The clown game as an alternative to the serious I [Thesis].

"Laughter is a weapon of mass construction"

Jango Edwards-Clown 

The instructional scripting is the handwritten formalization of the course of an intervention or training. These notes include the detailed progress of each of the training sequences and form a guide for the various speakers as well as a guarantee of quality, professionalism, and reproducibility. 

Pedagogical scripting also allows for the creation ofserious games (from the English serious games). These serious games are educational objects that use the abilities and appetite of individuals to engage in games for the purpose of learning. 

The combination of the terms game and serious to describe these edutainment tools suggests that non-seriousness is not educational. Just as it is rather unlikely to imagine a serious game to train a clown, it is unlikely to train serious people with a clownish game. Indeed, how can one envision an education based on laughter, jokes, and fun?

  "Clown" can be used to discredit a person's status or diminish them. But is it that simple to be a clown? Is it enough to be called a clown to be one?

Some circus schools do not offer training in the role of clown judging that clowning is something innate, a vocation, or even as some family circuses suggested, a genetic thing. If this is the case, ambitious people wishing to train for the red-nosed profession will be at a loss. 

How does one become a clown? Is there a pedagogy for clowning? Is it serious? Is it restricted to learning the clown's craft? But what exactly is a clown? This is what the clown Rafaël Resende Marques da Silva proposes to discover in his thesis "Development of a pedagogy of clowning: a journey between Brazil and Europe"

Why read this thesis

Rafaël Resende Marques da Silva offers a clownish thesis born of his experience as a clown, teacher and researcher. The pen, the effort and the will to captivate and bring smiles are palpable.

Like a tightrope walker, we travel the thread of research overhanging without vertigo, personal experiences, theoretical and experimental approach in a way that is both elegant and captivating. With each of our steps, little by little academic knowledge relating to the clown materializes before us. Then is revealed behind the stereotype of the red nose, a complex history, a deep universalism and above all a surprising pedagogy based on laughter, exchange and respect for the other. 

The clown researcher succeeds in this manuscript in constituting a stone contributing to the improvement of both his art and science with the deep ambition to participate in the constitution of a network of researchers on the subject of clowning.

Warm-up

 " The subject of this work has been observed for fifteen years from my early theatrical and clowning experiences. Empirical experience was the basis of my training as an actor and clown which naturally stimulated a need to understand my practice. The search for a personal artistic practice can trigger a sui generis research project due to the inherent particularities of the object of study.

Artistic creation has its own methodology developed by the artist during their creative moments. The chaotic starting material is gradually transformed into something concrete and perceptible to others, stimulating an aesthetic appreciation through emotions, images and reflections. And a thesis can follow the same logic, as an experience, an idea or a problematic is transformed over the years into a palpable corpus and a text capable of analysis and verification. Thus, this work is the fruit of a dialectic of interferences between the artistic and academic worlds in an attempt to bring art closer to the academy and perhaps transform art through higher education, or the academic approach to the performing arts through the game of clowning. 

The game of clowning is the great theme of this journey, which began in Brazil and crossed four European countries (Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal). This experience gave birth to two shows A2 and Turning Point: the Burrocratas, twenty workshops of initiation and creation of clown acts, twelve artist residencies, fifty performances in twenty cities on two continents and an estimated audience of eight thousand people in this research process between the years 2011 and 2018. A long journey that is not yet over and continues with my return to Brazil. 
[...]
The game is an option for accessing and discovering the world of the clown. It is a pedagogical tool for the formation of human beings in life and for the theater and, therefore, clowning. This universal human practice can contribute to artistic creation. The interactions of acting with other fields of knowledge (pedagogy, psychology, philosophy) will be used to help explore the concepts and theoretical foundations proposed in the thesis. Unified practice and theory can thus give oxygen to an art that is both ancient and contemporary.

Practice is present on two fronts: performance creation and clown pedagogy. The teaching occupies a major place in the working path of this research because in our group the Cia da Bobagem we have been the guinea pigs of the methodology used. And when this practice works in the company, it is shared in a workshop with other interested people. Exercises, techniques, games, methods of analysis and processes are tested as in a laboratory that can spread to others later. "

Without Red Nose

Rafaël Resende Marques da Silva desacralizes the profession of clowning that some artistic currents associate with the innate or mystical by incorporating more than mysterious initiation rituals. 

Through his research the author succeeds in highlighting two pedagogical styles associated with the clowning profession: the pedagogy of suffering and the pedagogy of pleasure.

The pedagogy of suffering corresponds to a model of vertical transmission of information with a teacher putting himself in the position of Mr. Loyal judging and evaluating, in an often obscure and subjective way, the apprentice clowns. Granting himself the function and the right to demean, humiliate or even bully the students. This behavioralist tyrannical method creates anxiety, suffering and blockages in learners, whose learning, comes down to pleasing and satisfying their master. 

Pedagogy of Pleasure is a pedagogy developed by the clown Jesus Jara dispensing with the authority figure of the Mr. Loyal and based on four principles:

• "I am wrong therefore I am" encouraging to de-dramatize the error by valuing it and renouncing the obligation to succeed;
• "The letter enters with humor"in total opposition to a Spanish saying stipulating that there is no learning without pain comparable to the famous English "no pain no gain." All learning should then be a pleasure;  
• "Self-esteem"by encouraging learners and their esteem through constructive, non-demoralizing remarks; 
• "Teaching Process Evaluation"in order to enable the teacher to put themselves in a position to improve their practice after each intervention. 

Pedagogy of pleasure allows the teacher to becomea stimulator of pleasure both in being on stage and in learning, sharing, and growing. 

This pedagogy, with the horizontality of human relationships and the respect for the individual and his or her uniqueness, does not aim to impose a clown on all learners, but rather to bring forth a singular clown in each of them through play. 

Describing and analyzing numerous clown trainings, author Rafael Resende Marques da Silva succeeds in defining a clown pedagogy whose central axis is the pedagogy of pleasure allowing one to learn the art of clowning through lightness without losing its quality and principles. On this pedagogy, teaching clowns enrich knowledge and clown pedagogy by their experiences and individualities by bringing their skills and know-how acquired in partnership with their students and their public.

With Red Nose

Rafaël Resende Marques da Silva transcends many prejudices and the generalized cynicism of our societies by experimenting with and highlighting the unifying force of a pedagogy based on pleasure. Transcending even his own subject, he proposes to reconsider knowledge and our relationship to it by adopting a pedagogy of pleasure. This method makes the acquisition of skills and knowledge possible by offering free choice and autonomy of learning. 

By lightening the weight of error, by proposing a new way of transmitting, the pedagogy of pleasure puts the pleasure of learning and teaching back in the forefront. It emancipates individuals by creating and cultivating an appetite for knowledge as well as autonomy. By instilling thealthy and rewarding communication techniques through the stimulation of connections with ourselves and others, it has the potential to help us manage and defuse toxic hierarchical relationships through what is well and truly a form of clownish wisdom.

What about you? Ready to incorporate some clowning into your educational scripting?

On the same topic I recommend Denis Cristol's article on learning the art of clowning. 

Good reading

This work was defended on June 11, 2018 in Montpellier, in the context of obtaining the degree of doctor of the University Paul Valéry Montpellier III and prepared within the research unit Representing, Inventing the Reality of Romanticism in the XXIst Century - RIRRA21 - EA 4209 and the doctoral school Languages, Literatures, Cultures, Civilizations : ED 58 (Montpellier - France)

Sources

Rafaël Resende Marques da Silva. Development of a pedagogy of clowning: a journey between Brazil and Europe. Art and Art History. Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier III, 2018. French. ⟨NNT: 2018MON30082⟩. ⟨tel-02165951⟩

Thesis: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02165951

PDF: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02165951/document