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Reviewed by:
  • The Art of Clowning
  • Kevin P. Kern
The Art of Clowning. By Eli Simon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; pp. xv + 165. $26.95 paper.

In his pastoral comedy As You Like It, Shakespeare assigns Touchstone the exhortation: "It is meat and drink for me to see a clown." Touchstone, the courtly fool, is not speaking of himself, but rather the dullard William and his attempt to woo the lovely Audrey. This sets up the difference, in Touchstone's mind at least, that there is a distinction to be made between the dimwitted souls whose humor comes not of their own doing but simply as a result of their stupidity, and the studied, trained, and practiced wits whose humor comes from craft.

In The Art of Clowning, Eli Simon gives an "advanced treatise" to those interested in experiencing the latter. "We all have a clown living somewhere inside us," Simon notes (2), and through the carefully mapped exercises and even "Failure Charts," the reader can expect not only to find his or her inner-clown, but bring it to life, trot it out onstage, and keep it around for lifelong adventure. Simon uses this book to expertly build on a chapter from his first work, Masking Unmasked: Four Basic Approaches to Acting. It is a pleasure to see the clown-work so firmly rooted in the craft of acting, and a not-so-subtle reminder that some of our greatest clowns were fine dramatic actors as well. One thinks of Steve Martin and his transformation from the frantic, slapstick act of the 1970s to the array of interesting dramatic roles he has created more recently, such as Jimmy Dell in The Spanish Prisoner or Adam in Its Complicated.

The book is very accessible, offering exercises to get students out of their chairs and onto their feet early. It reads less like a treatise, as Simon describes it, and more like a guidebook along the lines of Libby Appel's great Mask Characterization: An Acting Process (1982). Simon begins with preparation, warm-ups, and the rules, which should please any academic considering this for a textbook in an acting class; it provides a healthy dose of grounding before we jump into red noses and funny walks. He even takes time to cover the rules for the audience, including the challenge, "Laugh when it's funny, and do not laugh when it isn't" (10).

The book then plunges into the work, leaving plenty of room for stories about great clowns like Chaplin, Emmett Kelly, and the immortal whiteface clown "Joey" Grimaldi. These brief sidetracks are not mere lazzi, however; they help to illuminate sections of the book by providing real-life experiences from the iconic geniuses behind the red noses. The most notable and comforting is the section on Felix Adler, "The White House Clown," so named for his numerous command performances. Simon speaks of Adler's use of the perceived mistake or failure to create his comedy—a treasure coming from trash. For those of us prone to the occasional bumble, gaffe, or misstep, the author reminds us that Adler's funniest bit was borne from a stage accident where a pulley broke loose, hit him on the head and knocked him unconscious. One can imagine Adler regaining consciousness with circus pigs climbing all over him, hearing the audience roar with laughter, and thinking to himself "Keep it!"

It is this acceptance of probable failure that makes Simon's book the perfect tool for the student of any experience level. Throughout the book, the clown-in-training is not only given permission to fail, but Simon even provides charts to chronicle the events. "Breakdowns, missteps, and screw-ups are life forces that flow through clown veins," Simon notes (49); "the best way to ensure things go right, is to let them go terribly wrong first" (70). This idea of failure is really the heart of The Art of Clowning, but it is also the art of acting—the notion that we must give ourselves permission to stretch, reach, and come up spectacularly short, or we cannot grow. This paradox holds true throughout the artistic disciplines, including the...

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