Send in the clowns

Hello loves!

In this newsletter, I'm not going to try to convince you to like clowns.

I'm going to do something wilder.

I'm going to try to convince you that you already like clowns.

A soundtrack to this newsletter:

The Boswell Wilkie circus rolled into Durban every year of my childhood, announcing itself in hypersaturated neon posters on every street pole up Marine Drive. The circus was big entertainment for South African families in the 80s. This was the height of Apartheid; there was a global cultural boycott and the good local music and theatre was all banned, but when the circus came to town, working class families could enjoy an evening of hand-standing elephants and spangly trapeze artists and motorbikes zooming round spherical cages. These thrilling acts were supposedly from exotic far-flung lands like Mongolia and St Petersburg and Peru. In truth, the Boswells were from Yorkshire.

You might think there's nothing progressive about a form of entertainment that forces wild animals to balance balls on their noses, but give them some credit. The Boswells defied Apartheid laws by performing to racially mixed audiences, and scandalised the church by putting on shows on Sundays. If you ignore the animal cruelty, it was an inclusive, joyful place.

It was also cheap, which was my family's main interest in the circus. Tickets cost the equivalent of around R150 per adult, cheaper than a cinema ticket today, and kids got in free.

For my hardworking parents, looking for a night of affordable entertainment, there was just one problem. I was desperately terrified of clowns.

It started when I was two, and we were making the annual family pilgrimage to the circus, but our wheezing skedonk of a car broke down so we arrived late. Which meant we walked into the Big Top mid-clown-act. Just as we squeezed inside, a clown hurled a flare that went off with a BANG right at our feet. I screamed. I did not stop screaming. My mum had to carry me back to the car like she was exorcising a toddler banshee.

There was no solace when we got back home, because my mum had made the totally-normal-by-1980s-decor-standards decision to decorate my ENTIRE CHILDHOOD BEDROOM IN CLOWNS.

There were porcelain ceramic clowns clustered on every shelf. A mobile with felted clowns dangling over my bed. A wallpaper border around the room covered in clowns. I swear to fucking god I'm not taking artistic license with any of this. My whole childhood bedroom was literally a shrine to clowns.

Eventually I swopped bedrooms with my little brother, sacrificing him to the evil red-nose devils in my place, because that's just the kind of caring big sister I was. And I declared that I hated clowns. Every year after that when we went to the circus, I would bring a blanket, and hide under it when the clowns came out.

Caulrophobia, the fear of clowns, was all the rage in the 80s. Before then, sad clowns were definitely a thing, but it was pretty unusual to find clowns creepy. But that was the decade the mood really turned against clowns. Blame real-life 1970s serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who worked as a children's clown called Patches. Blame Stephen Spielberg and Tobe Hooper for 1982's Poltergeist, featuring a killer clown doll. Blame Stephen King, who published It in 1986, and Tim Curry, who turned a whole generation off clowns with his iconic embodiment of the role in the 1990 miniseries. Blame Alan Moore for releasing the seminal Joker comic book Batman: The Killing Joke in 1988.

Whoever started it, the idea of creepy murderous clowns really hit the mainstream in the 80s, and it hasn't left. What parent today would decorate their child's bedroom in porcelain clown figurines, unless they were conducting a psychological experiment into how much you can traumatise a toddler?

I used to share an office with Ronald McDonald. Well, I shared an office with a six-foot-six man named Dustin, who was the official Ronald McDonald actor for the South Gauteng region in the late 2000s. He had a van with a dressing room and make-up table in the back and he and his manager Leslie used to drive around to local schools and children's parties. There was no branding on the van, because you wouldn't want Ronald to be swarmed by excited children, and no windows, because Dustin used to change into his yellow jumpsuit back there. So yeah, if you ever saw a plain white, windowless van parked outside a primary school in Johannesburg there's a decent chance there was a very tall man dressed up like a clown inside of it. Enjoy the fresh nightmares.

There are a lot of strict rules about what you can and can't do when you're dressed up like Ronald McDonald. You may not eat any McDonald's food, for instance (Ronald's job is to sell the concept of 'fun', and the company hates to be accused of using Ronald sell its 'food'). You may not hug any children. You may not answer truthfully if a kid asks where the burgers come from. The official line is that they grow in a burger patch.

So yeah, clowns have followed me throughout my life, no matter how I've tried to avoid them. Right now, in fact, I live around the corner of the official clown egg register, where clowns 'patent' their unique make-up designs by painting them on hen's eggs. For inexplicable reasons, they're stored in the vestry of my local church.

Then, a few weeks ago, I realised I'd been completely wrong about clowns.

Last month, I went up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (non Brits, this is a month-long theatre/performance/comedy extravaganza that happens every August, like the National Arts Festival in Makhanda). My magician friend Stuart Lightbody had been up there for weeks already performing, so when I arrived, I asked him for his top show recommendations. I was more than a little resistant when he suggested a bunch of clown shows.

"Clowns? Really?"

Yes, clowns. But I trust Stuart, so I took his advice and booked a bunch of clown shows, and - friends - NO ONE IS MORE SHOCKED THAN ME to report that I'm now 100% sold on clowns. I've been convinced that clowning is one of the great art forms of our times. Of any times.

Here's the thing: it hadn't clicked for me what clowning actually is. I thought clowns = white face, red nose, big shoes, loud bangs & possible murder. But clowning is a school of performance that encompasses all of these people:

• Rowan Atkinson
• Lucille Ball (from I Love Lucy)
• Sasha Baron Cohen
• Laurel and Hardy
• Peter Sellers
• Helena Bonham Carter
• Rob van Vuuren (from Corne and Twakkie)

If you've ever giggled at Mr Bean or Borat, you like clowns! If you think Emma Thompson's got great comedic timing (fun fact: she trained at clown school), you like clowns! If you love drag kings, honey, I hate to break it to you, but you like clowns!

Many cultures have clown-type ritualistic roles, but Western clowning is a specific performance tradition that stretches back thousands of years. Ancient Greek and Roman theatre featured clown-like characters who'd provide comic relief amongst all the tragedy. Medieval Europe had jesters and fools. The 16th-18th centuries gave us a popular type of theatre called Commedia dell'arte, featuring standard stock characters like the Harlequin (and other clowns). In the early 1800s, a 'harlequinade' clown called Joseph Grimaldi developed a look called the 'Joey', which might look familiar:

Grimaldi's 'Joey' character was so popular it inspired clowns at music halls, pantomimes and circuses throughout Europe and America, and became the iconic clown getup.

But clowning didn't stop developing with Bozo. The red nose, for instance. The nose is doing something important: Lecoq, a major 20th century clowning teacher, described the red nose is the 'smallest mask', and there's a whole philosophy about why clowns mask. But when 'killer clowns' became the dominant cultural clown meme, many clowns dropped the nose, instead relying on thick makeup as the 'mask', and many contemporary clowns don't mask at all.

You might be surprised to hear that clowning's having a renaissance today, driven mostly by performers in LA, Edinburgh and Sydney. I was surprised by how much clowning there was at the Edinburgh festival this year. I was even more surprised by how much I loved it.

I cannot describe how electrifying and disarming these shows were. Really, I can't describe them! Part of what's so great about clowning is that they're live experiences. Most of them are highly interactive. There's no fourth wall. They play with the vulnerability and trust of the audience. Anything I tell you will entirely fail to capture how that feels.

To give you just the barest image, the best show I saw - Garry Starr's Penguin Classics - featured an Australian man re-enacting every great work of classic literature while wearing nothing but a penguin coat and flippers. At one point, he did a naked handstand while a volunteer from the audience fished a tiny figurine of The Little Prince out of his bum hole, and this was the payoff of a joke he'd set up forty minutes earlier, and I have never laughed so hard in my life, or been so utterly gobsmacked by a piece of live theatre.

Clowns aren't just funny, they're usually funny because they act like the Freudian 'id' - all unrestrained impulse. They are ignorant of social norms (think Borat). They're often petty and selfish (think Mr Bean). They are usually downtrodden and have no social status (think of Charlie Chaplain's Tramp character). They can be madly oversexed, and in contemporary clowning shows, they're quite often nude. The clown is usually doing something very ordinary, but in a ridiculous way, showing how absurd it was in the first place.

A great example of this in South African theatre is Woza Albert, an iconic struggle play created by Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon in 1981. Several of the scenes re-enact the daily humiliations of black South Africans by the Apartheid state, but subvert the power dynamics by having all the white characters wear clown noses.

Clowning requires risk from a performer, and play. It's a primarily physical theatre form (that's one reason for the mask - to force the actor to communicate with their body instead of their face). It's improvisational and interactive. It's transgressive. It's surprising. It's vulnerable, and deeply trusting.

In fact: it's very brave to be silly.

I think that's what I find so personally thrilling about clowning. The parts of myself I like the least are the most self-serious parts. As a small, scared-of-clowns child, I dreamed of escaping to an easier life than my parents had, and I was convinced my ticket out was cleverness. I built my whole identity around being clever, and to some extent, it worked - it got me a bursary to a private high school, then a university scholarship, then let me build a stable-ish career. I clung to my cleverness like a life raft. At my worst, I was Comic Book Guy: correcting people, showing off my facts, constantly arguing. Underneath, of course, I was miserable. "I'm so clever" energy is just insecurity behind a fucking big mask.

It wasn't until my late 20s that I really learned to chill the fuck out, to goof around, to play, to clown, to be vulnerable ... and to connect with other people. That's when I started writing seriously. And it's still a struggle for me; whenever I'm anxious, Clever Girl still shows up, trying to keep me safe in the world. But these days, I'm trying to let my inner clown walk into the room first. It's a much better way to live.

If I sound like a nutty clown convert, sorry, I am! And I want to convert you too.

So, here's what I want you to do for me: go watch a clown show. You have to see it live. Here are some suggestions:

• Many of the best clowns these days are performing as drag kings. In London, the best drag king circuit is called Man Up (my fave kings are Dairy King, Die Lemma, and Jean, a sentient pile of denim). South Africans, Jozi Kings & Things and Cape Town's King's Collab are both utterly wonderful - they put on shows periodically.
• Londoners, Cabbage the Clown's show is on for a couple more weeks, and it's delightful.
• South Africans, my brilliant clown friend Roberto Pombo recommends Momo Matsunyane, Jenine Collocott, Klara van Wyk, Sophie Jones, Daniel Buckland and Rob van Vuuren. They all do many types of performance, not just clowning, so check that the specific performance is a comedy. Roberto's got an unmissable show on at PopArt in Joburg next month, called The Agents.
• If you know anyone in Sydney, please please please strong-arm them into watching Garry Starr's Penguin Classics - it might honestly be the best live show I've ever seen.
• Americans, Julia Masli's on tour there over the next few months.
• The major international clowning schools are École Philippe Gaulier, Helikos and Lecoq. If you can find a local performer who's an alumnus from any of those schools, go see them.

Try it, and let me know if you're convinced!

Wishing you laughs, interesting office-mates, and exciting things up your butt,

Sam

Some other random things I've loved recently:

• Naomi Alderman's list of things she loves in London, part 1 and part 2.
• Mona Awad's batshit bananas brilliant brilliant novel about living with chronic back pain and why it's a bad idea to make deals with witches, All's Well.
• John Green's non-fiction book Everything is Tuberculosis. Last week I said I was trying to replace fast-paced news input with reading more thoughtful books that give me fresh perspective on the world, and this is a great example. The infectious disease that killed the most people in the world between 2020-2022 was Covid-19. In most other years of your lifetime, it was tuberculosis, meaning 1.3 million die every year die of a disease that is totally curable. This book made me feel outraged, deeply moved, and also hopeful. Can't recommend it highly enough.
• Learning about Muriel 'Cunty' Belcher, who owned a famous bohemian nightclub in Soho in the 1940s. If your nickname is 'Cunty' and it was gifted to you by a gay man, you're living your life correctly.
• I Realised It Was Me, the transcendent new album by Steam Down. Incidentally, Steam Down's weekly jazz improv sessions in the Peckham Levels are the most electrifying live music nights in the city.