Howdy! This is an ongoing travelogue experiment following revelations related to attending clown camp. Part cultural analysis, part Jenny Lawson/Sedaris style essays. Catch up with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. You can also wing it and keep reading! There are no rules!
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Paola Coletto’s clown and physical performance school expect the impossible from their students, and the students learn how to become what was previously impossible. It is an exacting and arduous process toward free expression. In their full-year program, a third of it is spent in Italy where ppromising but under-practiced Commedia del Arte masks.
Signing up for a week-long intensive was a leap of faith for what I considered my own promising-but-under-practiced comedy. “They will surely see that I am an imposter without a core to my antics,” I thought in my leisure moments. “Can’t wait for the moment I’m revealed to never once seen Rent. I’ll assure them my sketch comedy has allusions to Pinter and Beckett and a pile of names I’ve learned. I’ll tell them “Waiting For Godot has more than two characters, actually,” and we will all nod. I have passed the modernist theatre shibboleth.
Paola Colletto’s week-long intensive was offered in 2015 and the session I signed up for was canceled. They tried to move the intensive to the next week with 10 days’ notice in a hurried email, but alas, I couldn’t take a second week off of work.
In 2022, I’m at Mooseburger Clown Camp, hosted by lauded Minnesotan clown queen Pricilla Mooseburger. It’s different. Not better, not worse, but entirely a different beast. Centering on the American tradition of clown as popularized by three-ring circuses, parades, and birthday parties, Mooseburger features no leather masks to be hand-made under the tutelage of a Sicilian tanner, nor wine to be sipped while gazing over the Tyrrhenian. We have a prop station where we can customize our kazoos with garden hose and pool noodles. A workshop is offered on the proper way to launch pies (open-palmed, gentle, and consensual.) Our cafeteria food is All-American and questionable. To hell with the Mediterranean. We got Lake Buffalo, and we’re better for it.
“Clowning 101” starts at 8:30 AM and runs until 11. The five-day course focuses on the foundations of crafting a clown identity. Each class is split into two parts: a makeup portion where we learn our basics for making our clown face, and a performance portion that delves into the specificities of being a clown-for-hire. We go over the clown etiquette and protocols for parades, birthday parties, and hospitals.
Because we are all beginners, the person teaching the makeup portion of the class has a no-nonsense approach to traditional forms of clown face designs. Her section of the room has two walls of clown faces printed out for our perusal. Yesterday, the class pulled their inspiration from these faces. Today, they hunkered down and figured out the minutia for their clown face. Missing a day of deliberation, I quickly selected a clown face. And then another one. And then fell out of love with that one, and picked another. All your favorites were represented, including:
Sad hobo
Happy hobo
Mature Pippy Longstockings
Country Doctor
Sad Mime
Mimey Bad Boy
Traditional Big Red Mouth Guy
White Face (Fancy)
White Face (Doofy)
Scarecrow-Looking Lady
Young Buck Alt Clown With Mohawk
I go for an auguste look, where the white is limited to accentuating facial features and not the entire head. The idea of going full whiteface on this time constraint seems a little much. My teacher Annette shows infinite patience.
Makeup is not my strong suit. Applying makeup remains on my list of “oughtas.” Years of yearning to present more femme have availed little progress. I’ll coat my face in a… concealer? It’s liquidy and the color of my skin. Whatever it is, I glob it on and smooth it out. Eye shadow is applied with my fingers. I feel most confident with eyeliner. Apply it thick to look dramatic, smear it throughout the day to look like a raccoon and channel the goblin-energy that best describes my quieter moments. When I do attempt to be more serious about makeup minutia, applying it agitates my perfectionism. An attempt to futz myself out of a smear becomes a protracted battle with no winner, besides Revlon and the Walgreens down the street.
I had trouble looking like an effeminate clown. Maybe I was putting too much pressure on the makeup. Looking back, I could have gone the route of piling on eyelashes and dimples until my face was 90% femme-signifiers. The number of Jesuses watching me didn’t help. A familiar sense of fatigue set in.
With femme makeup struggles, I can at least go halfway and be sloppy but still femme. I won’t pass, but the makeup hangs a sign on my face that reads “not strictly man.” It works in some places, and attracts the wrong attention in others.
Sloppy clown makeup veers into murder clown territory. They don’t care much for murder clowns here. Mention of the haunted clown met with a quick “let’s move on” response or risks a complete conversational derailment. Scary clowns cast a tall shadow over the community-driven working class clowns. Any mention of the creepy, shadowy side of clown reveals a simmering frustration too great to be obscured by grease paint alone. The clown fear coalesced in 1980s America, meaning we’ve been living with coulrophobia for about 40 years. It’s a genre of horror unique to us. We love terrifying clowns.
Personally, I like being a fun non-murdering clown. I feel as though I only scratched the surface of what that looks like on my face. Gender and clown dysphorias came together and formed a perfect storm. Part of the reason I like clown is the physical performance, but this makeup weighed down my body. Maybe if I wasn’t committing to this type of classic Americana clown for this class I’d be in better spirits. For whatever reason, I stayed committed, to mixed and anxiety-generating results.
Don’t let this reflect poorly on the entire experience. A trans clown in my group crushed it. The interfaith atheist minister aspiring to be a sad hobo also crushed it. The retired police sergeant and his wife who decided to try something new? Thriving.
I readily accept that I have brought baggage to clown camp. The bags are small and filled with impossibly large items for comic effect.
Thank you for reading! The next entry in this story will be shared within the week, and I’m permitting myself to publish issues unrelated to this story as they come to mind. Thanks!