1
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques
Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
To cite this article:
SCALARI, Rodrigo. The child as a model in clown
pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe
Gaulier.
Urdimento
– Revista de Estudos em Artes
Cênicas, Florianópolis, v. 2, n. 47, jul. 2023.
DOI: http:/dx.doi.org/10.5965/1414573102472023e0104
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The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
2
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau,
Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
1
Rodrigo Scalari
2
Abstract
The article stems from my PhD research on the child as a model in theatre pedagogy.
It reveals tacit relations between the child and the clown in Jacques Copeau's
thinking and the way in which the child becomes a model for learning clown language
in Jacques Lecoq's and Philippe Gaulier's pedagogies. The aim is to problematise
commonplaces about the child-clown relationship through a dialogue with different
disciplines (anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychology, performance studies), in
search of an expanded understanding of notions such as innocence, authenticity,
singularity and creativity in the clown's training within the French theatrical tradition
of Copeau-Lecoq-Gaulier.
Keywords
: Child. Clown. Theatrical Pedagogy. French Theatre. Acting.
L'enfant comme modèle dans la pédagogie du clown : chez Jacques
Copeau, Jacques Lecoq et Philippe Gaulier
Résumé
L'article est issu de ma recherche doctorale sur l'enfant comme modèle dans la
pédagogie théâtrale. Il met en évidence les relations tacites entre l'enfant et le clown
dans la pensée de Jacques Copeau et la manière dont l'enfant devient un modèle
pour l'apprentissage du langage clownesque dans les pédagogies de Jacques Lecoq
et de Philippe Gaulier. L'objectif est de problématiser les lieux communs sur la
relation enfant-clown à partir d'un dialogue avec différentes disciplines
(anthropologie, psychanalyse, psychologie, études de la performance), à la recherche
d'une compréhension élargie de notions telles que l'innocence, l'authenticité, la
singularité et la créativité dans la formation du clown au sein de la tradition théâtrale
française de Copeau-Lecoq-Gaulier.
Mots-clés
: Enfant. Clown. Pédagogie théâtrale. Théâtre français. Jeu d'acteur.
1
Spelling and grammar revision of the article by Rodrigo Monteiro. Graduated in Languages -
Portuguese/English at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (2007). Bachelor's Degree in Social
Communication - Audiovisual Production with specialization in Scriptwriting and Art Direction from the same
university (2008). And Master in Performing Arts at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2011).
http://lattes.cnpq.br/7379695337614127
2
PhD in Theatre Studies from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III (FR), with the support of the Full
Doctorate Abroad Scholarship from CAPES. Actor, researcher and theatre teacher. Master in Theatre by the
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP/Brazil), with the support of a FAPESP Master scholarship.
Graduated in Theatre by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS/Brazil). rscalari@gmail.com
http://lattes.cnpq.br/3449140497011229 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6163-1744
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
3
El niño como modelo en la pedagogía del clown: en Jacques
Copeau, Jacques Lecoq y Philippe Gaulier
Resumen
El artículo proviene de mi investigación doctoral sobre el niño como modelo
en la pedagogía teatral. Destaca las relaciones tácitas entre el niño y el payaso
en el pensamiento de Jacques Copeau y la forma por la que el niño se
convierte en modelo de aprendizaje del lenguaje del payaso en las pedagogías
de Jacques Lecoq y Philippe Gaulier. El objetivo es problematizar los lugares
comunes sobre la relación niño-payaso a partir de un diálogo con diferentes
disciplinas (antropología, psicoanálisis, psicología, estudios de performance),
en busca de una comprensión ampliada de nociones como inocencia,
autenticidad, singularidad y creatividad en la formación del payaso dentro de
la tradición teatral francesa de Copeau-Lecoq-Gaulier.
Palabras clave
: Niño. Payaso. Pedagogía teatral. Teatro francés. Actuación.
A criança como modelo na pedagogia do
Clown
: em Jacques
Copeau, Jacques Lecoq e Philippe Gaulier
Resumo
O artigo é oriundo de minha pesquisa de doutorado sobre a criança como modelo
na pedagogia teatral. Evidenciam-se relações tácitas entre a criança e o
clown
no
pensamento de Jacques Copeau e a maneira pela qual a criança se torna um modelo
para a aprendizagem da linguagem
clownesca
nas pedagogias de Jacques Lecoq e
de Philippe Gaulier. Objetiva-se a problematização de lugares comuns sobre a
relação
criança-clown
a partir de um diálogo com diferentes disciplinas
(antropologia, psicanálise, psicologia,
performance studies
), em busca de uma
compreensão expandida de noções como inocência, autenticidade, singularidade e
criatividade na formação do clown dentro da tradição teatral francesa de Copeau-
Lecoq-Gaulier.
Palavras-chave
: Criança.
Clown
. Pedagogia Teatral. Teatro francês. Atuação.
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
4
Introduction
If, on the one hand, the child embodies the ideal spectator of the clown
performance, on the other hand, the figure of the child is often evoked during the
process of construction of the clown itself by the actor. It is in this second direction
that I will develop the present text: in order to demonstrate the ways in which the
figure of the child has influenced Jacques Copeau's understanding of clowning, as
well as the teaching of clowning by Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier, three
French theatrical pedagogues belonging to the same current of research on the
actor's work and influential in Brazil and in the world.
This text displays part of the results of my doctoral thesis, entitled
L'enfant
comme modèle dans la pédagogie théâtrale. Dans les approches de Jacques
Copeau, Jacques Lecoq et Philippe Gaulier
3
(Scalari, 2021a), defended in January
2021 at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III, carried out under the
supervision of Josette Féral and funded by the CAPES Full Doctoral Scholarship
Abroad Programme. In the doctoral research, I investigated the way through which
the child became a model from which Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and
Philippe Gaulier rethink acting and formulate new questions in relation to the
actor's training. The research had an ethnographic outlook, with a field work based
on the practical training of the author at the
École Philippe Gaulier
, benefiting
equally from a wide documental research carried out on unpublished material
preserved at the
Fonds Copeau of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
, from an
extensive bibliographical research and from interviews with personalities involved
with the work of the three theatrical pedagogues present in the research corpus
4
.
3
The child as a model in theatrical pedagogy. In the approaches of Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and
Philippe Gaulier.
4
This article contains excerpts from interviews I conducted with Guy Freixe, Guy Langford, Nicole
Kehrberger, and Pascale Lecoq. The full versions of the interviews can be found in the appendices of my
doctoral thesis in the reference list at the end of this article.
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
5
Jacques Copeau and the discovery of the intact nature of
clowns: the examples of Chaplin and the Fratellini Brothers
I would like to add that, in my opinion, it is perhaps the great
virtue of cinema to make dramatic art return to its childhood
and thus recover its principles (Copeau, 1995, p. 27, our
translation).
5
In the passage above, Jacques Copeau refers less to cinema than to one of
its greatest 20th-century filmmakers, Charlie Chaplin. Through the writer Waldo
Frank, Copeau met Chaplin in 1928, when the latter came to France for the launch
of "The Circus", and the two spend an evening together when Copeau takes Chaplin
to the
Cirque Médrano
to show him the work of the Fratellini Brothers. To Chaplin's
creative genius, Copeau dedicates
Réflexions sur un comédien
6
, a text in which
Chaplin's tramp becomes the embodied example of those characters with which
Copeau dreamed of updating the spirit of
Commedia dell'arte
, through the creation
of his
Nouvelle Comédie Improvisée
7
. In his text, Jacques Copeau wonders about
the reasons for Chaplin's popularity. His hypothesis: "It is that Charlie is a character.
He created a character. That character lives in him and he lives in this character.
[...] he lives, he thinks, he acts, he suffers for the benefit of the characters he feeds
every day with his own substance and that of his art" (Copeau, 1995, p. 27, our
translation)
8
.
In the same text, Copeau does not spare words of exaltation for Chaplin's art,
of which he is clearly an admirer. However, what surprises him most is the
moderate personality and untouched nature of an actor who does not fall into the
temptation of extravagance even when worshipped by crowds.
To escape the ovations, he had to hail a taxi. Later I realised that
the crowd frightened him. And I made this simple reflection, which
5
J'ajoute que, selon moi, ce sera peut-être la grande vertu du cinéma de faire retourner l'art dramatique à
son enfance et de lui faire retrouver ainsi ses principes.
6
Reflections on an actor.
7
New Improvised Comedy.
8
C'est que Charlie est un personnage. Il a créé un personnage. Ce personnage vit en lui et il vit en ce
personnage. [...] il vit, il pense, il agit, il souffre au profit de personnages qu'il nourrit chaque jour de sa propre
substance et de celle de son art.
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Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
6
at first did not come to mind, that this idol of the crowd is never in
contact with it, that he gives it his image but not his person or his
nerves. His work is studio work, always done in recollection. This
would be enough to explain why Charlie, as he matures, not only
does not deform, but always asserts himself with greater measure,
style and distinction: "I could never - he explained to me - perform
on stage.... The only thing I like to do is play charades with some
friends." I saw him, one evening, amusing himself with a child,
making graceful faces with her, which he knew how to put within
his reach, and which were much less the work of a professional
actor than of a delicate improviser (Copeau, 1995, p. 26, our
translation).
9
The nature preserved from self-centred deformations arising from success is
what Jacques Copeau also sees in other comedians, notably in the
Fratellini
Brothers
. Regarding the family of clowns, Copeau expresses his admiration for their
style and their gentleness and emphasises the importance of the support that the
three brothers give each other when they perform together, a perfectly balanced
tripod that Copeau wishes not to see eroded by vanity and frivolity.
Always, with your modesty, keep this emotion at work. Never let success
distract you from your true beauty. Remain always together, all three of
you. It is your trinity that is sovereign. Three great actors, knowing how to
play well together, can alone play the whole drama of the universe. […]
You will always be distinguished by two inimitable characteristics:
your
purity of style and your gentleness.
I call "purity of style" technical
perfection and in particular muscular perfection at the service of a
spontaneous and sincere feeling. And I call "gentleness" in everything you
do, the smile of your intact nature (Copeau, 2012, p. 217, our translation).
10
9
Pour se soustraire aux ovations, il fallut héler un taxi. J’ai compris plus tard que la foule lui faisait peur. Et je
fis cette réflexion, bien simple, mais qui ne vient pas tout d’abord à l’esprit, que cette idole de la foule n’est
jamais en contact avec elle, qu’il lui livre son image, mais point sa personne ni ses nerfs. Son travail est un
travail d’atelier, exécuté toujours dans le recueillement. Cela suffirait à expliquer que Charlie, à mesure qu’il
mûrit, non seulement ne se déforme pas, mais qu’il s’affirme toujours avec plus de mesure, de style et de
distinction : « Jamais – m’expliquait-il – je n’aurais pu jouer sur la scène… La seule chose que j’aime à faire
c’est de jouer des charades avec quelques amis ». Je l’ai vu, tout un soir, s’amuser avec un enfant, faire avec
lui de gracieuses· grimaces qu’il savait mettre à sa portée et qui étaient bien moins d’un acteur de métier
que d’un improvisateur plein de tact.
10
Gardez toujours, avec votre modestie, cette émotion dans le travail. Ne vous laissez jamais détourner par le
succès de votre vraie beauté. Demeurez toujours ensemble, tous les trois. C’est votre trinité qui est
souveraine. Trois grands acteurs, sachant bien jouer ensemble, peuvent représenter à eux seuls le drame
entier de l’Univers. […] On vous distinguera toujours à deux traits inimitables ; votre pureté de style et votre
gentillesse. J’appelle chez vous « pureté de style » la perfection technique et notamment la perfection
musculaire au service d’un sentiment spontané et sincère. Et j’appelle « gentillesse » dans tout ce que vous
faites, le sourire de votre nature intacte.
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
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Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
7
What Jacques Copeau admires in clowns are precisely the same attributes
that he always admitted he recognised in children. Like children, for Copeau,
clowns preserve the innocence and sincerity of their nature: "Clowns do not have
the pedantry of actors. They are sincere and naïve. They do difficult and modest
work" (Copeau, 1999, p. 178, our translation)
11
. Therefore, it is not in default of his
theatrical interests that Copeau approaches clowns, because, as in the case of
children in their games
12
, clowns seemed to him to point in the right direction to
renew the actor. In fact, Copeau's ambition was to transform his actors into
improvisers who were as good at reacting to the present moment as the clowns
are.
However, Copeau was unable to conduct systematic pedagogical research on
the art of the clown within his company or his theatre school. This would only
happen much later, in the work of Jacques Lecoq, who definitely introduced the
search for “one’s own clown” in the universe of practices concerning the training
of actors.
Jacques Lecoq and the search for “one’s own clown”: meeting
the child who has grown within us
According to Lecoq, clowns appeared in his school in the 1960s, when he
wondered about the relationship between commedia dell'arte and circus clowns.
A man of practice, Lecoq could not have formulated a more concise and
galvanising question to trigger an experimental approach around the clown: “the
clown makes us laugh, but how? (Lecoq, 2009, p. 152). By focusing on the 'how'
rather than the 'what', Jacques Lecoq immediately pushes his students into
practice, without any concern for the historical reconstruction of the figure of the
clown, but with a view to its discovery. Lecoq thus allowed the emergence of a
11
Les clowns n’ont pas le pédantisme des comédiens. Ils sont sincères, naïfs. Ils font un métier difficile et
modeste.
12
Childhood and children's play were objects of observation and experimentation in the research of a new
pedagogy of the actor in Jacques Copeau. For more information, I recommend reading four other articles of
my own: Quand le théâtre rejoint l'enfance: Apports de la Children's School à la pédagogie de l'acteur au
sein de l'École du Vieux-Colombier (Scalari, 2021b); Copeau e os laboratórios da infância: as brincadeiras de
seus filhos, ou, melhor dizendo, le tout rond (Scalari, 2022a); Jacques Copeau e o instinto dramático da
criança (Scalari, 2022b); Copeau and Bing's Childhood Laboratories: a group of children, the embryo of the
École du Vieux Colombier (Scalari, 2023).
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
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Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
8
new clown language, the theatrical one, while inventing a pedagogy for it.
It is through the actor's body exploration and the improvisation that, following
a practical approach, Jacques Lecoq begins his research on the clown. One of his
first observations is that the clown involves the actor's subjectivity in a way that
was unheard of in his school, more than in any other dramatic territory studied by
him before.
I'm going to tell you now about another sector. [...] Which is the search
for ‘one’s own clown’. But this should not be understood in the sense of
the traditional circus clown [...] But in the sense of the search for
ourselves through our clown. Because there is a child that has grown in
us that we can no longer express in social relationships. It was with us
when we were small, but it is not the child in us, it is the child that has
grown in us, with its own gestures, with its own voice. And these are
extremely personal to us. [...] And it is this, bringing it to the surface, that
will give the represented clown a human, sensitive value. Then we realise
that our own clown is us (Jacques Lecoq apud Patrick Lecoq, 2016, 0'27
'', our translation).
13
Placed at the end of the training in the schools of Lecoq and Gaulier, the
clown takes the opposite path to the neutral mask, a technique figuring at the
beginning of the training in both schools. If, in the neutral mask, the work consists
of allowing being impregnated by the external phenomenological world, by the
experience of what is outside, of the things, of the elements of nature, in the search
for “
one’s own clown
”, the actor exposes to the others what is intimate and
personal in him, in many cases his own fragilities. In the neutral mask, it is
necessary to open up to let the world imprint its marks on us. In the clown, the
actor also opens up, but to seek in himself his singularity, to show it to the
audience and thus leave his personal mark in the world.
Search your own child, but avoid infantilism
From now on, about clown teaching in Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier,
13
Je vais vous parler maintenant d’un autre secteur. […] Qui est la recherche de son propre clown. Mais il ne
faut pas l’entendre dans le sens du clown traditionnel du cirque […]Mais de la recherche de nous-mêmes
par son clown. Car il y a un enfant qui a grandi en nous et qu’on ne peut plus exprimer dans les rapports
sociaux. Il était avec nous quand on était petit, mais ce n’est pas l’enfant qui est en nous, c’est l’enfant qui
a grandi en nous, avec ses gestes propres, avec sa voix propre. Et qui nous sont extrêmement personnels.
[…] Et c’est ça, à le faire ressortir, ce qui va donner au clown représenté, une valeur humaine, sensible. Alors,
on s’aperçoit que notre propre clown c’est nous.
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
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Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
9
we can start from the following premise: the child model is extremely important
in the clown's pedagogical practice, and its application in no way represents the
actor's fall into what we might call
infantilism
.
The mark we leave as clowns is the revelation of something personal which,
for Gaulier and Lecoq, has to do with the childhood of each student and not with
the exteriorisation of a supposedly childish behaviour. Although the clown belongs
to the universe of the theatrical mask, the clown's mask, as "the smallest mask in
the world”, Lecoq underlines, “gives the nose a round shape, lights up the eyes
with naiveté and makes the face seem bigger, robbing it of all defences” (Lecoq,
2006b, p.116).
In the same vein, Gaulier states, "As a teacher, I like to work with a red nose
because when a student is with one, I see better how he was as a child" (Gaulier,
2016a). Therefore, worse than not finding the "repressed child that grew up in you",
is to willingly assume an immature attitude that is pretentiously childish.
Philippe Gaulier and childlike ingenuity/innocence in clowning
Nicole Kehrberger, a former teacher at
École Philippe Gaulier
, tells us about
her discomfort when she engaged in clown training at another school, before
arriving at Gaulier's school as a student.
I learned a lot about fake acting. I call it fake acting. A fake smile… Even
in the clown workshop, it was about gags, but I did not see any humanity
and I did not know myself how to approach to change that, to make it
differently. I learned to be effective on stage on doing a gag and to smile
at people in a fake way, to be funny enough… And for me, the audience
who used to go […] they accepted it and they liked it. Maybe because they
don’t know it better. Maybe because that’s what they like. I don’t know,
but I hated it. I felt bad in my skin. […] what I mean with this fake, it’s you
put a grimace on your face, you put a mask, not a real mask, but it’s like
people that have a mask on their face, and I cannot see their soul. I cannot
see the human being. And seeing the human being is what which makes
life beautiful because everybody is so different. Probably I went to
Philippe, amongst other things, [...] but probably one of the points was
that I was looking for something else. I was looking for a teacher or a
school or anything that could help me out of this prison. (Kehrberger apud
Scalari, 2021a, p.662).
Kehrberger's testimony can be related to clown-training processes in which
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
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Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
10
a connection between the comic figure and an overly romanticised view of the
child is used by a pedagogue supposedly to help an actor discover his clown. The
behaviour which Nicole refers by the term fake acting, which she claims to have
become a prison for herself, is related to the idea of a "childlike naivety" of a type
that is severely criticised by Gaulier.
Members of the audience admire the pleasure, the tactics and the fantasy
which a clown employs to make them believe something. They couldn’t
care less if it’s true or false. They admire the naivety, which the dictionary
defines as simplicity, a natural grace imbued with trust and sincerity. The
naivety I’m referring to has nothing to do with the shabby false naivety
which street performers put on when parading themselves as sweet,
asexual, pure, foolish characters begging for loose change. This is ugly
naivety. It makes the performer an insignificant little nothing. The naivety
I’m referring to has the freshness of freedom. (Gaulier, 2012, p. 289).
Report of a day of the clown course at the École Philippe Gaulier:
Wednesday, 27 November 2013, at around 6.30pm, École Philippe Gaulier,
Étampes, France
We are in the last weeks of the clown course. This is the clown course of the
second year of the school, which lasts a total of ten weeks. Juan
14
is an Argentinian
actor who has come especially for the clown course. This is a common occurrence
at the school as it is internationally known for its training of clowns. Juan has had
many difficulties so far, but, in the last days, he has made remarkable progress. At
this point in the course, in addition to the improvisation exercises that Philippe
proposes for the class, we can perform clowns' numbers, individually, in pairs, in
groups, in any way we like, in order to try to find a place for our numbers in the
final showcase of the course. Juan has a proposal to make today.
Juan arrives with an air of Latin chivalry. A song begins to play; Juan expresses
surprise in his eyes. As if he didn't know what was going to happen; he continues
to look at us with a strange face until, as soon as the lyrics begin, we discover that
it is Julio Iglesias in one of his romantic songs. Juan pulls a microphone with a
cable from his pocket, which is not connected to any power source, and starts
14
Fictitious name given in order to respect the privacy of the actor mentioned.
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11
dubbing the song. Philippe interrupts him a few seconds later. Then, as always, he
asks one of the students in the audience if he found Juan's act funny or if it would
have been better not to have watched it. The student responds by saying that he
would have preferred not to watch. This is what we call the Flop, a feeling of failure
accentuated by Philippe's words. After leaving the actor in this state of failure,
Philippe says: "You can see that his microphone cable is nowhere connected. We
don't see him playing the clown who wants us to believe he is Julio Iglesias."
This is a basic rule of clown teaching in Gaulier's approach: the clown, in all
his acts, wants to make the audience believe that he is something he is not.
Philippe then recalls a situation experienced by his
son, Samuel, when he was six years old. Preparing to
celebrate his sixth birthday the next day, Samuel was
determined to dress up as D'Artagnan. But he made one
very important request: Daddy, I have to dress in a hidden
place, because if people look at me while I am dressed up,
no one will believe that I am really D'Artagnan. Philippe
turns back to Juan: "Maybe if we saw that his microphone
was disconnected only at the end, it could be funny. It
would also depend a lot on the actor. Now it's a disaster."
To be naïve, innocent, refers to the clown's inability to
adapt to the conventions of the ordinary world within which
he presents himself as an outsider. The idea of the clown
as a little butterfly walking through a garden of beautiful and delicate flowers has
nothing to do, at least in Philippe Gaulier's pedagogy, with the clown's sense of
naivety or innocence. From a completely different perspective than that of
idealized innocence, actor and researcher Guy Freixe
15
, witnesses an anarchist
personality revealed by Gaulier's own clown, this time as an actor and on stage.
15
Actor, director and teacher, Guy Freixe is also a university professor of theatre theory and practice at the
Université de Franche-Comté. He graduated from École Jacques Lecoq and was an actor at the Théâtre
du Soleil from 1981 to 1986.
Samuel Gaulier dressed as
D'Artagnan. Photo in the
commemorative program of 25
years of the school, 2005.
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Childhood, in Gaulier, was in his clown. The dirty child, the one who
cannot express himself, the transgressor child. There are all kinds of
clowns. There are ugly faces, frowns, imps or even clowns whose origins
are unknown. Gaulier's clown is very rude, very anarchist, he must come
from a part of childhood that in adulthood no longer appears, and that,
suddenly, reappears through the clown (Freixe apud Scalari, 2021a, p. 598,
our translation).
16
If, in the territory of the clown, as Lecoq proposes, it is about relating to the
child that has grown within us, nothing prevents the discovery of the clown himself
from revealing a child with characteristics contrary to delicacy and courtesy. It is
quite possible that the approach of the clown himself reveals the child as
narcissistic, brutal, rude. And all this without losing its innocence.
Another situation that occurred in our field research at École Philippe Gaulier
complexifies the idea of the type of innocence present in the clown.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013, at around 6.30pm, École Philippe Gaulier,
Étampes, France
When two clowns were about to make us lose interest in their improvisation,
Alice
17
, a Swiss student, did not hesitate to look at the audience and with a serious
expression of indignation in her eyes, asked: "You fuck my wife?" This is a classic
Robert De Niro sentence in a scene from the film "Taxi Driver". The sentence was
so unusual that it surprised us and made the audience laugh out loud. Stimulated
by the laughter of the audience, seeing her strategy of "saving the show"
18
working,
Alice repeats: "You fuck my wife?" Once again, we started laughing, Alice was like
a child who played with her parents and made them laugh. The fact that Alice kept
repeating the phrase made us laugh and the more she repeated it, the more we
laughed. From that day on, the phrase became a strategy thanks to which, in all
16
L’enfance, chez Gaulier, était dans son clown. Le sale enfant, celui qui ne peut pas s’exprimer, l’enfant
transgressif… Des clowns, il y en a de toutes sortes. Il y a des sales gueules, il y des teigneux, des petits
diables ou même des clowns dont on ne sait pas d’où ils viennent. Le clown de Gaulier est très mal poli,
très anarchiste, cela doit venir d’une part de l’enfance qui à l’âge adulte n’apparaît plus, et qui, tout d’un
coup, réapparaît par le clown.
17
Fictitious name given in order to respect the privacy of the actress mentioned.
18
This is one of the principles we learned in Gaulier's clown course. Like a child who wants to retain our
attention, when playing clown we have to keep the audience's attention and love at all costs, without which
we have to leave the stage. As the clown's ambition is to never leave the stage, we have to do anything to
"save the show".
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the following improvisations, when the attention of the audience dwindled, Alice
was able to save her improvisation. All she had to do was look at us seriously and
ask us, "You fuck my wife?"
What was interesting in Alice's strategy was not the phrase itself, but the way
she said it, a twinkle in her eye appeared when she noticed that what she had said
had provoked frantic laughter from the audience. We had the impression that in
fact this clown did not even know the meaning of what she was saying, an
impression reinforced by the fact that the actress in question had French as her
mother tongue, and that she, in the vast majority of cases, had improvised in
French. In praise of Alice's strategy, Gaulier commented, "It was good! It's like a
child who saw the film and liked this phrase without understanding what it means.
And who only retained this phrase from what he saw".
As Pascale Lecoq points out about the clown, "it is linked to a state of
enormous availability [...] a state of openness. Just as a child is available to the
world [...] Being innocent, seeing things without judgment"
19
(Pascale Lecoq apud
Scalari, 2021a, p. 616, our translation). In this way, the clown can utter a cheeky
phrase like "You fuck my wife?" emptying it of its sexual connotation because,
without understanding what it means, the clown just wants us to believe that he
is Robert De Niro's character in this scene from Taxi Driver. To be naïve in the
clown means not conforming to the norm by not understanding it, a characteristic
that gives the clown a certain degree of stupidity, quite human, but which, in
ordinary life, we often try to hide. In this sense, Guy Langford, former professor at
the École Philippe Gaulier, draws a parallel between the ingenuity of the child and
the clown.
There is something about the naivety of a child that is the same as a
clown. […] that naivety is great because it means that a clown doesn’t […]
really know what a doctor does. So, when it’s asked to be a doctor, he
does a very simplistic idea of a doctor and then it’s very kind of charming
to watch. […] It’s funny because we see a child pretending to be a doctor,
it’s not really like a doctor, but it’s really lovely to see what the child thinks
the doctor is (Langford apud Scalari, 2021a, p.702).
In order to make more concrete the kind of simplistic idea that, like the clown,
19
Il est lié à un état de disponibilité énorme […] un état d’ouverture. Comme l’enfant est disponible au monde
[…] Être innocent, regarder les choses sans jugement.
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a child can have of any activity, we could not resort to a better example than the
one given by Nicole Kehrberger talking about her granddaughter.
I just have a remembering on my grandchild. She’s a child really thin. Her
mum is tight and she’s small. [...] she’s a really tiny person this girl. And
she saw her father exercising, her father is totally mad about sports and
my other son as well, both sons. So, they exercise. So, they do push-ups,
and they pull, and they put [...] techno music to push themselves. And,
and the funny thing is [...] especially my youngest son, he always takes
out his shirt. So, he does it with the body naked and I always laugh about
it. But he loves it. And he does like this probably because he sees his
muscles better. [...] And my grandchild observed how the big man, they
do exercise. And she knows the word exercise, because often she asks:
“what are you doing?” And Milan, my youngest son, he says I’m doing
exercises, I’m exercising. And one day I discovered her, she was alone in
the room, she asked me to put techno music for her. This music from
Milan, she asked. So, I put the music and I left her alone and I came back,
and she was without t-shirt, trousers. And she did. (Nicole makes straight
movements with her arms) (laughs) And I said: what are you doing? It was
totally ridiculous what she did, her movements, you know, and I said,
“what are you doing?” And she says, I’m doing exercise. So, she
understood you have to have no t-shirt to exercise, to do straight
movements. She doesn’t know the meaning of the movement; she
doesn’t understand what it is about. But she understood she has to do
like this and like this and no t-shirt on, you know? For me this is the
perfect clown. It’s the perfect clown. So probably if she has a good
teacher and she wants to do this kind profession, then maybe she will be
a superhero in her costume. I don’t know. Because that makes it totally
ridiculous. Especially being such a fine female body, you know, it was
absolutely ridiculous (Kehrberger apud Scalari, 2021a, p. 666).
The clown, the child and the problematic of the "authentic self"
According to Jacques Lecoq, "Only children display their feelings directly"
(Lecoq, 2006a, p. 16). To exemplify, Lecoq imagines the potential embarrassment
he would cause if he decided, like some children, to show his tongue to another
adult he did not like, which, if done by a child, even if it generated some
embarrassment, would be easily forgivable because such behaviour is seen by us
as something inherent to the child condition: “‘Oh! Pay no attention, he’s just a
child!’” (Lecoq, 2006a, p. 16). However, for Lecoq, the processes of education and
socialisation cause the child to gradually lose the gestural spontaneity that he
manifests before incorporating social codes of behaviour.
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To show one’s feelings is not polite. Society comes along with its rules of
conduct and corrects such spontaneous behaviour. Society fights against
natural, instinctive gestures which appear vulgar (Lecoq, 2006a, p. 16).
The struggle evoked above is not without consequences on the corporality of
the human being educated to live in society. For Lecoq, a kind of split is created
between the natural state of the body, where internal motivations would be in
conformity with its external expressions, and a state of the body "flattened" by
culture, a state that becomes a
second nature
.
A number of our movements are quite involuntary and we frequently
express our intimate feelings by means of instinctive gestures: I clench
my fist or I tap my foot because I am angry, because I object to something
or because I detest it. Through observing the effect produced on others
by these uncontrolled gestures, we become aware of them and begin to
use them deliberately in order to obtain the desired reactions. Little by
little, these gestures acquire clarity. By force of habit, we end up
assimilating them into our own being and using them without noticing.
They have become second nature. We smile – almost all of us –
mechanically without really wanting to, when someone is introduced to
us for the first time. This smile is an expression of polite greeting. It is far
removed from the reaction of the child who cries when faced with an
unknown lady who frightens him. Smiling has become a structured
language (Lecoq, 2006a, p.6).
To a large extent, the different techniques applied in Lecoq's school -
movement analysis, neutral mask, identification with elements and subjects -
contribute to the deconstruction of this corporal language structured for social
conviviality purposes and aim to make the student experience new corporal
qualities (new behaviours and new corporal states), different from those with
which he is used to. The difference here is that, if the application of the mentioned
techniques provokes the actor to perform a corporal deconstruction from his
encounter with an exterior technique, that is, "from outside to inside", in the clown
one of the first objectives of the work is precisely the awakening of the gestures
which were repressed during the actor's childhood, to bring such gestures "from
inside to outside", since, when repressed, for Lecoq, such gestures disappear only
exteriorly, but remain deep inside the body of the child from before and of the
actor in the here and now.
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At the same time, we do technical work on forbidden gestures, the ones
which an actor has never been able to express in society. “Walk properly!”,
“Stand up straight!”, “Stop scratching your head!” – such are the
injunctions that lead us to keep certain gestures buried deep in our
childhood bodies without ever allowing ourselves to express them. This
is work of a very psychological nature and gives the actor great freedom
in his playing. It is useful for the students to experience this freedom,
finding themselves stripped of all defences, in what I call the primary
clown (Lecoq, 2009, p. 157-158).
We can see the influence of the thought of the anthropologist of gesture
Marcel Jousse in Lecoq's work. In his turn, Jousse did not spare criticism to the
gestural castration to which the child is submitted when he/she begins to be more
directly educated, becoming the object of a socialisation that, in his opinion, often
takes place prematurely.
But man, by force of circumstances, has become not only a miming
animal, as we have studied, but a
social animal
. [...] The Child is not social
at first. The Child is the most selfish being there is. She/he is right,
because she/he absorbs in herself/himself all the wealth of the world.
The Child plays things his own way without caring what is said or done.
But we arrive with our formulas, with the weight of our authority, and we
say that the child doesn't understand us. No, it is you who impose yourself
on the child, from outside, who inflict your gestures on the child, as you
want to impose them socially on your neighbour (Jousse, 1935, p. 5).
20
Thus, in Lecoq's work, the clown's first task is to free the student from the
gestural limits set by his "social animal", to free him from the corporal codes that
privilege, for example, politeness over spontaneity, so that the student can bring
out the "undisciplined child" once repressed.
This search for one’s own clown resides in the freedom to be oneself, to
accept this truth and use it to make others laugh. There is a child within
us, that has grown up within us, and which society forbids us to show; it
is more permissible on stage than in everyday life (Lecoq, 2006b, p. 116).
We can see that, for Lecoq, the clown as language and the stage as a
20
Mais l’Homme par le concours des circonstances s’est fait, non seulement animal mimeur comme nous
l’avons étudié, mais animal social. […] L’Enfant n’est pas social au début. L’Enfant est l’être le plus égoïste
qui soit. Il a raison, car il monte en lui toute la richesse du monde. L’Enfant joue les choses à sa manière
sans se préoccuper de ce qui se dit, de ce qui se fait. Mais nous arrivons avec nos formules, avec la lourdeur
de notre emprise et nous disons que l’enfant ne nous comprend pas. Non, c’est vous qui vous êtes infligé à
l’enfant, par le dehors, qui avez infligé vos gestes à l’enfant, comme vous voulez les infliger socialement à
votre voisin.
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framework are ideal conditions for this repressed child, who constitutes, as said
above, "the truth of oneself", to be revealed. We come then to the idea of the child
as the authentic self.
A man from the first half of the twentieth century, Jacques Lecoq's discourse
on the "true self" bears the mark of the modern theatrical conceptions of his time,
essentialist ideas that cut across approaches by many other great theatre
pedagogues and directors belonging to Lecoq's generation or generations before
him, as Auslander identifies.
The problematic of self is, of course, central to performance theory.
Theorists as diverse as Stanislavski, Brecht, and Grotowski all implicitly
designate the actor’s self as the logos of performance; all assume that
the actor’s self-precedes and grounds her performance and that it is the
presence of this self in performance that provides the audience with
access to human truths (Auslander, 1997, p. 30).
The clown, in particular, is possibly the language in which this demand for
authentic exposure of the self is most evident, and often researchers and
practitioners maintain that the clown is not a character, since it is always the actor
himself exposing his own ridiculousness and subjectivity: "What is the clown or the
clown? It is you magnified, it is not a character, it deals with your questions, with
a magnifying lens, it is a technique that revolves a lot around that" (Concá apud
Brum, 2018, p. 466, our translation)
21
or still "The clown needs to undress; the actor
needs to dress" (Sperber apud Ferracini, 2006, p.327)
22
.
In this sense, in clown pedagogy, the smallest mask in the world is used to
try to reach the point where the social mask disappears in favour of exposing
characteristics that one tries to hide in everyday social life because they are
considered ridiculous or signs of weakness. We are here in the counter-current of
the Sartrean aphorism according to which "existence precedes essence", because,
in a certain way, the clown's work is considered as the taking of a subjective path
full of obstacles so that the actor can unveil a certain authenticity, repressed in
21
O que é o palhaço ou a palhaça? É você ampliado, não é um personagem, trata das suas questões, com
uma lente de aumento, é uma técnica que gira muito em torno disso.
22
O clown precisa se despir; o ator precisa se vestir.
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childhood, in front of the audience. This whole mystique around the figure of the
clown, through which the actor must "be himself", is marked by metaphysical and
essentialist considerations typical of those whom Philip Auslander calls "modernist
performance theorists".
The problem is not that modernist performance theorists, especially
Grotowski, fail to acknowledge that the body is encoded by social
discourses, but rather that they suggest that these codes are only an
overlay on the body, that there is an essential body that can short-circuit
social discourses. This essential body is a metaphysical, even a mystical,
concept… (Auslander, 1997, p. 91-92).
Lecoq certainly does not carry the same interest in the actor's self as
Stanislavski and Grotowski. However, from the perspective of subjectivity, the
territory of the clown in particular brings Lecoq closer to the other two
researchers. From the theories of pedagogues and directors classified by
Auslander as "modern", as well as from the "the freedom to be oneself" (Lecoq,
2006b, p. 116) proposed by Lecoq in Clown, stems the difficulty of answering the
question, "what does it mean to be yourself?" This is a question hardly answered
by any of the modern masters. Perhaps because practice is more effective than
theory when it comes to presenting answers to questions such as this, that is, that
which many times escapes the discourse not rarely imposes itself on stage as
irrefutable evidence of affectation and contact between the actor and the
audience, between the clown and the public.
Let us allow ourselves, however, a brief theoretical approach to the challenge
imposed by the reckless question: what is to be yourself? As far as Lecoq is
concerned, it is interesting to take into consideration what Marcel Jousse proposes
on the subject, given the anthropologist's strong influence on the man of theatre.
In his anthropology of gesture
23
, the closest Jousse comes to a definition of what
"being yourself" means is when he refers to the experimentation present in the
23
Anthropology of Gesture and Rhythm, or Anthropology of Mimicry, is a field of study created by the French
priest and anthropologist Marcel Jousse in the first half of the 20th century. For Jousse, man is an
"interactively miming animal". In short, man elaborates the world in which he lives to the extent that he
"mimes" ("imitates") it, consciously and unconsciously. Critical of bookish formal education, Jousse would
be an advocate of children learning in contact with nature and through their play, with as little adult
intervention as possible.
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child's play.
To play, to awaken, to understand oneself, to understand oneself with
one's own mechanisms, because this is a wealth of "infinite power": to
know oneself because we know that we are very rich... But let us be
careful! This game needs solitude. This game needs purity. This game
needs spontaneity. It is in the child that lies the secret of the search for
oneself (Jousse, 1937, p. 20, our translation).
24
For Jousse, this authenticity can be developed through the play, thanks to
which the child, driven by the force of mimicry, gets to know the world through
itself and its receptor mechanisms, while forging itself through the re-signification
of the strongest impressions that the cosmos has left in it. In this way, "being
oneself" has less to do with revealing a supposedly immutable essence of being
than with producing a creative interaction with a world whose meaning and rules
of operation are not all given a priori. And here we can also refer to Donald
Winnicott, for whom it is only in play and in creative interaction with the world that
a person can discover himself/herself: "It is in playing and only in playing that the
individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and
it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self." (Winnicott, 1975,
p. 110, our translation)
25
. Thus, the figures of the child and the clown meet through
a common activity, play. The clown's clumsy subversion of reality is anarchic and
represents the extreme of his "non-adaptation" to pre-existent rules, condition for
all creative experience for Winnicott. We will resume.
The clown or the theatrical existence of the child: subjectivity,
singularity, stylisation, improvisation, repetition of the same
game, creativity
Lecoq was, above all, a man of practice and it is not possible to measure the
power of his work by limiting ourselves to what he said or wrote. The learning of
the clown in Lecoq, and also in Gaulier, is more a question of intense practice of
24
Se jouer soi-même, s’éveiller, se comprendre, s’orienter avec ses propres mécanismes, parce que nous
avons affaire à une richesse « d’une puissance infinie » : se connaître parce qu’on se sait soi-même très
riche… Mais faisons bien attention ! Ce jeu a besoin de la solitude. Ce jeu a besoin de la pureté. Ce Jeu a
besoin de la Spontanéité. C’est dans l’enfant que réside tout le secret de la recherche de soi-même.
25
C’est en jouant, et seulement en jouant que l’individu, enfant ou adulte, est capable d’être créatif et d’utiliser
sa personnalité tout entière. C’est seulement en étant créatif que l’individu découvre le soi.
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play than of theoretical discourses on the clown figure. We are here far from
psychodrama, since it is not enough to let "your inner child come out", but, as Guy
Freixe proposes, it is necessary that the "child-clown" exists through his
relationship and his play with the audience.
From a psychological point of view, this is very strong, because with
the clown there is both the stylisation of the theatre and, at the
same time, a very deep appeal to the subjectivity of each individual,
which was set aside, so to speak, in the first year of training. At the
end of the training, something finally appears which does not
resemble the common poetic background of the neutral mask, but
which is singular to each individual. This is where the great journey
of the school comes in: at a point where our own hidden child can
use the power of the theatrical transposition to appear. With a little
colour here. That is Lecoq's great creation. That pedagogical path
did not exist in Copeau. Therein lies the whole strength of Lecoq's
pedagogy: to take the student through this whole journey, towards
this zone where the child can exist theatrically in complete
connection with the audience. Because the clown only exists
through the eyes of the audience. It's not a self-centred child. It is
the strength of the child that is seen on stage (Freixe apud Scalari,
2021a, p. 598-599).
26
The wealth of elements contained in the above quote compels us to unfold
three fundamental lines of thought.
The first concerns the
technical structure that will allow the actor's
subjectivity to blossom in a theatrical dimension
, preventing him from falling into
a psychologising or self-directed approach. If the clown invokes the actor's
subjectivity, one must take into account that the fact that the clown work is
strategically placed at the end of two years of training allows this subjectivity to
emerge in the bulge of a theatrical technique that the actor has built since he
26
D’un point de vue psychologique, cela est très fort, car avec le clown il y a à la fois la stylisation du théâtre
et, en même temps, un appel très profond à la subjectivité de chacun, qui était mise de côté, en quelque
sorte, dans la première année de formation. À la fin de la formation, quelque chose apparaît enfin qui n’est
pas similaire au fond poétique commun du masque neutre, mais qui est singulier à chacun. C’est là où le
grand voyage de l’école arrive : à ce que notre propre enfant caché puisse utiliser la force de la transposition
théâtrale pour apparaître. Avec un petit bout de couleur là. Cela est la grande création de Lecoq. Ce
cheminement pédagogique n’était pas chez Copeau. Là il y a toute la force de la pédagogie Lecoquienne:
amener l’élève à travers tout ce voyage, vers cette zone où l’enfant se trouve propulsé vers une zone où il
existe théâtralement en lien complet avec le public. Parce qu’il n’existe que par le regard du public. Ce n’est
pas un enfant qui serait autocentré. C’est la force de l’enfant qui se donne à voir sur la piste.
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entered Lecoq's or Gaulier's school
27
. This technique favours the theatricality of a
mime body which dedicated itself for two years to transpose elements of daily life
to the artistic sphere through tools and diverse explorations:
neutral/larval/dell'arte masks, masking of the body in the buffoon, research on the
tragic chorus, etc. Furthermore, at this stage of training, the student is expected to
have a minimum command of theatrical elements such as the management of
time and rhythm on stage, the use of space, the precision and clarity of their own
physical actions. In a certain way, it is ensured by this technique, that the "child of
the actor", understood as a subjective element, is invited to show itself, limited by
a series of concrete and objective principles. This technical structure then
organises a subjectivity which, if invoked otherwise, could lead to egocentric
experiences of a more therapeutic than theatrical nature.
However, because it is at the end of the training courses proposed by both
Lecoq and Gaulier, the clown pedagogy suggests that the mastery of technique
does not count for itself. Thus, our second line of thought concerns the promotion
of the
actor's singularity
through clown. The work on this child, grown within the
student and brought out through the clown, seems to be Lecoq's invitation to the
student so that, in possession of the technical and poetic baggage learned, he can
leave school charged with a personal and singular creative impulse, without
allowing himself to be limited by the training obtained, avoiding the risk of doing
shows dedicated to displaying his technique. Working with the technical baggage
acquired, the student uses it as a support for artistic desires that are personal to
him and which he will be able to find by carefully observing the echo of the outside
world in himself. Thus, it is through laughter and comedy that Lecoq invites the
student to express, upon leaving school, his uniqueness in the theatre.
The third line of thought is the one to which all the elements of the first
contribute and which will be explored in particular within the clown's territory -
the quality of the contact he establishes
with the audience
: "The power of the
clown's imaginary, unlike the child who plays in solitude and for himself/herself,
comes from the fact that the clown exists only in relation to the audience" (Freixe
27
However, it is important to note that, unlike in Lecoq's school, in Gaulier's school, a student may, if he or
she wishes, take any of the workshops, regardless of whether they are in the first or second year of teaching,
on a stand-alone basis.
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apud Scalari, 2021a, p. 599)
28
. Thus, the "child of the actor" is invited to show
himself or herself so that - although aware of the theatrical transposition he or
she must make to escape from a self-centred play, so that the play may amuse
the actor/actress himself/herself, but also his or her audience, a commitment that
the child does not have - the student may rediscover the freshness of the play in
childhood so that his or her play is perpetually renewed.
This is where he [Lecoq] comes into contact with Copeau's other great
intuition: his fascination with the Fratellini clowns. In other words, the
presence of total improvisation, improvising a number in a different way
every night. Copeau was fascinated by the Fratellini clowns, going to see
them every night for a period of time and thinking, "my god! They can
improvise according to the audience's laughter, the laughter of such and
such a lady..." In other words, taking every moment really as a moment
when you have to react. And this brings us back to the great power of the
child. The child can play the same game twice, but each time he will play
it differently (Freixe apud Scalari, 2021a, p. 599, our translation).
29
And here we touch in another aspect of childhood worked by the actor in all
the dramatic territories, but focused in the clown in a particularly special way: the
creativity. We can base ourselves on the notion of creativity proposed by Donald
Winnicott as a quality inherent to human nature and recognisable in any child
whose "environment has been good enough" (Winnicott, 1988, p. 56) so that, during
its life, it is not limited to submit itself to the rules of a world that precedes it. On
the notion of creativity, Winnicott states:
It is above all a creative mode of perception that gives the individual the
feeling that life is worth living; what is opposed to such a mode of
perception is a submissive relationship of complacency with external
reality: the world and all its elements are then recognised, but only as
that to which one must adjust and adapt. (Winnicott, 1975, p. 127).
30
28
La puissance de l’imaginaire du clown, à la différence de l’enfant qui joue dans la solitude et pour lui-même,
vient de ce que le clown n’existe que dans la relation au public.
29
C’est là où il rejoint l’autre grande intuition de Copeau : sa fascination pour les clowns Fratellini. C’est-à-
dire, un présent de l’improvisation totale, improviser tous les soirs un numéro de façon différente. Copeau
était fasciné par les clowns Fratellini, il allait les voir tous les soirs pendant une période et il se disait « mon
Dieu ! Ils arrivent à improviser en fonction du rire de la salle, du rire d’une telle dame »… Autrement dit,
prendre vraiment chaque moment comme un moment où il faut réagir. Et cela nous renvoie à la grande
force de l’enfant. L’enfant a beau reprendre deux fois le même jeu, à chaque fois il va le rejouer
différemment.
30
Il s’agit avant tout d’un mode créatif de perception qui donne à l’individu le sentiment que la vie vaut la
peine d’être vécue ; ce qui s’oppose à un tel mode de perception, c’est une relation de complaisance soumise
envers la réalité extérieure : le monde et tous ses éléments sont alors reconnus, mais seulement comme
étant ce à quoi il faut s’ajuster et s’adapter.
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
23
Also:
By creative life I mean not being killed or annihilated continually by
submission or reaction to the invading world; I mean looking at things in
a new way (Winnicott, 1988, p. 57).
31
An example of the renewed gaze can be found in the child who asks us to
sing a song repeatedly, to listen to the same story a tenth time, to play the same
game for hours if possible. This is a natural behaviour for children, for their
enjoyment of life itself is completely new. More difficult for adults, this state is
currently sought through meditation, mindfulness and yoga practices. Japanese
Zen Buddhism, for example, uses the word
shoshin
(Suzuki, 1977, p. 29) to refer to
the "beginner's mind", an empty state of mind, ready to accept, to doubt, but, above
all, to be equally open to the unknown and to what we think we already know:
"The beginner's mind contains many possibilities; the expert's mind contains few"
(Suzuki, 1977, p. 30, our translation)
32
.
Let us resume Winnicott's phrase "I mean the fact of looking at things in a
new way" (Winnicott, 1988, p. 57, our translation)
33
. Like the child, the clown is an
example of this new and curious way of looking at the world, in which, through
incomprehension, he or she relates to things with his or her clumsy way of being.
Thus, if the lamp in the ceiling of the room burns out, the clown may ask for a
ladder, climb up empty-handed and try, by the most varied means, to lower the
ceiling to put the new lamp that he/she left at the foot of the ladder. It is at this
precise point, that, like the "child of a sufficiently good mother", the clown does
not submit to the ordinary logic of a reality that precedes his own presence. He
becomes a creator when he extracts things from their ordinary logic and instates
the chaos with which he imprints his world on ours: "Creativity, then, means
retaining throughout life something that is, properly speaking, part of early
childhood experience: the capacity to create the world" (Winnicott, 1988, p. 55, our
31
Par vie créatrice, j’entends le fait de ne pas être tué ou annihilé continuellement par soumission ou par
réaction au monde qui empiète sur nous ; j’entends le fait de porter sur les choses un regard toujours neuf.
32
L'esprit du débutant contient beaucoup de possibilités ; l'esprit de l'expert en contient peu.
33
j'entends le fait de porter sur les choses un regard toujours neuf.
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Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
24
translation)
34
.
Thirst for love, birth of humour in the clown and the child.
One evening my son (Samuel) saw twelve seconds of Swan Lake on a bad
television set whose aerial never worked. When he wouldn’t go to bed, to
gain time, he would dance the lake and the swans. He even added
elephants. He moved his legs, his arms and his bust and jumped, fell and
twisted his feet in such a complicated way that a stranger would have,
after a moment of bewilderment, wondered what it all meant. He would
dance until I shouted. “Alright, ten minutes more! Then you’re off to bed!”
He was happy. He had won some time in the light. We love Samuel when
his invented gestures, his ridiculous and complicated attitudes, suggest
his thirst for being loved, his hope not go to bed (Gaulier, 2012, p. 283).
Present in his book, Gaulier also uses the above account in the clown course
to exemplify the need to obtain the love of the audience that motivates the clown
to do anything to stay on stage. This relationship between the child and the clown
that Gaulier detects in his son raises an interesting question for our reflection: is
there a relationship between the child and the clown in terms of humour itself?
We could think that an insurmountable limit between the child and the clown
is the very idea of humour, that is, the fact that the clown, unlike the child, plays
and does silly things so that the other person can laugh, while, normally, in the
child we do not necessarily find this relation of intentionality. However, the
relationship between the child and the clown seems to be more complex from the
point of view of the intentionality of the child when he makes his interlocutor laugh,
especially if we approach the funny situation not through the text of his act, but
through the context of his response.
A study by Indian psychologist Vasudevi Reddy identifies clown-like behaviour
in children from an early age. Reddy points out that studies on humour in children
to date are often limited to the domain of verbal humour, ignoring non-verbal
participants such as infants. According to the researcher, the modern account of
cognitive development broadly agrees that mood perception does not emerge until
18 months. However, in a study on the development of humour in infants,
34
La créativité, c’est donc conserver tout au long de la vie une chose qui, à proprement parler, fait partie de
l’expérience de la première enfance : la capacité de créer le monde.
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
25
specifically in the first year of life, Reddy concludes from observation and
interviews with parents of 7-11 month olds that most infants are capable of
provoking laughter, deliberately reproducing clowning in order to sustain laughter
in others.
The prevalence and nature of clowning acts. Parents had little difficulty
in identifying instances when their infants did things intentionally to elicit
laughter from them. Of the parents who gave clear responses to the
question, 87% of 8 month olds, 87% of 11 month-olds (and 100% of 14
month- olds)–were reported to have shown at least one instance, with
details, of clear clowning with no significant age differences in the
presence of clowning. Some of the parents at 8 months reported only
simple acts such as splashing and banging, which increased in frequency
and intensity when others laughed. Other parents, even at 8 months,
reported more complex and idiosyncratic acts […]. There were increases
with age in the obviousness of the attempts to re-elicit laughter (Reddy,
2001, p. 250).
In this case, it is not the child who appears in the clown, but the clown who
presents himself through attitudes intentionally made by the child to not only
provoke laughter in the adult, but also its repetition.
The most frequently reported acts were actions of the head and face,
mainly head shaking, nodding or wobbling, and screwed up faces. The
infant actions shown in Table 1 were all ones which we as adults would
recognise as being funny, and fall without difficulty into categories of
actions derived from adult clowning. [...] the infants’ sensitivity to and
interest in the laughter and emotional reactions of others that then
allowed these acts to be repeated as clowning (Reddy, 2001, p. 252).
In a direction contrary to ours, Vasudevi Reddy opens ways not to think about
what the clown may have of the child, but to think about what the child from an
early age possesses of clown in his behaviour. For this researcher, "Clowning as an
activity which is sensitive to and plays upon others’ laughter appears to be present
in the second half of the first year of human infancy" (Reddy, 2001, 254). Thus, as
with adult clowns, for children, "the play with others’ reactions is the crucial
emotional key to such engagements" (Reddy, 2001, 254). Extremely stimulating,
although Vasudevi Reddy's study is not explored in depth here, it opens up a whole
new perspective for future questioning and assures us of the richness that
attention to the child, this human being full of possibilities, presents for theatrical
research, and, more specifically, for clown research. A richness that others before
The child as a model in clown pedagogy: in Jacques Copeau, Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier
Rodrigo Scalari
Rodrigo Scalari
Florianópolis, v.2, n.47, p.1-28, jul. 2023
26
us were also able to highlight, which we try to demonstrate here.
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Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina
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