 Please take a brochure, check out the shows. Today we have a very special event. This is a Clowning Love Female, a conversation. Please turn off your cell phones and give it up for Kendal. Woo! Have this conversation. There's a lot of filming going on. We're supposed to be live streaming on HowlRound. That didn't quite work, so I think we're Facebook Live-ing and later it will be up on HowlRound. So there are lots of cameras and stuff going on, but that's fun. I'm just gonna, I'll get back to these people later, but this is Sonia Norris, Judy Pesquiao, Hillary Chaplin and Cecil McKinnon. I'll introduce them more a little bit later. Just wanna say who's here, the cameras, the people, you all. I've had so many fantastic conversations with women who couldn't be here tonight, who really wanted to Skype in and be here. It's been really enjoyable and dynamic to see that could we not have them so bright, so that I could see the, thank you. And I wanna invite them, even though they're not here, they wanna be here, even though maybe they're watching the screen, but they will watch it later, so they'll be here later. I also wanna name all the women who came before us, who are no longer with us, but we follow in their footsteps about clowning and calling off email. So what we're gonna do, I'm gonna introduce these women and myself a little bit more, and then we're gonna talk a little bit amongst ourselves, and then we're gonna open up for questions and hopefully open up the conversation, and then we'll finish, and I'll say some thank yous, and then we'll all mingle, and then we'll go out on the street, and we'll get wet, and we'll exchange phone numbers, and call each other tomorrow and talk some more. Just the beginning of an ongoing conversation. I mean, it's not even the beginning, it's an ongoing conversation. I am hoping that we are here today to share our experiences and our knowledge and our experience of clowning while female and what that's about, and that we can witness one another and share stories and support and inspire one another to go forward and do more clowning while female. And even though we're gonna be sitting like these people up here and you're out there, it's really kind of a circling thing, so I just wanna say that it's kind of a circling thing, and also leaving the house lights up a little so we'd be more circling, and cameras are circling, and people want to be home are circling, and that's that. You wanna put your more recording device down? I don't know whether it will, I don't even really know how it works, but you know, what's the name of the voice recorder? It's a voice recorder, it's like old school. Yeah, look, it's a question, but I don't know whether it will pick us up, but I don't know if it's old school. You know, it's not, look, it's rolling. It's an eye of change, you know what I think you are. So let me introduce here, Cecil came to clowning through two pathways. One was circus, and she was part of an act known as the Pickle Family Jugglers, which later expanded into the Pickle Family Circus, and also she came to clowning through Shakespeare, and working with Mary Conway, both as a director and a director in Shakespeare's comedies, principally at Shakespeare and Company, and currently as Circus Flora is where Cecil is now, as a director and white-faced clown, where she's created shows in the 1200-seat circus tent, and also in collaboration with the St. Louis Symphony at Powell Hall. She's an actor and director of theater, bought some Shakespeare and some opera in New York City and regionally, and as a teacher, she's until recently been an arts professor at the Experimental Theater Wing, and will use Tisch School of the Arts undergraduate drama program. And we have Hillary. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. I'm so happy to learn all of this. Hillary Chaplin is here next, and Hillary has been touring for, since 2005, her internationally with her original solo show, A Life in Her Day, which was directed by Abner Eisenberg, and she's been in variety shows worldwide, with her short comic numbers. Drawing inspiration from clown theater, movement, objects in puppetry, at which she is brilliant with all of those objects. I'm so admiring of that. Hillary's been creating solo and ensemble work for the past 40 years. She was an original cast member in Bill Irwin's Largely, New York, and appeared on Broadway in the Public Theater Production of the Tempest, directed by George C. Wolk. She played a featured role in Forrest Gump and a lawyer on law and order criminal intent. She's entertained children in New York, stating hospitals as nurse nights of the renowned Big Apple Circus Hospital Clown program, and is a founding member of the New York Goose, which was a clown ensemble created in 1996. She's premiering a new show in Poland this year, The Last Rat of Theresienstadt, which I saw a debut performance, I'm not sure how you called it that. A work in progress. A work in progress. Other nights, it's a really beautiful show, so when it comes back to New York, you should all see it. And Hillary's also a teacher of clown and physical comedy and clowning in hospitals. Background and dance and movement, Julie has spent her entire clowning career in the hospitals, first with Big Apple Circus Clown Care, and now with healthy humor. Her clown is extremely physical, mischievous, and has an intense fondness for wearing undergarments on her head. She was also a storyteller, a yoga teacher, to all kinds of different populations, and a world traveler, and doing a lot of teaching and bringing her gifts while she's traveling. Face director, divisor, performer, and teacher, working internationally with Theater Circus Clown, puppetry and dance companies, and she's recently directed Rachelle Ely. Oh, Rachelle Ely. Rachelle Ely and her one-minute show, Mal at the Ottawa Fringe Binstool, worked with Vancouver's, you know, Clown Collective Assembly. Over the past few years, she's been performing in a garbage can and collaborating with double amputee aerialist, Erin Ball, and Legacy Circus. She also teaches and directs with social circus theater and puppetry projects, working with marginalized populations in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Canada's Arctic, and Toronto. She is an MFA in directing from York University, and she's a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto Center for Drama, Theater, and Performance Studies, researching female clown as a practice of survival, and a performance of failure by those who failed to perform amidst the trauma of happiness in successful-oriented cultures. It's Makina, an all-female clown troupe who's, we're making theater shows here in New York, and I teach clowning for women workshops, and I'm also an actor, just straight old actor person, and a modern dancer. So that's actually it. I wanted to sort of, I'll talk about with the idea of crown and gender, and the Annie Frantlini, who's a famous circus clown family. She notoriously said clowns have no gender, and I know from my experience, oh, sorry, Claire, I touched them, like. My experience in workshops when this idea came up of no gender, early on when I was studying, the request would be come to class wearing baggy pants or some sort of costume, this and that, and yet the other instruction was clowns, you have to be yourself, and those things didn't go together for me. So my question to you is how did you explore clown and gender? I mean, this old idea that clowns have no gender, I mean, did you work with that? Did you change how you, did you just make discoveries, and what was your journey throughout that season? Sure, well, because I'm very tall, I was, or not very tall, but taller, I am often, or a lot of the audience, as they're leading with shake hands, they say, oh, you're a girl, oh, you've been in there, and because I do white face and it's a traditional 19th century clown for paintings, I think a lot of women have done it, I mean, I've seen them in Europe, and so in a sense it is exactly that, it is unclear what gender my clown, that clown is. I don't think I deliberately try to make anyone think I'm either that I'm a man, I assume I'm a woman, but I also believe that I'm Louis XIV, who is male, because Louis XIV had infinite power, knew that he was right, that is part of my character, more was right, so I think that's a male quality rather than a female quality in the audience as well. So I play with that, I mean, I obviously make fun of that, I'm usually wrong about what I think I'm right about, but it's that area, but I think it was more the image of the painting than a decision I made, and then it's the audience don't see, you know, it's a big velvet costume, I happen to be tall, my name is Cecil, which is, you know, I mean, in the Midwest where I perform a lot, it's a female name, but in the East, so. Did you ever explore a clown that was? Well, absolutely in theater, of course I played, always played female characters, and I always thought exaggerating your female characteristics was the most fun, you know, huge butt, big, huge breasts, and so sort of going that way was where I tended to go. Early on when I started, I never really thought about whether or not it was male or female or without gender, I just assumed it. But in my early exploration, I also put on a fat suit for a while, and I found that putting a fat suit on kept me, allowed me to stop thinking about the female of me, and just allowed me to be in the moment and react to whatever it was that was happening, and so I was not concerned about how I looked, and that was a really great period of growth for me, and I started doing some pieces that I started trying to make myself look really good and still be funny, and I had one of my mentors, whose name I don't think we need to mention, said, Hillary, you have to make yourself look funny, you can't look so beautiful, and do that, and be funny, and I said, you know what, I think you're wrong, I'm going to try to look my best, and still be funny, and that's worked really well, I see no reason for women not to look beautiful and be able to be funny. At the same time, I love playing with all kinds of costume and character and shapes, and I'm not afraid to look ugly, which can be really fun, but I don't think it's necessary. That's funny, before I talk about myself, Hillary just said something that I witnessed in a workshop once, and there was a girl who was, I mean beautiful, like big blue eyes, what do they call it, Raphael curls, or whatever the big blonde curls and stuff like that, and this particular teacher who does not need to be named, like walked up and said, you know your problem, you're too pretty, and he made her put her head in a garbage can, like a garbage can all during the day, we've been like throwing stuff in, and it was when we were talking before about uncomfortable moments in workshops, and I remember, and to this day I feel bad that I did not stand up for her, because she was like, well he's telling you to do this, and she was so earnest and wanted to do it, so she walked over and she did it, and then she ran from him crying, and so I will never forget that, because it wasn't true, the work she had been offering was darn funny, it was whatever their perception, you say it was a male teacher of it that caused her then to have this complete shut down of the thing, and so I'll never ever forget that. So that's, when you said that, that's one thing I thought about, and then I, it's interesting, because I came to clown from the dance world, so at the beginning I wanted to be the pretty ballerina, so it's all about like the look, and I knew I didn't fit in in that way, and then I played a lot of, because on the opposite of you, I'm very small, and with my energetic, I was often playing little boys quite a bit. When I met my husband, I was playing little boys, and when I was like, that tells more about him than about me. But it's interesting, but then when you really have a clown, my clown is so immensely girly, and I am not, I mean, like I purposely keep my hair like two inches long, and barely wear makeup, but she is this very girly, albeit mischievous, but in this really girly demeanor, and I don't even know, I can't even explain it, it's like when I have partners that haven't worked with me before in the hospital, this one partner says, you're really into shoes, and I'm like, I am not, but she is. I couldn't tell like I got 50 years crocs on, so that's really interesting that my clown she very much is very feminine, and such the biggest flirt that I've been married for forever, which I never was, so that's just what my experience is. It's a lot of fun. It was really fun. Oh, yeah, oh, what, no? Do I need to put it on? No, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. Thank you so much, take it off. Thank you. So my clown is also really girly, and now exists in a garbage can, a lot of the time, but of her own militia. Nobody puts a baby in a garbage can. But this is the heart of what I'm seeking to unpick or to just take a look at in terms of other people's clown as well. I never contemplated whether my clown should or shouldn't be girly. She just really was really girly in all the ways that I, as Sonia, won't. I'm gonna wear boots and I'm gonna stomp around so that you know, don't fuck with me, or it makes me say, for whatever, or all of those things, on stage as a clown, then I can play with all the things I won't allow myself to play with. I can play with high heels, and with clumsy stupid dresses that actually give me great pleasure to wear, serve for all the wrong reasons. So, do you know that's a, I don't sit easily with that as I am now at a stage by doing a PhD out of the blue about something I never thought that I would be analyzing, but it's making me analyze things so I have allowed myself to be unconsciously responsive to. And I think that that is incredibly important. That's why I'm doing it right now. This PhD around female clown is that I think that we need to actually think through these things. We don't have the luxury of being unconscious and just being inspired in the moment, not saying that we shouldn't do that and shouldn't follow the impulse. And I really believe that our clowns are created from a place of pleasure. We follow what gives us pleasure to show up on that stage. But now I have to unpick, what am I doing in a pink bridesmaid's dress with little white gloves on? Talking like a little girl, God help me. Like it's so not what I believe in, and yet there I stand. And with big, huge buck teeth, because I, like we've heard, same thing, I was told, not that you're too beautiful, I didn't seem to exceed to that limit of, that was never it. But I was told you're too symmetrical. So it's sort of like you're too perfect to look at that there's no funny. And I accepted that, I wasn't in, didn't actually take that as a negative. I'm like, oh, I understand that, it makes total sense. I'm too symmetrical. What am I supposed to do? You need something that throws you off balance. I can agree with that, I can get on board with that. And so I created these huge buck teeth that throw me out of balance in speaking, which I actually really appreciated because it means that my, like Sonya's mind can't actually work in the same way. I am put into a different way, a different rhythm of response mentally, as well as therefore physically. And that's what the costuming does as well for me is that it puts me into a different place of response. Because I can't move literally in the exact same way. And yet it's doing all those things that you could go, that's exactly why women have been put in high heels and tight dresses. It incapacitates us, it immobilizes us. Yep, and I don't agree with all of that. So I actually sit in an uneasy place of, I've just done certainty right now. I'm not changing what I'm doing, but I'm very conscious of it and I'm not comfortable with it. I just, before I stop on this subject, I wanted to just mention that the issue of, I think that we're talking about with this question really comes back to how can we disrupt how we are perceived as women? I think that that actually is an issue every single time that a female clown sets foot on the stage. And as to whether we are subverting or just diverting or reinscribing the norms and the demands of society on us or whether we're saying, I don't care, that's not what I'm, I'm not even dealing with any of those things and yet your presence still is. Whether you choose to think about it or not, it still is the minute you step foot on stage. And therefore, how do we interrupt the immediate response of the fact the reality is that we live in a world in a society where as a female, there are perceptions that are in place just the minute that people look at us. And that is different, I think, than when a male clown sets foot on stage, even though of course we have perceptions and demands and norms around men as well. But I think that that's the difficulty that as female clowns that we are constantly dealing with is well then what do we buy into it and do we put on our lingerie and do we play with being super sexy or you know, I shouldn't do that, oh God, well I shouldn't do that, well then what, but I actually like to play with being so. What am I doing here? What am I doing? I've had the experience of, you know, the idea that the audience is gonna tell you what's funny, that idea and I've had the experience of being in a clown workshop that was, a co-ed clown workshop and doing something on stage and I could see some of the guys in the room were like, yeah, yeah, do that thing, do that sort of crotch-y thing and they're gonna laugh and they're gonna find it funny and I was like, I see how that would inform me and it wasn't what I wanted to do. So I sort of had to do that and then let it go and move on and I was like, oh, that would get into Buffal territory and like deal with that in a certain way but it really like in a room, an audience that I can see certain people are responding, they're saying, please go do that thing and I was like, that's not really what I wanna do. So I mean, I think that's one of the reasons I get in a room with other women so that we are really, and even when I make my own solos, I'm in a room by myself because I like a lot of privacy to figure out what I wanna be making and sharing. So I totally agree that what is funny is being seen that we're addressing that when we get in front of an audience. I had a conversation with Amy Gordon who couldn't be here but she was talking about and it was sort of related to this question about gender but also whether clowns are sexual or not and she said she had, I hope she doesn't mind my sharing this but she said, somebody had said to her, oh, you can't do that, you can't be sexual and she said, well, did anybody to the fucking audience that? You're gonna get on stage and there's something going on there that you have to deal with and so I just wanna throw it out there if the idea of clowns is not, besides not having gender, like not having any sexuality, like, I mean, they're related but if that has come up with the beauty issue or yeah, generally. But actually, before you get to that, I realized that your conversation, because I do have the extra thing of like, sort of like your perception of, now there's a woman, it's a black woman. And so there are for sure things, people definitely expect me to say, to do, to be able to do and that's what is very interesting because sometimes I will go down that road because again, I wanna please the audience. Even if it's not something I wanna do and I know by frankly, I'm gonna get the laugh because as a black person, if especially if I'm doing a group thing, if I say this, everybody will laugh because it's a play on my color. And so I do use it but at the other hand, there's some days I'm like, like I don't, that's not actually what I wanna say or do but again, I know, I'm me inside but I can't, from yoga, I'm a soul and all that stuff but I can't escape the brown packaging so it's very interesting and also I perform mostly at this hospital that's in Harlem and so it's very interesting because there's a lot of, I either sometimes the other black women who are perceiving me or either some of them are church going ladies who quite frankly, there was one lady when I was very new to clowning and she called me over and she says, honey, don't make a fool out of yourself like that. And so there's that and then there's also the, what I call the African Queens, we have a lot of West African women who are kinda looking at me like what that's gonna like, you know, it's like she making fun of herself is she making fun of all of us so it's an interesting part of being a native New Yorker as I grew up very almost devoid of really being conscious of my color quite a bit, it was a different New York, I guess, than it is now and it was only really when I came to theater when I was being cast at things, you know, this is not the show for you, you know, this is not the show for you that I really became aware of it and so most of the time I have to say it's not a thing in clown but there are different times when like what I do, if I'm really reading you on it and so I'm like, you want me to do the sassy black woman thing, okay, I will. But it's the same, I bought at, I mean, a clown's job is to expose humanity, you know, male and female and therefore I think there's lots of very sexy male clowns, I mean, it depends on the person's take but that's part of who they are too, who is sexuality, so I just don't think, I think it's, it is the job of a clown to be everything, or whatever the particular thing about humanity you're on at that moment, like yeah, yeah, and of course for women it's, this is what women are, but for men it's, this is what men are, so I guess that's where I'm kind of like, I don't see it as just women's problem. I certainly also really agree with what you all were saying about, you know, when I'm in the position of hiring clowns, I really like, maybe I just really like female clowns to be attractive in some way, not to be grotesque and I think that's just probably personal taste, I don't know how poor it's an evolving world we're in maybe about what you find funny, what you find. Can I ask why you don't want them to be grotesque? Because I find it more appealing when they're showing me, I mean like, buffoon is different, but if you're doing clown, like an entree that you're gonna watch for eight or nine minutes, it to me needs, it needs to bring in the audience in some way, so I think that's why, I feel like if we once, was it a clown Amanda, do you know? She called it, anyway, Crocker, yeah. Who I think is wonderful, she's like, she's small and wiry and could play a little girl, and she sort of does, but she plays on that sort of what I imagine, I don't really work with. So I don't know if I've answered your question. I think that then, I'm sort of tending my mouth shut because then I immediately then go, so what is, could you define what is grotesque to you? Because I think that that is necessary then to understand, well, what do we actually mean by grotesque? What do we mean by attractive? I guess I was thinking of fright wigs and big red noses and things that scare children. Which can be overcome, but they're seen as probably that sort of thing, like that image. Like that traditional American image of the party store. Yeah, or highly distorted somehow. Yeah, that's been left behind, it seems to me. I think, I mean, maybe there's some of it around, but you do see them, yeah. There's some of these meters like that, but nonetheless, pull forward on just what you were saying. Because I think that the point that you just brought up about, honey, don't make yourself foolish or don't make it fool yourself. This is something that I have been thinking about in regards to women as well. And although there is sexuality, I agree in both men and women and the clown is about bringing forward what is human and the issues that we have is being human, therefore sexuality could be part of it, all of that. But the thing is, is that women are sexual objects in a way that men are not in our society and that's just a simple fact. I will not believe that we are equal in how we are perceived sexually as men or women in our society and therefore how we play with our sexuality on stage is not equal either. That's a problem, therefore, with how do we play with it. And the thing about clown, and this gets into what is clown and what do we believe clown is, but so let's just say that right now I'm talking about, that I think that as clowns we do stand on the stage and whether we are going down that pathway of love me, love me or give me a laugh, you're looking for some kind of approval. Now, what word we use for that? Is it approval? Is it appreciation? Is it to be loved? All of those things. They are difficult, they have a lot of baggage around them, those concepts, for anybody, absolutely, but for women, I think specifically. Because we are brought up, all generalizations, but we're brought up to make sure that we are pleasing. We are brought up to make sure that we are appealing. We are brought up to make sure that we are attractive, that we are not too much, not grotesque, not exceeding all of those things that I think we probably all know already. But therefore, I think about those things now in a way that I didn't think about it when I was in my own clown training X number of years ago, and now when I enter a clown workshop or I enter the stage as a clown, I do think about, Sonia, what are you doing when you look out there at that audience and you go, do they like me? Do you like me? In whatever way that I am doing something and part of me wants to smack that down in myself. And yet it is actually part of the heart of clowning. I'm a little reluctant to say this because I'm sure that we could also unpack that and go, well, that's an old concept or maybe that's what we need to get rid of. But then if we get rid of it, then what is clown? What am I doing there? Open heartedly going, yeah, and there's whatever my plan is that I've come up with that I really wanna share with you. I don't want you to go, you know what? I think that you're boring. So I am looking for an approval and that is carrying baggage of myself as a woman in society wanting to be liked or knowing that I am not, but really knowing that I'm failing. And just one last thing along with it because it comes off of the foolishness is that I've been thinking about how clown is about revealing the stupidity, right? In the best possible way, but the stupidity of humanity and I believe in that. I wanna see more Franklin losers on stage to eat those things that I can really relate to that I am just failing at and yet surviving and living with and finding pleasure to be alive still in my fallible state. And yet if women are often perceived as stupid to begin with, we carry that baggage. So how do I find the pleasure? How do I play with stupidity when I actually in my life, or I have spent a lifetime trying to prove that as a five-two blonde female, I'm no fucking dummy. I am not stupid. And there comes the rage. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do. I have obstacles, our inner obstacles for clowning. I don't know if that's what you were gonna address Hillary, but I'm gonna. I was going to say that I think men are, I don't think it's that different with men on stage. They want to be loved. I don't think it's that different with any kind of artist who is creating something that they're going to put out in the public. Part of that is self-expression. These are my ideas. These are my feelings. These are what's important to me. But I think every artist wants appreciation and love for their art form and for their expression of their work. And I don't disagree with you that women are brought up wanting to please people in a much different way than they are. I mean, I often feel like the challenge is understanding my right to be on the stage, my right to own the stage and clowning because there's so much with the audience. You know, the right to that space as well. To be as powerful as possible on the stage with the audience and engage with people. And that's the challenge that I'm coming up against. I mean, it's basic. Do I have the right to be on the stage and play and be seen and all of that? So, and it may not be just women who have that issue but it seems like when I've worked with workshops and my troop and I think one of the reasons I'm working in a room that's just women is because then there's suddenly some of that issue is gone and we make our own world. And then when we put a show on stage, we're bringing our whole world to the stage and we're not having to ask for permission from the audience in the same way because it's our world that now you're invited into. So, I mean, I'm sort of curious how, I mean, because different kind of clowning happens different ways, theater, circus, and in the hospitals, when you're working in the hospital you walk into a different room every day and you have to ask permission every day when you go in. And how does that change whether you're okay and whether you're allowed to be there or not and what does that do for you as an artist or a human being? Do you have any thoughts about that or more about obstacles that you... I just thought in relation to the hospital. I worked in hospitals for many years and there are times when a kid doesn't want you in their room and it's not about you. The wonderful thing that I finally learned was it's not personal in any way. It's not me they don't want. They don't want the presence of what we are because they're in a state where they're just not open to it and it has nothing to do with me. So for me to go through that process of understanding was really good for me as a performer because it took it out of the personal. And in the hospital, you have to leave that ego behind and know that you're there for whatever the child needs in the moment or the family. And also what we do in the hospital, there's what we use the word permission there's so many different ways of getting permission. It's very different. The permission might just be a, I just, it might be, yeah, yeah, come in or it might be just a blank or there's so many different ways of getting permission. Yeah, sure, whatever. Yeah, yeah, the sure whatever. Or just like, yeah, like a teenager. So you come in, yeah. Or it might be just even the raise the eyebrow and you think, yeah, you're gonna go for it and go in, but it's absolutely right. You get to the point is like it's not personal. This kid's been just been stuck with a thousand different needles and they're not home and they're scared and I'm certainly not gonna take that they don't want me to come in and walk into a wall for them, like it's all personal. So in a way, that going through that has given me a new kind of idea of permission of what I'm, what I should or shouldn't be doing allowed to do. I don't think I question this much in some areas working on a new show. I question it different areas in regards to that. I'm not cured. A little bit related to this. I wanted to ask what you're going to create something new or perform, what is the best room? You know, what do you want in the room to make the best room for your creativity or your performance and your clown to come out? Whether, I mean, you know, maybe it's the best studio space or I mean, whatever you want to describe or the best performance, what are the things that really make you say this is the room where I can do my best clown? That's just a question I've never, I've never had the luxury of identifying what's the best. So I get, and yet there must be things that I need. It's like things, I think it's, I'm just looking for inspiration and other people. Things. I need a kid. Yeah, especially since again, only nearly in the hospital, I need, there's nothing, I mean, Hillary can say her experience. There's nothing that I can manufacture in a studio that will be exact and the same thing as I walk into the hospital room or walk into the clinic and there's all those different variables and for me that, well I guess it is, it's having a lot of stuff. I have so much stuff. I have so much stimuli and they're about that. There's like, you know, the things on the walls and stuff. That's what I can get. And your work is also improvisational? Yes. You're not working on something in a studio to then present your audience. I think for me too, I like having other people and I like having people who I know don't care if I really fail. I have to be able to be really bad in order to find what's good. Well, I think ideally I like people but I don't usually, I mean, often I have a lot of hostile people. I don't know. That's what I'm saying. I mean, there's like, you know, there's 90 people around and they're not really going, oh, that's very interesting. But it does come back for me always to the same thing which is a reason that I think is important to do this just the same as why go on stage is because you think you're saying something or something I want us to say. And we're working towards that. It may be horrible, but the reason is that there's something we're trying to say about society, people, relationships. But it's also tremendously difficult. I don't know how it is if you work on your own but to rehearse a clown act without an audience is really hard because you, it's just really, I mean, you set it up and you kind of, that means working or not. You know, it is always, I guess, what you're calling improvisation is, oh, you can set up the structure but I mean, like Adam, we're doing a dress and he's like, okay, that was the act. All right, so when we're done, there's nobody there. There's nobody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hope it works out. Yeah. Yeah. I think that must be true whether you're alone or with 90 people. Yeah. It's just more hostile when there's 90 people going on. I'm looking for hostile. It's better being alone. Yeah, yeah. It's better being alone. I'm alone. I'm alone. He's funny. I'm, I call it a studio myself when I'm working on my own material and I have a mirror there. And for a while recently, I was like, what's wrong? What's wrong? And I realized because I started wearing glasses but now if I'm not wearing them when I'm working, I can't see myself in the mirror. So I don't have this audience and I'm suddenly like, this isn't really fun anymore. So that there's something about even in the mirror, you know, this engagement, but I feel like as you say, the clown doesn't really come alive without some of that. You can set up a lot but it is so much about the play and that's other engagement. Even if it's me with myself, it's sort of funny. I wish I could have used myself that much. You know, the thing that they say, if you laugh by yourself, that there's just like a line or you're like, yeah, every time I laugh by myself, I'm like, oh. I walk out of the street and start laughing. And I'm like, this is okay. Yeah. I wanted to ask, what is the most gender wacky thing someone has said to you about your climate? Wait for it. A lot of inappropriate things said, like, because I do play quite the flirt in the hospital and I have 5,000 boyfriends among the hospital staff. Everybody's a sweetie, a chick, and that, and that, and that. And so there have been times where, you know, particularly this one police officer, a hospital police officer, who is a mountain. He is like all of us, like sit that much, he's this huge guy and he's got these big eyes, he's like, and so we play those very flirtatious games every once in a while. And because I am totally playing, but every once in a while it tips into, I'm not sure if that's, you know, and particularly, I'm always with a partner and I particularly if, and if I'm with one of the other women, if they, if I feel them start to like, then I know because I'm so familiar and it is so much my game with them. So I've had like some things that I'm like, but my meter is sort of like, if it starts to feel like a creepy place, then I back off, but I can't like, think of one particularly thing, but there have been times when I felt like, you went to, you went to the bad place. I can't really think of any gender wacky things, gender inappropriate. I was on stilts at a gig with a lot of drunken people and I think the majority of them were men. It was some kind of a business thing on the evening party and they were drunk. And when I'm on stilts and a man is standing in front of me, he's comes to a certain level of my body and made some inappropriate gestures towards that part of my body and that was pretty, pretty uncomfortable. I've had that as well. What did you respond to? How did you respond? I turned to it. I don't know, it's quite a while ago, but I think I gave him just a kind of a disgusted look and just turned. I don't know how I'd respond today. That was a long time ago. I stopped doing that kind of work soon after that though because having those kinds of experiences and then at a nightclub where I had to be out in the middle of this dance floor and people just treating me again a little bit inappropriate. I don't have to do this anymore. I just don't have to do it, so I stopped. I once had, after doing a clown act, somebody that a man said to me afterward, your husband must be very lucky. Yeah. Ew. Yeah, he said it, yeah. I don't have a husband, but I understood it to mean the man who gets to touch you or be around you. You know, just so, yeah, I mean, just a odd thing. I just went on a clown act. You didn't take it as a compliment? I took it that he was excited by my work, so I took it as a compliment for a work. I was not positive, something, but I didn't bother explaining the way that was a completely inappropriate thing to say, and weird and whatever, because why? Why? What am I going to explain to you to understand that that was just the wrong thing? There was one thing. And it was a gender wacky thing, but it wasn't one of those things that made me creep out. Traditionally, the last ship before Thanksgiving in the hospital, we do this thing and a lot of clowns do it in the hospital. We're one of us dressed as up like a turkey and the other was like the chef. And running around. And so all through the clinics, it's like this traditional thing. It's like, you know, so I'm usually the turkey. So I remember I was running by, and I think, Wayne Barton, for those of you who know him, he was the chef coming after me and we were in an elevator or something and there was some male staff member. And I was like, oh no, save me, save me. And Wayne was going, no, get her, get her. And he looks at me and goes, not enough, press me on that bird. It's like, but it wasn't like a creepy, we just got to all get away after my run. I want to, just a couple more questions here and then we'll take some, I think. But I wanted to talk a little bit, I mean, you talked about breast meat on your bird. You know, what about, what have you, what have you been exploring about your relationship to the body? That, you know, how to work with that? I mean, how to, how does it manifest these questions about, you know, who's in charge of my body? How do I use my body? I mean, since we're physical performers and all this, there's a lot of work that goes into that, but have you had stuff that comes up or you have questions or explorations specifically about how you're dealing with your body on stage and going back to that fat suit I wore for a long time, for years, for a life and for a day, I wore a fat suit underneath a red one-piece thing and another thing over it. Well, here's an interesting thing. Ogner was directing me and I didn't have a dress over the one-piece red union suit. He said, you know, I think you need to wear something over that because we're looking at you and you look naked and is that what you want? And then I realized he really was right and he said, why don't you play with the idea of modesty? So I put the white thing on and then whenever I change into a little bikini over a fat body, but never, try never to let my bits show. Same with getting into another dress, changing, always trying to play with the modesty and I found that for me it actually did make a lot more sense the idea of modesty and not wanting to get naked like that because it didn't start to feel like you're getting naked. So that was an interesting change. Even though your naked was the union suit. The naked was the union suit because that was my naked and I'm not interested in getting naked, whether it be my own skin or. But I used a fat suit because this character is always eating and sweet things. And I was, well, and she feels very comfortable with herself. She wasn't worried about eating and not getting fat. She was very comfortable with her bulky, bunchy body. Then I let go of that suit and I just wore the union suit and I think again it was just, I got to a point where I didn't need that as protection because it was protection for me because I didn't want my body to show under it. And that was a fake body on top of my body. So it was a long process of just feeling comfortable with myself. And now in one of my pieces, a Shakespeare piece, I wear a tight dress, which for me as a woman I rarely wear tight clothes and I find it difficult to wear clothing because it really shows my body. And so it's actually been really good for me personally to get to that point where I'm actually comfortable wearing it on stage. There also used to be this idea that your costume should cover most of your skin and you shouldn't show skin. Which I think that's a great question. Forget about that. Too hot. Is that for the men and the women? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A real ring lady. I dare I? Yeah. Excellent. There's a, well none of you are at this point yet, but as you age and you work physically, it's been very, I mean I have a constant dialogue with whoever I can talk to about if I look, because I used to do a very, very, very complicated steps, which now I don't think look good on me. I feel they, I feel them too stiff. So I've gone in a whole different physical direction, still using that the walk has changed and the way I use my arms has changed. And kind of saying this is what an old person's clown looks like, which I find, I mean I don't know, I think it's interesting. I don't know if anybody else does, but I think it's interesting. So that's, and yeah, so that has really morphed physically through my life now. With the troupe, we did a show that had a few numbers with all the nudie suits, which were these, you know, nudicolor unitores with little fake nipples on it. And again, it was like the play, the exploration that the clowns could do about their bodies while still being covered, yet they look naked, was just hilarious to me. I mean, it was hilarious to us anyway. It was hilarious because, you know, there's sort of like a different ways of being modest or sort of glorifying in that feeling of being naked except they weren't naked. And it was just, it was so great to, I think there's just so much more we could do with that, but that thing of naked not naked or modesty and the body is so interesting. And yet coming up to that edge of like, oh, that's not, you know, now they're naked. I mean, because it did start to feel like getting naked. So that was an interesting change. Even though your naked was the union suit. The naked was the union suit because that was my naked. And I'm not interested in getting naked, whether it be my own skin or, but I used a fat suit because this character is always eating. And sweet things. And I was, well, and she feels very comfortable with herself. She wasn't worried about eating and not getting fat. She was very comfortable with her bulky, bunchy body. Then I let go of that suit. And I just wore the union suit. And I think again, it was just, I got to a point where I didn't need that as protection because it was protection for me because I didn't want my body to show under it. And that was a fake body on top of my body. So it was a long process of just feeling comfortable with myself. And now in one of my pieces, a Shakespeare piece, I wear a tight dress, which for me as a woman, I rarely wear tight clothes and I find it difficult to wear clothing that really shows my body. And so it's actually been really good for me personally to get to that point where I'm actually comfortable wearing it on the stage. There also used to be this idea that your costume should cover most of your skin. That you shouldn't show skin clime. Which I think that's, I think it's called, forget it about that. Too hot. Except for the men in the woman? Yeah. Yeah. A real ringlet. Yeah, right? Yeah. Excellent. There's a, well none of you are at this point yet, but as you age and you work physically, it's been very, I mean I have a constant dialogue with whoever I can talk to about if I look, because I used to do a very, very, very complicated steps, which now I don't think look good on me. I feel too stiff. So I've gone in a whole different physical direction, still using that the walk has changed and the way I use my arms has changed. And kind of saying this is what an old person's clown looks like, which I find, I mean I don't know, I think it's interesting. I don't know if anybody else does, but I think it's interesting. So that's, and yeah, so that has really morphed physically through my life now. With the troupe, we did a show that had a few numbers with all the nudie suits, which were these, you know, nudicolor unitores with little fake nipples on it. And again, it was like the play, the exploration that the clowns could do about their bodies while still being covered, that they looked naked was just hilarious to me. I mean, it was hilarious to us anyway. It was hilarious because, you know, there's sort of like a different ways of being modest or sort of glorifying in that feeling of being naked, except they weren't naked. And it was just, it was so great to, I think there's just so much more we could do with that, but that thing of naked, not naked or modesty and the body is so interesting. And yet coming up to that edge of like, oh, that's not, you know, now they're naked. I mean, it was funny to watch the audience with those numbers because the audience was like, they're naked, but they're not naked. But I feel like they're naked. I have a lot of feelings about that. I have a lot of feelings. I don't know how to feel. But it was great to sort of work that edge of what everybody feels about that. Yes. Sort of mixing the last question and this question of what some gender weird thing that was said to us, whatever that question was, and that everybody actually started talking about inappropriate sexual things that were said to them. I thought that was interesting, that that's how that got answered. And how I, what I'm aware of with my body, what I'm doing with my body or whatever that is, my body on stage as a clown is actually, it stems from, I think, from being told that I was absolutely un-fuckable by Philippe Gourier. Who I had a fantastic experience with. I got him when he was absolutely fabulous and I worked really well with him. I was so, and it worked to be told that, that I was absolutely un-fuckable. It was very funny. Everybody laughed at me. And how un-fuckable I am. And that has, I've held on to that. And again, probably for all kinds of very wrong reasons that that has resonated into positive action for me, but there you go, there's my own fuck up. But I realized as I was thinking about when you ask the questions, like I don't know, my body on whatever. But I very happily have therefore set about as a clown to make myself seem more fuckable. Like I realized there's a connection there that I hadn't really actually identified solidly. But not from a place of anxiety or, oh my God, or the way that Sonya right now might be sitting here and hope that, like I'm not gonna sit here and let the sag and this stick out, I'm gonna do my best to try and look good somehow, whatever, that sort of consciousness that I have of Sonya's body right now as Sonya, as my clown, I quite happily forget about it that and solve the problem of, oh, well, then I need bigger tits, that's cool. I can do that with bubble wrap, that's really excellent. Done, fuckable, happily fuckable, aren't I? Because that's apparently what I am now, that's what the, so it didn't pose a problem for me. It gave me a way to actually deal with the reality that is difficult for me in life. It became so much easier. It is so much easier, so it's almost a relief, I think, to be in my body as my clown. I'm more comfortable there as myself than I am here right now. My last question I wanna post to you before we take it to the audience is this question that was on the press materials and promo for this. Is clowning one female or radical act? I think clowning is a radical act. Third, or? I don't know, I don't know, I'll say why. Can you say why? Well, because it's radical whatever your gender or self-definition, because you're trying to step out and go, this is what people, this particular person is, or this is what I think, this is what I see, society. So anytime you do that, it's hopefully radical. I guess we have to then say what's radical, but anyway, pardon me. That's what I'm asking, why is clowning radical? Because it's sending, it's asking, I mean it's like the history of clowning, you know. It's asking society to turn itself upside down and look at the hierarchy, look at power, look at gender and roles that people play and like the saws, you know, they live in town to town. That's in its job and it's a needed, people need it. I also think that as for anybody to be a clown is a radical act for oneself because I'm putting myself out in front of you and allowing you to laugh at me for my idiocies and therefore to allow you to laugh at yourself because anything that's idiotic about me is idiotic about you too. So I'm letting you laugh at me and I feel I do it, I try to give that as an act of love and it's a gift to let you laugh at me. I totally agree with both the people in Hillary the minute you said radical, I think the act of the amount of vulnerability it takes anybody to be a clown is completely radical in a time where it's all about the cover up and the layering on top. If the vulnerability that really takes to just open it up that's a radical act. And I've been thinking about joy, radical joy and radical hope and I've been doing a lot of research into joy and hope and how those terms are defined and how those elements of the human experience are examined philosophically through history and things like that and what's the psychology of joy and the psychology of hope and what is the difference between hope and optimism and things like that. And I think that to hope is a radical act in a world that is giving us so many reasons to not hope and I think that to propose joy as a not a valid but as an important response to our horrific and tragic world is a radical act to propose joy as something that actually has a muscle behind it and that is essential and that we need to offer it up not as a stupid momentary diversion as just a happy lip in time to sit here and laugh at my stupidity but to actually understand why that is so profoundly necessary for us as human beings and necessary right now in so much in this world that we are in and there's a trauma therapist that has wonderful things to say about clown and she says something about how can we live with not a superficial hope but with a courageous hope in such a tragic world? That is what I feel like as the clowns are exploring with everything that they do is that they are exploring a courageous hope in the face of tragedy and of course that gets into what do you think your world is tragic and the world is beautiful and all kinds of other fabulous things as well but yeah so the clown offers that as a radical possibility in response to our world I think hope and joy. Any thoughts? I'm sorry, I was just thinking just Mimi think of somebody else, the radicalness of that the clowns live in the problem and we don't run away from it, that's where the juice is we live in the problem, we screw up in front of everyone and make it worse. And make it worse and we live in the problem in the society when it's all about the cover up literally I think that's pretty radical to live in the dumper live in the black. I also think that the freedom of the clown is radical and particularly for women and not just for women but for other folks who are not the dominant people so to be on stage and actually be free is radical for women to do and so it's pretty just that to do it. Some questions, do you folks have questions? They wanna, it is hot, it is hot. Is there a possibility or is it to the clown that it is hot? Microphone's not to become the air condition. How much has it changed in the past 10 or 15 years to be the moving clown now? 15 years ago, is there something that's really changed, bubbled up and it's been done? Or is it part of the thoughts now? I think there are more and what I've heard from other people is internationally there are more and more. For the first few months, but you've got a good memory right there. Come here. I have quite a few questions. It's a different, it is different like. The dynamic. Yeah, the dynamic. I do, I still think the, I still think the structures of big industry and commercial services and variety shows are still stuck a little bit in the old way so and what I've heard from people, you know you have to get in a room to be able to say like here's how we could do a different thing and do it more than the clowns and sometimes they're like, I don't know. And I know guys who are like, I don't know how we're gonna do that. You know, you just have to open the door like how people will tell you and do it like, I don't know how we're gonna do that. I don't know how. So I think there's still some of that, but what are you all saying? There are still a lot more men at a professional level both in charge of who gets hired and the number who get hired. It's often a kind of, unless I'm at a women's sound festival of which there are a good handful of now around the world and those are primarily women performers and amazing women performers out in Europe and South America. Then it's usually predominant. Because, proportionally, there are not as many women shows out there yet as there are men at that level, but there are more and more, so much out of the world. It's been some great months. So because of the research that I'm doing and talking to an awful lot of people and the research that I'm doing and talking to an awful lot of female clowns and asking them questions about this and the thing that, as well as reading, there's a very small amount of literature on female clowns. John Davidson being one of the few people that has actually written about female clowns and thank you very much for doing that. But what I have read several times in various sources is that female clowns, one of the ideas is that they came about. They started to appear because only when men, male clowns were sick or dying. And so I've read that as that's part of our history. And at the same time that I'm reading that, this summer I interviewed a whole slew of Canadian female clowns who I think are sort of like, I consider them the first generation of contemporary female clowns. And they're in their late 50s into 60s. So they spend some lifetime doing it as women here have. And they repeatedly, in separate interviews with no idea of what was being said elsewhere, they repeatedly said the exact same thing of, well, I get work, it's like I'm the problem solver. I only get hired when there's a mistake. So I am the mistake or I'm the gap filler. These sorts of things were said repeatedly and they identified that it was when a man gets sick, gets a better gig and leaves or dies, then they call me in. And the similarity of, we were talking 1830s or something or 1880s, whatever it is, I'm terrible as a researcher remembering my dates, but that, and now we're talking 2018. And it is exactly the same thing that is being said. That is very telling to me about the situation with women still today. If that's what's happening. And the reality of that is that also, sorry for just the reality, but that means they identified that when they get called in, when they finally get the job, they get given 24 hours to rehearse into it. And so that's the work that is then allowed to be developed by that really fantastic, incredible talented female performer. Whereas the men that got the job in the first place were given whatever it is to treat women for weeks, six weeks, whatever it was to develop their work. But the woman is brought in to solve the problem and is given 24 hours and therefore really what, you know, and so these are big problems in terms of what then is able to be evolved from the talent, just the raw talent of the performer if they're not being given the equal opportunity to evolve their craft. I just wanna say, I have to leave. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Frankly, most men and many women still don't think a woman is going to be as funny as a man. I can feel it. I think men are often surprised that I'm as funny as they are. I don't know, there's so many people from past generations, women that I think are hilarious, wonderful clowns from Bobbill, early TV. I'm just sitting here trying to, yes, there's more men in glory, that's certainly true. But I would hate for us to just say, well, there's been no one. There's been lots of fantastic women clowns. I think probably in the 19th century, as I've said, I think they hid that they were women in order to be on stage. But I know they were on stage. So, yes, I think in theater, like in almost everywhere, there's fewer jobs for women, there's no question. That's why I'm not debating that. But I just, there have been female clowns, or I find it incredibly inspiring. And when I was young, I was not watching them. Tapes of looking and doing. Gracie, George Allen. I mean, it's just kind of, oh yeah, I mean, how'd she do it? Amazing. I can't hear. Oh, repeat it, oh repeat it after she. But I'm gonna ask, how do people respond when they find out what your kind of like, your families or like friends or like, is it that way for like, really? Or people invalidate you or are they supportive? Are they excited when they want you to perform on the spot? Like, how is it like coming out as a clown? No, you otherwise. In your daily life, like that. So I'll repeat. The question was that how, what is it to tell your friends and family that you are a clown and how are they responding to you as you come out as a clown? At the dinner party? Yes. Today, I asked you before, what is it? Well, many years ago, I, when I first started doing clowning, my father said, what are you going to do something besides clowning? Clowning. And then when I did a solo show many years ago about a woman from Tulsa Trax, painting, Die Beckenbach, he, the woman who long life loves, Die Beckenbach, he watched that show, which was not a clown show. And he said, no, I understand. Which was really cool, because you saw that the clown work really made a difference in my work as an actress, especially in that kind of show that didn't have a court law as talked to, frankly to the audience. And I will admit that for a long time I would not call myself a clown because I didn't, personally I didn't understand the respect that the art form deserved. And I always wanted to be taken seriously as a woman, as an artist, as a performer, and I just, I couldn't call myself a clown. And I still, when I say that I'm a clown, I put a little explanation of, you know, like a theater clown, or like a Charlie Chaplin mixed with Lucy Ball. That kind of a clown, not a circus clown, no offense to circus clowns, not a birthday party clown, no offense to birthday party clowns I was a clown. But yeah, because people say, oh, that's cute. Oh, still to this day, many people see me and they say, you still clowning around? I really hate it. Infantilizes. Infantilizes, thank you. She's been my word correct with this week. She's been my word correct with this week. Infantilizes. Which that just did. No. No. No. But I think it's the same dispute that everything to do with, you know, you're saying you're a juggler. Oh, are we juggled through balls? Or, you know, or, So you don't say that. Or, you know, you're a clown, no, you know, just a birthday party or something. I don't know, so it's the same, it's all one umbrella of dispute. Poverty invented an organization which all want to join the Circus Anti-Defamation League. For example, the Senate is called a circus. When a circus is well rehearsed, 90 people do. Well, they're working well too. Yeah, they're working well too. Whether they agree or not, they're all working. So it's not like hubby's up there, he's the president of the CAHD and so on. But anyway, the duck, it is a big umbrella of dispute, I think. Dancers too, dancers didn't agree with me. Yeah. Oh, you pulled it. Yeah. Are there other questions? Not really a question. I just wanted to add it to the, talk about where they're doing the clowns and the United Saints especially, and where they dressed as men and hidden. I'm working with Vanessa Tullio, who's the director of the Circus and Fairgrounds Archive in UK, she's recently sent me some, they're gonna start working on it to publish it. Some newspaper cuttings from, I think it's the 1860s about women clowns, and there were hundreds of them. And they were mostly building themselves as Lager clowns, which then was still the term, 30, 40 years later, the only Lager clown, there were several of those. But there are a lot of them, and I think, as in other areas of women's history, perhaps, it's not that they weren't there, they weren't taught, and they just come up in the Circus and Fairgrounds Archive, so they would be putting them out there soon, that they were there. I just have a question about using, because you guys kind of mentioned people's reaction to gender, or like an audience, what they would expect, the baggage they bring, all that type of thing. So I was wondering if you could talk at all about using that in your toolkit, kind of, or playing that up or down, or based on the gig per se, or if you're at a traditional, if you're taking a gig at a traditional circus, if you're doing a theater gig, if you're just doing walk around, or in the hospitals. So can you talk about that a little bit, the flexibility of it, or if that makes sense? The question was, folks are, sorry, my brain started working on the answers, so what local question? How folks are working on this? Just kind of how is gender just part of your toolkit? Like, we're talking about how audiences, and different audiences, might bring different ideas to your performance, whether you want them to or not, and how you might anticipate that, or use that in your performance, based on the different types of gigs that clowns can do, whether you're at a traditional circus, whether you're at a theater performance, or whether you're in the hospital, or doing walk around, or improvisational type of stuff. Well, why don't you go and answer? Yeah, so I am very interested in exactly that question of what's the relationship with the audience and gender, and how am I, in my own performance, and with the truth, how are we just working on those different aspects? And particularly when I am doing audience participation stuff, I'm often trying to work on that kind of stuff. Can I get a guy in the audience to kill me, how is that gonna work? Is the audience gonna accept that, and laugh? And they do, and things like that. Or we've also had things about when shows when kids are there, are we gonna change what we're gonna do, what goes over kids' heads, and how much is, whether there's stuff to change about that, not that much, actually, because we're still in a certain realm that's not X-ray, and it's not even R-ray, it's fully G-ray, even though it's sophisticated about, but I'm interested in those questions about the gender and audience, and working on that, so that's particularly what we're working on. But I think there are definitely people who, they'll take an act that's in a variety show, and when they go to circus, they'll do something, they'll change it for reasons, right? I mean, Cesar O'Aime, Gordon Candon, your service didn't, she didn't do her kazoo act. No, she didn't do her kazoo act. But that's also a different thing. But she did, she did her lower skating act, pretty much as she's been doing it these past, I mean, if we were doing a late night show, I'd love the kazoo act, of course, if we do perform in St. Louis. I think your question should be thrown back to you, because it seems to me society right now is talking about gender, how am I addressed? What's the pronoun you're gonna use? And I would hope your generation of clowning will take up the topic, because it's like, it is, I mean, well, why would go for it? It's right there, and I've often played with it, what do you call me? I'm an it, but I think there's a lot of room there. For me, there's, the thing about Amy and the kazoo act, I mean, that's more of an age appropriate, and I have some things that I will change slightly for age appropriateness. In my show, in a life and a hard day, I get abandoned in the audience often. I hand him on a engagement ring, and I get him to put it on my hand. And then later, when I come back, I realize, oh my God, German already. Sometimes I've actually been in a room of all women, or where it's all women in the front, and I can't find a couple, so I've used a woman, and said, oh, when I go back, I'm already, I go, oh, you're a woman, I don't do women. Or I've had a young person, a young man, and I say, oh, you're too young, or a gay man. Oh, you're with him, oh. So I'll change it so that it can fit any situation, and that's actually been kind of fun when I realized that I'm not always gonna find a couple, and the audience has been very embracing of, that allowance of different kinds of people in the audience, and they've embraced that there are all different kinds of people. And I think that that's a really relevant issue of to just be conscious of what are we doing with that in clown, how do we play with that? How do we open up that world? The clowning, I think, is pretty heteronormative in how it has been played, how it is played out. The ring, the marriage, we're dealing with all of these some very known normative ideas of this is what a human life is, is that you fall in love, you get married, those sorts of things, so they get played out, and they get played out with female roles an awful lot. And when I went back to Philly Collier in 2009 and took a clown with him again just to see what was what, and I had been with him in 1994, so a long time prior to that, and in 1994 I was essentially heterosexual, now in 2009, well I was in a relationship with a woman and I was really not really clear how I would define my own gender and I didn't really give a two how I had to define that. But I stood up on that stage with a friend, a male friend who is married to a man and we were, because we were partnered together and holding hands and immediately there is the assumption right that we're a couple, it's just like there's just that immediate thought that if I was standing up there with a woman it would not be immediate that we were a couple. And Collier talked to us about that we were a couple and I said, and it was somebody from Canada who was actually a former student of mine and I said no, no, no, no, he's my student, I would be, no, no, no, no, no, and then this joke evolved about this relationship between me and my student and when I got off stage and we had a great one of the other students who was clear, she came up to me and she was so mad at me. And she said, why didn't you never say that you're gay? I said, well, I don't fucking care who I'm sleeping with when I'm on stage, like it's relevant to, I was just, I played the game. The game was proposed that I was sleeping with a guy, I don't care, I followed the game. But she was livid with me and it stuck with me because I think she's got a bit of a point and I'm not sure where I stand with that but of what are we playing with and how did I need to make a stance, did I need to reveal something or I didn't think that I did and I still don't think that I did. Actually, I very happily played the game of being in a heterosexual possibility with this guy but it did make me pause and think about, because then what's funny? Like what's our, how we be in a time of inclusivity and the need to be inclusive and for very good reason and yet, is it funny? What if it's not so funny to play that game with two women up there? Even though I might find it way more fun in life to be with that woman, maybe on stage it's not and I don't know how could, I think it's a tricky point that we're at of having to be respectful and I'm not suggesting for second right that we shouldn't but the need for respect and inclusivity and everything that we must attend to in society actually poses some difficulties, I think, in a form like found where we're dealing with, what's funny? What's funny changes? I don't think it's a problem. That's fine. There's plenty of other material. I think that's fine. Yeah, I'm not, I guess I'm not saying it's not fine. I'm saying that I think there's a discrepancy right now. I don't think that we caught up with making it funny. I don't think we're there yet, but it's funny somehow because we're still dealing with, it's so new in our world. I agree with both of you, but it is, humor changes and we're at this moment that humor is changing and these questions are, how do we not, I mean, clowns are provocative and whatever, but how do we not offend or degrade certain people with our jokes and the same as male clowns would do about women? It seems like it's a great opportunity these days to really look at what we are finding funny and how there's more material that can be brought out. That's the opportunity. I think I want to finish, unless there's a burning question. It's burning. Well, I've been burning, but yeah. Yeah. I interpreted her, there's two parts of my question that we can answer them or not answer them when we can have a private discussion later, but I interpreted her question as being like the expectation that you spoke about, and I threw up Sun Jian at the beginning about how there's an expectation of what people are finding funny is the things that are degrading to women, right? The certain expectation about being sexy or dumb or whatever and that I interpreted her question as like how do I use that expectation of the audience to then change that expectation or something or work with it or play with it. The last one, if you have some thoughts on that, I'd be curious about that. And the second part of my question is how do you see contrast comparison between the comic world and the stand-up world as far as how women are participating? Can you answer that? For women? I think women are doing great. Yeah, actually, I would. I have a friend who had left stand-up years ago because he was a hospital for women, and she recently said if it were today, she never would have given it to me. Really changed the TV? Wow, that's changed. I'm amazed it changed so fast. It just, yeah, part of your hope, joy. Yeah. Can you contrast and compare like being a client and being a stand-up? Oh, I don't know, I think it's stand-up. I know nothing about stand-up. I think that's a whole other conversation. But it's a different sensibility to me just in a nutshell without unpacking it, but it's a completely different mind at work, I think, in a stand-up mind. Do you ever see Judy Halliday? Look at one of her films. She has one. Yeah, Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe, but Judy Halliday, to me, is just unbelievable, playing Judy as Clowns. She's unbelievable. Well, to your other question, get back to me in a minute. Because, does anybody know CB Goodman? CB and I are going to go back into working on a show. We have a male director, I Tor Casari, but he thinks women, Clowns are funnier than men, so. We're working on something that we think is about it's kind of tearing apart feminism and making fun of it in the end result, hopefully showing how important and how necessary it is for the rest of the world to keep up with feminist ideas and how important feminism really is. And in a sense proving it through our using, yeah. Stay tuned, hopefully we'll ask some answers for that. One of the things I think about, about how to work with expectations, that that sort of aspect of showing so much about women so that it might be that at first you go, oh, I think I know what this is, but then this woman will change, she'll come back later and she's different. So that sort of richness of the world and using that what is resonant in the expectations and then expanding on it, I think is the place that we're trying to work to open that up and it's not always about sexuality, but it's just about our expectations of what the roles are and the stereotypes. And instead of working in the stereotypes, working with archetypes and really sort of migrating at a deeper level. So there's more, I mean one thing about humor is that the audience has to empathize with the person on stage. So that in itself, the sort of empathy and the women's subjectivity having to sort of be in tune with that is already a challenge. It's already a challenge as a person on stage. I mean, it already affects that and opens that up and deals with those expectations. I know there have been men who've come to our shows that I hear later, they're like, I'm not sure if I was allowed to, I don't know, I thought it was funny, but then I don't know if I was allowed to. So there's a whole experience going on about that. So, Colin. You just said, I've been thinking about how important it is for the dark clown and to be able to really find that truth at the moment is where a lot of that's gonna be found and the performance of men have a certain kind of dignity they're trying to maintain, women do they're trying to maintain and pursue their passion. But one sensibility or sensitivity of a clown might be able to go into a more risque or blue area if she can keep her truth. And another might not be that kind, have that kind of sensibility. So within everything there is the uniqueness of each individual clown and where they can go with that with no standard. So it's not really a question. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What are you doing here? You're still running because not that. I think as people, just in response, as people go through their clown training from being a young clown into becoming a more mature clown, at the beginning a lot of people go into very stereotypical kinds of characters, brides, whores, and nerds. Washington women. And Washington women. And the more one matured into their clown they pay attention to who and I and we start to go deeper and then it does become about that individual as opposed to the idea of what is clown. I think today, I just want to add, I think today what Hillary said, I think today once the younger generation that's starting out with clowning they have more of an opportunity to tap right into that heart of themselves of not the idea of the character. Per se, as it was different maybe 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. And I think that I just want to say that to the younger people that are starting out just go for it, go for who you are. You know, you can start, you can develop characters in different ways. It's great, but you don't have to rely on it. You can really take that process to find out who you are, who your clown is. And just really that exploration today I think is so much more open without relying on a certain character than it was 30, 40 years ago. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Yes, I'm going to do that. Good try. Good go for it. Before I talk there, it's a really, yes. And also I have a question is the role model, which I like, it's kind of, I like Lucy, the female model too. But also the most I like Bill Owens, the Charlie Chaplin, Pastor Keith Donnan, and Harpo from Mark's Brothers. So, but sometimes I think why they are funny, but because they're men. So sometimes I stop the threat to catch or even I try to do the, for example, Bill Owens dancing, it's movement, maybe I catch that it's going to be funny, I believe so. Even I imitate his funny each movement dancing, I just try to do that. But sometimes I thought because he did it, that he's a man, so I don't know that character is man. That's why funny. Even I do that, it's not funny because I'm female, or sometimes I feel like that. And also one theater play, The 39 Steps, which I really liked it, I favorite. So I want to try. I don't know British English, I don't know. But there's a school, it's called Clown. It's named Clown. But most of the products are male. But I couldn't understand why. I only thought strongly because men, I don't know because the male or the 39 Steps, they do many characters, female, male. Why can't do that? Female can do, but I cannot take audition because audition details it's female only. I do think still that there are very, that people have an idea of what, and it's a whole other subject. But what, are there things men can do that are funny that women can't do, and things that women can do that men can't do? Are there things that are inherently more male? Create funny in men as opposed to women. That is the most obvious example. If a male clown gets another male clown, that's funny. If a male clown gets a female clown, that's funny. Yeah, I mean that's what we think. Well I don't know, then you have to take that story that I play with. Right, in my glasses all the time. But what you're talking about is that world has not changed, I don't know if it ever will, but. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about race and gender and in casting and in these minds. Yeah, I have to change their production's mind. Hey, hey, hey, that's right. Besides that, besides that, so in the role model, so you pick up from the Charlie Chaplin from the male character. Yeah, so we need to give you. Yeah, I can do. But also maybe you do that too. So. So Bill was an eccentric dancer. His training was as a dancer. Yes. An eccentric dancer that's really defined himself as when he first started working in the service. So that's what he did. And then he started making pieces of that and he did white face. And then he worked into other things. But you can start, an eccentric dancer is not a gender specific thing to be. Yes, yes, yes, that's correct, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do that. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for watching YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're a lot of funny women. I know, I know. Yes, yeah. I do know the Thompson. He's done a good list. Well, I think it's on his blog. It's on his blog. It's on his blog. That's right. I think we should end now because everybody's gonna run to each other and get resources and find out stuff like that. So I just wanna say thank you all so much for being here. Thank you Cecil and Hillary. I also wanna thank all of you for being here and today, doing the conversations with Mary Conway, Tiffany Riley, Amy Gordon, Michelle Matlow, Sarah Peterson, Karen Gersh, Barbara Allen and Isha Jansen-Faith who are so helpful also when I was putting this together. Members of my troupe, all of them, some of them are here tonight but everybody, all of those women can give me so much inspiration for all of this work and Sean who also does. Evelyn and Melissa, they're just filming here, they're on the back. Sia and B.J. Howl round. Hopefully we'll come through with us. Claire and her friends, Claire and friends, thank you. John, thank you for suggesting that I contact a brick about this and thank you also for all the research and the work you've done and the work you've done. And thank you Michael and everybody else at the brick. And that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Would you like to tell us about it? Six o'clock, the people who've been on the workshop with me this weekend on creating and dividing plan performance are going to show some of the things that they've created and devised. Yeah? Yeah. I think we'll like this free. It will be pretty informal. Six o'clock, free. Come back. But good luck at the time of the moment.