
She says she left his instruction back in the early 2000s, thinking he had failed her. Only after he died did she recognize he had been right all along.
You wonder how much that’s true for you too.
You wonder where you have to go. 

An hour later, you see a dear friend for a bite of dim sum.
It’s his birthday. It’s nice to laugh.
You wander toward home, a bit colder than expected.
You check your texts, and find a thank you from the clown host. She says that your conversation helped her. She may return to that school. 

You arrive home. 

And all this time,
still,
throughout the entire day,
you wonder
why you feel
so utterly
alone. 

The Glory of Gaps (Apr 1 2026)

JulianLeave a comment

Sometimes nothing is everything 

Earlier today, I bought tickets to a play.
$5 per person for two tickets to an off-broadway show. 

At 5:10pm, I asked Partner, “Do we even want to go?”
Partner said yes. I agreed (ambivalently).
At 5:42pm, we arrived to the theater. A sign on the door stated tonight’s performance was cancelled due to “staff injury”. 

What a lucky occurrence!
Partner and I walked toward the sunset.
We split a pound of strawberries and listened to a spiel for a green energy provider.
Then we strolled up through the park til our bare shoulders felt cold
and hopped the subway back home to eat lentils. 

I ran 2.5 miles today at a 7:59min mile,
lifted heavy objects for the first time in forever,
and walked three or four miles. 

My body feels nice when it’s satisfiedly used.
Life is especially nice when the universe conspires in your favor. 

A Half-Baked Production (Feb 18 2026)

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero has a crusty good time. 

The worst theatrical performance I’ve ever observed occurred in an off-broadway theater this afternoon from 2pm to 4pm. 

Experiential quality is the delta between expectation and outcome. 

This play, which retails for $55 per seat, but which my partner and I observed for a steep discount, prompted my partner to say, “We spent more money getting to and from the show, which is appropriate.” (We took the subway.) 

Issues included: 

  1. An actor flubbing her line, saying “first anniversary” instead of “fiftieth anniversary” in a very-obvious-to-everyone manner. 
  2. Plot point problems being invented only to be immediately resolved. It’s like Chekhov always said: “If a gun appears on stage in act 1, it better be fired within 5 seconds, lest any theatrical tension develop.” (That’s not the real meaning, duh.)
  3. A lead actor who had no light in his eyes. No joy on his face. No radiance whatsoever. When he sang about the weather – about his love for the wonders of the natural world – I received no awe. Only cringe. He hit his notes, his lines were clear and well inflected, he simply had no pleasure to share. 

A year or two ago, I watched my partner’s brother-in-law perform in a small town musical. He played Linus in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I left that performance appreciating the heart that the performers shared with us that day. I left with a new, darker view of the character of Charlie Brown. I left disillusioned with the influential characters I had formerly seen as simplistic. I asked questions like, “How have the archetypes of that generation’s comics/cartoons shifted and morphed as the American experience has changed over generations?” 

This play ended with the explicit moral “The real success was the friends we made along the way”. 

I’m not kidding. 

It wasn’t even tongue-in-cheek, self-aware. The writers seemed to actually think that was an acceptable moral. Or else the whole play is an over-the-top self-mocking farce that the director and actors failed to recognize. And then, why were the characters lit in purple for that one scene? Some avant-garde nod to Grimace? (Per my ex-professional-lighting-designer partner, “The lighting designer was incapable of changing the mood through anything but LED color washes and the colored lights weren’t powerful enough to properly light the scene and be visible.”)

Around 3/4ths of the way through the first act, when the characters on stage mention they’re about to go to intermission (they were performing in a TV program), I thought, “Ah, a fun meta-joke: Their intermission will be exactly the same time as ours.” Then, when their intermission struck, ours wasn’t for another 15 minutes! Another man in the audience clearly thought the same thing, as he stood up and then confusedly sat back down. 

Woof. 

My favorite part was before the show started, when a woman behind me narrated everything she was doing. “I like standing up so I don’t have to get up when people need to pass me. I hate shuffling by people and I am thoughtful and don’t want to make people shuffle by me. Oh, the row is now full, I will now sit,” she said to no one in particular. “It’s very stuffy in here. Very stuffy with all these people,” she said wearing a kn95 mask, her row full, but the theater only one-third full.

As my partner put it, “It was fun to sit near the woman who had to narrate everything out loud. I wonder what her IQ is.”

As that woman narrated just before the show started: “I do hope it’s a good performance.” 

I also hoped it would be a good performance. 

It was not. 

-1 star. 

Hate Mail (Feb 11 2026)

Julian2 Comments

In which it’s nice to be seen 🙂 

My first piece of hate mail arrived in the form of a google document from my partner’s former grad school weightlifting friend. It articulated all the terrible traits that he observed during the long weekend we stayed with him. It included such gems as, “There were multiple occurrences of him saying something to the effect of ‘this happened because of some thing you did Nikki’ or ‘whose fault is this?’ And because he was saying it in a silly way it is expected to be a joke.” 

I read this criticism to a clown school friend of mine, who asked, “Oh, so you were doing bits?” 

“Yes,” I replied. “One was blaming Nikki for absolutely absurd things that were clearly not her fault, like the weather.” 

“That’s a pretty good bit.” 

“I agree.” 

—

Then, two months ago, I received a second piece of hate mail. This one came as a series of text messages from a fellow clown student. She derided my blog, my relating to other humans, and my analytic approach. I hadn’t spoken with her in ~a month (I had broken my foot and stepped away from clown school), and before that, I recall only neutral-to-positive experiences. Apropos of nothing, she sent me this diatribe. 

I have since shared that letter with a few friends. To a person, they describe it as “unhinged” (or various synonyms). 

In her hate mail, she made a few good points. My writing was likely alienating to some clown students. Clown school is a beautiful place and a precious gift. 

She also took some shots. Specifically, she said I “wasn’t funny yet” (the newsletter was called “Am I Funny Yet?”) and she described my blog as “very public and mediocre”. 

After I received that letter from her, I of course didn’t reply. I also of course didn’t alter my writing or publishing schedule. The article I published that day prompted a second screed from her the next day. She – in whatever reality she was experiencing – thought my intervening post had been about her (it had not). 

This second screed brought me great joy. 

“Ah,” I thought. “How wonderful it is that she reads my blog every day!” 

—

I like to live my life in public. I adore New York partly for that reason: meeting strangers and living in an environment where big, bold people are appreciated. I take my shirt off in public. I do so even though I’ve grown breasts. 

I also think it’s funny to call a blog about someone’s daily struggles “mediocre”. It’s not polished. It’s not complete. It’s not intended to be either of those. It’s a documentation of my attempts to do new and challenging things; a collection of my thoughts and observations and learnings and experiences. I’ve never been accused of waiting for perfection (and my partner, at least, thinks my life is better for it). That’s one of the clowning lessons: fail more, and befriend your flops. 

To quote my partner: “Being mediocre is the first step towards being kinda sorta good at something”. 

At present, I have 21 Substack subscribers and 168 subscribers. 

I’ve never looked at my stats before. I haven’t cared. I still don’t. But it’s nice to know that her estimate is also true numerically. 

So yeah, with my hundred of fans and my abnormal life, I’m proud to be: 

Very Public & Mediocre. 

Mellow and Dramatic (Jan 26 2026)

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero mellows in the drama 

Today was the first day of the second term. I’m not there. I’m in Etampes, four minutes walk from the school. I walked earlier today by the train station cafe that doubles as the student haunt. Yet I’m not there. Do I miss it? 

Today my mother and I dawdled down a classic Parisian street. Over lunch we swapped plates four times so we could experience what the other was eating. An Eastern European tourist offered us alcohol at Jim Morrison‘s tombstone. A California native gushed his worries about American politics 10 feet away from Molière corpse. 

This evening, my housing purchase was confirmed. After 8 years nomadic (homeless?), it’s time to put down roots. My partner ordered a bed for the empty apartment. I ordered locks for the doors. We’re buying one way flights like we always do, only this time they’re to home. 

The clown course I’m missing is melodrama. A fellow student once told me that melodrama is about stretching moments. What should be a five second stroll becomes ten minutes of dramatic, hyper-experienced anguish. 

Today stretched. From sprinting for the train to dashing through loan documentation, I was hyper present. Focused. Immersed. 

That’s one of the goals (or is it *the main goal* of clown school). Presence. Giving. Moving forward. 

I don’t miss melodrama. 

I’m excited for my life. 

Clown School Break Day 4: Return of the G

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero gets his groove back. 

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. 

These are nice.

Thanks, clown school. 

Clown School Break Day 1: The Flickering Light

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero contemplates steadiness.

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.

Clown School Day 31: Absolution & Airflow

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero sleeps, sins, and seeks salvation.

At the end of this week, I’m a quarter of the way through this program. That’s wild. Three times as much left as what I’ve already done. No wonder it feels like I’ve lived six different emotional lifetimes.

I told my sister today about our daily Simon Says game. It’s brilliantly constructed. It’s also deranged.

Here’s how it works: when you make a mistake, you must seek absolution. You get to choose your method of redemption. The menu: 

  • Hug
  • Kiss
  • Swedish handshake
  • Nothing
  • Or… torture

If you choose “nothing,” nothing happens. If you choose “torture,” one of the teachers (or a friend, if you prefer) faux-tortures you in front of the class. If you choose one of the other options, you turn to a peer and ask, “Can I have a [hug/kiss/handshake]?”

If they say “yes,” you receive absolution.

If they say anything else—literally anything: “yep” is interpreted as “go to hell”—you get tortured.

My sister was horrified. Honestly, same. The first time we played, I felt like I’d accidentally joined a cult that prioritizes whimsy over human rights. And yet…it works. The faux-torture weirdly brings us together. There’s something intimate about placing your fate in someone else’s hands and trusting they’ll either help you or throw you to the wolves. (And, sometimes we just choose the torture directly: our Assistant Teacher is an exquisite tickler.)

My sister asked why people don’t always say “yes.”
Partially because we’re learning how to ask and receive asks well. So if you ask poorly (not loud enough; emotionally closed; selfish), your odds plummet.
And partially because, well, that’s the game.

—

Last night, for the first time in ages, I slept well. Deeply. My room traps CO₂, so I’ve been sleeping poorly. Last night I cracked open both the window and the shutters. Oxygen: acquired. Primitive problem, elegant solution.

I don’t have much to write about today. My energy feels softer, steadier.

One woman in class has been struggling to find a lower, more powerful voice. Our assistant teacher stood behind her and performed a kind of gentle, low Heimlich maneuver while she screamed “FUCK YOU, [Head Teacher]!” at full volume. It helped. Theatre is strange medicine.

We also explored two new “substances”: oil/petrol/gasoline and superglue. I’m tired of this exercise. Some classmates love it; I don’t. Maybe that’s the point: finding joy in an approach I don’t naturally love. I can learn it. I just don’t yet.

—

I found a partner for Friday’s scene. The task: play contrasting characters who always agree. Hot, fast, smoky oil in perfect harmony with gentle, falling snow: two beings that shouldn’t coexist and yet do.

It might be funny. It might be a disaster. That’s clown school.

—

My goal this week is simple and impossible: be sensitive, be open, be gentle: with my partners, with the audience, with myself. I’ll do the exercises, but the real work is internal.

Do I have pleasure?
If so, am I sharing it with the audience?
If so, am I sharing it with my partner?
Am I playing together, or am I playing alone?

Clown school is hard.
But at least I slept.
And maybe—just maybe—I’ve solved my CO₂ problem.

That would be nice. 👍

Clown School Weekend 6.2: The Rules of Clowning

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero attempts to eff the ineffable.

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:

The Rules of Clowning

It covers:

  • What the “goal” of clowning actually is
  • What makes someone an attractive player
  • Why the audience’s pleasure outweighs your own
  • How to find a “good game”
  • How to play it without destroying it
  • Tactics for impulse, aura, dignity, lightness
  • The mechanics of Major/Minor
  • How to play beautifully with partners
  • 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.

Clown School Weekend 6.1: Putting the Text on the Game

JulianLeave a comment

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.