Re-Contextualizing Canadian Clown: In Conversation with Monique Mojica, Jani Lauzon, Rose Stella, and Gloria Miguel

In this article, theatre artist/researcher Sonia Norris delves into the complicated question, “what is Canadian clowning?” Canadian clowns provide a diverse array of possibilities in answer to this question depending on their location, training, and linguistic and cultural background. However, the international clowning community often associates the term ‘Canadian clowning’ uniquely with the style of clown training and performance developed by Richard Pochinko in the seventies and eighties. Furthermore, their perception is that this style of clowning is a form of Indigenous or ‘Amerindian’ clowning. Norris scrutinizes this perception with Indigenous theatre artists Monique Mojica, Jani Lauzon, Rose Stella, and Gloria Miguel. Lauzon and Mojica worked with Richard Pochinko and his longtime collaborator Ian A. Wallace, Stella worked with Pochinko-trained teachers as part of her clown training, and Miguel’s work with Spiderwoman Theater incorporates clown and Trickster. This discussion presents a re-contextualization of the term ‘Canadian clown’ and investigates the differences and connections between Pochinko’s approach to clowning and Indigenous clowning and Trickster traditions in Canada.