'In a workshop I took last week, the leader, a talented clown and movement artist Christopher Bayes, mentioned something that resonated deeply with me.
He said that when you are three years old, the emotions of despair and joy are close to each other on the spectrum. You can quickly move from sadness to laughter - one extreme to another. Nothing in the middle, two wild, near the surface, intense experiences. This is why three year olds experience life so fully - they embrace the emotion at the time, and then discard it based on a new stimulus. They are completely present in the moment. Every moment counts.
Over time of course, as we age, we insert a whole bunch of other, less intense emotions in that spectrum. So it takes us a long time to both traverse between despair and joy, and also to reach the extremes at all. We "get stuck" in the modules we've inserted along the way - stops in the spectrum like mild disgust and acceptance, irony, sarcasm and the all important "knowing nod."
In clowning, you want to be in the moment and preferably on the edges of the spectrum. These are emotions that are powerful and easy to understand and accept by the audience. You also have to be in the moment, crisply aware of all the existing moods and anticipations in the audience.
I have long said that I aspire to be three. I love a three year old's approach to life, to love, to finding joy and lingering in wonder. Three year olds get it. As I aspire to do.
Maybe this is why studying clowning is so good for me - it appeals to my natural wish to be three.
