Get Things Done Through Fun!

Participant notes from Clown Congress 2025
Clown and Theatre of the Oppressed session proposed and documented by Rosa Stourac McCreery

I proposed the session because I have been researching and exploring the intersections of theatre of the oppressed practice and clowning, and if and how these forms can support each other and create different or new invitations to audiences to interact in meaningful ways which garner solidarity and can translate into real world actions.

I love clowning and I love theatre of the oppressed practice, they are the cornerstones of my life, and I think they offer us so much for healthy, connected ways of being, living and working together and challenging and proposing. Up until the past few years I had thought of these forms, as well as the physical theatre and Circus based arts which are other key parts of my practice, as necessarily separate. It seemed like the more physically challenging, or stylised forms couldn’t be used within a theatre of oppressed framework because of the need for audience to interact with the content, form, and aesthetics of a theatre of the oppressed play.

But, increasingly, I felt like it would be worth exploring what happens when we bring these forms together. Does it make for more dynamic theatre of the oppressed plays? Does the Clown help us to question and reflect on the oppressions being shown and how normalised they have become? Does the Clown help to bring humour to what can otherwise be heavy and depressing subjects to tackle? Is the Clown an obstruction or distraction to audiences interacting with the play? What becomes of the role of the Joker/facilitator of the of the oppressed process, when the Clown is already establishing a direct communication with the audience? All of these questions are ones that I have been exploring.

I was keen to bring this exploration to Clown Congress because of the range of clowns with different experiences that were there, and also because I think that it offers us important opportunities to question the purpose of the interaction with audience when we are clowning. Are we interacting with audience just because that’s what clowns do? It’s inherent to the form? What is it we are asking of audiences when we do this? How can interaction with audiences lead to a greater readiness to build solidarity and tackle the problems we can see represented in a Clown show, linking Clown with what’s happening in the world and inside of us?

The session itself I thought was really great – I was blown away by the enthusiasm people brought to the session, and how they took agency in it and made proposals.  It reminded me of the fabulous laboratory models of the feminist theatre of the oppressed practices, where we support each other’s aesthetic and political development by practically exploring our ideas for the enhancement of the play we have seen by another group by offering back a version we have quickly collectively worked on. Of course there’s only so much we can explore in the time we had and as people who are just meeting for the first time. Also, some folk there did not have prior experience or knowledge of theatre of the oppressed practice. I talked briefly about other experiences I had had of mixing these forms, most recently in Zambia, Brazil and Guatemala.

In Bristol, we decided to try out creating games for an audience with which they can interact which could lead to meaningful interactions, in terms of interactions that have to do with the content of the play and people taking action on the oppressions that are shown. A member of the group suggested that we choose a theme that is current and affect lots of people; the announcement about PIP benefits had been made fairly recently and of course many people were and are very worried about how this will impact. So we agreed to use that as the theme for the short pieces and games that we made.  I suggested that people could make an image of the oppression as a starting point, as a way of aesthetically representing our relationship to the issues, and giving a form to work from. 

Of the games that were created, one was much more clearly identifiable as a game. However, it felt as if it was the performers playing it rather than so much an invitation to the audience. So there would’ve been the task of working out how to make this accessible to an audience and get them involved, and it still felt a little bit unclear about what the purpose of the involvement would be. In the case of another group, we created an image as a starting point which showed a person representing capitalist system/politicians taking money away from people for their own gain, another figure who was supposed to be a support service or advocate, but seemed inept or over capacity and ultimately helpless, to support a third person who was clearly struggling and in need of support but increasingly downtrodden. The invitation was to step in as an audience member and act in solidarity, or support. Each of the characters appealed to members of this audience to join them or to acknowledge their intention. This one got somewhat chaotic, there was clear empathy with the person who most needed support, but the capitalist figure was very pervasive and paid very little heed to everything else that was happening. In some ways, quite real. But the audience was stalwart in support of their comrade, and kind of pushed the advocate out, whilst the money man was heading off doing his own thing. The advocate figure was a bone of contention, with most people seeming to feel that they were in the way and ultimately not serving the person who most needed it and needed to be taken out of the picture.  I feel in this case that the audience took roles as actively because they were very warm to the exercise and ready to interact. I do wonder how much a different audience would have got involved, or if they would just look on.

The third piece felt most effective theatrically and was impactful as well as compelling the audience to act, although performers came towards the audience rather than inviting the audience into the playing space. The piece was less clearly Clown, if anything had an element of grotesque and possibly what would be called dark Clown. It consisted of someone in need of support, and someone who was there clearly to be there with them and support them, but all the elements of support were being silently, insidiously stripped away by the shrouded figures approaching as if invisible and literally peeling away the elements which represented support. It was clear that the shrouded figures who were stripping all support elements away were coming for the persons life next. However, at that point the person came into the audience asking for help and solidarity, and the audience closed in around them preventing the shouted characters from getting to them. Whilst this piece was the one which really created shudders in us as audience members and where there was a clear offer and mechanism of acting in solidarity, there was much less playfulness and Clown-based verve. It would’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened to the piece if more of this was present in it, and how this might have changed the relationship with the audience or not. Also, I think it would be useful to think about how the piece could be a stimulus for discussion about what that kind of solidarity would look like in real world terms, and for the narrative to be developed so that there was more variety of possibilities for interaction and intervention in the narrative from the audience.

As the notes from the session attest, I think through the session and as a group we asked many really useful questions, and I really appreciated the opportunity to continue to explore and interrogate these forms coming together. I think more time would be needed to develop Clown aesthetics and narrative which invite audience involvement and maintain a sense of critical thinking throughout, acknowledging the dangers of people just getting swept along and not really thinking about what they’re actually doing and why. I think there’s something interesting about the power of the performance space and an enticing character or set of actions, and the way that an audience can get carried along with that power, or may reject it because it feels unsafe for outside of their comfort zone. I think there is still so much to be explored with these questions and with more time and space to do so it would be great to continue to share discoveries and insights.

They were also good questions asked in the session about the differences between impulsive, in-the-moment actions, which someone proposed was like the metaphor of the warrior, versus slower more considered actions which would take a longer period of time to achieve, for which the image of the midwife was used. This line of questioning also makes me think about what kind of process the performance sits within. Whether or not there is the possibility to develop relationship with the audience to create dialogue and involvement in a variety of ways, including after the performance thinking about how collective strategies that have been proposed in the creative moment can be harnessed and acted upon and what kind of organising needs to take place to support that.