Lessons from Clown School
a look back at the many silly faces of our last show (and a peek at our next!)
Did September even happen? We’re not sure either! Cass and I may have been battling off the 9 Plagues of Bushwick to start off the fall but Queers n Peers is still bearing its summer fruits. In August we had our Back to Clown School show which was, you guessed it kids, Clown-Themed. We featured all kinds of clowning, from silly to sexy to scary, and oh, did we ever have a ball.
More on that to follow, but right now you better save the date on OCTOBER 19, because we are back with EMOWEEN, a show celebrating both the coming of the gayest holiday of the year and the onset of Seasonal Depression. Hoorah! Follow us for updates — lineup and poster coming soon!
xoxo
Babz and Cass (and Caty)
THIS ONE’S BY BABZ!
I took exactly one week of clown class back at ye old NYU when one of our more, erm, colorful teachers took a week off to go film Lorde knows what – and it must not have been great because I didn't really get it. It felt like Silly Show’n’Tell. Maybe it was more of a Miming class? But I digress. It would be a full decade before I got to really engage with the art of clowning again, when we went to support a QnP Alum, Chuckie Sleaze, at their own Clown Cult show (check out their own Halloween extravaganza on October 21).
That show really left an impression on the whole Queers team – so much so, that we decided to go all in on a clown theme for our next slate of variety artists. In a way, all performance is a form of clowning, and the art seems to have a primal source deep inside our psyches.
The earliest clowns that we know of date back to the 5th dynasty of ancient Egypt, where the role of Priest and Clowning were intertwined and thus performed by the same people. I can understand how it could be considered a religious experience, seeing as in order to really do it right, you have to conquer that sense of shame that lives inside your head.
And that’s exactly the energy our performers brought: Shamelessness. Josh Nasser’s comedic stylings were particularly emblematic of this, even without painting his face. He brought a particularly irreverent love song that included such lyrics as “Poo poo pee pee poo poo poo.” The audience clapped along to the beat, engaged and absorbed. This was complemented by The Jester of No Court’s equally delightful anti-folk song about stealing your wages back from your employer by pooping on the clock!
Clowns truly embody the spirit of Variety – it was almost too perfect of a fit for our humble show. Clowns can be sad and dejected, they can be silly and intoxicated, they can huff helium from balloons and sing Barbara Streisand hits, like Tank! I am officially in love with the art, and am deeply excited to continue my own Clown journey. It feels like unlocking a New Gender!
THIS ONE’S BY CASS!
Like Babz, I didn’t have a super clear understanding of clown until recently, when I started attending more formal Clown Shows that my friends in comedy and nightlife were putting on. Yes, I dabbled in clown in theater school as well, but have almost no memory of what we did or learned. Brooklyn Comedy Collective, where I work, has a clown class but I have yet to take it (though it’s still on my bucket list).
However, these strictly-clown events I went to in the past few months taught me that actually, I’ve always loved clown. The wacky, raucous “performance art” scene helmed by folks like Matthew Silver I spent my early 20s cavorting around with on both streets and stages was one of the first performance types that grabbed me beyond theater.
Now, I realize almost all of it was a form of clown. (The Brooklyn alt-comedy that was my gateway into the comedy scene years ago also definitely had clownish elements to it.)
How do you define clown anyway? Obviously, it’s an established performance genre some people have dedicated their lives to studying, but it’s also soooo wiggly and expansive, like a big silly umbrella that shields you from all the boring. It’s big, it’s performative, it’s weird, it’s earnest, it’s gross, it’s hot, it’s cute — sometimes all at once!
Technically, not everyone we booked identifies as a clown, which was kinda on purpose to show how many forms this style can take. Cochina Divina, a burlesque/drag artist, put their clowny spin on an act set appropriately to Fergie’s Clumsy, while Tank, who sings and does theater and drag, combined all three in a helium-inflated musical theater spectacle to close out the night.
Julian Hernandez and Josh Nasser, both comedians with material far more unique than your average stand-up, each took the crowd on a journey of jokes, readings, songs, and more, with just enough audience participation to keep people on their toes. I feel like good clown should make you excited, delighted, and nervous about what’s coming next. You’re so focused on what’s happening you don’t have time to think about your own life! That’s a gift.
There was classic clown makeup, jester hats, and red noses, but also people in normal clothes, whatever that means. Babz and I both performed, too — they opened the show with a lip-sync to Judy Garland’s Be A Clown featuring one of the longest scarf pulls I’ve ever seen, and I turned one of my old comedy songs about a failed watersports attempt into a creative, triumphant hunt for the letter P.
All in all, it was a great time, and we thank Clown Cult for inspiring us to throw a kooky lil clown event of our own. Now, prepare to get emo with us on October 19!