clown as sacred trickster

Sergey Ivchenko / Сергей Ивченко

Someone asked me if I thought Trump was a clown. We often hear this comparison - people wonder how we feel about politicians being called clowns. There has been some good writing on the subject, like this from the Guardian, when we were dealing with the buffoon, Boris Johnson.

There is a danger in being frivolous or off-hand with these comparisons - for both the clown and politicians. Regarding Trump though, he is demonstrating far more dangerous traits. And so I started to ponder the disruptive and destructive force of the Trickster.

For both Johnson and Trump, there is a danger when we put the clown or trickster on the throne because they can bring the whole house down. Certainly Trump seemed to be accelerating the decline of the United States and the status quo of the Capitalist world order.

These musings led me back to the writing of Lewis Hyde who wrote “Trickster Makes this World” and this thought-provoking podcast, ‘When Trickster Changes Sides’. Both reference how indigenous societies would ritualise their destruction in order to renew. They emphasise the sacred role of the trickster to challenge and refresh culture.

Historically, tricksters have been seen as essential figures: a chaotic, destructive force for change that arrives to renew the old, but not necessarily on our terms. Ancient cultures; from the ritualised mockery of Ancient Greece and the inverted celebrations of Carnival, to the role of the ‘ritual police’ among the Pueblo Indian Tribes of the southwestern United States, knew that keeping the trickster close, fed, and given a stage, was vital. By ritualising disruption, cultures could harness its power without allowing it to bring the whole system down.

Pueblo sacred clowns. | sarahzust.tumblr.com

Stanczyk by Jan Matejko

So if all systems, societies and communities must embrace periodic, controlled chaos to avoid stagnation but we have lost our spiritual avenues for ritualised destruction and mockery, does that sacred task now fall on the clowns?

Could we see our role as clowns; who turn rules on their heads, who transgresses and brings joy, where one expects only pain; as a sacred one. Can we be the ones who bring balance, renewal and innovation. And if so, how?

I brought these ideas to the Clown Congress; proposing a session called “Clown Trickster As Sacred Disruptor”.

The session began with this introduction to these musings and then an invitation for us to start with mockery. In pairs, one person was invited to mock the other and to discover all the ways we can do that. What emerged was a mix of mirroring, parody and sarcasm. Some really enjoyed the play, others felt like it was mean because it felt unnecessary in this particular space, while others noted the layers of mockery as some leant into firstly mocking themselves, in order to give the other something to mock them about. This exercise also raised the question; are we punching up or punching down? This question led the exploration in the next section.

We created four groups. Two groups played recognisable power structures; the police and the church exploring spaces where the trickster could play and mock authority. The other two groups created scenarios to mock something which is sacred and important to us. Here the trickster was playing in and around a funeral and child birth.

After a period of play we watched each of the groups.

A group of clowns played at mocking a military parade and a dictator. With my experience of clowning in protest, this was familiar territory. Here the naive clowns were trying their hardest to participate but getting it wrong and, importantly, getting in the way.

Another group were based in a church at a funeral. Here a clown chorus that chimed in alongside the priest, and offered dead flowers. There seemed to be catharsis in the transgressive play.

The mockery of our sacred spaces began to edge into the realm of the Bouffon; the figure who holds a mirror up to society, reflecting our own absurdities back at us.

Each group played lightly with sacred moments: childbirth and a humanist funeral, yet the scenes felt irreverent, challenging the sanctity of our most deeply held ideas and beliefs. Though edgy, this play was also funny, and strangely fruitful,  a space where the clown (or here, the bouffon) could thrive. By gently mocking, by testing the elasticity of what we consider sacred, even rigidly so, they invited us to laugh at ourselves. And in that laughter, something powerful emerged: regeneration through play.

This session ended but some questions still linger for me:

• Who should we mock, and why?
• When does mockery become rebellion, offence, or catharsis?
• Could disruption support ritual, rather than just mock it?

I'm excited to keep researching in this space with a new appreciation for the possibilities of the Bouffon to help me explore these further.