“There’s a clown inside all of us,” another student told me when I first arrived. I didn’t understand what this meant, but it sounded like something a person from clown class would say. What did it mean to have a clown inside of me? And was that something I wanted?
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“Who knows?” she said. “When your clown comes out, you’ll be surprised.”
She sounded post-clown, like she had met her clown and was happy with it. Meeting her clown had clearly done something for her. But I wasn’t here to meet my inner clown. I was here to take a break from working on the next novel. To have some fun.
The instructor of the workshop promised I would “reclaim a sense of child-like wonder” and “laugh and collaborate with like-minded idiots”—and I needed that. Every morning, I stared at the blank screen and couldn’t figure out what to put on it. I was exhausted by the cycle of starting and stopping, the sheer monotony of questioning every idea I had.
I impulsively signed up for something called “Tiny Bullseye: Red Nose Clown Workshop” offered by a local theater, despite not knowing exactly what a clown workshop was.
The instructor of the workshop promised I would “reclaim a sense of child-like wonder” and “laugh and collaborate with like-minded idiots”—and I needed that.
“Good to know,” I said, even though what I really thought was: if we all do have a clown inside of us, I’m pretty sure mine is dead.
That first day of the workshop, the instructor did not start with an explanation of what clowning was. Instead, he put us through a series of theater exercises that were easy enough. He made us pass a sound around the room. He made us stare into another person’s eyes and mirror them. He made us crawl on the floor and do something he called “movement work.”
But at the end, he asked each person to put on their red nose, come out alone to the center of the floor for the first time. He didn’t tell us why or what we were going to do.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
I had watched a few of the other students do this and knew by now that I was supposed to name my inner clown. I knew it was likely that any name I chose would be rejected. So I had to pick a good clown name.
“Schmoop,” I said.
“No,” he said. “That’s not your name.”
His absolutely certainty made me angry. How did he know what my inner clown was named? And then: Oh God, please don’t let me be an angry clown.
“What’s your name?” he asked again with the patience of a father talking to a child.
“Hoodle Schmoodle,” I tried again, trying to go even lighter. Sillier.
“No.”
I felt that flicker of rage again. Let it go. Blurted out a series of the most clownish names I could think of, ones I can’t repeat here because I have blacked them out of my memory. All I can remember is him telling me, “No, no, no,” and then the horrible flush of failing so publicly.
Ten minutes passed like this. It was the nightmare I’ve had since I was a child—cast in a play but somehow don’t know any of my lines. Don’t even know my own name.
But for some reason, I can’t leave the stage. Normally, I wake up at this point, but I was already very awake, aware of the class staring back at me, waiting for something. What were they waiting for? Did they want me to be funny? Did they want me to dance and sing a song about bad shrimp like the last person? That seemed to go over well. But I had nothing to say about bad shrimp.
“I can see you all wondering if there is a right way to do this,” the instructor said later. “Looking around for the cue or the prompt. It’s empty space up here. That’s all it is. And whatever you fill that empty space with is…you. That’s your clown. That’s what comes out. That’s the whole point. That’s why it’s terrifying.”
This helped explain why I wasn’t having any fun. Clown class was actually the ultimate terror—to be asked to fill the empty space in front of a crowd with no direction whatsoever and see what comes out. It seems I had signed up for a class that was just the physical manifestation of trying to write a novel. Look at that blank screen and just trust what comes out.
Sounds easy enough. Except I long for a rule. A guideline. A prompt. Some guidance about what a clown should be named. A clear and undisputed definition of what a novel should be. Because what if I get it wrong? What if I fill the empty space with something terrible? What if I waste my entire life in all this empty space, trying and failing to be something, over and over again?
He encouraged us to think about why we were so terrified of what might emerge in the empty space of the stage. What did I not want people to see about me? And why did I think I could actually hide that? The audience always knows, he said. The audience can see and feel your insecurities.
And he was right—I had seen them on the other students when they performed. After years of therapy, years of writing, nothing had ever so clearly crystalized the pointlessness of trying to hide what I was feeling and thinking.
“What’s your name?” he said to me again.
“Shrimpy McGee,” I said. Old habits die hard. There I was, doing it again. Trying to be fun.
“No,” he said. “What’s your name?”
I failed to come up with my name, over and over again, precisely because I kept thinking only of what a clown name should be. I kept thinking, what does this man want from me? I kept strategizing and he could hear it in my voice.
Clown class was actually the ultimate terror—to be asked to fill the empty space in front of a crowd with no direction whatsoever and see what comes out.
As he continued to ask for my name, I became impatient—I wasn’t a clown. I wasn’t an actor. I was just a writer trying to have some fun. I looked around at my fellow clowns-in-training and felt angry because how was this fun? What were we even doing? We were being ridiculous. I wanted to take off this red nose.
“Oh my God, fine, my name is Sarah!” I finally shouted.
He actually laughed. “Sarah? Your name is Sarah?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Hi Sarah,” he said. “Why are you so angry that your name is Sarah?”
“Because that’s a dumb name for a clown. Who names their clown Sarah!”
This time, the class laughed too. It was actually shocking to hear some response from them after all the horrible silence. How quickly things can change. How wonderful to be embraced after all my failed attempts.
And I felt grateful to Sarah, too, for showing up like that. Because who was Sarah? What was Sarah? Was Sarah my inner clown? Or was Sarah just an honest burst of rage, coming to the surface?
“Clowning is not about being funny,” the instructor said later. “It’s about doing something real on stage.”
He was right. The best performance was done by a man who stood out there and said, “I’m sad.” It worked because the man had seemed a little sad throughout the entire workshop. It was cathartic and scary and arresting to see him actually admit it.
“Why are you sad?” the instructor asked.
The man looked up at the ceiling. “Because there are no more stars in the sky.”
“Then why are you still looking up at the sky?”
“I’m looking at Cynthia.” Everybody howled.
“Are you praying to Cynthia?”
“Yes.”
“Who is Cynthia?”
“She’s a communications professor at CCRI,” he said, and we all laughed again. It went on like this, an unexpected and moving conversation about God and godlessness that was as funny as it was sad. By the end, he had a few of us in tears.
“Now that’s clowning,” the instructor said, and we clapped. “You work with what you have. You go where it makes sense to you to go. That’s the only guide you have.”
It helps to keep the instructor’s voice in my head. To go where it makes sense for me to go.
Going where it makes sense for you to go requires terrifying honesty. It requires starting with whatever it is that you already are, even if you don’t want to admit it, even if you’ve decided that thing is the worst possible thing to be on stage.
“Sarah is boring,” I had admitted to the class.
I knew nothing about Sarah other than that Sarah had a deathly fear of being Sarah, and that was a place to begin. I suddenly had a lot to say up there because Sarah had a lot to say about the disappointments of being a normal person named Sarah.
“That’s why I ask you what your name is over and over again,” the instructor said. “It wears you down to the point where you have no choice but to eventually just say what you’re thinking. To work with whatever comes out.”
When I start a new novel, I often write pages of whatever I think I should be writing, and then I interrogate them: is this boring? Does this reveal something truly awful about me? Is it too sad? Too long? Too melodramatic? Too everything? Or worse: nothing at all? And so of course I stop working on the novel, because that’s not a fun place to begin. That place leaves me with nothing real to say.
It helps to keep the instructor’s voice in my head. To go where it makes sense for me to go. This doesn’t mean knowing exactly who I am, or what I’m going to say, but it does require having a basic allegiance to whoever might emerge when I give that person a little room to be honest. When I throw up my hands in frustration and say, Ok, fine, just say it! That’s always when the real writing begins.
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The Wedding People by Alison Espach is available via Holt.
