GRACIE: CLOWNING FROM THE INSIDE
If you are reading this, then you might be curious about GRACIE. Gracie is a piece and part of me. She is not a fragmented “alter ego” or other. Rather Gracie is fully integrated and embodied part of me. She is my inner clown: the Royal One. The Sacred. The unapologetic.
I met Gracie three years ago when I signed up for an adult circus intensive at our local Circus school. I was deeply interested in the world of circus-specifically the use of circus as a medium for social action and change.
It was a two-week circus immersion where various samples of circus arts were taught and explored. All sorts of classes: trapeze, fabrics, stilt walking, lyra (hoop), clowning, unicycle, and acro-yoga. The part of the circus that instantly grabbed me was clowning. It was only a two-hour class with a few exercises. And I loved it!
After the two-week circus intensive, I signed up for a six-week clown class. I had a million different thoughts about clowning and what it would entail. What was clowning?
As we began the classes, our teacher Sarah-Jane told the class that clowning involved “high stakes” and “high risks”. What did that mean exactly? As I dove into this red nose world, I learned that having high stakes and risks meant that each moment is the only potential moment. That each moment is the present moment and it is all you have, it’s all any of us have. It means participating in the fullness and richness of each moment. Showing up in one’s vulnerability in the present moment is living at its loudest.
As a clown, it means being authentic in the discovery of the present moment: what Gracie hears, smells, sees, and witnesses. It is how Gracie engages with her environment with what she is presented with. This is clowning from the inside. It is not scripted. It is saying YES to the present moment and understanding that there is something in the YES that is to be discovered.
Movement stirs from the inside of the cosmic heart. It is where vulnerability lives and placing that vulnerability in the container, and in this case on the stage. High stakes and high risks mean taking a chance of not hearing a laugh. Taking a risk being you because being you is always a good thing. Liked or unliked. Clowning is not the goofy white-faced birthday clown with a collection of gags, rather an archetype—that offers us a larger sense of the divine in each of us-that celebrates our humanness, animal-ness, vulnerabilities, and the times we can touch each other in a moment of laughter and joy.
