Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia: Ridicule and Resistance 9781474249270, 9781474249300, 9781474249294

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia Ridicule and Resistance Barnaby King

METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2017 Paperback edition first published 2018 Copyright © Barnaby King, 2017 Barnaby King has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Nick Evans Image supplied by author All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-4927-0 PB: 978-1-3500-7639-6 ePDF: 978-1-4742-4929-4 ePub: 978-1-4742-4928-7 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Printed and bound in Great Britain To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To Molly, Zora and Cleo

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements 1 2 3 4 5 6

Introduction: The Politics of the Ridiculous Happy Families: Clowns in the Circus Mangos and Salsa: Clowning the Marketplace Acts of Faith: Clown Theatre and the New Wave Neo-Clowns: Culture, Citizenship and Public Space Dialogues and Divides: Humanitarian Clowning Unruly Play: Clowns in Hospital Conclusion: A New Map of Clowning

Notes References Index

viii ix 1 23 59 95 127 163 201 239 253 261 273

List of Illustrations Figure 1 Jhon Freddy Angulo, owner and director of Circo Mexicano (January 2012)49 Figure 2 Joaco Krosty outside a shop in San Victorino (December 2011)61 Figure 3 Paula Malik of Buenavista Social Clown in El Desconocido Limite Entre Lo Publico y Lo Privado (December 2011)147 Figure 4 Lucho Guzman, Carlos Andres Niño and Wilmar Guzman of Pasos de Payaso (October 2011)169 Figure 5 Jaime Fajardo and Camilo Rodriguez of Henyoka Clown in ReClowntaMiento (May 2010)195 Figure 6 Members of Titiriclaun with the author in Santa Sofía hospital (August 2009)204

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many friends, colleagues and collaborators in Colombia who have given their time, shared their work and welcomed me into their lives for extended periods of time. Thank you to the clowns of Circo Ciudad and Pasos de Payaso, especially Lucho Guzman and his partner Daisy Toro, who always made a room available for me in their Bogotá apartment. Lucho has been a constant companion during my fieldwork in Colombia, performing with me and discussing clowning for hours on end. Thank you to Camilo Rodriguez and Jaime Fajardo of Henyoka Clown, who have provided so much friendship and insight over the years. I am also indebted to Buenavista Social Clown, but especially Judith Pérez Segura, who has always been available to answer my questions, provide video and written documentation about the company. My thanks also to Mario Escobar and Fernando Rojas for their unwavering support and their willingness to provide me with information and materials pertaining to their company. A special word of gratitude must also go to the Cardenas brothers, Edgar and Charli, who have helped me on many occasions, accompanying me in the field, translating and transcribing interviews, editing videos and inviting me to contribute to their own clown research project. Thanks to all those mentioned above for their contributions over the years not only to this project but also to the Clownencuentro. Of all the restaurant clowns I met only two ended up featuring in the book. But all were courteous and friendly and I thank them warmly, including Pitín, Pirulín, Pintadito, Prín Prín, Chistín, Oscariño, Martillo, Firulay and Arcemiro. Joaco Krosty and Zapatín – the two clowns I focus on in the book – deserve my special gratitude for taking time out of work to answer my endless questions and explain the niceties of their unusual trade.

x Acknowledgements

Likewise in the circuses I thank the many clowns who generously spoke to me, through formal interviews or informal conversations, including Cascara, Samir, Said, Carlos Angulo, Tutti Frutti, Pirulín and Rusbelín. I would especially like to thank Jhon Freddy Angulo and his father Ancor Angulo, for their hospitality and friendship and for inviting me to perform in the Circo Mexicano. I must also acknowledge Pipelone (Felipe Puentes) who shared his contacts and introduced me to many of the circus artists, as well as offering his own critical perspectives on circus clowning in Colombia. I have had the pleasure of knowing Titiriclaun since 2005 when Adriana Gaviria and Juan Carlos Salazar invited me to teach a workshop. Since then they have repeatedly extended their hospitality and friendship to me as well as opening up their group and work to my inquisitive eye. Thanks for putting up with me. Thanks also to all the clowns in Titiriclaun: Leyla, Griselle, Edwin, Sergio, Sebastian, Anita, Andres, Oscar and others. The Clownencuentro has been a central aspect of my research and it would not have been possible without the hard work and commitment of a great many individuals since its founding in 2009. In that first year it was facilitated by Inti Bachman, Camilo Carvajal and Edward Gómez. In 2010 Ana Milena hosted the Clownencuentro at the University of Antioquia in Medellin. I am grateful to Ana Milena, a wonderful clown teacher, performer and researcher, who has recently completed a PhD on the topic of clowning in Colombia at Paris Sorbonne University. In 2011 the Clownencuentro project really established itself thanks to the arrival of Fiorella Kollmann, Ilana Levy and Katherine Mayorga, who formed the central organizing team for the subsequent annual festivals. They turned my enthusiasm into a reality and I warmly acknowledge their enormous commitment, passion and excellence in supporting the growth of clowning in Colombia. I have also benefited greatly from their advice and friendship over the years

Acknowledgements

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and for that I am eternally grateful. Behind this central team we have also been excellently supported by Carolina Mendez, Zoraida Varela, Dudu Farine Zundel, Alejandro Mendoza, Paloma Santaella, Beto Urrea, Pacho Fajardo and others already mentioned. Special mention goes to Dudu and her husband (the ‘gringo’) Joseph Bacall, who have been an unfailing rock of support throughout. I also want to express my immense gratitude to companions in Colombia who have not been directly involved with this research but whose support has sustained and nurtured me. In particular I should mention my great friends Felipe Vergara and Catalina Medina, who have done more than I can say to develop my understanding and appreciation of Colombian culture and performance. Felipe’s mother Mariu and his father Felix have hosted me on numerous occasions and have truly made their home feel like my own. Thanks also goes to Felipe’s brother Esteban, who has contributed his skills as a professional photographer both to my own research and the Clownencuentro. Many people outside Colombia have also contributed to this project. The unwavering support and critical acuity of my PhD adviser, Professor D. Soyini Madison, has sustained me at all stages. I have benefited and grown from her sensitive, wise guidance over the past eight years and I consider myself blessed to be her student and mentee. I was also fortunate to count on the advice and support of the other two members of my dissertation committee, Professor Ramón Rivera-Servera and Professor Tracy C. Davis. I am especially grateful to Professor Davis for inviting me to delve into the world of historiographic practice-as-research and co-author an essay with her. I would never even have embarked upon this project without the inspirational presence of Sue Morrison in my life. Sue was my first clown teacher and her passionate and nurturing style changed the direction of my life irrevocably towards clowning. Thank you for this gift. I must also give due thanks to staff members and colleagues at my current institution, Edge Hill University, who have helped me steer a

xii Acknowledgements

path through the challenging balance of teaching and book writing: in particular Professor Victor Merriman, whose support facilitated a vital period of research leave in 2015; and Geof Atwell, for the coffees, flapjacks, jokes and unstinting friendship. Lastly I must acknowledge my wonderful family for their love, patience and support throughout this entire project. Thanks to my mother for proof-reading and spotting the split infinitives. Thanks to my beautiful girls, Zora and Cleo, for keeping my feet on the ground with their silliness and their unconditional love. And most of all, thanks to my wife Molly who, in taking up the slack on so many occasions (and following me to Colombia), has really allowed me the space to complete this project.

Introduction: The Politics of the Ridiculous

April 2004 It is my first day in Colombia. Still fuzzy-headed with jetlag, I find myself in a small but well-appointed circus tent, pitched in a car park near the centre of Bogotá. While the heavy afternoon rain beats down on the blue canvas, I loiter in the area behind the main entrance to the circus ring that serves as a dressing room, while acrobats, aerialists and tumblers in glittering costumes apply intricate red and white make-up and go through their preparatory stretches. At show time, I climb the precarious wooden stands and squeeze in among bright-eyed children and equally excited adults, to watch the troupe of sixteen young men and women perform Chung Kwei, a contemporary circus show about the destroyer of demons from Chinese mythology. The young artists all belong to Circo Ciudad, a circus school with the social remit of helping young people and their families out of poverty. Earlier that morning I was introduced to one of the artists, Lucho Guzman, who was to accompany me to the circus. As we travelled through Bogotá together on the bus he explained to me how clowning has become his passion. His best friend, a talented performer named Elvis, had been killed three months previously by a neighbourhood gang in Ciudad Bolivar where they both grew up. In such areas of the city, mostly populated by migrant families from rural conflict zones, the cycle of poverty and violence is difficult to escape. Not only is the circus a means for Lucho to imagine a different future, he tells me, but clowning in particular has provided a way for him to deal with the sadness of his own personal loss.

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia

The performance of Chung Kwei is evidence of the artistic vision of the project. The audience is rapturous in its appreciation and the circus skills are equal to anything I have seen in touring circuses in Europe. The performers who play the lead character roles are also clowns, tumblers and jugglers, multitalented performers who would not be out of place in Ringling Barnum and Bailey’s circus or even Cirque du Soleil. Lucho is one of these, yet he is hungry to learn more and excited to meet someone who shares his passion for clowning. The following day I bring along my clown nose and costume and he asks me if I want to join him and four other clowns from Circo Ciudad in an improvised performance outside the circus tent. I agree. So, sweating in the humid afternoon heat, I pull on my tatty black suit and together we file out into the bright sunlight, a motley band without a plan. Finding myself in an unfamiliar space in the midst of a flow of pedestrians, my clown starts to bark orders: stand straight, form a line, be silent, behave. A few curious passers-by stop to look at my four companions, who are making a poor attempt at following my instructions. I become agitated and gesticulate wildly as I continue to boss them around: turn, duck, jump, hide, follow, run. They clumsily comply as a sort of chaotic game – based on a clear difference of status – begins to develop between us. They soon get bored and discord creeps in, hushed disputes leading to scuffles that cause the group to lag behind and require me to turn around and reprimand them. Our temporary audience is now laughing, cheering on the underdogs but also enjoying my impotent authoritarianism. While running across a square I called ‘halt’, stopping the lead clown in his tracks and causing the others to pile chaotically onto him. More laughter. While I am giving orders in English, the clowns nod enthusiastically, pretending to understand and then gabble back to me in Spanish, which makes me more irate. The game of status develops a military tone: a sergeant major trying to discipline an increasingly rebellious troop of soldiers. Soon we are engaged in full-on slapstick hits, ducks and falls. As my clown becomes



Introduction: The Politics of the Ridiculous

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more infuriated, they become more troublesome, finding more inventive ways to ridicule my petulance. They steal my hat and taunt me with it. They fill the hat with popcorn and then put it back on my head. Somehow, I end up standing knee-deep in a fountain while the other clowns try to convince a security guard that I am crazy and should be removed. After two hours of energetic improvisation, dripping with sweat and hair caked with popcorn, I find myself back in the tent, without quite knowing how I got there. Breathing heavily and laughing in the euphoric aftermath of our antics, we look each other in the eye and shake hands before my rambunctious clown partners head out once again into the ring for their next show. My inaugural clown performance on the streets of Bogotá was both thrilling and revelatory. In Chung Kwei the clowns demonstrated an impressive range of circus skills, including juggling, tumbling and acrobatics. But it was not until they were released from the confines of the big top that I witnessed the extent of their flair for clowning. Though strangers until that day, I discovered that we shared a common language of clowning that allowed us to play, improvise and entertain with complicity and connection, to evolve relationships and develop comical situations. Yet aspects of their clowning were also strange to me: their voracious and fearless sense of playfulness, their penchant for risk-taking, their acute sense of irony and ridicule, characteristics I later found to be prevalent in much Colombian clowning. While such games of status were well known to me within my own technique of clowning, they seemed to attain a ferocity and specificity here that spoke to the different reality in which these clowns had learned their trade. What struck me that day was how the clowning resonated and interacted with aspects of its immediate social reality. The narratives of authority, domination and resistance we had played out in clown were not just entertaining frivolities, but critical reflections on the world we were inhabiting, both the immediate world of the young

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia

performers and that of Colombian society more broadly, where the politics of domination and resistance have been part of daily reality for over sixty years. Moreover, the relationship between our clowns in performance reflected aspects of our real relationship, such as the implicit inequality between me as supposed expert, invited there by the British Council to teach clown, and them as supposed novices and recipients of my teaching. The opposition of dominant, high status clown and low status underdog that emerged in our improvised performance is a general characteristic of many, if not all, classic circus clown routines.1 Nevertheless in this context it took on distinct and local significance. It held up common assumptions about inequality and power for critical inspection. It also offered the possibility, through the power of ridicule, for inequality to be redressed. That is, clowning not only reflected the reality of our social relationship, but it also transformed it, making divisions less harsh and injustices less oppressive. While playing the game of being incompetent and insubordinate soldiers, ridiculing and exposing my authoritarian position, their evident skill and virtuosity as clowns also challenged any assumed status difference between us as performers. Clowning in this instance, moving out of the circus and into the social fabric of the city beyond its canvas walls, becomes a deeply felt social performance, one that both reflects complex realities and provides a space in which those realities can be examined and manipulated. It is this notion of clowning as a social performance, in which the art of the ridiculous is put to use in concrete social contexts, that particularly concerns me in this book. I did not go to Colombia with this idea in mind. Rather, the very notion of clowning as social performance emerged as I struggled to come to terms with the ubiquity of clowning practices I observed in Bogotá. Clowns were not just evident in formalized cultural contexts, but could be seen practically anywhere and everywhere in the urban environment,



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fulfilling a host of special and mundane social functions. As this first visit evolved into a research project and weeks turned into years, I came to understand that while clown artists continued to thrive in Colombian circuses, theatres and festivals, they appeared to have also broken away from such cultural spaces and institutions, penetrating the very texture of everyday life in the city. On major thoroughfares and in forgotten corners of Bogotá, clowns plied their trade among the street vendors and shoe-shiners, merging seamlessly into the quotidian flow of pedestrians and traffic. Businesses and politicians sought them out and used them as PR tools. Busy commercial zones, city parks and plazas, hospitals, schools, businesses and community centres became their temporary playgrounds, while the mundane rituals of daily life – driving, eating, cleaning, shopping – provided fodder for their performances of everyday incongruity. Clowning in Colombia seemed to have become – or, perhaps, had returned to its place as – a deeply relevant practice, connected to the lives of everyday people. Understanding just how it is connected to people’s lives and what everyday meanings circulate around the clowns are the principal concerns of this book. Equally important are broader questions about why this has occurred and what it means both about clowning and about Colombian society. For clowning has had and continues to play an important role in shaping Colombian history.

Evolution of clowning in Colombia In Bogotá, clowning has become more than an artistic or cultural phenomenon. Its proliferation and diversification cannot be explained away as a temporary fashion, an artistic movement or a deep-seated cultural inclination. Entwined within the globalized and cosmopolitan economies of the street, integrated into the fabric of the

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everyday, clowns fulfil a host of mundane functions, social, political and economic. Indeed some local economies and forms of social and political communication have become dependent upon their subtle powers of persuasion. But this has not always been the case. In fact the emergence of the clown in Bogotá can be traced alongside a series of social, political and economic changes that have affected the city over the past hundred or so years. It was the expansion of the European circus that first brought the red-nosed clown to Colombia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, propelled by rapid urbanization and industrialization that made the whole of Latin America a fertile and attractive ground for entrepreneurs. Circus historian Julio Revolledo identifies the 1920s and 30s as the peak of the ‘golden age’ of circus in Mexico (2010) and this holds true for Colombia, where a distinctive local circus culture also developed. It was not until the mid-1950s, when the country was in the throes of a twenty-year period of bitter civil conflict known as La Violencia, that financial insecurity, the danger of travel and general social instability in rural and urban areas prompted a decline in the fortunes of the Colombian circus industry accompanied by a crisis of employment for clown performers. But the chaotic expansion of commercial life in the cities, especially Bogotá, also provided new opportunities for enterprising clowns beyond the canvas walls of the big top. As early as the 1960s, clowns with megaphones in hand became a common sight in busy commercial thoroughfares, advertising shops, restaurants and other businesses, giving a modern twist to the clown’s historic talent for salesmanship. This migration of clowns from circus to street might be said to represent the first stage in the contemporary diversification and socialization of clowning. A strong similarity in appearance and repertoire still links the clowns of the circus and the clowns who advertise restaurants in the commercial sectors and some have successfully negotiated transitions in both directions, working for



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the circuses when the opportunity arises and for the restaurants when necessity prevails. These two types of clown take the focus of the first two chapters of the book. Chapter 1 details an extensive period of fieldwork with a small circus owned by the Angulo family, constantly struggling to stay afloat amid a torrent of competition. Chapter 2, meanwhile, draws on observations and interviews with several restaurant clowns as they work the busy streets. Despite the very distinct ways in which each has adapted to changing conditions, both kinds of clown must negotiate relationships of dependency with institutions and powerful entities. It is to questions of power that these chapters repeatedly turn: what potential is there for the ridiculousness of clowning to resist or disrupt exploitative relations of power, patterns of abuse or violence, or simply the damaging effects of free-market capitalism? Conversely, when does clown performance itself become complicit in sustaining forms of domination? Amid an increasingly protracted and fragmented conflict, the 1990s saw Colombia embracing neoliberal economic and social reforms that were foisted on much of Latin America, essentially ‘opening up’ Colombia’s economy to an aggressive influx of foreign capital (Rojas 2009). Alongside economic globalization came a plethora of fresh cultural stimulus, including clown theatre from Europe and Argentina. Chapter 3 follows this cultural influx associated with the embrace of neoliberalism and the influence it has had on Colombian clowning, seeing it as one point of origin for the ‘contemporary’ clown, always actively distancing itself from the ‘traditional’. Building on Victor Turner’s model of ‘social drama’ (1987: 81), this chapter lays the foundation for a political critique of the link between neoliberalism and the emergence of a new, theatrical style of clowning first brought to Colombia by foreign companies and later emulated and developed by Colombian artists. In 1995 the iconoclastic mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, used mime-clowns to patrol the streets instead of traffic police, in what has

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become a celebrated social experiment emulated around the world. Mockus’s coupling of popular culture and governance endowed the art of clown with an official authority it had previously not enjoyed. Chapter 4 engages with the legacy of Mockus’s mime-clowns, particularly in the work of Buenavista Social Clown, whose clowning is put in the service of government agencies to educate citizens about the proper use of public spaces. Together, then, Chapters 3 and 4 trace an ambiguous trend in contemporary clowning in which it has become a battleground for competing ideological and political agendas, swinging between satire and subservience. The idea that vulnerable and marginalized elements of society have been able to reinvent clowning as a pragmatic means of survival, as documented in Chapters 1 and 2, is only half the story. Chapters 3 and 4 suggest an equally inventive exploitation of clowning must also be attributed to certain individuals and institutions in positions of influence and authority. Clowning, that is, must be seen not only as a weapon of the weak but also of the strong, its potent blend of entertainment and critique redeployed not only as practices of everyday survival and resistance but also as part of official strategies of coercion and control. Chapters 5 and 6, however, explore the potential of clowning to bridge this gap between institutionalization on the one hand and radical resistance on the other. Despite a tendency to co-optation, many clown performers are aware that their relationship to power is a pragmatic one and some actively seek to evade the trap of discourse and counter-discourse while remaining socially engaged. As Circo Ciudad floundered financially in the mid-2000s, a group of its clowns, including three of those I performed with on that first trip to Bogotá, broke off to form their own company, Pasos de Payaso, dedicated to serving marginalized communities both in rural and urban settings. Chapter 5 explores how these clowns evade some of the traps of co-optation and even speak back to the sources of power



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that, at times, have tried to press them into its service. A second group, Henyoka Clown, also features in this chapter, a particularly apt example of how clowning can intervene in official processes of peace-building and post-conflict reconciliation. While the book’s structure follows a loose historical timeline, following the fortunes of clowning during a period of time in which the city expanded exponentially, it also follows a centrifugal path that moves resolutely from centre to margins, as clowns are themselves wont to do. Thus the final chapter abandons Bogotá entirely, recounting my fieldwork with a group of hospital clowns, Titiriclaun, in the mountain town of Manizales. Out of the grips of the city, clowning can flourish in different ways, still limited by the politics of the hospital institution but able to play with and subvert some of the social injustices that the institution tends to reinforce. By referring to various conceptualizations of play, Chapter 6 attempts to theorize clowning as a kind of ‘loving perception’ that is only possible due to its non-competitive playful nature (Lugones 1987: 18).

Clowning as a means of enquiry During many extended periods of immersion in the clown culture of Bogotá between 2008 and 2012 I found myself frequently switching hats between that of academic, teacher, performer, colleague and student. Sometimes these identities would blur together and I would find, for example, that I was researching and performing at the same time, combining roles in different ways but always with the common element of the clown. Indeed clowning itself emerged during this research period not only as the object of enquiry but as the means of enquiry: a way of investigating, learning and communicating. I sometimes called this practice-based methodology ‘clown ethno­ graphy’ or ethnoclownography.

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia

Within performance studies, theatre studies, media studies and other related disciplines, the notion of practice-as-research has for the past fifteen years challenged dominant perceptions of what passes for knowledge in the academy. Proponents of practice-asresearch have sought to balance conventional forms of academic knowledge, described by Robin Nelson as ‘know-that’ (2013: 45) with embodied forms of knowledge or ‘know-how’, which are often tacit, unacknowledged and learned through doing. Nelson does not reject the importance of ‘know-that’ in his embracing of ‘know-how’. Rather he proposes a multifaceted model of ‘praxis’ or ‘doingthinking’ that embraces a dialogical interplay between three kinds of knowledge that work together in complementary ways. Along with embodied knowledge (know-how) and the traditional academic knowledge (know-that) exists a third (know-what), which is ‘the tacit made explicit through critical reflection’ (2013: 37). Ethnoclownography integrates Nelson’s three levels of knowledge and thus constitutes a kind of praxis that one might call ‘clownthinking’. It also draws heavily on Dwight Conquergood’s notion of ‘coperformative witnessing’ (2013: 37), which supplants voyeuristic ethnographic observation with a ‘hermeneutics of experience, relocation, copresence, humility, and vulnerability’ (2013: 37). Ethnoclownography begins and ends with embodied practice, the performance and the technical skills of other clowns. But in order to access this ‘know-how’ I draw upon my own clown technique and practice as a means of both interacting with and analysing others’ practices. Over a period of five years, from 2008 to 2012, I spent innumerable hours and days in my clown costume and in my clown persona, observing clowns, talking to them and attempting to emulate their practices and performances. I found that this strategy helped me to overcome distrust that I would often encounter as a conventional academic. It created an atmosphere of playful complicity in which my collaborators felt comfortable



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both to act and talk more openly, and often to include me in their performances. Foolishness and failure are second nature to the clown and it is perhaps because of this affinity with vulnerability that clowning practice proved to be effective as an ethnographic research method. Indeed it was often the moments of catastrophic failure that led to the moments of greatest learning. My first intervention as a hospital clown with the performers of Titiriclaun, described in Chapter 6, for example, was a dispiriting and sobering experience that required humility and an acceptance of my own ignorance alongside those who were the real experts. This experience of being suddenly de-skilled was invaluable, exposing precisely how their practice differed from other kinds of clowning, including my own. It pointed to the crucial difference that social contexts make in relation to clown routines and performances that seem to share a similar point of origin. Such insight would have been impossible without ethnoclownography. As a foolish ethnoclownographer I could step easily into unfamiliar situations, engage in risky and dangerous practices, which propelled me towards a deeper connection with others. Ethnoclownography as a method of research might be said to have facilitated the ‘extraction’ of technical know-how and its translation into documentary forms of knowledge that are publishable (knowthat). This does not imply, however, that the clown artists were not themselves able to reflect, understand and theorize their own practice. This is where ‘clown-thinking’, an embodied practice of critical reflection through clowning, vitally complements ethnoclownography. It is not valid for the academic to observe a performance and decide what it means without reference to local interpretations. The clown artists I encountered often expressed complex understandings of their own work or that of other clowns, including its political and social significance. My analysis of clowning often draws on dialogues between myself and other clowns, as well as on the fluid

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia

and sometimes conflictual conversations that took place between artists who came together to discuss their practices. While many conversations of this kind occurred on a one-to-one basis as I spent time in the field, giving rise to terms and ideas about clowning that are applied throughout this book, perhaps the most productive and multivocal space for debate was the annual conference of clowning that I co-founded in 2009: the Clownencuentro. The Clownencuentro provided structured time and space in which clown performers could come together and contribute as equals to a process of critical reflection and embodied learning. In its first iteration in 2009 about twenty clown performers engaged in a series of discussions, talks and workshops under the theme: ‘Colombia se despierta al payaso’ (Colombia wakes up to the clown). Over the following six years it expanded to include not only Colombian artists but a range of international teachers, performers and academics, who came both to learn and to contribute to the conversation. As it expanded – and became more financially cumbersome – it began to lose some of the openness and simplicity which had, in earlier years, allowed for particularly candid exchange of views. However, certain themes and questions that had been voraciously debated in the first version continued to filter into the academic fora and discussions in subsequent years. While many of these are picked up in the chapters that follow, I will pause to mention one particular theme that helps to frame the political and social nature of clowning in Colombia. While most of the Clownencuentro participants admitted that clowning had proliferated wildly over the previous five years or so, there was little consensus on whether this was to be seen as a positive or negative development. Certain questions were anxiously returned to: what is the difference between clown and payaso (the Spanish word for clown)? Has clowning become a ‘fashion’? Is clown an elitist term? Opinion polarized around two contrasting attitudes, one characterized by defensiveness and scepticism, the other by celebratory



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inclusivity. The word clown entered the Colombian Spanish vocabulary in the 1980s, but the imported English term did not function as a simple replacement for payaso. Payaso continued to be used to refer to certain forms of clown, particularly the older circus clowns and restaurant clowns, often those who retained visual connections to the grotesque auguste of American and European circuses. The English word clown, meanwhile, came to be associated with a more culturally refined style that dispensed with such grotesque appearances and appeared more like a theatrical character, often in a much more austere or conservative costume, with minimal make-up, perhaps a bowler hat, and sometimes (though not always) a delicate red nose. These clowns had more in common with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton than with Lou Jacobs or Bozo, and this adaptation was broadly perceived in social terms as marking an elevation of status, a refinement and sophistication that made clowns not only acceptable, in a way that the payaso was not, but actually a desirable and positive presence. The deliberations about what exactly were the differences between clown and payaso were charged and indeed continued to ruffle feathers at Clownencuentros in subsequent years. For some, the embrace of clown and the corresponding disparaging of payaso was a form of cultural snobbery that reflected a deeper social prejudice, since the payaso was often associated with the lower economic sectors. For others, the new style of clowning represented an opportunity to reject associations of the past and embrace the future. For some the clown provided a way to sidestep or rise above the consequences of the popularization and democratization of the payaso, which were seen as undermining the true skill and technique of the trained professional. For others, the spread of clowning could only bring more abundance and diversity to an art form that had previously stagnated. These debates, only sketched out here, clearly demonstrated how profoundly clowning was connected to everyday constructions of

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia

economic class and social identity, and that consequently the study of clowning could provide a key to unlock a new understanding of these. Ethnoclownography, then, might be said to resemble a methodology that Colombian cultural scholar Jesús Martín-Barbero calls ‘el mapa nocturno’ (night-time map): This is a map which enables us to study domination, production and labor from the other side of the picture, the side of the cracks in domination, the consumption dimensions of economy and the pleasures of life.2 (1991: 229)

The Clownencuentro and the embodied forms of ethnoclownography suggested that clowning indeed has an ambivalent relationship to questions of domination, production and labour, as well as to the other side of the picture, where individuals resist and challenge the hegemony, opening up cracks, pursuing their own practices of consumption and indulging in profitless pleasures. In other words, the whole gamut of life, its visible and hidden dimensions, the cultural and the counter-cultural, are reflected and put into practice through clowning. Until quite recently, scholarly study of clowning has failed to grasp the deeply political and social character of clowning without dismissing or idealizing it. Yet there are signs that this is at last changing.

Clown theory A recent spate of publications on clowning has paid particular attention to its ambiguous entanglements with political, social and economic conditions that affect our everyday lives. Until ten years ago, much academic clown research, produced mainly by anthropologists and historians, had tended to reduce clowning to essentialized and functionalist cultural interpretations. Anthropologists focused their attention primarily on the ritual-clowns of various North



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American native peoples, tending to conceive of them as a force for social cohesion and stasis. In the 1930s and 1940s there was a flurry of comparative studies that offered explanations for their ‘formal obscenity’ and predilection for ‘backward speech, eating or drinking in excess or things ordinarily repugnant’ (Parsons and Beals 1934: 497). Elsie Parsons and Ralph L. Beals compared the Kachina clown of the Pueblo with the Mayo and Yaqui clowns of the Sonora people, finding a consistent pattern to the social purpose of their transgressions: ‘the clowns have a punitive and policing function in ceremonial matters and through their license in speech and song a somewhat similar function in domestic matters, ridicule being a strong weapon among the Pueblos’ (1934: 499). A number of similar studies concluded that clowns’ function was to reintegrate loose elements of society, to curb rebellious energies and ultimately to ensure the integrity of the given social order within a community (Charles 1945; Makarius 1970). In the 1980s and 1990s a clutch of anthropologists, influenced by Victor Turner’s theories of social process and the emerging field of performance studies, imbued clowning with a more ambivalent and agential potency. Don Handelman argues that clowns embody the very process of flux and transformation in society (1981). Likewise, William Mitchell employs theories of performance and play in relation to clown practices that emphasize ‘process, experience and practice in contradistinction to structure and stasis’ (1992: 11). To capture this proactive potential Mitchell coins the terms ‘critical clowning’ and ‘hegemonic humor’ to highlight the capacity of transgressive performance to both bolster and challenge dominant forces in society. The variously authored essays that comprise this edited volume fail, on the whole, to find examples of such change. A major reason for this is a lack of critical reflection on what clown performances mean both to artists and audiences.3 Ethnoclownography and ‘clown-thinking’ are designed to circumvent just this kind of methodological limitation

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which would prevent a proper understanding of how clowning actually affects the society it purports to critique. The tendency to reduce clown practice to essentialized meanings can also be seen in certain historical studies of clowning. Enid Welsford’s seminal study, The Fool: His Social and Literary History painstakingly traces the clown’s social and aesthetic evolution from the ‘parasites and laughter-makers’ (1935: 4) at the courts of emperors in second-century ad Greece, through to clowns of twentieth-century stage and screen, such as Grock and Chaplin. The relationship between fools and powerful patrons such as politicians, kings and noblemen, upon which Welsford focuses, is one of passivity, even of cold instrumentality: ‘the court-fool was used at times as a convenient tool in the hands of the politicians’ (1935: 140). To be sure, fools were allowed to be critical of tradition and authority: ‘burlesque of religious ceremonials was part of the comic stock-intrade of the jesters of all countries’ (1935: 140). Nevertheless this was little more than a ritualised form of opposition that tended to shore up rather than disrupt the status quo. In contrast to Welsford, Joel Schechter’s Durov’s Pig presents a history of twentieth-century clowns becoming increasingly critical and rebellious as they loosened their ties to powerful elites. Schechter argues that clowns such as Anatoly Durov and Joseph Grimaldi in the late nineteenth century represented a break from ‘the tradition of court-patronized folly’ (1985: 13), thus inspiring and initiating a new tradition of popular folly that answered to the needs of the people. The rebellious quality of clowning became explicitly politicized in the hands of writers and directors such as Brecht, Mayakovsky and Lazarenko, through to Dario Fo and Augusto Boal. But as much as he wants to show clowning being politically potent, Schechter focuses mainly on the role of clown characters within dramatic texts (i.e. plays) rather than what happens in the performative moment and how clowning takes shape within specific social and historical contexts.



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Around the turn of the millennium, paralleling a groundswell in clown training opportunities in independent workshops as well as physical theatre conservatoires such as L’École Jacques Lecoq in Paris and the Dell’Arte school in Blue Lake, California, there has been a surge of publications both scholarly and technical. An abundance of handbooks and practical guides by celebrated clown teachers (Lecoq 2002, Wright 2006, Gaulier 2008), have been followed more recently by Eli Simon’s The Art of Clowning (2009), Veronica Coburn and Sue Morrison’s Clown Through Mask (2013), Caroline Dream’s The Clown in You (2014) and Jon Davison’s Clown Training (2015). In terms of enriching the research culture around clowning, the value of such practitioner perspectives has been to demystify much of what previously had to be guessed at or simply neglected in academic work. While these books sometimes offer contradictory ideas about how to clown, they lend legitimacy and validity to the art, both by asserting the degree of technical specialization and preparation that is required but also by suggesting that clowning is available to anyone, given a sufficient amount of commitment and practice. Coinciding with this interest in clowning technique, and perhaps influenced by the focus on the clown (as) practitioner, a number of academic texts have recently brought refreshingly detailed, critical perspectives to questions of the historical and cultural significance of clowning (i.e. clown-thinking). In Victorian Clowns (2008), for example, Jackie Bratton and Ann Featherstone shed light on both adaptive and interventionist aspects of specific comic performers’ relationship to historical change, that is, the ambivalent ways in which they are shaped by and also shape history itself. In particular they describe the ‘semi-independent’ relationship of clowns to circuses, fairs, travelling theatres, and menageries of the nineteenth century that constituted a ‘delicate web’ of entertainment-related institutions, in turn linked to wider social processes of industrialization, economic expansion and class differentiation (2008: 11).

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The ambivalent politics of clowning also pervades Jon Davison’s Clown (2013). In one particularly illuminating chapter, Davison constructs an eclectic genealogy of clowns who ‘have been allied with or appropriated to political ends’ (2013: 234), from the militaristic propaganda of the early English circus to the polemical Soviet clowning of Oleg Popov and the social disciplining of ritual clowning of the Hopi Koshari clowns. These examples suggest the ways in which powerful figures have attempted to use clowning to achieve their ideological ends. As a counter-example, Davison also discusses the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) who used clowning ‘as a tool against power itself ’ (2013: 254). The subtle politics of CIRCA was to engage police in game-playing at protests and other potentially conflictual sites in order to subvert their authoritative power. Yet the group’s efficacy, Davison implies, was often undermined by lack of training or by loss of balance between politics and playfulness. What Davison manages to capture, just as Bratton and Featherstone do, is the ambivalence and multidimensionality of the social role of clowning and the need to consider each example on its own merits: ‘We can see that clowning in the realm of politics holds an ambiguous position, at once critic, police, hero, enemy, representative of the people and a threat to social order’ (2013: 256). A third recent work which also refuses reductive essentialism is Tim Prentki’s Stages of Folly (2012). For Prentki, the fool is a pervasive cultural trope that denotes a certain detachment and an ability therefore to critique society from the outside, ‘exposing false positions, hypocrisies and self-interest’ (2012: 16). Shape-changing, boundary-crossing and playful ambiguity are the key strategies in the realization of folly, which operates as a kind of mask, ‘expressing the outrageous opinions that draw abuse down on its head while the wearer of the mask, the fool, hides safely behind the persona’ (2012: 16). But of course, the idealized detachment that Prentki associates with the fool persona is impossible when folly is materialized in the



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body of the historical clown, subject to the pressures of society, the need to eat or feed others. In such situations attachments to political or economic interests may become a pragmatic necessity, regardless of the personal convictions of the performer. Similar to Bratton and Featherstone’s notion of the clown as ‘semi-independent’, then, clowns and fools actually exist ‘in a semi-detached relation to the society upon which folly preys’ (Prentki 2012: 16). This is a frame that acknowledges both the agency of clowns and the social strictures that must limit them and their performances. Crucially it relies on a view of history and society in ‘a constant process of flux, of becoming rather than of being’ (Prentki 2012: 4). One of the most valuable and prolific contributors to clown scholarship in recent decades has been semiotician and scholar of circus, Paul Bouissac. His painstaking description and analysis of dozens of circus clown routines represent a mammoth scholarly effort. However, over the thirty or more years that he has been writing texts on clowning, his approach and perspective have changed considerably. In ‘The Profanation of the Sacred in Circus Clown Performance’ (1990), Bouissac argued that clown performances are rather benign rituals that do little to disrupt or question dominant values: Even when rituals provide some means for a society to reflect upon itself, through a meta-language, which makes it possible to cognitively manipulate the tacit axioms in a relatively safe manner, the stability of the system is not actually jeopardized. (1990: 207)

Bouissac’s analysis emphasized stability and stasis over conflict and change. In an explicit rebuttal of Turner’s ‘social drama’ model, he applied a Lévi-Straussian binary to clown routines that reduced them to ahistorical reflections of stable cultural systems, without considering that stability itself is not inert but the product of certain power relations and agendas. Clowning may well promote stability, but in whose interests?

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Bouissac’s most recent work, The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning (2015) is his most comprehensive study of circus clowning to date and significantly revises his earlier position. While still describing circus clown routines according to certain repeatable binary structures, Bouissac is more attentive to the possible role clowns play in historical processes and much more inclined to see the clown’s performance as materially significant: ‘societies are haunted by their clowns, who bang on the ground upon which we rest and make it sound hollow’ (2015: 179). The text is replete with vivid suggestions that clowns’ symbolic transgressions may both function to uphold systems of power and also potentially to upend them. Of the genderbased play of certain auguste clowns, he states: They explode the ideological pretense of these codes to express natural norms. By the same token, the laughter they elicit contributes to reinforcing these cultural norms by mobbing the transgressors. (Bouissac 2015: 157)

The use of words such as ‘explode’ and ‘mobbing’ acknowledges the political agency behind clowning, that is, the ways in which clowning functions as a social performance used for a variety of ideological purposes. Bouissac focuses almost entirely on circus clowning. Though he acknowledges a new movement of clowns who ‘break away from the confines of the traditional ritual space and time, and selectively penetrate the texture of their society and its institutions’, he dismisses this as ‘the contemporary trivialization of clowning in the name of commendable concerns for the well-being of communities’ and does not provide substantial description or discussion of this kind of work (2015: 181). The examples I will describe in the chapters that follow suggest that these kinds of everyday social clowning demand an analysis every bit as searching and critically attuned as that which Bouissac applies to circus clowning. Indeed, to assert a



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hard distinction between clowns in the circus ring and those who have penetrated the ‘texture of their society’, in which the former are serious and the latter trivial, is to deny the truth that, while circuses are drawing ever fewer spectators into their tents, more and more clowns are finding alternative stages and spaces in which to perform beyond the ring and, at least in Colombia, both the creativity and the popularity of these innovative clowns is flourishing. If, as Bouissac claims, clowning in the ring potentially ‘unmasks the deeper institutional violence inherent in the contextual society inasmuch as it is founded on social inequality’ (2015: 113), surely its unmasking potency is enhanced when those clowns are able to leave the ritualized frame of the ring and penetrate the social sphere itself. Hospital clowns, street clowns or humanitarian clowns may be driven by ‘commendable concerns for the well-being of communities’, as Bouissac suggests (2015: 181), but they may also be experienced professionals retooling elements of clown tradition to engage in a socially progressive agenda that denounces injustice and empowers oppressed communities. Meanwhile circus clowns, as some of my case studies demonstrate, may just as easily make a living by rehashing stale routines that critique nothing and empower no one except their circus bosses. While clowns may fulfil a range of social functions in a range of everyday and formal spaces, they have had to adapt and conform to particular kinds of political and economic development that characterize recent Colombian history. The expansion of the Colombian clown into the social sphere and its broad-based popularization is in part a consequence of historical particularities. But history does not entirely limit the clown’s potency. As Davison reminds us, ‘the clown is apt to be assimilated into the needs of the moment, yet never completely so’ (2013: 256). Whether conceived as ‘semi-detached’ (Prentki 2012: 16) or ‘semi-independent’ (Bratton and Featherstone 2008: 11), the relationship of the clown to history and social reality is constantly on the move and constantly in question.

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Happy Families: Clowns in the Circus

Two Clown Routines Rusbelín enters the ring of Circus Las Vegas to a pumping Reggaetón beat and flashing disco lights. He is a blur of movement in purple tails with gold edging and a mop of black hair that he is constantly flicking back. He yells, waves and pumps his fist, whipping the audience into a frenzy. He tears along the aisles, stopping to gyrate his pelvis in front of a female audience member. He leaps into the ring and shimmies up to a black-suited, stony-faced emcee. The music changes. It is slow and raunchy. Rusbelín peels off his jacket provocatively, revealing a simple white t-shirt with braces. He passes the jacket between his legs and pulls it back and forth against his crotch. The emcee steps in front of Rusbelín as if to shield him from the audience. Quickly, Rusbelín passes the jacket between the emcee’s legs and tries to do the same thing. Appalled, the emcee tries to remove him: ‘que se vaya’ (off you go). But the audience wants him to stay. The emcee reaches down to pick something up and as he does so Rusbelín reaches out to squeeze his buttocks. There are squeals of laughter from the audience and the emcee spins around, catching him in the act. This is repeated. On the third approach the clown is making faces at the audience and doesn’t notice that the emcee has already turned to face him. When he realizes that he is about to grab the emcee’s crotch he leaps back in mock horror before collapsing in hoots of laughter. The act continues with the same relentless rhythm, the gags coming thick and fast. Rusbelín asks an audience member his name. ‘Jorge’, the

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man answers into the microphone. Rusbelín takes back the microphone and mimics him but in an exaggeratedly deep and guttural voice: ‘Jorge’, he says, over and over again, each time throwing his head back and snorting at his own joke. He plays up to the delighted audience and lopes around the ring like an ape, scratching his head and burbling ‘Jorge’. He picks up the trumpet to play. The emcee holds the microphone at the other end. Everyone waits for the clown to play, but all that comes out is a muffled ‘Jorge’. Rusbelín goes to an electronic keyboard and hits notes chaotically. The emcee comes over to stop him and Rusbelín raps him on the head with his knuckles three times while playing a wood block sound effect on the keyboard. This evolves into a rhythmic exchange of kicks, slaps, nipple pinches and pelvic thrusts, accompanied by a range of electronic honks, thuds, tinkles and crashes. Rusbelín gets carried away and the emcee slaps him sharply on the back of the head, sending him juddering and shaking uncontrollably around the ring. Without warning he freezes in front of the emcee, grabs the microphone and blurts ‘Jorge’ into it before dissolving into manic laughter. The emcee loses his patience and unleashes a blow to the side of Rusbelín’s face and walks off. Rusbelín falls to the ground and lets out a high-pitched wail. ‘Soy solo. No tengo mamá ni papá. Tal vez mi papá es …’ (I’m all alone. I don’t have a daddy or a mummy. Maybe my daddy is …). He looks towards the audience. ‘Jorge’, they shout. ‘Papá’, yells the clown, bounding into the audience and leaping melodramatically into Jorge’s outstretched arms. On his return to the ring, apparently soothed, Rusbelín plays a sentimental love song on the saxophone. The emcee returns and they take their bows together. Rusbelín, at just nineteen years of age, was the star clown at Colombian-owned Circus Las Vegas. This act, however, known as ‘The Musical Eccentrics’, was said to have been originally created by Pastelito of celebrated Chilean circus family the Maluendas. In fact,



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in the early part of 2012, variants of this act were being performed in circuses across Bogotá, including at Circo Gigante de México, where it was performed by twenty-one-year-old Chilean clown Tutti Frutti and at Circo Mexicano, where it was performed by the two teenage clowns Cascarín and Cascarita, nephews of the circus’s owner. Over a three-month period I saw all three versions on several occasions, noting the overt similarities and subtle differences. While Rusbelín and Tutti Frutti’s versions were almost identical, Cascarín and Cascarita’s version seemed strikingly different. I began to reflect on this and wonder why certain clowns appeared to be reproducing others’ routines. What factors were at play here? What was influencing these various kinds of adaptation? This chapter explores the play of difference among popular clown acts in order to suggest the interconnectedness of clowning and broader political economies within and beyond the circus tent. Clown routines cannot be considered in isolation because they do not occur as such. Thus this chapter begins with the act as its point of departure but also moves outward through an ever-expanding series of frames or spheres, considering the place of the clown routine within the rest of the circus show, its relationship to the circus as commercial entity and community, and further still to its encounter with the political and social realities of Colombian society. Dressed all in black, Cascarín enters the ring of Circo Mexicano, which is pre-set with a variety of musical instruments. He begins with a grand announcement: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. Let me introduce myself. Tonight, for your enjoyment and entertainment, I, the worldfamous musician, Troy Casparov, will play for you.’ The lights go down. A tooting sound is heard and a figure appears, running around the edge of the ring. A follow-spot picks him out. It is Cascarita, his long hair bunched up in a top-knot, dressed in a blue shorts and stripy footballer’s shirt and clutching a toy plastic trumpet. Cascarín

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intervenes: ‘Hey, mister, who are you? I’m the musician. You’re just a clown. Off you go’, and he hustles Cascarita off through a back curtain. He introduces himself once again, accompanied by a drum roll. Cascarita runs in, holding his trumpet like a machine gun, and sprays imaginary bullets across the audience. He finishes shooting and blows the smoke from the end of the trumpet. ‘Who are you?’ asks Cascarín once again. ‘Rambo’, replies the clown. He grabs a discarded piece of rope from the edge of the ring, holding it rigid as though it were an iron bar and then slowly pushing his hands together so that it appears he is bending the metal. The audience laughs. ‘Show us something more impressive’, Cascarín instructs. Cascarita finds a thicker piece of rope and does the same thing. ‘Even more impressive’, Cascarín goads. This time Cascarita accidentally picks up a real iron bar. He brings it down hard on his knee, but instead of bending it bounces off and he doubles up in pain. ‘What happened?’ asks Cascarín in mock concern. The audience laughs as Cascarín sends the other clown off once more. Cascarín begins again but is interrupted by the familiar strains of ‘Thriller’ and Cascarita enters in sunglasses doing a Michael Jackson impression. These disruptions and small contests of wit continue, always ending with Cascarita’s ejection. Thinking he has finally got rid of the intruder, Cascarín begins to play his xylophone, but Cascarita staggers in carrying an array of scrap iron, pots and pans and other household objects upon which he begins to hammer out a children’s nursery rhyme. Cascarín gets more and more irate until finally, defeated, he gives in. Cascarita celebrates, pumping his fist, clapping and molesting Cascarín with pelvic thrusts. But rather than re-establishing order and authority, Cascarín gives himself up to Cascarita’s silliness and they appear now to be playing together. For a finale they play ‘La Cucaracha’ together, Cascarín on the keyboard, Cascarita on his homemade apparatus. The audience clap along merrily and the act concludes.



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The manifest similarity of these two clown routines (the former presented at Circus Las Vegas, the latter at Circo Mexicano) rests on tropes that are well established in the circus clown repertoire: the double act, physical slapstick and the musical eccentric tradition. Louise Peacock argues that the double-act formula, which has been a mainstay of comedy since at least Ancient Greek civilization, ‘reflects the binary nature of dramatic structure which impels its narrative’ (2014: 45). The formal characteristics of the double act consist of a series of oppositions or strong contrasts – for example of wealth, status, costume, physicality, intelligence and age – between the two performers, which lead to the conflictual comedy. The historical pervasiveness of this kind of clown pairing is beyond doubt: from the master–servant dynamics of ancient Greek farce or the Pantelone and Arlecchino pairing of Commedia dell’Arte to the famous duos of silent film comedy, such as Laurel and Hardy, the comic potential of status differentiation has been exploited over and over again. However, this often essentialized formula, when embodied in specific historically situated performances, takes on myriad forms that not only give it a different twist but in some cases entirely subvert its meaning. In the equestrian-oriented circuses of the late eighteenth century, for example, a comedy duo developed pitting the military authority of the riding master (later to become ring master) against the tomfoolery of a clown sometimes known as Mr Merryman, a popular country bumpkin entertainer of the rural fairs. What began as an improvised ‘filler’ during set changes evolved in the hands of skilled comics into a finely honed and much anticipated verbal set-piece within the circus programme in the early nineteenth century (Towsen 1976: 100–1). Later the low-status clown became a star in his own right with the emergence of the ‘auguste’ clown in Paris, a development which Davison argues was related to mood of the time, ‘rooted in the new social conditions which brought mass popular audiences to the circus’ (2013: 65). In the context of partnerships that

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became household names of the time, such as Footit and Chocolat, the auguste provided a new low-status hero to specifically caricature the ringmaster who was seen as representing the old order. In the early twentieth century the auguste reached the pinnacle of its artistic refinement in the work of Grock, whose various partners were reduced to the role of stooge while he took centre stage. In need of a new low-status buffoon, the Fratellini brothers conceived the ‘counterauguste’, whose exaggerated features, shaggy wig, bright clothes and oversized shoes inspired the notoriously garish circus auguste adopted in the American three-ring circuses at the turn of the century (Davison 2013: 92). The depression era of the 1930s provided yet another opportunity to exploit the low-status clown as popular hero, with the emergence of tramp clowns such as Emmet Kelly and Otto Griebling playing on ambiguous cultural associations of the migrant worker and railroad hobo as both ‘vagabond and folk hero’ (Towsen 1976: 283). The conflict between clowns of low and high status has thus underpinned the entire history of European circus clowning. Nevertheless the meanings attached to this conflict are far from static. Rather they must be seen in relation to constantly shifting social conflicts and anxieties, overlaying the seemingly binary nature of clown performance with ambiguous cultural and political significance. Our two Colombian circus routines exemplified many formal characteristics of the classic circus clown duo, as defined by Paul Bouissac (1990: 2015). Both acts exhibited high-status figures dressed in well-fitted suits denoting refinement and authority, consistent with Bouissac’s description of the whiteface clown: ‘the whiteface is articulate, moves graciously, and is elegantly dressed’ (2015: 38). The possession of a microphone further established the emcee’s control of the space in both acts, designating him as the one who was supposed to be there. The association of both these figures with officialdom, as well as their exemplification of the right and proper type of behaviour, was clear for the audience to see.



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Likewise, the two low-status clowns in each act demonstrated the basic attributes of the auguste clown: ‘the garb of the auguste is gaudy and ill-fitting, his behaviour is awkward, and his way of speaking is unpolished as well as impolite’ (Bouissac 2015: 39). Garish and brightly coloured clothing, unkempt hair and oversized shoes, accompanied of course by almost continually rebellious, unruly behaviour, emphasized a contrast with the high-status figure in each act. Furthermore, Rusbelín and Cascarita both performed the role of imposter in the space: an unwelcome, yet tolerated disrupter of the official proceedings. On the surface, then, both clown pairings seem to conform to Bouissac’s formulaic description of the clown duo as ‘a semiotic couple in which the signs that define one are inverted in the other’ (2015: 39). Within these broad structural similarities, though, there were differences between the two acts, some more obvious than others. Even minor variations, when considered in terms of the local cultural resonances, may begin to seem significant. What are we to make, for example, of the overtly sexualized comedy and exaggerated physical aggression of the Las Vegas act, compared to the more moderate tone and greater verbal dexterity of the Circo Mexicano version? Physical conflict in the Las Vegas routine was often linked specifically to a struggle for power and was generally either rebellious or punitive. Rusbelín used physical, often sexualized gags to ridicule the emcee, and the latter retaliated with physical aggression. While Cascarín and Cascarita used some of the same physical gags, they tended to rely on a more playful and verbal banter, with both partners switching roles of trickster and victim. The only physical conflict that took place, during the keyboard sound effects sequence, was of a playful and reciprocal nature. The formal nature of the relationship in each act was significantly different. Rusbelín and his emcee were clearly cast as generationally separated, evoking the authority structures of a traditional father/son

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relationship. Rusbelín functioned as a symbol of rebellious, undisciplined youth: hyperactive, unfocused, and vigourously determined to satisfy his every frivolous whim – so much so, in fact, that the routine often seemed less like a double act and more like a vehicle for the solo virtuosity of Rusbelín. The dramatic slap followed by Rusbelín’s reunion with his ‘papa’ in the audience was suggestive of the desire to escape the tyranny of male patriarchy, to find a different kind of father, but a father nevertheless. Cascarín and Cascarita, by contrast, were a much more even-footed pairing. Despite the differences in costume, they were of a similar age (their similar physicality may also have prompted suspicion that were related). Their status difference was not essentialized or romanticized in the way that it seemed to be in the Las Vegas act, but was rather a playfully performed relationship that seemed less concrete and more transient. In Las Vegas the superiority of the emcee over Rusbelín, as father and son, was never really in question, despite the latter’s protracted sequences of anarchy. The superiority of Cascarín over Cascarita, meanwhile, was fragile and constantly in doubt. By the end of the act, status difference seemed to have dissolved completely as they joined together in their rendition of ‘La Cucaracha’. According to Louise Peacock there are two kinds of double act: in the ‘sparring’ double act the two performers ‘are in constant competition’, with one taking the upper hand and then the other; in the ‘supportive’ double act, the two performers appear to be working as a team towards the same goal, but get into difficulties as a result of their differences (2014: 46). In the former there tends to be a balance between the two personae, even though there is one who seems more obviously high-status at a given moment. That is, the status roles are not constant: high can become low and low can become high, depending on the situation. In the latter, the status roles rarely or never change and the authority of the high partner is never at risk, despite the undermining qualities of the low partner.



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This analytical frame is especially useful because it draws attention to historicity – that is, the way things change over time – and suggests how clown routines can represent fundamentally differing worldviews about the nature of power, authority and the possibility of change. It might be considered that the Las Vegas routine, on first impression, would be of the sparring variety, since there is a degree of conflict. Yet over time, despite moments of rebellion, the status relationship is fixed and unchanging. While the emcee allows Rusbelín a certain amount of space to play, he is only ever waiting patiently for the moment when he steps too far and must be forcefully reined in. The worldview underlying this act is one in which status is absolute, misbehaviour only tolerated within strict limits and always corrected if taken too far. When the emcee leaves, his only option is to find a replacement father figure, at which point he seems to be pacified, his anarchic qualities quelled. Once rebellion is suppressed and authority reasserted, Rusbelín is able to conclude the act alone with a celebratory demonstration of his musical virtuosity. The overarching narrative that the act presents is one in which revolt is fun but ultimately ineffective, and change impossible. On reflection, then, the act proves to be of the supportive kind, in which the two performers are locked into a predetermined status relationship that provides comedy but can never be challenged. The Circo Mexicano act, meanwhile, had a genuine sparring quality, its balance of power always altering and in question. This was exemplified by the rope-bending gag in which Cascarín was able to outsmart Cascarita using his wits rather than physical violence, but the superiority gained as a result was temporary and easily overturned. The worldview underscored by this act was one of conflict and social fluidity, in which authority was a role being performed for a particular purpose, not an essential or naturalized fact. You were never quite sure who was going to come out on top,

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and when the act descended into a more playful equality it seemed to be exploring a democratic, even utopian, ideal. Yet this ideal was itself a tentative and temporary one. Over a number of viewings of the act, I observed that the act was never quite the same twice and that Cascarín and Cascarita were engaged in an exploratory process of change and adaptation, adding new gags, taking others away, sometimes improvising in the moment. By contrast, the Circus Las Vegas act rarely varied from its carefully scripted structure. Over time, then, it became clear that at Circus Las Vegas the clowns were reproducing reliable crowd-pleasing clown formulae, albeit with a significant degree of skill and technique, while at Circo Mexicano, they were dismantling old structures and experimenting with new configuations, despite a certain roughness of aesthetic. This choice between adaptation and stagnation is nothing new in the context of circus clowning, as suggested by Kenneth Little’s observations of European circus clowns (also known as ‘entrée clowns’): The earliest entrée clowns engaged in free play within the tradition, relying on the imagination of family members as bricoleurs and constructing the tradition as open-ended; by contrast contemporary circus entrée clowns resort to a more strictly-defined circus authority: its rules, its laws, its morality, and its order. Proudly drawing back into its traditions as new clown forms emerge, entrée clowns have undermined their popularity. (2003: 142)

As I continued to spend time in and around the Colombian circuses, it became clear that the differences in the two acts were linked to the contrasting ways in which the two circus institutions adapted to broadly similar economic and social conditions. While the adoption of a corporate management style and scale of Las Vegas led to an emphasis on top-down hierarchy, static structure and artistic schematization, the maintenance of a looser, more informal familybased business model at Circo Mexicano allowed for greater equality, flexibility and artistic freedom.



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To some extent the way that the performers adapted and modified the traditional clown repertoire could be seen as a response to the particularities of their institutional conditions, a place where clown artists might negotiate and express their own identities in relation to the institutions that housed and fed them. But their license to reimagine clowning was also, to differing degrees, limited and circumscribed by the politics of those institutions. One way in which a circus institution can define and limit its clowning is through the positioning of the clown acts in relation to the rest of the show: not only the placement of the acts within a structure but the specific dramatic and narrative functions they fulfil. Circus clown acts cannot be considered in isolation, since they are experienced as one segment within a longer spectacle. Indeed the ‘spectacle’ of the circus might be said to begin before the lights go down, before one enters the arena, perhaps even as soon as the big top comes into view.

Two circuses The four imposing masts, the sweeping gold, green and blue canvas and the gigantic arch bearing the words ‘LAS VEGAS’ are impossible to miss as you arrive at the Portal de Las Americas, the western-most terminal of Bogotá’s mass transit bus system, the Transmilenio. From here you must transfer onto a local bus or walk in order to access the myriad ‘barrios’ within Kennedy, a vast sprawl of unchecked urbanization that seems like an entire city unto itself. The scale and grandeur of the circus, in contrast to the constant flow of traffic and bodies around it, produces the illusion of permanence and solidity in a sea of everyday, mundane transience. Yet however monumental the circus looks from a distance, a closer inspection reveals that it too is temporary. According to a large billboard, the tract of ground upon which the circus is sited

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will soon be developed into new apartments. On the muddy patch of ground between sidewalk and the gilded arch, five young, black-shirted students are chanting animal rights slogans, while a few feet away a small cluster of equally young police officers surveys the protesters with an air of suspicion. Meanwhile, family groups stand in queues at the ticket booths, while children peer through the fencing, trying to catch a glimpse of the much-vaunted Russian bears. The muffled boom of amplified music floats out of the tent, casting a strange spell of anticipation and excitement over this uneasy in-between space. As the first of the afternoon shows ends, yellow-jacketed attendants open up a section of the tent wall and herd the audience back onto the street. Before they are all out, the new audience is ushered in, up a ramp, through the turnstile, into a spacious lobby with lion sculptures, red velvet couches and food stalls. Here, officials inspect tickets and direct audience members towards one of four fenced-off seating areas, depending on how much they have paid. The vast majority are squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder on raked banks of benches that rise to the peripheries of the tent to the left and right of the main ring entrance. Directly opposite the main ring entrance is a more expensive seating area, still on benches but offering a front-on view. In front of the bench seating, separated by a metal barrier, is a zone of more comfortable plastic chairs, more expensive still. But the costliest and closest to the action are the exclusive boxes, featuring cushioned chairs arranged in groups directly adjacent to the ring. The show opens with a display of tacky Americana: a troupe of female dancers in red, white and blue leotards parade jauntily to the strains of ‘New York New York’. A genial black-suited emcee welcomes everyone and introduces the next act, a band of young, black acrobats who perform a series of leaps, balances, somersaults, and jump rope tricks. As the act nears its tense completion, the emcee describes for the audience the number of spins and twists they are going to attempt, building the visceral sense of danger and risk.



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Rusbelín is third into the ring, performing the ‘Musical Eccentrics’. This is followed by some more standard acts: static trapeze, hoolahoop dancing, two lethargic grizzly bears, who enact a series of absurd scenarios including a marriage ceremony in full wedding regalia. After the much-anticipated appearance of the bears, Rusbelín is back, this time joined by a more traditional-looking circus clown in baggy green dungarees and a floppy cap. While in the ‘Musical Eccentrics’ Rusbelín had been the downtrodden underdog, he is now suddenly the dominant authority figure, providing the foil to the green clown’s stupidity. This is an opportunity for more knockabout slapstick, ending with another harsh slap and a moment of restorative justice involving a child from the audience who comes out and kisses the crestfallen green clown in a seemingly spontaneous act of kindness and pity. The first half of the show finishes on an adrenalin-fuelled high with a Cossack-themed bareback horse-riding act. The slick pace of the first half is sustained in the second: a juggling routine, more aerial, a high-wire act, among others, all performed to a high professional standard. There is one more clown act, in which Rusbelín enlists three audience members to help him present a musical recital. The clown gives them percussion instruments and teaches the two male volunteers some dance moves, generating much laughter from the audience. The one female volunteer is given a china plate and hammer and instructed to tap the plate gently to make it chime at the appropriate moment. At the culmination of the song Rusbelín points to her and she promptly smashes the plate. The show finishes with the act that it seems everyone was waiting for: ‘el Globo de la Muerte’ (Globe of Death). The ominously named act involves a spherical steel cage inside which up to six motorbikes thread simultaneous pathways, narrowly avoiding collision. As the audience is once again herded out to make way for the next, the tent still full of exhaust fumes, it is the motorbikes and the bears they are chattering about.

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While perhaps not the most popular or memorable of Circus Las Vegas’s many specialist-skill performers, the clowns performed three distinct acts through the show, suggesting that they fulfilled a significant function within its overall structure. Relatively little has been written on the structuring principles of circus shows, but conventional wisdom has it that clown acts have often been utilized as ‘fillers’, either to distract the audience while equipment is changed over in the ring or to relieve the tension produced by dangerous acts and thus heighten their effect.1 This logic cannot be underestimated in the case of Las Vegas, where the clowns often followed a featured act such as the Russian bears or the high-wire routine. The fluctuating patterns of tension and relaxation, risk and comic relief, provided a structural through-line, a kind of narrative arc, that invisibly sustained the audience’s attention and manipulated their experience. However, clown acts themselves were by far the most narrativedriven acts within the circus, and as such a sequence of three allowed for a different kind of narrative journey to take place, one that has the potential to communicate a value system and a moral orientation just as a play or story might. Rusbelín’s anarchic spree in the first act is a forceful introduction to the transgressive world of the clown, but, as I have noted, this transgressive force is seemingly ‘corrected’ by the ringmaster. Having learned how to behave properly, he ascends up the status ladder and in the next clown act he is the one to discipline the mischiefmaker. The second act is resolved through an audience member’s intervention, which in turn leads to a finale in which the auguste clown’s role is taken by audience volunteers. Having been taught the difference between right and wrong behaviour, the audience are able to laugh with impunity at their fellow spectators’ mishaps and mistakes. The smashing of the plate at the very culmination of this routine provides a sober warning of the dangers of pretending to be that which you are not. The overarching narrative of the three clown



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acts, then, is one in which learning to behave according to certain rules is rewarded with redemption and upward mobility. The thing that first strikes me about the tent of the Circo Mexicano is just how small it is. On my first visit, I got lost trying to find it. My taxi driver, evidently anxious to be hunting through the backstreets of this neighbourhood, was on the point of giving up when we rounded the corner to see the cheery blue and yellow tent, surrounded by rickety caravans and bedecked by strings of coloured lights, brightening up a small square of local shops and houses. Entrance costs less than half that of most other circuses and it is less than half the size. There is still some differentiation of seating zones and ticket prices. But in this intimate space you feel you are on top of the action wherever you are seated. In the darkness the Star Wars theme crackles out of the speakers and a spotlight picks out a performer dressed as Spiderman running out into the ring. He climbs up into the rigging and begins a cloud swing routine, occasionally diving out over the audience’s heads and catching himself by his feet at the last minute, drawing great gasps of shock and delight from the people below. Next, twin sisters perform a contortion routine that, despite their fixed smiles, looks painful. In third billing, an animal trainer wearing a Mohawk wig and introduced as Germán from the popular TV series, leads a troupe of small performing dogs through a series of tricks, including pushing a pram, kneeling down to get married and walking across a high-wire. Cascarín and Cascarita are next, followed by a hulahoop act and then a unicycle routine, which, to my surprise, is also performed by Cascarín, now appearing in a quite different persona from that of his clown. Indeed Cascarín and Cascarita make numerous appearances in the show, each time in a different costume and performing a different act. Cascarín specializes in balancing acts such as the unicycle and rola-bola, while Cascarita performs several aerial solos, on silks and static trapeze. They both feature in the dramatic high-wire finale.

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Likewise, Cascarín and Cascarita are not the only clowns in the show, and two other clown acts feature different performers. One of these is a reworking of a classic circus routine in which two bullfighters do battle with a comedy bull, played by two people in a front-and-back costume. To the irritation of the bullfighters the animal continually evades confrontation, until finally they give up and decide to look after it, feeding, petting and kissing it. A third clown act, performed by yet another artist, is a solo that also has an ecological theme. The clown, a short, stocky figure in a glittering, sequinned waistcoat, chequered trousers and a sparkly pork pie hat, enters holding a small, striped and furry animal that appears to be a very small tiger. The crowd is animated, for this is the strange and unusual phenomenon promised by the billboards outside the tent and hyped in amplified pre-show announcements: ‘El Tigre Mas Pequeño del Mundo’ (The World’s Smallest Tiger). The creature is placed down and requested to perform some tricks. At first it stubbornly refuses, then does the opposite of what is asked of it. It runs in circles around the bemused clown, who vainly attempts to catch it. In the chaos that ensues he accidentally trips and lands on top of the tiger, apparently squashing it. The clown weeps and wails over the lifeless animal. He tries to revive it, first using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and then pretending to wind it up with a giant key. But seeing it is no use, he begins a eulogy, full of love and tenderness, during which the animal stirs and finally wakes, seemingly brought back to life. In his delight, the clown grabs the tiger, there is a scuffle and then up into the clown’s arms leaps a small white dog, leaving behind the limp skin of a tiger costume. With the dog yelping and licking his face, the clown waves goodbye and leaves the ring. As is the case in Circus Las Vegas, the clown acts in Circo Mexicano are assigned more stage time than any other routines and by their nature have much more potential to convey meaning through an evolving narrative. Of particular note was the thematic recurrence of



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animals, on one occasion an animal costume concealing two humans, and on the other an animal costume concealing another animal. Indeed a third clown act that sometimes replaced the bullfight routine also involved a performer in a gorilla costume. In each of these routines the ‘animal’, whether real or fake, was treated as a compliant comic foil, an underdog who nevertheless succeeded in defying and outwitting the clowns. In the bullfight and gorilla routines the clowns were taught a lesson that animals should not be mistreated and oppressed but rather should be respected and cared for. These disobedient animals offered a critical commentary on the exploitation of animals within circus itself. While in Circus Las Vegas the routines had a conservative and moralistic narrative in which status difference was normalized and justified, in Circo Mexicano status difference was presented as a symptom of social inequality, whether between different groups of people or between humans and animals. The routines served uncomfortably to draw attention to such inequalities while also imagining a world in which love and respect become the norm. The characteristic idealism of these acts at Circo Mexicano was something I found to be reflected in the attitude of the circus’s owner, Jhon Freddy Angulo, to clowning, circus and society in general. Indeed the clown who performed the ‘World’s Smallest Tiger’ routine was in fact none other than Jhon Freddy himself. By turns preoccupied parent, shrewd businessman and idiosyncratic artist, Jhon Freddy exemplified the versatility and resourcefulness that was seemingly required for small family circuses to compete and survive in a marketplace populated mainly by much larger, corporately managed affairs such as the Las Vegas Circus. His resilience, furthermore, was expressed as much through his clown routines as through his artistic vision for the show and his day-to-day running of the circus as a particularly eccentric yet somehow functional family unit.

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Two families I arrive at Circus Las Vegas at 10 a.m. to meet Rusbelín, but he doesn’t arrive for another hour. When he does, he is not in a hurry. So we sit in the empty stands while the motorbikes roar and splutter behind us as they go through their daily practice for the Globe of Death. Rusbelín and I talk about clowning and about his life: how he did not choose clowning, but rather it chose him; how it was his destiny to became a clown. He tells me the story of his own baptism into the profession at the age of seven, when he began accompanying clowns hired to perform at birthday parties and soon found himself being paid as an entertainer in his own right. These conversations have become a routine for us. But it is a shortlived one. After a few days I start to sense that I am not welcome, that perhaps my interviews with various artists are seen as threatening to the management. During one meeting, Rusbelín, who has been eager and polite up until now, suddenly seems distracted and distant. The next time I arrive to talk to him, I am told he is not there. I call his mobile, but it is switched off. Rusbelín felt that he was doing something with a special purpose and mission, that laughter and happiness had an important social function in a country like Colombia. In a country that has known so much conflict and violence, he told me, it is important to show people that love and reconciliation are possible. He explained how the routine that he performed with the green clown demonstrated this idea: It’s a really beautiful message for children, that not everything in life is violence and war … I hit him, I treat him badly, but then later I come back and we are about to start fighting again, but we look at each other and the clowns think about what they are doing, and the other clown says no, he doesn’t want to fight any more, and he puts out his hand



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to make peace. But because my role is very serious I say, ‘No, no, no! I don’t want to’. But the audience shouts out ‘Yes! Yes!’ We play at that for a while, them saying yes, me saying no. The audience wants me to take his hand and finally I do and we hug and dance together. It’s a very significant message especially for children, a message of peace, of not having hatred towards others, forgiving, it’s a very beautiful message.2

This interpretation of the second clown act conflicted with my memory of it and this puzzled me. What I remembered of the act was the rivalry between the two clowns, culminating in Rusbelín knocking the green clown to the ground. In other words, conflict was the overriding impression left by the act, not reconciliation. He nodded and admitted that this was a problem. Sometimes there are children who say to me ‘you’re bad, why did you hit that other clown?’ They leave with a bad image of me because I hit him, and maybe they missed the moment of reconciliation. It might be because when the clowns come out the guys also come out selling things in the audience at the same time and that can be very problematic. Look what happened with you. It’s easy to miss something.

Because this clown act comes just before the intermission, he explained, the sellers of popcorn, toffee apples and various toys and trinkets come out and start moving through the audience during the tail end of their act, distracting people from what is going on in the ring and perhaps causing them to miss his moment of redemption. The potential of the ‘message of peace’ to be actually communicated seems to be extremely tenuous and contingent upon many factors that do not always pertain in a circus environment, perhaps due to the competition for the young audience members’ attention. There is a conflict of intentions and priorities within the circus. While for Rusbelín it is important to offset the violence of the clowning with a ‘message of peace’, management requires that food and merchandise be touted throughout the show, whether or not that might distract

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children from the action. What this suggests is a complex and ambiguous relationship between representations of violence within clowning and the social realities that frame it: in particular the commercial pressures of the circus as institution and the understanding and experience of conflict among the communities to which the audience belongs. Clearly, at least in Rusbelín’s view, clowning has a profound and complex relationship to the realities of life for many Colombians. Sometimes the value of the clowning is not drawing attention to the violence but rather distracting from it: The situation in Colombia is very complicated, a lot of kidnapping, a lot of violence, inter-family violence, social insecurity, a series of conditions that give to the clown the important task of bringing happiness to the people. One time we did a beautiful thing, which was to go to the women’s prison in Armenia to give a show to the women there. It was very interesting because they really enjoyed themselves even though they’re in this world of four walls and the bars, they had a good time and they forgot for a moment the problems that they had. What we do helps people forget everything bad.

The claim that the representation of violence in clowning helps incarcerated women forget the violence that attends their everyday lives is very different from the claim that it might teach young people the value of peace. Both claims seek to justify the presence of violent images in clowning. The difference between the two kinds of justification might be related to the contrasting needs and demands of two different audiences. In both cases it is clear that depictions of violence in Colombian clowning are far from innocuous, but rather are deeply rooted in assumptions about the culture of violence that pervades the everyday lives of Colombians. Colombian anthropologist, Myriam Jiméno, warns against the damaging cliché that there is a ‘cultural acceptance of violence’ in Colombia, a fatalistic view that ‘ascribes the extreme and cruel



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aspects of acts of violence to “Colombian culture”’ (2004: 110). Nevertheless surveys indicate that a very high proportion of people in Colombia have experienced violence or abuse in their own lives, very often at the hands of authorities such as police, army, clergy and teachers. Jiméno points to a crisis with the notion of authority that exists both in the family and in broader society, particularly in low-income urban communities. When asked to speculate on the cause of violence in the home, the majority of surveyed victims identified ‘the need for correction or reprimand, given the paternal/ maternal need to maintain control of family life and instil patterns of behavior’ (2004: 114). In the family context, Jiméno suggests that at the root of this is a fear of social breakdown: ‘family life is perceived as vulnerable, threatened by disorder and disrespect for authority. In this context, parental reprimands act as a means of prevention’ (2004: 114). It is not that people have accepted violence as legitimate but rather they have learned to integrate it ‘under an essentially ambivalent code’ (Jiméno 2004: 114). The ambivalence and ambiguity surrounding the justification of violence in the family is also deeply linked to perceptions of authority at a state level. In particular Jiméno draws attention to the lack of trust in authority figures and institutions that not only commit acts of violence themselves but also fail to mediate and intervene in conflicts in general. The notorious ‘weakness’ of the Colombian state, indeed its virtual absence in many cases, sets the example for the turning of blind eyes to violent actions and also leads to the assumption of responsibility for justice by illegal paramilitary groups. The absence of a fair, even-handed authority leads to a vacuum which must be filled with a form of authoritarianism that is extreme yet portrayed as pragmatic. The family is one location in which this authoritarianism is asserted: ‘Family life is perceived as a fragile entity. Its members are on the verge of disorder, and authority must reaffirm itself with the use of force in anticipation of disrespect’ (Jiméno 2004:

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117). As an analysis of the clown double acts in Circus Las Vegas, this could hardly be more fitting. In both cases disrespect is anticipated and authority reaffirmed with the use of force. Could it be that circus clowning is one place where violence is being integrated ‘under an essentially ambivalent code’ (Jiméno 2004: 114)? Jiméno claims that ‘in varying ritual and secular forms, social systems reiterate that acceptance of the social order goes far beyond obedience’ (2004: 117). That is, certain formalized types of cultural performance do not just bully people into compliance with the dominant order but rather deeply ingrain its values and practices such that they are seen as norms. Rusbelín argued that his routines offered a ‘message of peace’ and forgiveness. But ultimately is it the message of peace that underpins the comedic effect of the routine, which is so valued by the circus? Is it the message of peace that audiences remember when they leave the circus tent? It was not until my third viewing of Circus Las Vegas that I suddenly realized the victimized green clown in the second clown act was played by none other than the emcee who had previously been so domineering. His name, in and out of the ring, was Piolín. I saw him often when visiting the circus – a distant, hovering presence, watchful yet somehow troubled, always pacing, always a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He assiduously avoided me and whenever I tried to engage him in conversation he rebuffed me with some excuse. When, on one occasion, we made an arrangement to meet, he failed to appear. His brooding aloofness and surly demeanour frustrated and yet intrigued me as a researcher. It seemed at odds both with his genial emcee persona and his impishly playful clown. I felt the need to understand Piolín, suspecting that behind that intractable mask lurked a rich well of experience that could help me unravel the story of Colombian circus clowning. Piolín had become something of a hero and mentor to Rusbelín since joining Las Vegas two years ago. ‘Piolín is considered one of



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the best clowns, typical of the traditional, classical style of humour in the circus’, he assured me. I asked why he seemed so distant and unfriendly and Rusblín told me that he was having trouble with the management. Piolín was not only a celebrated clown but also a former circus owner and manager, who had been forced out of business by the influx of large, more commercially oriented and profit-driven circuses. He had subsequently been contracted by Felipe Acero, wealthy businessman and proprietor of Circus Las Vegas, to be its artistic director and emcee. Acero was not the kind of circus owner that Piolín had been. He was rarely present on site. Indeed I never saw him during my three months of fieldwork there. Instead he managed the circus through a team of surrogates that included Piolín and also a production manager with whom he often clashed. At this moment, Piolín was trying to introduce a new act but the manager had vetoed it. Rusbelín was noticeably diplomatic, nervous even, when it came to the details of Piolín’s troubles. I desperately wanted to fill in the gaps and so I broached the subject with him one evening after the show: ‘I hear you used to have your own circus’, I began tentatively. ‘Yes’. ‘What was it called?’ ‘Circo Piolín’, he replied with a wry smile and walked away. Piolín was a man of few words. Yet these particular words, as well as exposing the comical ineptitude of my own attempts at communication, were remarkably eloquent. His circus had carried his own name, suggesting how much his own sense of identity was bound up in that circus and the entire conception of the family circus. In losing the circus, then, he lost part of himself. ‘Circo Piolín’ was no more, and there was no more to say. These two short words contained a painful story that was still being played out: the story of the demise of small family circuses all over Colombia and their

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absorption, following the logic of neoliberal capitalism, into much larger commercial oriented circuses in which efficiency and profitability trump artistic innovation. Acero’s circus was just such an entity and Piolín himself an example of its destructive ability to ingest traditional practices associated with small-scale family structures and regurgitate them as commodities for public consumption. As I witnessed Piolín’s daily performances, both in the ring and beyond, it became clear to me that they were deeply marked by the emotional and psychological effects of that transition. The economies of the institution – the way that power was negotiated and contested – were also daily played out within the economies of power and violence in the clown routines themselves. Piolín and Rusbelín were not passive victims of this process. Their agency expressed itself in moments of dissent. Rusbelín’s conversations with me, until they were cut off, were small acts of rebellion and autonomy. Piolín’s struggle to control the show was also an act of resistance, attempting to wrest back territory in a fight that he was probably always destined to lose, but which he never abandoned. Rusbelín’s insistence on the importance of moments of reconciliation in the clown acts – despite the threat of the popcorn sellers to the integrity of the message – was another example of their optimistic resilience. Sadly, though, the uncritical and ambivalent repetition of narratives in which violence reasserts order in the absence of justice and fairness seems to override any progressive agenda on the part of the clowns. Circus clowns may not be entirely complicit in reinforcing the acceptance of violence, but in living by the rules of the commercial circus they can do little to challenge it. Jhon Freddy Angulo stands by his father Ancor Angulo outside a yellow caravan and watches the queue outside the gate slowly lengthening. Microphone in hand, Freddy breaks off conversation to deliver an announcement:



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Final days of the Circo Mexicano, back by public demand. If you haven’t seen it, don’t miss out. Great savings: everyone pays just five thousand pesos. Brand new line-up, new artists, new acrobats: the Marriage of ‘El Man es Germán’; the Globe of Death; The Bull Fight; Musical Eccentrics; llamas from Peru, the world’s smallest tiger and much more …

He looks up at the typically overcast Bogotá sky, as if anticipating rain, then strides off towards the tent, ducking though a hidden flap and disappearing out of view. This is a familiar pre-show scene: Jhon Freddy anxiously pacing about the enclosure, checking and reviewing; various members of the Angulo family, including Samir and Said, preparing popcorn, candy apples and other snacks, ready to sell to the incoming audience; and Ancor, a pillar of calm authority, sitting outside his caravan, waiting for the moment when he will rise, walk slowly over to the entrance gate and begin tearing tickets. It is a routine they have been performing for many years, in which the whole family takes part, repeated and reproduced in hundreds of locations around the city, though the tent, the acts and even the name of the circus has changed. During the lull between the end of one run and the start of the next, once everything has been packed down into the caravans and rented trucks, the circus seems to be at its most vulnerable and insubstantial, always in the throes of some crisis that threatens its survival. On one occasion the relevant permissions have not yet been obtained for the new site, which nobody knows except Jhon Freddy. On another, heavy rain has slowed down the packing and the truck drivers refuse to work without more money. Whether in an adjacent ‘barrio’ or at the other end of the city, the new location is always similarly remote and difficult to access, deep within socially and economically marginalized zones of the city where half-built houses hustle for space on the steep hillsides. Jhon Freddy has become adept at finding patches of ground just large and flat enough on which to pitch the tent and encircling caravans. And here again

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there comes a parade of logistical obstacles: the local bosses, official and unofficial, must be placated; electricity must be found and relayed to the tent, sometimes simply via a cable strung from a shop; local competition must be scouted and outsmarted. From the arrival at an empty patch of grass to the first act of the first show is a stressful and feverish time of hard labour in pressurized conditions. But it is also a new beginning, in which the circus miraculously reconstitutes itself. As the masts are staked out, the canvas roof winched up and the walls unfurled, the outside world slowly disappears from view and we once again surround ourselves with our comfortable, familiar circus environment: home. I visited the Circo Mexicano frequently, not only watching the show dozens of times, but ‘hanging out’ around the caravans during the daytime, talking to Freddy and his family as they went about their work, which was also, strangely, their life. I was welcomed and accepted here to a degree I never was at Circus Las Vegas, and with some encouragement from Freddy I even performed my own clown routine in the ring. I also joined the team as they made the transition from one site to the next, always a stressful exercise of creative adaptation to a new set of conditions. At the centre of this constantly shifting drama, Freddy was a troubled and unsatisfied leader, on whose shoulders authority and responsibility weighed heavily. His perspective on the circus was a paradoxical one. On one hand the circus represented an infernal and oppressive cycle of struggle under harsh economic conditions. Whenever we met, whether in the circus tent or in a local café, our conversations always began with a outpouring of grievances about his audiences, the poor weather or the large circus owners who were pricing him out of the market. Freddy’s world was dominated by obstructions and foes, trying to prevent him from achieving his life’s work. When, after a time, he could distance himself from these anxieties, however, the circus



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Figure 1  Jhon Freddy Angulo, owner and director of Circo Mexicano (January 2012)

became a powerful space of possibility in which to imagine and fight for better worlds and kinder futures. While the pettiness of the politics and the frustrations of the economics were a thorn in Freddy’s side, always threatening to inundate his creative drive, the artistic pleasure and his sense of purpose provided a sufficient counterbalance. Freddy referred to the Circo Mexicano as a ‘circo del barrio’ (neighbourhood circus), which performed a kind of ‘social work’ for communities who otherwise would never see live theatrical entertainment. He aligned himself, politically and socially, with the neighbourhood he served, tending to see both as oppressed and marginalized by powerful forces that must be cleverly negotiated: We are the only circus that’s currently working in the barrios of Bogotá and complying with all the little requirements of the districts. I’m not accepted, perhaps because I want to improve all the time. But it’s hard. The taxes you have to pay, the publicity costs, the costs of the artists, doing everything you can to survive, going here and there, and perhaps that’s also why the big circuses have been at war with me. Las Vegas

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia Circus has declared war against me, covering over my posters, stealing audience members from me by accepting our discount coupons in their circus, lowering the price exactly when I do. It’s very unpleasant that a circus as popular as the Las Vegas, that has its own TV ads, is putting itself in direct competition with us like that. That’s also why the small circuses are disappearing. First of all because the majority of owners are disorganized, but secondly because the big circuses set out to overwhelm us: the big fish eat the small fish. That happens and it’s ugly.

Freddy here positions the Circo Mexicano as the oppressed underdog in order to unleash a critique of the so-called free market in which the large corporation has an innate and unassailable advantage over the small family business. His critique directly attacks neoliberal market-driven economics, in which everyone supposedly benefits from relentless growth, describing instead a system which is rigged to help powerful entities while the weak gradually get consumed. Speaking specifically of Circus Las Vegas, which was at that time just ten blocks away, he implied that its owners had cosy relationships with government officials, which allowed them to avoid the taxes for which he – as a much smaller circus – was liable. In the face of such institutionalized inequality, what hope is there for the little fish? If the situation he faces is paradoxical and contradictory, so is Freddy’s response. He takes trouble to comply with the niceties of the law, cleaning up after himself and making sure that his circus sets an example of responsible social behaviour. Yet his observance of the law is rooted more in strategic pragmatism than in deferential respect for its fairness. ‘Doing everything you can to survive’ sometimes means playing a double game of acquiescence and defiance, and Freddy is clear why, at times, retaliatory action might be a necessity: ‘Circus Las Vegas has declared war against me, covering over my posters, stealing audience members …’. During my fieldwork with Circo Mexicano a ‘war’ did indeed escalate between the two circuses. Somebody anonymously posted



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on Facebook a photograph of a Las Vegas poster, which had clearly been altered to show the location and performance times of Circo Mexicano. One day, while we were sitting in front of Ancor Angulo’s caravan, a mediator paid a visit to warn Freddy that he could be sued if he continued to do this. While Freddy insisted that the other circus was responsible, it seemed more likely that both circuses were using ‘dirty’ tactics to gain advantage in what they saw as a territorial struggle. Battles over ticket prices, discounts, special deals, artists and even the acts themselves were also quite common. Legal threats were never followed through during the time I spent with the circuses but were part of a repertoire of symbolic, ritualized aggression that reinforced actual acts of covert sabotage. Despite Freddy’s honourable intentions, his actions suggested that he viewed rules and regulations with opportunistic ambivalence. In Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), James Scott identifies actions such as poaching, pilfering and mimicking, as part of an underlying tension and struggle between dominant and dominated groups in society. Scott’s theory of resistance relies on the idea that there are essentially two types of performance or discourse: the ‘public transcript’, which is official and open, controlled by the powerful and reproduced by the subordinate (1990: 2); and the ‘hidden transcript’, which represents ‘a critique of power spoken behind the back of domination’ (1990: xii). The reproduction of the public transcript by subordinates does not, however, support Gramsci’s notion of ‘false consciousness’ in which dominated groups passively acquiesce in their own domination. In fact the presence of a hidden transcript, which ‘consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript’ (1990: 4–5), shows that the performance of the public transcript is just that: a performance. Jhon Freddy knew just how to perform the public transcript. He was adept at fulfilling the necessary formalities that

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gave the impression of a compliant and law-abiding circus owner. Meanwhile the vitriolic critiques that emerged in our conversations (the hidden transcript) revealed that this impression was strategically disingenuous. While the public and the hidden transcripts take place in relatively safe and discrete realms, where neither disturbs the other, the real threat to the dominant is to be found in the middle ground, an area Scott calls ‘infrapolitics’ (1990: 19), the seemingly innocuous and everyday tactics with which subordinates challenge their social oppressors, materially and symbolically. This is ‘a politics of disguise and anonymity that takes place in public view but is designed to have a double meaning or to shield the identity of the actors’ (1990: 19). While infrapolitics does not itself constitute an all out rupture of the official, it is nevertheless ‘the building block for the more elaborate institutionalized political action that could not exist without it’ (1990: 201). Infrapolitics crucially works at the edges of power, not going for its heart, but nevertheless disturbing the normally clear-cut boundary between the public and the private and in this sense threatening the basic cultural distinctions that sustain the status quo. It is often hard to recognize, being deliberately disguised, and often can only be identified when one also has access to the hidden transcript. It may take elementary forms such as anonymous gossip, rumour, euphemism and grumbling, or more elaborate forms such as oral storytelling, symbolic inversion and rituals of reversal. Such cultural forms have their counterpart in disguised and seditious acts of resistance and survival such as stealing, pilfering and sabotage. Freddy excelled in most, if not all, of these clandestine activities, which Scott also calls the ‘arts of resistance’. Even his daily grumbling to me, a self-confessed researcher who was ultimately going to publish his words, went beyond the safe boundaries of the ‘hidden transcript’



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and became a small act of sedition. Certainly, the doctoring of the competitors’ posters to entice audiences away from other circuses, was a clear example of such infrapolitics. But even more significantly, in terms of our understanding of the social significance of clown performance, the circus ring itself was a site in which infrapolitics were made visable, though safely so. Freddy’s clown routines constituted carefully disguised critiques of oppression, in particular that embodied by his powerful competitors, as well as articulating utopian alternatives. Indeed Freddy had a vision for the kind of circus he wanted to create: a more theatrical experience anchored by a strong social critique: I love to be creative. That’s what’s missing in the circus. Being creative, inventing new things. The bullfight routine, I created that. That’s what I want to do, put on an ecological circus, but with many different acts, not with real animals, but with people. Did you see the Germán routine? I created all of that, mixing animal acts with clown and creating something that make the children like happy.

Freddy interpreted the bullfight routine as both a satirical critique of society’s abuse of the natural world and of other circuses’ mistreatment of animals. He told me that the bullfight routine parodied the actual use of bulls in circus acts and related a real incident at Circus Las Vegas in which a bull died due to maltreatment. I was never able to corroborate this story but the routine, alongside Jhon Freddy’s explanation, nevertheless demonstrates that he is reinventing the circus tradition to speak to contemporary issues and to deliver a clear message to audiences. While the ecological critique of this routine is not particularly hidden or controversial, the veiled critique of large circuses is less easy to spot. Such is the nature of infrapolitics, where we can see that ‘a partly sanitized, ambiguous, and coded version of the hidden transcript is always present in the public discourse of subordinate groups’ (Scott 1990: 19). Ambiguity is of course a safety mechanism,

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a means of protection against those you are critiquing. A hidden transcript may also be divined in the ‘World’s Smallest Tiger’ routine, in which the diminutive tiger (literally the ‘underdog’ inside his tiger suit) represented Freddy and his circus. Having initially acquiesced to his master’s game, the tiger plays his master for a fool, ridiculing him at first by playing dead and then revealing his true identity. The dog’s ability to disguise himself and to ‘pass’ as a tiger aims a double-pronged joke back at the audience as well as at other circuses who must use real tigers to attract their audience. It is a risky move, at the climax of the show, to expose the headline act as fake. Yet the audience seem to appreciate the joke, rather than feeling conned. The surprise of the transformation from tiger to dog is a delightfully light and mischievous note on which to end the show, and exemplifies the ‘social work’ that Freddy claims to be doing within his circus, albeit in an unfinished and raw state. He is not only speaking ‘to’ the audience, but ‘with’ and ‘for’ them, since they too may identify with the need for the underdog to disguise himself. Plying its trade in the far reaches of the city, where the large circuses cannot go, Jhon Freddy’s circus embodies values of solidarity and playful resistance that communicate with its audience on multiple levels.

Happy families Surrounded by the colourful circus memorabilia and religious iconography that adorn the walls of his caravan, Ancor Angulo leafs through the dusty pages of his photo albums, reliving forty years in the circus. Here is a six-year-old Jhon Freddy in a Mexican cowboy costume, complete with gun and holster. Here is a flyer for the Circo Union de las Estrellas, one of the circuses Ancor previously owned. Here is a picture of Jhon Freddy again, as a young adult in a baggy clown



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costume, standing next to his brother Pedro, who now works for the national syndicate of Colombian circus artists, SINARCIRCOL. Jul Brinner, another of Ancor’s sons who owns his own circus in Venezuela, is pictured on the high wire, knife throwing and juggling. Flor Baby, Ancor’s eldest daughter and mother of the two clowns Samir and Said, stands proud on a trapeze in her sparkling leotard. Ancor himself appears not only on the flying trapeze but also as lion tamer and muscly acrobat. And here is Ancor again, this time on crutches, shortly after a trapeze accident left him unable to do anything other than clown. Ancor’s albums were an astonishing archive of personal and collective memories, a blend of artistic record, family genealogy and social history. They painted a picture of a ‘golden age’ of circus in Colombia, when the Angulos were nationally respected artists, who toured year on year with large and impressive shows: Circo Flaymber, Circo Internacional Olimpico and Circus Ancor. But perhaps the most striking aspect of these albums was what they revealed about the levels of versatility and trust required for the successful preservation of the circus family and the family circus. Even when the circus was at its grandest, nearly all the performers were members of the same multiskilled family. Like all families, Ancor told me, this family had been through its moments of conflict and separation. The current state of togetherness is transient but it provides happiness for Ancor: Now they’re all here. My daughter, the mother of the clowns, she has her own circus. But for now they’re here helping her brother, so we’re all united and that makes me happier that the whole family is together working.

Ancor’s running commentary on his album does not model a traditional, idealized notion of the nuclear family as a stable unit

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that brings happiness and prosperity. Happiness, rather, is based on temporary and precarious unity achieved against the odds. In The Promise of Happiness Sara Ahmed describes the family as ‘a happy object, one that binds and is binding’ (2010: 45). But the family, according to Ahmed, is not just an object. It also circulates through significant objects, which require us to act or react in certain ways. ‘The family photograph album might be one such object: the picture of the family as happy is one way in which the family is produced as a happy object’ (2010: 45). True enough, Ancor’s family album was a treasure trove of happy images, and as an object I imagine that its transference to future generations will precisely facilitate what Ahmed describes as the way that ‘the promise of family is preserved through the inheritance of objects, which allow the family to be assembled’ (2010: 46). Yet other objects depicted in the photographs – canvas, rope, ironware, steel cables, poles, which are the same objects that surround us now as we sit in Ancor’s trailer – bespeak another kind of inheritance. For while most families live in houses and surround themselves with furniture and other objects that come to define a certain ‘affective distribution’, this family’s home is also the circus. Its bedrooms are also backstage dressing rooms, which, every few weeks, must be transported to a new site. Its living room is the circus tent, where every day the family rehearses and every night performs for its new neighbours. And its garden is the scrubby patch of land within which the tent is situated. These are the spaces that ‘secure family intimacy’ (Ahmed 2010: 46). In the photos, family happiness is evoked not by smiling poses on the beach or in an amusement park, but through the bodies of its members as they perform collective feats, catching each other at great height, passing juggling clubs, or throwing knives. While most family albums ‘make visible a fantasy of a good life’ (Ahmed 2010: 45) by upholding distinctions of work and leisure (the photos telling of the latter but not the former), Ancor’s photographs tend to collapse such



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distinctions, since work and play overlap in the circus space. Thus the photos do not generate the illusion of the good and happy family, rather they document this very particular kind of family happiness in which work and pleasure can coexist, even if just for a fleeting moment. In these brief moments, the circus family is not just a happy family. It is the happiest family.

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Mangos and Salsa: Clowning the Marketplace

How do we study the cleverness with which the city attempts to reconcile everything that arrives and proliferates, and tries to contain all the disorder? (García Canclini 2005: 3–4) I wander through the maze of narrow, shop-lined streets, which flout the grid-like regularity of much of the city as they curve, double back and reroute, throwing the unwary shopper off the scent. Balloons, toys, piñatas, clothes, books, tables, chairs, posters, plastic tubs, frying pans, sunglasses, cell phones, and every imaginable type of consumable hang from walls, awnings, doors, spreading upward and outward in attractive displays designed to draw the buyer’s gaze. Stationed on stools outside the shops and restaurants, vendors intone repetitive sales pitches into microphones, their voices booming and echoing out across the street, while others engage potential customers at close quarters with a deferential ‘a la orden, caballero, que buscas?’ (at your service, sir, what are you looking for?). A rough, gravelly voice, crackly with static, pierces through the background hum on Carrera 11 and carries all the way up the block to where I am standing. Siguan almorzar. Almuerzo rico. Que vengan almorzar. Hoy hay almuerzo corriente, almuerzo ejecutivo. Tenemos pollo, carne, pescado, arroz, espagetti, bandeja paisa. Almuerzo muy economico. Que entren almorzar.

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A flash of colour draws my attention and through the sea of bodies I catch a glimpse of a conspicuous figure pacing frenetically out into the street and back again. He is wearing a scruffy assortment of rags and accessories: checked baggy trousers, a dirty black waistcoat with giant multicoloured buttons, a thin red scarf tied roughly round the neck, a plaid handkerchief spilling out of a pocket, a ratty grey umbrella clutched in one hand, and black clown shoes that look like they have seen better days. His make-up, white with black flecks around the eyes and a large red smile painted around the mouth, along with the small black bowler hat perched on an unkempt orange wig, complete an image reminiscent of the North American circus clown. Over his shoulder is slung a large white megaphone, connected by an extendable wire to hand-held microphone, into which he babbles his rapid sales pitch, stopping every now and then to take a sip from a white plastic coffee cup. He smiles and beckons to a passing couple, who glance at each other and then follow him through an open entranceway into a restaurant just behind where he is standing. After a few moments he reappears and resumes his restless pacing. Unable to resist the urge to know more about the clown and what he is doing, I creep closer. He notices me and waves, as though we were old friends. He strides in my direction, holding out a hand. Perhaps I too stand out as different in the crowd, because the clown addresses me in broken English. ‘Hallo. How are you?’ He shakes my hand enthusiastically. ‘My name is Joaco Krosty. Have you eaten your lunch yet?’ he enquires, now reverting back to Spanish. ‘Yes’, I reply. ‘I don’t believe you. Open your mouth.’



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I open my mouth. ‘I can see your underpants.’ Joaco Krosty cackles hoarsely at his own joke. I laugh along, even though I’m not quite sure why this is meant to be funny. Is it that my stomach is empty, so he can see all the way to my underpants? Or can he see them because I got so hungry I actually ate them? I don’t have time to ask as he turns back up the street and begins announcing the lunch menu into his megaphone again. At your service. Affordable lunches. Typical dishes from Antioquia, paisa platter, soups, barbecue. Step this way.

My first encounter with the payaso de restaurante (restaurant clown) in 2009 provoked in my mind a flurry of questions. Why was a clown apparently publicizing a restaurant in the middle of a busy shopping street? What historical developments had led to the clown being the medium of choice for such a publicity stunt? What did this imply about the social status, function and significance of the clown in the Latin American metropolis? There was little about this situation that was familiar or comprehensible to me. Yet there he was, a bright

Figure 2  Joaco Krosty outside a shop in San Victorino (December 2011)

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point of colour among the greys and browns of the passing crowd, an incongruous and bizarre presence on an otherwise ordinary shopping street. This chapter takes this incongruity as its starting point. Yet of course what seems at first incongruous quickly becomes familiar, and so the chapter also dwells on how and why clowns have become part of the landscape of the urban marketplace, and with what consequences. What elements of clowning might have been lost in this apparent assimilation? How might the marketplace be affected by their presence? Finally, this chapter employs some clown-thinking to suggest how clowning itself can lead to moments of dramatic and powerful critical reflection. Over the following year I spent many hours wandering through San Victorino, during which time I got to know Joaco Krosty as well as many similar, yet distinct restaurant clowns – Zapatín, Pitín, Pirulín, Pintadito, Prín Prín, Chistín, Oscariño, Martillo, Firulay, Arcemiro and others – the likes of whom have worked the corners and sidewalks of the zone since the 1960s. One afternoon Joaco pointed out a tall, stooping figure with long grey hair, an old fraying sweater and a walking stick, lurching along the pavement at a striking pace. ‘That’s Saul,’ Joaco told me, ‘he started this whole thing.’ I ran after Saul and introduced myself. As he continued up the street, he related to me that in 1957 he used to have a menagerie in a nearby marketplace. One day an idea had struck him: why not post someone in costume outside the entrance to lure customers in? He found a circus clown willing to do the job. Instead of using his clown costume, however, the performer wore middle-eastern garb and went by the name Mustafá. Like so many origin myths, I initially doubted the validity of Saul’s tale. Yet two articles in El Tiempo in 1970 seemed to corroborate it. ‘The Case of an Unemployed Street Clown’, for example, tells the story of Jesús María Liévano, a former circus performer and



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veteran of the Korean war, who dressed up every day in ‘yellow, red and green satin, attired as a Hindu, and worked singing the praises of a store that would pay him’ (‘El Caso’ 1970: 8). Whether or not Mustafá was really the first publicity clown in Bogotá is not easy to establish. The journalist Oscar Bustos certainly accords him that status: ‘without knowing it, Mustafá was creating the profession of the public announcer in the heart of the metropolis’ (2011). What is more significant is that his story exemplifies a growing social phenomenon, a mobilization of clowning that is particularly linked to social hardships of the time. The articles praise Mustafá as a popular hero whose welcoming and friendly face brought muchneeded relief in the aftermath of the period known as La Violencia, when ‘peasants from all corners of the country were arriving in the city to protect their families and become city dwellers, forging new neighborhoods in margins’ (Bustos 2011). These narratives tend to construct Mustafá as a symbol of popular resistance, fighting a battle against oppressive forces. In 1970 a measure was introduced banning clowns from the street, drawing heavy criticism from the columns of El Tiempo: ‘The decision is anticonstitutional. Everybody has the right to dress however they wish or however it suits them, with waistcoat or without, with loose bell-bottom beige trousers with yellow stripes, or traditional ones’ (‘El Gran Mustafá’ 1970: 4). The threat of eviction, however, is trumped by the looming menace of modernization: It’s the old struggle of the body against automation, of man against machine. He and his friends know that amplification technology is killing off the clown. ‘They would prefer to pay the tax for a loudspeaker than a clown’, says Mustafá to the reporter in a quiet voice. ‘That’s why we artists of the side-walk are condemned to disappear.’ Just as it was for Chaplin. (‘El Caso’ 1970: 8)

Chaplin is perhaps invoked here as both victim and critic of automation, one whose career ended, it might be argued, as a result

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of technological developments in the film industry. Yet of course Chaplin also benefited from technology and knew how to take advantage of it.2 Indeed the pessimism of the article appears to have been misguided, given the evident resilience and adaptability of the restaurant clown. Bustos calls Mustafá ‘a pioneer of the art of survival’, and it seems that the restaurant clown phenomenon has not only survived but thrived during the forty years since this prediction of its imminent demise. Not wishing to distract Joaco Krosty from his job, I dive back into the pandemonium and continue up the busy street. Barely a block further on, I hear another amplified voice, producing a similar type of promotional rhetoric, but this time with a fluid and smooth vocal quality quite unlike the rough staccatos of Joaco. I finally locate the voice’s owner, smiling benevolently by an open entranceway, a point of stillness and calm amidst the weaving crowds. He is wearing orange and cream plaid trousers, a muted tweed blazer, white shirt, red bow tie and a black top hat with a red stripe, reminding me of images of Colombian gentlemen in the 1940s and 50s I had seen in black-and-white photos. Instead of the rusty megaphone, he holds a cordless microphone, and his voice drifts, clean and crisp, from speakers concealed somewhere in the wall behind him. Latest fashions, clothes for every taste, for every budget, right this way. Beautiful baby clothes, comfort clothes, warehouse prices, step this way. No commitment.

Occasionally he holds the microphone to one side and engages a passer-by. It does not seem as though he is trying to sell them anything, however. Indeed the body language of both clown and interlocutor is more suggestive of pleasantries exchanged between neighbours or friends. During the conversation he looks up and points several times, as if giving directions. Compared to Joaco’s roughly daubed face paint,



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Zapatín’s make-up is complex and elegant: a base of pink with white around the eyes and mouth, black eyebrows and exaggerated eyelashes, additional black lines around the mouth and chin, and some black dots like stylized tears on the cheeks. When he sees me watching him with evident interest, he immediately crosses the road to shake my hand, smiling and bowing slightly. I ask him how he is doing. Excellently well, thank you very much. Isn’t this crazy? They pay me for doing nothing. How do you like that?

Some people around me laugh at the quip. Then, with a cheeky grin, he brings the microphone back to his lips and continues with the same monotonous sales pitch, moving slowly back towards his post. Clowning – like many other types of popular festive performance – has often been the object of a contradictory desire to embrace and reject, to romanticize and demonize. The clown’s association with tabooed and profane actions is well documented and largely responsible for his or her marginal and marginalized status in many societies (Bouissac 1990; Charles 1945; Makarius 1970). But while in certain times and places the clown’s profanations have been tolerated, or even venerated, as wise or sacred (thus the notion of the all-licensed fool), in others they are demonized as a dangerous intervention of the grotesque into the everyday. In such moments, the authorities or dominant social groups may act to suppress grotesque or carnivalesque energies, or at least to separate them and banish them far from the public sphere. For Stallybrass and White, one such site was the fairground in Renaissance England, where the bourgeoisie sought to reassert control by purging unruly practices that threatened the functioning of the fair as a site of economic exchange (1986). That is, they sought to avoid the ‘deep conceptual confusion entailed by the fair’s inmixing of work and pleasure, trade and play’ and to limit such confusion by separating the fair as ‘purely a site of pleasure’ from

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the fair as ‘purely an economic event’, so that ‘in so far as it could be thought of as low, dirty, extraterritorial, it could be demonized (and in time, idealized) as the locus of vagabond desires’ (Stallybrass and White 1986: 30). A similar oscillation between idealization and demonization can be noted in the public’s attitude to the Colombian restaurant clown. Older generations of Bogotános speak nostalgically of a time when such clowns were operating in commercial zones throughout the city. The media romanticize them as historically and culturally significant landmarks in the cityscape: familiar and stable symbols of innocence in a lawless urban jungle. Yet at the same time gentrification of zones frequented by the clowns has led to restrictions that effectively confine them to smaller and smaller pockets of the city.3 Even in these supposedly legitimate zones they are frequently menaced by police, mistreated by employers, harassed by pedestrians and criticized by other clowns as charlatans and sell-outs. In other words the clowns seems to produce the same kind of tense and contradictory response that was also generated by the clash of festive practices and economic exchange in the medieval fair. Regardless of their marginalized status in the contemporary urban landscape, those I met were invariably friendly and open. During six months of fieldwork, Joaco and Zapatín would unfailingly greet me with a smile and a handshake and always maintain a graceful demeanour even while trying to balance the pressures of the job with responding to my questions. Our encounters were often tense and fragile affairs, interrupted or cut short when the clown became aware that someone was watching us or that perhaps he had been neglecting his post for too long. Occasionally I was able to catch a few minutes with a clown before or after his shift, or perhaps during a break, although this was difficult since they were very often working long days and switching between jobs and locations. The clowns were always busy with something, whether it was talking to a customer,



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putting on make-up, grabbing a bite of lunch in the restaurant or racing to their next job, and I quickly realized that there was never going to be a moment of calm in which to conduct a ‘normal’ interview outside the working environment. A messy convergence of research methods – interview, observation and participation blurring together – lent a kind of texture to the experience which was unavoidable and strangely appropriate. The restaurant clowns were never still. Even when their bodies stopped moving, their eyes would continue to dart about, actively seeking out the next customer. On a daily basis they would move several times to different jobs and, over the course of weeks and months, their repertoires and routines would shift in response to employers’ whims or their own search for better pay and conditions. Over time I recognized that the messy nature of my experience as researcher reflected the chaotic nature of the clowns’ lives, which ultimately resisted rationalization and interpretation consistent with ethnographic fieldwork as ‘an embodied practice: an intensely sensuous way of knowing’ (Conquergood 1991: 180). What I learned on those streets, hanging out with restaurant clowns, and what I try to convey in these pages, was thus a chaotic blend of stories, histories, encounters, conflicts, commentaries, complaints, aspirations, regrets and comic interludes, because of course these clowns are not only salesmen but funny men by trade, adept at generating laughter and pleasure in the time it takes a pedestrian to walk by.

Adding the salsa In between bouts of describing today’s lunch of fried steak and rice or delicious fried fish and spaghetti, Joaco tells me the story of his initiation in the circus. He has always loved clowns and circuses and remembers that as an eight-year-old he and his friends dressed up as circus clowns

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for their own amusement. At thirteen he left school and soon after that he and his best friend ran away from home to work in a small travelling circus, not as performers, but as labourers, who would help with almost everything of an unskilled, manual nature, including carrying and rigging equipment, selling refreshments and ushering the audience. The romantic appeal of circus life quickly faded: the exhausting daily ritual of dismantling the tent, travelling through the night to the next venue and getting everything ready for the show, often without having eaten, soon began to take its toll. They left after just three months. The exploitation and hardship of the travelling circus, being away from home for months at a stretch, proved too challenging for Joaco. Working closer to home in the commercial sector seemed like an attractive option: I’m not exploited and bossed around any more: put up this or take down that. I work for a salary now. I still worked in the circus when it was near my house: not travelling with the circus, though. I would just go on the day of the show and come back to the house, and then go again the next day. So I didn’t have to tour with the circus. (into megaphone) This way for lunch, this way for lunch … right this way… It’s a hard life. But I like it. Maybe one day I’ll go off again, although it’s difficult to work out there now with the guerillas. That never used to happen before. When I was a kid there weren’t so many guerillas. But these days it’s delicate working out in those villages. Sometimes the guerillas don’t let them work. (megaphone) Delicious onion soup today. This way. This way. Welcome.

Each time our conversation is interrupted as Joaco stops to make an announcement into his microphone, he seems to forget where he was. When he resumes, he starts a new episode or topic, with the result that the timeline of his life takes on a jumbled and contradictory character. Yet as his gaze comes to rest on me and he begins to talk again with that insatiable intensity, I understand that beneath



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these biographical minutiae he is speaking a deeper truth about his experience of life. I started on the street twenty years ago, working in shops in the commercial zone. I also do parties when I can. I get by. I still look for work in the big circuses, but it’s been difficult. Back then I spent time with Tuerquita, the television clown, with the Egret Brothers’ Circus, a big Colombian circus popular throughout Latin America that presented in permanent arenas and was owned by the Argentinian impresario Ricardo Roca. (megaphone) This way, this way … everybody welcome.

One of a celebrated family trio of clowns of Chilean descent, Tuerquita is still a household name, having starred in popular children’s television shows of the 1970s and 80s alongside his father Pernito and brother Bebé. Yet unlike his two family members who are still idolized in the popular imagination for the ‘ingenuity of their gags … the racket of their shouts and guffaws … the freshness of their simple stories’ (Coronado 1997), Tuerquita is not remembered solely for his clowning but for his dramatic fall into alcohol and drug addiction interspersed with periods of religious fanaticism. While Bebé and Pernito are held aloft as symbols of national pride and resilience, of the potential of innocent fun to overcome the country’s inner turmoil, Tuerquita is for many a painful reminder of the lawless and corrupt underbelly of Colombia that they would rather forget – even the mention of his name evoking an awkward aversion of the eyes or resigned shake of the head. A dark and shameful anti-hero then, Tuerquita was nevertheless a role model and mentor for Joaco, who recognized perhaps that his dark and mischievous energy was not in the least antithetical to being a good clown. It was his encounter with Tuerquita that seems to have been the most influential element of Joaco’s informal education and training as a comic performer.

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During an unspecified period of time, Joaco practised and performed in partnership with Tuerquita. Unlike most clowns, who tended to repeat a static repertoire for an ever-changing audience, Tuerquita was always performing new routines and trying different things, improvising, changing the scripts: He was trying catch me out, to see at what moment I would fall behind or not be able to keep up. But I would never fall behind. Sometimes Tuerquita would deliver real punches in the ring, instead of the choreographed slapstick hits. Some of those clowns are really bad.

Joaco’s experience with Tuerquita, though harsh and short-lived, was unquestionably formative. Despite the apparent violence of the real punches, Joaco’s feeling towards Tuerquita was one of paternal respect, bordering on love, and he idolized the other’s abilities as a clown. It was in this period that Joaco learned all the classic routines of the circus repertoire, several of which he described to me in great detail. But more significant than the routines themselves, which he could simply have learned by observation, his performances in the ring with Tuerquita taught him something he could only learn through embodied interaction. The word he used to describe this quality was ‘salsa’. As well as referring to a style of popular music and dance, salsa is, of course, a sauce used to spice up an otherwise bland dish. It is that which gives flavour and variation to the mundane and everyday. According to Joaco, many clowns know the classic routines but they don’t have the ability to lift them from mere copies to truly memorable and individual performances. To the undeniably important skill of mimicry the clown must be able to add this intangible quality, salsa, which gives life and breath to the routine in the presence of an audience. Joaco’s term elicits the distinction between simply performing a scripted (or memorized) routine and clowning it. Indeed salsa might be compared to the theoretical concept of performance: an



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ambiguous, contingent and unstable moment that always contains the possibility of change and difference.4 Joaco’s descriptions of Tuerquita departing from the script, trying to throw Joaco off his guard and challenging him to keep up, illustrate perfectly this elusive ingredient. Indeed we might see these antics as tactics, designed – consciously or not – to maintain the sense of liveness and immediacy, of discovery and invention that make a well known routine seem new, fresh and responsive to the emerging reality. By emphasizing the importance of salsa, Joaco thus insists on clowning as a communicative act requiring the embodied co-presence of performer and audience in what is necessarily a dialogical exchange rather than a monological delivery. The sauce is a vital ingredient of commercial success in the circus, for it is this that will keep audiences coming back to see what are essentially the same series of routines. But the idea of clowning as a dialogical exchange also implies a critical political stance, invoking the ideal of a multivocality and equality in society itself.

Playing with fire Zapatín is the only restaurant clown I have come across who does not have a megaphone. Instead he carries a cordless microphone which amplifies his voice through loudspeakers hidden somewhere in the entrance to the discount clothing store behind him. (through loudspeaker) Beautiful clothing for all the family. Great prices. Factory outlet warehouse. The best line of shirts. Come in, no commitment. Step this way. Special offers and promotions.

He smiles and nods deferentially to passing shoppers, very respectfully finding opportunities to approach and introduce himself with a slight bow, an extended hand or a friendly wave. During a lull I find the opportunity to ask Zapatín how he was first introduced to clowning.

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia When I was six I was a very mischievous and restless child, and I was always looking for something new to explore. I discovered the circus and started working there when I was ten.

I ask Zapatín what he learned in the circus, but before he can answer a woman approaches and asks if he is selling ‘minutos de celular’ (cell phone minutes), as on the streets of Bogotá it is common to see vendors, who for a per-minute fee will lend you a phone to make a call. ‘Yes, look’, he says, bringing out his phone. ‘How much?’ the woman asks. ‘A thousand pesos.’ ‘No!’ ‘Okay, three hundred. Two hundred’, Zapatín banters, jokingly. She laughs, knowing that he is not really a street vendor and wondering whether to take him seriously. ‘What’s the number?’ asks Zapatín, holding the phone up to dial. ‘But seriously? How much?’ she asks. ‘Two hundred. What’s the number?’ Finally she gets out a tatty notebook from her purse and reads out a number, which he keys into the phone. He hands the phone to her, while he looks at his watch to time the length of the call. It lasts less than a minute, and the woman hands 200 pesos to Zapatín. But that is not the end of the interaction, for he uses this opportunity to ask the woman what she is shopping for and after perhaps five minutes of small talk, she walks into the clothing store behind us. Zapatín looks at me and winks. (loudspeaker) Beautiful clothes for the whole family, great value, come this way … (to me) What was I saying? I’ve forgotten. It’s escaped me in this moment. What I learned? There’s a word for it. I’ll think of it in a moment. Ah yes, it’s ‘comicidad’. That’s what you have to learn to perform in the circus: ‘comicidad’. It means learning all the jokes and stories to make people laugh. Learning jokes to make others laugh, whoever is in front of you.



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(loudspeaker) Clothing at warehouse prices … clothing for the whole family … come in without commitment … cordial invitation.

I ask him why he left the circus and why he started working as a restaurant clown. We left because of the economic situation, because we weren’t remunerated well enough to live. When you have a family, you have responsibilities. You can’t do that kind of thing anymore. You need stability. You can’t be off all the time on tour leaving the family all alone. I don’t miss it. The situation of the circus has become very critical. Because the only ones who make money are the promoters. The clowns are there to provide the image but we don’t make money. (loudspeaker) Bargain socks: every kind of sock, socks for this, socks for that, socks for business … excuse me sir, do you need socks? This way, please.

Zapatín had worked for this same store in this exact location every day except Sundays for fifteen years. Like Joaco, he initially found his way into clowning through the circus and later migrated to the street. But unlike Joaco, he had no lingering nostalgia or any hankering to perform in the circus again. Being a publicity clown was his true vocation. He prided himself on his professionalism and his ability to hold down a job for so long, when most other clowns didn’t last more than a few months. While his principal aim was to drum up business, he also saw clowning as a form of public service: ‘My social function is to advise. Even if they don’t come into the store, I’m a kind of tourist guide who can point them in the right direction.’ Within Zapatín’s rhetoric were a set of values about the kinds of behaviour that were appropriate to the role of publicity clowns. He was particularly scathing about those clowns who were not ‘educated’, as he put it, implying that they lacked refinement, integrity, politeness, respectability and the kinds of specific knowledge required

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to be a public service clown. These ‘uneducated’ clowns, according to Zapatín, were responsible for the deteriorating reputation of clowns and clowning. While bemoaning the absence of professionalism in restaurant clowning, he shored up his own legitimacy by emphasizing that he had precisely these qualities that were lacking in the others, establishing a divide between them and himself. His own self-aggrandizement and his denunciation of others were mutually dependent and reinforcing. Such distinctions were evident not only in our conversations but in his clowning practice and his use of humour, which served to reproduce a social divide inextricably linked to distinctions of class and taste. When I asked Zapatín if jokes were an important part of his clowning technique, he replied that they were, but that they must be ‘chistes con educación’ (jokes with education). Making people laugh is fundamental. Making jokes and gags, but with education. Generally, I make jokes for the kids who are going by. For example, I’ll say to someone, ‘what do you call that hairstyle?’ And the kid says ‘I don’t know’, so I say to him, ‘your hairstyle is like a sucked mango. Because when you suck on a mango it looks exactly like your hairstyle.’ I often talk to children in front of their parents. I ask them how they behave in their house, because sometimes the children today can be very naughty. So I give them a good piece of advice and I speak to them gently, maybe tell a joke, and they take it in good grace, and it stays in their head, and they don’t do it again. I can give them some education, like I could say, kids, don’t eat so many candies. When you are served food at home eat sensibly, because all you eat is candy and that’s not good. You need to eat your soup. And that makes them laugh. By making a joke, the children take note.

Chistes con educación might be understood using Freud’s concept of ‘tendentious jokes’, that is, jokes which are ‘employed for definite purposes’ (1960: 90–1). The joke about the mango might appear innocent at first glance. But the innocent appearance of a joke is precisely what enables it to ‘bribe the hearer with its yield of pleasure



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into taking sides with us without any very close investigation’ (Freud 1960: 103). The seeming harmlessness of a joke, the pleasure it provides, functions as an ‘envelope’ of inoffensive fun that protects the teller and masks his or her intent, thereby giving the joke more leverage. The reference to a hairstyle that looks like a sucked mango is a specific social reference to a spiked hairstyle popular among teenagers in Bogotá. The joke, which denigrates contemporary youth fashion as a deviance from the norm, helps Zapatín to cement his role as educated and professional, since it demonstrates that, despite being a clown, he is a protector and defender of traditional values and social respectability. The strategic lacing together of ‘jokes’ and ‘education’ thus offsets any potential offence that might be caused by his clownish appearance, and indeed helps to cast him in the role of socially respectable clown, who uses his powers to help parents keep control over their children. My early encounters with Joaco and Zapatín suggested that clowns in Colombia were fulfilling a social role that has long been lost in the circus clowning of Europe and North America. Anthropologists in the twentieth century were particularly interested in the social function of the clown in so-called primitive or tribal societies, where clowning was often still a regular part of sacred rituals and woven into the fabric of everyday life. Lucile Hoerr Charles, an American folklorist, undertook a wide-ranging ‘comparative study of primitive clowning’ in an attempt to solve ‘the general problem of the clown’s function’ (1945: 26). Her conclusions, based on second-hand reports of 136 cultures produced around 1940, are salient: Apparently a clown is concerned always with something which is not quite proper; with something embarrassing, astonishing, shocking, but not too much so. […] He goes through a ritual of impersonation as if he were the outrageous thing itself or its personification; yet at the same time he knows, and both he and his audience know that the other knows, that he is not that thing. Very frequently he is one of the

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Typical of the functionalist anthropology of the early twentieth century, Charles’s conclusions suggest that the clown’s role is to play with licentious and tabooed subjects but in a manner that is actually quite safe and indeed functions to reinforce the status quo. Despite the universalizing assumptions, Charles’s analysis is resonant in relation to Zapatín. While playing with aspects of the grotesque, Zapatín was at pains to remind me and his public that he was in fact ‘one of the most honorable persons in the community’ (Charles 1945: 32) and his chistes con educaciión were specifically intended to discipline bad behaviour. Whether or not they succeeded in this aim is another question. What is notable here is that clowns are not closeted in circuses and theatres, but are engaging ordinary people on the streets and addressing social issues of immediate relevance to those people. If Zapatín practises the kind of socially acceptable clowning implied by chistes con educación, Joaco’s embodiment of salsa surely suggests something radically different. To be sure, Joaco’s clowning is equally integrated with the everyday, but it is not the conservative, normalizing ritual Charles describes. It is suggestive of a different conception of clowning that emphasizes instead the instability and liminality of the ritual over its stabilizing and normative effects. In contrast to Charles, Don Handelman (1981) argues that the ritual clowns disturb and dissolve social boundaries rather than reinforce them, albeit within the safe confines of liminal rituals. That is, they make the boundaries and rules of society suddenly visible and thus are able to question their logic, making them not guardians of the status quo but rather harbingers of change and social process: ‘The ritual clowns are both innocent and dangerous: true to type, they seem to be the very stuff of motion and flux, of the potential for



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dissolution’ (Handelman 1981: 345). Joaco’s indebtedness to the social outcast Tuerquita and his own ambivalent attitude to social convention and boundaries, seem to suggest that he too embodies this ‘potential for dissolution’. As my relationship with Joaco evolved over a period of months, his unpredictability and potential for crossing the line between innocence and danger revealed a different face of the restaurant clown, and in the process also exposed a less respectable and equitable side of society.

A clown without a soul If the use of a clown as an advertising gimmick for a restaurant seems strangely familiar to us, it is perhaps because it reminds us of the definitively global example of clown-turned-marketing-image: Ronald McDonald. The McDonalds corporation’s appropriation of a real clown (Willard Scott’s Bozo) to promote hamburgers is an example of how the logics of the marketplace in late-stage global capitalism have gradually turned a cultural symbol associated with anti-authoritarian humour into a means of maximizing profits. An article by Deborah Thomson and Eric Shouse charts Ronald’s transformation from grotesque and unpredictable social commentator into an instrument of capitalist profiteering, identifying three distinct stages, each of which entailed an erosion of the agency and ability of the clown performer to subvert authority (2010: 272). When Willard Scott first developed the Ronald McDonald character, based on his own extremely popular television clown, Bozo, he retained key aspects of the clown including ‘the license to question authority and the grotesque body’ (2010: 273). Two years later Scott was fired and replaced with a number of actors hired to play Ronald. This second stage represented ‘a significant shift toward disciplining the burger-peddling clown in ways that both literally and symbolically

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constrained his “voice” and his agency’ (Thomson and Shouse 2010: 273). In the final stage of Ronald’s demise, multiple performers (called ‘Toms’) were rolled out to play a corporately scripted version of the clown as a fitness and health expert: A clown whose body has been thoroughly disciplined (with jump ropes), whose freedom of speech has been curtailed, and whose connection to his or her own clown history has been severed, is a clown without a soul. (Thomson and Shouse 2010: 277)

Such a description of McDonald’s silenced, disembodied and dehistoricized clown prompts comparison with the Colombian restaurant clown, not only because they were born within a few years of each other in the 1960s but also because of the apparent structural similarity. In each case a professional clown has entered into a contract with a business for the use of his clown persona as a marketing tool. In each case it appears that the role of the clown as social commentator has been subsumed to the instrumentality of the marketplace and profit. Like his cousin Ronald, then, the restaurant clown is suggestive of the ways in which the spread of global capitalism and the increasing influence of multinational corporate interests have transformed and to some extent assimilated the clown. The link between the rampant expansion of capitalism in the late twentieth century and the emergence of the restaurant clown is just one element of a deeper and stronger link between clowning and the embrace of a neoliberal economics in Colombia in the 1980s and 90s, which will be further explored in Chapters 3 and 4. Thomson and Shouse’s critique of McDonalds raises troubling questions about the agency of clown performers in this new marketplace context that are as relevant to Zapatín and Joaco as they are to Ronald. Is the restaurant clown also a ‘clown without a soul’, severed from its historical roots as a critical social commentator? What fundamental aspects of clowning practice have been lost in its reduction to pure



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economic productivity? Is it still possible for clowns to critique or comment upon the systems of power upon which, ultimately, they depend to make a living? During the early phase of my fieldwork I spend most of my time on street level and am only vaguely aware of the invisible figures of authority that perpetually hover over the clowns’ heads. I never actually see an employer checking up on his or her employee at work, but I gradually become aware of the oppressive relationship of surveillance and dependency that binds the clown on the street within the network of practices and relations that are determined by the ‘boss upstairs’. Wanting to understand this relationship more fully, I decide to initiate a dialogue with one. José is an entrepreneur, the proprietor of the restaurant where Joaco is employed. While the clown works the street, José sits behind the cash register, greeting customers and receiving their money as they leave. The only time I see them together is when Joaco snags a customer and leads them up the stairs and into the restaurant. He does this to make sure José knows he is doing his job properly: a kind of safeguard against redundancy. José is initially wary of me, perhaps because he has seen me downstairs talking to Joaco on many occasions. I try to reassure him I am not there to disrupt or intervene in any way, but rather to better understand the practice of restaurant clowning, how it began and why. He has no idea about the origins of the phenomenon, but he is clear about why he hires clowns to promote his restaurant, and he quickly warms to his subject. Clowns attract children and families, he tells me, which in turn gives the business a wholesome, trustworthy, friendly and – most importantly – safe image. The restaurant is a place where shoppers can take a break from the busy, chaotic atmosphere of the street: a respite, a safe haven where they know they are free from the pressures of vendors and pickpockets that prowl outside. The clowns

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are a central part of his strategy. His logic is simple: clowns bring in children, and children guarantee security, not only actual security but the feeling of safety and immunity from the turbulent and unpredictable street. The perceived link between clowns and children is not unique to Colombia. But this link is particularly intensified and fraught in the context of a country where the involvement of minors in the armed conflict is widely acknowledged and the deep association between childhood and innocence in Western culture that dates back to the Enlightenment, is debunked on a daily basis. The recruitment of children as soldiers in Colombia is a common human rights abuse, perpetrated by both right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing Guerilla groups (UNHCR Human Rights Watch 2012). A study by Pilar Riaño-Alcalá points to the cultural enmeshment of violence and youth in the evolving conflict as it became increasingly subservient to the logics of capitalism in the late 1980s: Death became a commodity, highly valued and sought after by obscure economic and political interests and the drug cartels. It was bought and sold in an escalating cycle of terror and violence that reached its most dramatic expressions in the second half of the 1980s. Youth, through their role as hired assassins, and youth gangs, became the administrators of this valued commodity and the most visible agents in the exercise of terror. (Riaño-Alcalá 2006: 2)

Worryingly, the phenomenon of child involvement in the conflict seems once again to be on the rise, in part due to the economic effects of the global recession of 2008: Aid agencies say the FARC guerrilla force is stepping up forced recruitment of children to fill ranks sapped by a string of military defeats and scores of desertions. Children as young as 10 are used



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as informants or to transport arms and are later trained as fighters. In 2006, a rights group reported as many as 11,000 children and teenagers may have belonged to Colombia’s armed groups. But the Defense Ministry estimated last year that figure was closer to 8,000. (Markey 2009)

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that there exists a deeply ambivalent and paradoxical relationship between children and violence in the cultural discourse.5 On one hand the reported involvement of children in the conflict marks a definitive split between childhood and innocence. On the other hand, government and aid agencies frequently employ children’s faces and stories as fetishized symbols of innocence and hope, set in opposition to the present conflict. Perhaps unconsciously, José’s desire to attract children into his restaurant to function as talismans of security and immunity from danger reinforces this double-edged discourse. And the clown too is harnessed in service of the same effort, shuttled back and forth between associations of danger and innocence. José’s use of clowns demonstrates the subtle and elaborate ways in which cultural performance interlaces with social reality. Restaurant clowns, as well as fulfilling an economic function and reinforcing certain social values (as we have seen in Zapatín’s case), perform within a broader set of cultural preoccupations around the relationship of children, innocence and conflict, participating in the construction of safe, domesticated and familiar spaces that perhaps offer a respite from or an alternative to its devastating consequences. On one level, clowns are good for business. But they do far more than guaranteeing profits for restaurant owners. The cultural capital that clowns represent for José and other business owners does not seem to be reflected in their treatment of them, which is characterized by a dispassionate policy of hiring and firing strictly on the basis of efficacy. ‘You can’t really trust them’, José complains, as many of them are ‘desplazados’ (displaced rural

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workers who have been forced to leave their villages and come as refugees to the city) and thus unreliable and inconsistent as workers. Sometimes they simply disappear without warning or explanation. To maintain a job, José tells me, the clowns require certain basic qualities: charisma, friendliness and a reliable work ethic. But efficacy is the bottom line. If they are not bringing customers in, he will fire them. The desire to discipline the disorderly and unpredictable clowns, to exploit their economic value while suppressing their apparently wayward tendencies may be seen as an example of the purging of unruly tendencies from sites of economic exchange, which Stallybrass and White identified in relation to the fairs of Renaissance Europe (1986: 30). Of course the intention of the boss upstairs is only one side of the story. Despite the disciplinary mechanisms used to control the clowns’ unreliable behaviour, it is evident that they do not always function appropriately and in fact often fail to conform in one way or another. When fired, the clowns may simply move to another restaurant. While over successive decades the McDonalds corporation developed more sophisticated means of taming their clowns, Colombian restaurant owners lack this kind of power. Thus the restaurant clown, while potentially fulfilling the wishes of his employer, always has the capacity to evade and speak back to power that seeks to contain him.

Dressing out of place What, then, of Joaco and Zapatín? How do their clowning performances in their respective locations potentially conform or fail to conform to their employers’ attempts to script them into the marketplace logics? I want to think about this question in particular by relating it to the two clowns’ costume and make-up, as one element



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of their performative self-presentation. To what extent does the outward physical appearance of the clowns contribute to the scripted social performance which bosses such as José have in mind, one that exploits the cultural anxiety about children and violence in service of economic efficacy? D. Soyini Madison, drawing on Ruth Rubinstein’s observation that clothing becomes significant in specific social contexts, contends that the dressed body becomes not only a ‘provocative sign’ but a ‘critical performative’ when relocated ‘out of place’, or ‘outside its normative context and usual purposes’ (2013: 217). Clowns, by virtue of their conspicuous make-up, costumes and contrary behaviour, are always already marked as ‘out of place’ to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the location. A clown in a circus might not appear ‘out of place’, although his or her performance is still typically one that plays with transgression and inversion. On the street, one might expect that a clown would appear significantly ‘out of place’, and yet, as we have seen, for over fifty years restaurant clowns have frequented these streets, becoming a familiar sight and therefore not at all ‘out of place’. Does this mean that the restaurant clown’s dressed body is no longer a ‘provocative sign’ or a ‘critical performative’, to quote Madison (2013: 217)? If, under certain conditions, the clown can still perform provocatively or critically, how does this occur and what is the object of their critique? Not only do the clowns’ costume and make-up operate to differentiate them from the crowd, but also to individuate them from one another. Kenneth Little refers to the clown as ‘a unique performance art object’, since ‘each clown personality is the invention of the individual clown’ (2003: 141). There are material, economic foundations to this need for individuation. Zapatín, for one, understood the importance of brand recognition in the marketplace: It’s better to keep the same make-up because it’s a question of one’s identity. When you go out to do a presentation in the circus the people

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Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia will recognize you and say ‘that’s Zapatín’. That’s why it’s important to make sure you know how to do a really good make-up. I’ve had this make-up about thirty years. If you look at the photos you’ll see very little change over that time.

The creativity and skill that goes into generating the clown’s image is part of the ‘immaterial labor’ which Maurya Wickstrom describes as ‘so increasingly indispensible to postmodern capitalism’ (2006: 14). Crucially, such immaterial labour ‘doesn’t just produce goods and services, but social life itself ’ (Wickstrom 2006: 15). In particular the clowns’ creativity is put to work to produce what Otto Riewoldt has termed the ‘brandscape’, a kind of intensified brand awareness for the neoliberal age, which is cemented with a ‘deep-set emotional anchor’ (2002: 10). The brand in the contemporary marketplace is no longer just a memorable image or slogan, it is a reciprocal social performance that crosses the line from capitalist production into social and cultural realms, ensuring commercial viability in the long term by appealing to deep-set cultural symbols and identities. The brandscape produced by Zapatín does not just echo or reflect his identity. It rather reinscribes a broader set of values through daily performances. Both costume and make-up conjure a consciously vintage image, characterized by respectable formality and materializing a nostalgic view of history that tends to erase conflict and suffering. In evoking a bygone era, Zapatín’s appearance is as conservative as his behaviour, suggesting that the values of the past can be brought into the present and used to rein in the unruly trends of contemporary youth. As Zapatín himself confirmed, his make-up and costume have not changed over thirty years, and this sense of enduring stability is a central tenet of his appeal to audiences/ customers. His intricate make-up with its rococo twirls and precisely drawn lines has a decorative elegance, once again evoking a golden age of the past, while its suggestion of eccentricity is always tastefully contained and delineated.



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Joaco’s motley assortment of ill-fitting rags and layers, meanwhile, presents an altogether more grotesque and uncontainable image. The seemingly random colours, patterns and textures coalesce in a curious blend of bohemian circus charm and post-capitalist decay. Evident in Joaco’s costume is also the opportunistic and creative transformation of everyday objects such as yoghurt tops painted to look like giant buttons and an old tatty scarf redeployed as a tie. Grotesquery is the keynote of Joaco’s mask-like make-up, a white base with hard, black circles around the eyes, and an exaggerated red smile around the mouth. From a distance the circles and the smile make Joaco’s features appear monstrously pronounced, while close-up they accentuate the actual topography of his face, his tired bloodshot eyes and discoloured teeth. Unlike Zapatín’s, his make-up does not function to prettify, but rather garishly to amplify his all-too-human flaws. The contrasting images of the two clowns bear remarkable similarities to the whiteface/auguste binary described by Paul Bouissac as ‘the basic dichotomy in clown acts’ (1972: 164). This high/low status pairing underpins the European and American circus clown repertoire. According to Bouissac, the white-faced clown represents culture and respectability while the auguste (or ‘clown proper’) stands for the chaotic forces of nature: In contrast to the white-faced clown, with all his suave attributes, the ugly clown (clown proper) has a mask that accentuates natural protruberances and colors, enlarges his mouth, and emphasizes the natural symmetry of the human face; his wig is usually abundant and undisciplined; his suit is either too large or too small, of an extravagant color, and eccentric in other respects. (Bouissac 1972; 165).

While for Bouissac the whiteface/auguste pairing represents an essential culture/nature binary, I prefer to situate these contrasting kinds of clown within the specific social and political world they inhabit. Thus Zapatín as elegant whiteface clown, a figure of self-possessed authority,

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knowledge and education, evokes a socially dominant upper-middle class. This is underscored not only by his physical appearance but his daily performance of professionalism and his chistes con educación. Joaco as the rebellious and uncouth auguste, meanwhile, represents the marginalized underbelly of society, the poor and disempowered, those whom José indeed identified as the unreliable and unruly majority of restaurant clowns. Likewise, Joaco embodies this role both in his visual image and his unpredictable performances on the street. In a sense, Zapatín and Joaco’s contrasting clown performances reflect upon Colombian history but from different social perspectives: one top-down, the other bottom-up. As Wickstrom says, their ‘immaterial labor’ does more than sustain the economic viability of the marketplace. It ‘doesn’t just produce goods and services, but social life itself ’ (Wickstrom 2006: 15). It respectively reproduces and challenges a set of values and ideologies that reach deeply into the collective unconscious and the narratives that sustain Colombian self-identity. Both responses might be described as critical, but of different things and in different ways. Zapatín’s performance critiques and corrects any deviation from his ideal of respectability. Joaco’s, by contrast, critiques precisely the ideal that Zapatín seeks to enforce. Thus the clowns’ distinctive performances turn out to be not only part of a cunning marketing ploy, but also to participate in the discursive and embodied conflict between social groups within Colombia’s embattled history.

Policing the market ‘place’ San Victorino shopping district used to be even larger and more chaotic: an undisciplined and uncontrolled labyrinth of temporary stalls, shacks, awnings and alleyways. In the late eighties it was ‘cleansed’ as part of the urban amelioration project of Mayor Enrique Peñalosa. Despite the



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fact that commerce is now far more regulated, hundreds of unlicensed mobile street vendors ply their trade using old shopping carts filled with clothes, candy, cigarettes and myriad goods, legal and illegal. Operating at the edge of the law, these vendors, mostly women, must migrate across the square or around a corner to avoid the police who periodically appear to intimidate and threaten them. One of the women, Nubia Rojas, complained that one time the authorities confiscated her entire stock and she never got it back. Her friends describe Nubia as a clown, and her humour is of a particularly dark, morbid kind. She jokes that she is looking forward to dying as the only people who love her are already dead. I ask her about the restaurant clowns and she says she feels sorry for the ‘pobrecitos’ (poor little things). I ask her why. ‘Because they have to wear a false smile on the outside, while on the inside they are suffering with all their troubles.’ What are these troubles, I wonder out loud, and she replies that they are the same troubles they all have: being poor, how to feed their families, and so on. Nubia finds the contradiction sad, but also funny in its own way. In San Victorino, the seemingly random flow of human bodies across and through public space is given form by capitalist logics of commerce and exchange, turning it into what Michel De Certeau calls ‘a distinct location’ or ‘place’ (1984: 117). While for De Certeau, ‘space is composed of intersections of mobile elements’, and thus is constantly transforming and reorienting itself, local government agencies conspire with commercial entities in the attempt to impose ‘univocity or stability’ upon these mobile elements, turning the street into a ‘proper and distinct location’ of consumption: a market ‘place’ (1984: 117). Yet within this proper market ‘place’ there are always what De Certeau calls ‘conflictual programs or contractual proximities’ that undermine and disrupt the ‘proper’ use, such that it slides back towards being an ambiguous space (1984: 117).

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During the six months I spent frequenting the streets of San Victorino, one of the most striking patterns that emerged was the tendency for the clowns to circulate, disappear and reappear within the space over time. Sometimes, I would arrive at a clown’s usual post to find them simply gone. In some cases I would be able to track them down to a different restaurant, but sometimes they disappeared for long periods of time, even forever. In part this transience was due to the utilitarian deployment and disposal of clowns by employers. But it was also evidence of the clowns’ own tactical evasions and countermoves. Thus while it is certainly true that the flow of capital tended to limit the free movements of migratory low-paid workers such as restaurant clowns, San Victorino was in truth a ‘space’ of contradiction and conflict whose stability as a regulated ‘place’ for market exchange to take place was contested. The contradictions inherent in the market ‘place’ were also reflected, as Nubia insightfully remarked, by a contradiction for the clowns: the need to make jokes and express happiness on the outside while suffering on the inside. The tension between inner truth and outer expression, she suggests, is what is responsible for the ‘false smiles’ worn by the clowns. Yet, as we have already seen, Zapatín’s and Joaco’s clowns differ significantly in their styles and their relationships to social reality, and indeed the way that they deal with the various contradictions of space and place in San Victorino are also markedly different. In the ceaseless battle to increase market share, shops would sometimes establish an invisible border out onto the street that supposedly delineated their patch of street in which they could legitimately place products and salespeople while simultaneously preventing others from doing the same. Their ability to sustain this occupation of public space unchallenged was not determined by any recourse to the legality of ownership, but rather by the complex and contingent negotiations between business owners and the police who acted as their enforcers. That is, the configuration of bodies



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and use of space in the street became a living expression of networks of power that operated between privileged individuals and groups. Foucault recognized that power is not located in a ‘central point, in a unique source of sovereignty’, but rather emerges within a network of unequal social relationships, thus representing ‘a complex strategical situation in a particular society’ (1990: 93). But the states of power engendered by these unequal social relations are always ‘local and unstable’. In San Victorino, the instability was especially visible at Christmastime when transient, unlicensed vendors inundated the streets with glittering tinsel and baubles, plastic trees and every imaginable kind of ornamental decoration, opportunistically annexing space normally controlled by permanent businesses, leading to the execution of anxious defensive manoeuvres. On one particular occasion, during the Christmas season, I find Zapatín with a tin of yellow paint in one hand, a brush in the other, daubing lines on the sidewalk and the street, attempting to mark out the space belonging to his employer, into which no other commercial activity should stray. The activity of painting produces unexpected results, a kind of silent comedy, in which the clown struggles to protect the painted lines from being stepped on by passing pedestrians. Many passers-by, not noticing the lines, tread in the fresh paint, obscuring the line itself and carrying paint on their shoes onto other parts of the sidewalk, with the result that there is soon a mass of yellow footprints everywhere. Every few minutes Zapatín repaints the line, only to have it spoiled once again. The attempt to rationalize the space, to enforce the law, and bring order to the chaos of the street was quickly undone, and the original reason for the task seemed to dissolve into a mechanical game that existed only for its own sake. While we are engaged in this futile activity, a young man with black sunglasses and a large plastic bag positions himself in the street directly in front of the store and pulls out assorted Christmas decorations,

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which he then begins hawking to passing shoppers. As soon as he notices this, Zapatín walks forward and stands next to him for several minutes, not exactly confronting him, but asserting his presence, shifting slightly from foot to foot while continuing to intone his promotional patter through the microphone. After several minutes of this tense stand-off, Zapatín returns to his customary position at the doorway. For a moment it seems that Zapatín has lost the battle. But shortly afterwards a policeman appears around a corner and Zapatín catches his attention. They talk familiarly for a few moments. Zapatín points out the lines and the young man, some brief words are exchanged between the three, and soon the young man wraps up his wares and disappears into the crowd. This everyday episode, that would not have been out of place in a Buster Keaton movie, neatly illustrates the clown’s somewhat ambiguous relationship with power. Zapatín’s ability to regulate the space in front of his employer’s shop suggests the power of the clown to police boundaries that might otherwise become unclear within the chaotic movements of the marketplace. The policing of physical boundaries and marking of territories through the painting of lines or the exercising of strategic alliances was one more way – in addition to the others we have already seen – in which Zapatín put his respectable clowning to work to retain existing relations of power and thus sustain the stability of the market ‘place’. Furthermore his policing of outward boundaries was reflected by the balancing of contradictions and tensions within himself; his costume, make-up, temperament and attitude all seemed to contribute to the same, stable and composed whole: a steady, unfailing presence outside the same shop for fifteen years. By comparison, Joaco was a perpetual whirl of movement, sudden gesticulations and unpredictable mood swings. While we were talking he would unexpectedly break off and stride down the street



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or gaze at me in silence, tell a joke, and then burst into cackles of laughter. He would rarely engage a passer-by in conversation, but rather fire jokes at them in passing. He never attempted to mark out boundaries or demarcate space. Rather, his unpredictable, agitated pacing on the street tended to blur territorial borders and it was not always clear which restaurant he was working for. Perhaps for this reason I was not surprised to arrive one day at his place of work to find he had been fired. I spoke to the restaurant owner, who sullenly told me they had to close down because of lack of business. Joaco, it turned out, in failing to adhere to the logics of the marketplace, had also failed to garner profit for his employer. His erratic movement on the street was matched by his fitful ability to hold down employment and he moved constantly between jobs and locations. Yet deep down Joaco did not want to be there and his neurotic pacing at times resembled that of a wild animal caged in a space that is too small for it. A clown ‘out of place’, his unpredictable behaviour was symptomatic of his displacement, a sense of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, expressed in his most often repeated desire: ‘I want to get involved with a circus again, but I haven’t been able to. I can’t seem to find the way.’ In a sense he was attempting to sustain two conflicting sets of values simultaneously: those of economic exchange as practised in the marketplace, and those of salsa and the circus clown. But the value systems of the two places clashed painfully. Consequently, Joaco’s performance often appeared excessive and grotesque both to passers-by and to restaurant owners, who were unable to tame him to their will. The two clowns then offer us different ways to rethink García Canclini’s question, posed at the start of the chapter: ‘how do we study the cleverness with which the city attempts to reconcile everything that arrives and proliferates, and tries to contain all the disorder?’ (2005: 3–4). By seeking to contain the disorder of the marketplace,

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Zapatín had found the ultimate utilitarian function of clowning. For Joaco, meanwhile, it remained a disorderly space in which conflictual pressures and desires exacerbated his own sense of displacement. Zapatín adapted clowning to serve the economic and cultural work of the marketplace. By generating trust and safety through his calculated engagements, he made an exemplary restaurant clown. Joaco, on the other hand, had a dangerous and antisocial edge that makes him a difficult partner, a difficult employee, and a difficult ethnographic subject.

Who’s the fool? In the intersection of festivity and commerce, where the salsa of circus clowning meets the salsa of the cheap fast food establishment, Joaco’s eyes opened up a well of absence in which there was nothing left but to bounce off the walls and tell dirty jokes. Yet from within those eyes emerged also the twinkle of self-deprecating humour and the intensity of hunger for something different, something better, something absent: the seed of something we might recognize as resistant to the forms of oppression that kept Joaco from realizing his dream. Joaco’s salsa, the flash of danger in his eye and the flash of silver in his mouth, drew me towards him. I wanted to understand more about the ‘real’ Joaco and what it was that sustained him as a human, not just his performance on the street. I persuaded him to meet me when he was ‘off duty’ and so I sat opposite him in a corner of the restaurant while he took big mouthfuls of rice and steak. I asked if I could accompany him on his journey from home to work and back again, so that I could see and understand the daily routine beyond the clown routine. He looked at me sceptically and said: ‘I have just the same routine as anyone. I go to work



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just like a builder does. You’ll see.’ I laughed nervously. Joaco made no attempt to smooth over the tension. ‘I don’t know what you’re looking for, or what you want. I just have one little room. I don’t have anything.’ He told me that some time ago a researcher had befriended him and had come to his house, filming everything, and all he had got in return was a sandwich. Many students and journalists had interviewed him for a thesis or an article, he added. ‘I don’t know. We’ll see’, and he got up from his seat and went back to work. In this moment he seemed not only to be distancing himself from me but from the world that mistreated him. I left with a sense of failure and foolishness, exposed as another one of the many who were responsible for oppressing and limiting Joaco while he tried to get on with his life as a clown – or, it might be more accurate to say, his clowning as a life. Indeed that is what was truly remarkable about Joaco. His clowning and his life were constantly bleeding together, such that they seemed nearly inseparable. Clowning was life for Joaco, and a harsh one. His suggestion that he was no different from a builder expressed the clown’s feeling of powerlessness in the face of economic pressures. My intervention had just made it a little harsher. In an intriguing chapter called ‘The Fool and Mimesis’ William Willeford reflects on the unique facility of the fool (and he includes clowns in this category) to turn the mirror on his audience and reveal them as the real fools. He analyses Holbein’s illustration of a fool out of costume looking at himself in a mirror and seeing himself as fool reflected back: What should be his nonfoolish image gains its own capricious life, as though something weird and lawless within it had suddenly risen to the surface. What confronts him is the semblance of himself alive with folly; the nonfool is suddenly a fool. (Willeford 1969: 33)

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It is a graphic metaphor for the ambiguous and potentially powerful duality of clown performance: the moment we think we are non-fools (watching a fool) we become fools ourselves, and it is only in acknowledging our foolish natures that we become non-fools (i.e. wise). It is a trick of revelation, for rather than reflect things as they appear to us, it shows us a deeper truth: ‘In the tricks he plays upon us, the fool proves us to have been deluded in our assumption that we are merely members of the audience, nonfools, watching a fool upon the stage’ (Willeford 1969: 32). Fools and clowns are subject to the same subjectivity and relativity of foolishness as all humans, Willeford says, but they also have a special potency. They implicate us all in their own foolery and therefore generate both self-awareness and solidarity through the common acknowledgement of failure. Joaco showed me what a fool I was in my desire to know the ‘real’ him. He demonstrated to me the profound ability of the clown to turn the viewer’s gaze back on himself in order to reveal his own foolishness. It is doubly ironic that while I was trying to find examples of how clowns resist oppression, I was blind to my own role in forms of oppression. Joaco’s critical attack not only struck at the social biases of the marketplace, but also at my own complicity in them, my reliance on invisible boundaries that allowed me to be a transient spectator in the same space that for him was both workplace and cell. It was a space I could enter and leave whenever it was convenient for me, while he was locked into certain patterns of labour that he relied on for survival. His rebuttal was a clown’s act of resistance against a presumptuous invasion of privacy. The act of resistance shone the light of truth on an unequal relation of power and darkly ridiculed my own voyeurism. It was not a destructive or malicious act, yet it was certainly pointed and provocative. I had wanted to discover the ‘real’ Joaco. Always the clown, Joaco reversed my voyeuristic gaze and showed me the ‘real’ me.

3

Acts of Faith: Clown Theatre and the New Wave

The Iberoamericano In the 1980s and 90s, rampant economic and cultural globalization in Colombia had significant impacts upon the field of clowning. The national policy of opening up to global influences, known as apertura, encouraged a new wave of cultural importation, and riding high on this wave came new forms of clown which were given an artistic prestige never endowed to autochthonous clowns. This was not primarily clowning of the street or the circus, but rather of the theatre. Such clowns did not perform sketches or routines, but rather scenes with characters and dramatic narratives. They transformed the landscape of clowning in Bogotá forever, introducing new clown aesthetics and ultimately drawing it into new realms of cultural and social significance. At the same time clowning tended to become more self-conscious, self-referential, more anxious about its own potential to challenge injustice and enable change. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 will explore the resulting landscape, in which the newly empowered clown has had to navigate competing political pressures. This chapter, meanwhile, lays out some of the changes and processes by which this occurred. Here, I trace a genealogical link between three clown-based theatre companies: El Clu del Claun, an Argentinian company that visited Colombia in 1988; Colombian group Ku Klux Klown; and the contemporary Colombian group La Troupe. In so doing I return

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repeatedly to a cultural site which links the three companies and which continues to play an important part in shaping the landscape of clowning in Colombia today: the international Iberoamericano theatre festival. I show my photo ID, pass my bag through the X-ray machine and proceed under the soaring chrome arch at the gateway to Corferias, a huge complex of conference facilities, auditoria and pavilions just a short taxi-ride from the centre of Bogotá. The 2012 Iberoamericano theatre festival is in full swing and the main plaza is teaming with bodies, some heading purposefully towards their next scheduled show, some huddled around street performers, others sitting around eating ice creams and sodas. Almost immediately I am struck by the sight of several members of the public wearing red clown noses. As I walk around I begin to see noses everywhere and even discover several stalls selling the noses, alongside other circus and clown paraphernalia. Scanning the programme, I am also surprised how many clown performers are featuring in this fourteenth edition of the festival, including artists from Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Spain and Chile. On the front page there is even a photograph of the famed Colombian actor (and founder of the festival) Fanny Mickey, proudly wearing her red nose. Clown, it seems, is in fashion at this year’s Iberoamericano. I make may way to a small raised stage between two large pavilions, where a crowd of thirty or forty, many wearing red noses, has gathered for a show. While we wait, I take the opportunity to ask a few people around me why they are wearing noses. One couple tells me it is a homage to Fanny Mickey, who recently passed away; others are not so sure, but they mention that they simply want to feel part of the festival, to participate in the culture of theatre, to join in with the spirit of fun and happiness. While the nose seems to produce a sense of belonging and participation for many of these people, it also appears that this sense of belonging is a commodity that has been cheaply purchased.



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Most of them tell me they have acquired their red noses at one of the shops right there in Corferias. The show begins. I have seen La Troupe before but I have come to the festival to see them again because I am interested in why clowning seems to have become such a popular form among a new generation of emerging, trained theatre artists. The show, El Viaje (The Journey) is a smart and fast-paced satirical piece that follows a simple dramatic narrative about a poor family in Bogotá, the Baca Galindos. Beset by financial worries and buried in debts, Señor Baca Galindo, played by the company’s artistic director Diego Figueroa, takes part in a TV game show and wins a suitcase full of money. He and his overjoyed wife and children decide to go on vacation to celebrate, but disaster ensues as greed threatens to tear the family apart. They fight over the money, are relentlessly pursued by an inept masked robber, but finally the youngest son saves the day by hurling the suitcase into the sea. The first time I saw the piece I read it as a warning of the deleterious consequences of the pursuit of wealth, its threat to human ties and relationships that are exemplified in that most sacred of Colombian institutions, the family. It is in part a vindication and celebration of the family, in particular the poor working-class family. But the fact that it is the son who saves the family is also significant. While older generations have become stuck in patterns of conflict and financial strife, there is hope to be found in the youth of Colombia, and ironically the saving of the family implies both a moving on from such patterns of conflict and also a return to traditional values that are perceived to be lacking. I am expecting to see the same show here at the Iberoamericano. But about ten minutes into the familiar narrative, it takes a strange turn. During a scene in which Señora Baca Galinda is talking on the phone with a friend about the plastic surgery she plans to get with their new money, she opens a fashion magazine to a page on which

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there is a photograph of a famous Colombian film star wearing a large, glittering golden clown nose. This, she enthuses to her girlfriend (and to the audience), is the new hot look: ‘the red nose is so out’. She points to the audience. ‘Look. Everyone has a red nose these days.’ At this moment the whole company rushes on stage, clearly out of character now, and begins to berate the audience for devaluing and insulting their art form by wearing red noses. Most of the audience members think this hilarious. Diego waves his hand dismissively. Everybody falls silent. ‘Payaso pintado, payaso pagado’, he says in a condescending tone, and then sends the performers back into the wings. The rest of the show is exactly as I recall it. Yet the memory of this self-conscious disturbance in the narrative remains with me to the end and continues to trouble me as I exit Corferias and head home. Payaso pintado, payaso pagado is a colloquial expression that does not easily translate, but might be rendered literally as ‘a clown painted is a clown paid’. Its tone is heavy with irony, challenging the presumption that clowning is just about pitting on a red nose. Company director Diego Figueroa explained how this strategic interruption of the dramatic narrative served both to criticize the latest fad and also to defend the endangered art of clowning: Just because someone puts on a red nose and mismatched clothing, it doesn’t mean they are now a clown. You have to study the technique, play, create, improvise, live, and of course have a good show, or, in our case, a story to tell […] That’s the critical contribution we wanted our play to offer to the world of clown.1

Behind the playful jibe, this disruption in the narrative flow of the piece takes advantage of the clown’s special ability to break the illusory frame and to speak directly to the audience. Joel Schechter details, for example, how circus and cabaret clowns of the 1920s were



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particularly influential in the early evolution of Brecht’s political theatre (1985: 18–19). Indeed Schechter traces how many subsequent playwrights and directors took advantage of this strong affinity between Brechtian poetics and clown aesthetics, from Joan Littlewood through to Bread and Puppet Theatre. It was in particular the ability of the clown to directly address the audience, comment on the action and relate it to the material world beyond the theatre that made him such a useful tool in political drama. The moment in which members of La Troupe entered the stage out of character and harangued the audience for wearing red noses was just such a moment, exemplary of Brecht’s Verfremdung or V-effect, because it disrupted the narrative flow in order to draw attention to a social issue that was otherwise unchallenged. El Viaje, even without the Brechtian moment of interruption, used clowning to articulate a political critique of the deleterious effects of capitalism. But the moment of alienation added an additional dimension to this critique, a denouncement of the popularization and commercialization of clowning itself: payaso pintado, payaso pagado. Implying that clowning has been reduced to a cheap means of cultural identification and also an easy means of making money, La Troupe criticized the bleeding together of two worlds that ought to be kept separate: the professional and the amateur, as well as the artistic and the commercial. The audience, it was implied, was guilty of transgressing this line by donning the clown nose. Opening themselves up to the charge of elitism, La Troupe employed the clown’s skill for truth-telling to expose the audience’s shallow consumption of the clown as a fashion accessory, and more broadly to draw attention to the reduction of an art form to the banalities of the marketplace. And yet, as the first two chapters have demonstrated, clowning has been associated with commercial gain for many centuries. This is nothing new. Perhaps what is new, then, is not the democratization and commercialization of clowning itself, but rather the assumption that it

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should not be so. In other words, the complaint about the demeaning of the art of clowning is predicated upon a relatively recent elevation in the status of clown, its cultural differentiation from the payaso and the belief that it is in fact an art that needs to be defended from the polluting influences of commerce and commodification. Such an elevation is indeed what this chapter argues has occurred, and furthermore seeks to locate within a specific set of historical conditions. La Troupe’s tendency to blend clown with theatre, to conceal political critiques under the guise of harmless clowning and to make self-conscious and anxious references to clowning itself within their work, should not be seen as a break from the past, but rather a sign of continuity with clown-based theatre companies that preceded it. Yet at a certain point, this was perceived as a new way of approaching clown in Bogotá which due to the particular historical conditions, was embraced wholeheartedly. Before exploring the specific historical conditions which gave rise to this new wave of clowning, I will reflect briefly on a theoretical model for social change in which ritualized and liminal forms such as clowning may play a particularly significant role.

Social performance and social drama My use of the term ‘social performance’ coincides in part with the anthropological concept of ‘cultural performance’. David Guss defines cultural performances as ‘sites of social action where identities and relations are continually being reconfigured’ (2000: 12). In the first two chapters I offered examples of how clowning in Colombia (or potentially anywhere) might be considered a social and cultural performance: first because it reaches out beyond formal framed contexts such as circuses and theatres to spaces where it becomes integrated into the minutiae of everyday life; and second because



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regardless of the specific spaces in which it occurs, clowning often speaks to overarching social, political and economic themes. But in articulating clown as a social performance I also draw upon Victor Turner’s notion of ‘social drama’ (1982: 78). While cultural performance emphasizes the potential of formal events such as rituals, festivals and plays not only to reflect and describe social reality but also to modify it, Turner’s ‘social drama’ hypothesizes the specific role that performances play in relation to other forces in bringing about historical and social change, whether long or short term. The theory originated in Turner’s anthropological studies of ritual. Unlike many structuralist anthropologists, however, Turner did not see ritual necessarily as a force of cohesion – ‘its symbols do not merely condense cherished sociocultural values’ (1987: 158) – but also potentially as a kind of ‘social action’ that drives change through cultural disruption and reflexivity (1987: 94). At the heart of social drama, ritual provides the motor driving social change. The ‘social drama’ model can help us understand how clowning provided this kind of ritualized social action, mobilized as part of a wider strategy to resolve a crisis that reached its climax at the end of the 1980s. Social drama is not in itself a performance. Rather, it is a period of historical development within which performance plays a key role. The social drama typically begins with a violation or ‘breach’ of social norms, which widens to produce a ‘crisis’ that makes public some inherent but previously invisible social conflict (Turner 1987: 74). At this point certain individuals or groups, who may be weak or powerful according to the present status quo, take action to resolve the crisis in what is called the ‘redressive’ phase: Redressive action ranging from personal advice and informal mediation or arbitration to formal juridical and legal machinery, and, to resolve certain kinds of crisis or legitimate other modes of resolution, to the performance of public ritual. (Turner 1987: 75)

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In the fourth and final phase a resolution or ‘reintegration’ may be achieved, though this rarely means a return to the former social configuration, since ‘as like as not, the scope and range of its relational field will have altered; the number of its parts will be different; and their size and influence will have changed’ (Turner 1982: 71). That is, power structures will have shifted, albeit fractionally. If resolution is not achieved, however, a schism, or permanent shifting of the social landscape, results. Either way, change has taken place. Though Turner was convinced that social drama produced change that was generally for the good – a populist, democratic kind of change – the social drama model does not require this to be the case. That is, the resolution may result in a return of the status quo or, indeed, a heightening of underlying inequality or social injustice. Sometimes political and economic reform serve to maintain an oppressive status quo. This is true, for example, of Colombia in the 1990s, where an aggressively pursued neoliberal agenda that diminished social welfare, relaxed trade protection and welcomed foreign investment, actually increased the wealth of social elites in alliance with multinational corporations, while speeding up the dispossession of the poor (Ocampo and Tovar 2000, Rojas 2009). As I will explore in more detail below, policies introduced by President Gaviria in the 1990s under the banner of apertura (opening up), were promoted as part of a set of political, economic and cultural strategies designed to ‘redress’ the growing social crisis in the late 1980s, but did not necessarily diminish underlying inequalities. ‘Redressive action’, which seems to be the real motor for change in Turner’s model, may lock together various strategies that include ‘the rational idiom of the juridical process’ and ‘the metaphorical and symbolic idiom of a ritual process’ (Turner 1987: 75). That is, a legal or constitutional change on the part of a government, intended to resolve a crisis, may need to be supported by cultural or symbolic strategies. Of particular importance here is the way in which the



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redressive phase involves a conscious narrativizing of past and present, generating a reflexivity that pushes towards transformation. The process of resolving the rift requires the ability to stand back from the everyday flow of life in order to deconstruct and reinterpret the events that led up to the crisis: Whether juridical or ritual processes of redress are invoked against mounting crisis, the result is an increase in what one might call social or plural reflexivity, the ways in which a group tries to scrutinize, portray, understand, and then act on itself. (Turner 1982: 75)

The phases of ‘crisis’ and ‘redressive action’ are both described by Turner as liminal phases. Liminality crucially invokes a ‘subjunctive mood’, in which we are opened up to ‘all that may be, might be, could be, perhaps even should be’ (Turner 1982: 77). In such moments we use our imaginative faculties to dream, envision and create a different kind of society for the future. Certain kinds of ritual play an important part in these liminal moments of redress, alongside more mundane kinds of juridical or political action. Many commentators have perceived in clown performance a particular aptitude for fulfilling this kind of liminal and ritualistic function, particularly in moments of social breakdown (Beck et al. 1990, Charles 1945, Handelman 1981, Makarius 1970, Parsons and Beals 1934). In the view of Don Handelman, clowns are the very embodiments of liminality and flux. He demonstrates, using numerous cross-cultural examples, how clowning not only accompanies liminal phases within certain rituals, but actually embodies liminality itself, being always in-process, unfinished, incomplete and unresolved. He argues that ritual-clowns simultaneously embody a series of seemingly contradictory attributes, which ‘continuously oscillate, such that each attribute immediately brings to mind its obverse complement’ (Handelman 1981: 330). In so doing the clown ‘can be said to subsume a border, or boundary, within itself, which

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it straddles, or through which it moves’ (1981: 330). Characterized by extreme instability, the clown both dissolves the boundary and likewise ‘exists within a state of self-transformation and self-dissolution’ (1981: 330). Paul Bouissac (1990) also discusses clown routines as rituals. But while Handelman emphasizes clown ritual as an embodiment of innate flux and transformation, for Bouissac the actions of clowns tend to emphasize and instigate stasis and cohesion. Indeed Bouissac challenges Turner’s vision of society as constantly in a process of movement and change, instead arguing that in order to understand the function of clown rituals we must treat ‘the system or the structure as if it were out of time’ (1990: 207). Anthropological perspectives on clowning as ritual thus remain divided: while it clearly has ritualistic qualities and social functions, do these tend towards social change or continuity? As the next part of this chapter will show, it is probably better to avoid absolutes in answering the question. A case-by-case analysis suggests examples in which clowning tends towards social cohesion and stability and others in which it pushes towards conflict and flux. Returning to a climactic moment in Colombia’s on-going social crisis that occurred more than twenty-five years ago, we can see how clowning became part of a wider set of redressive tactics that included the writing of a new constitution, neoliberal economic reforms and various cultural initiatives. Thus clown practices function as social performance not only in the sense that they seep into the everyday experience of ordinary people, but also that they play a role in long-term processes of historical change, which, in turn, affect the way that those clown practices develop.



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Social crisis and redressive action in Colombia In 1990, in the face of rapidly intensifying guerrilla struggle, paramilitary reprisals, social violence and gang-related conflict, Colombia found itself on the brink of a social crisis that awoke memories of the very darkest hour of Colombian history. In a period of nine months, three popular presidential candidates had been assassinated: Luis Carlos Galán of the Liberal party, Carlos Pizarro León-Gomez of the former Guerilla group M-19, and Bernardo Jaramillo of the leftist Unión Patriótica party. The ensuing protests against the government suggested troubling parallels with the Bogotazo uprising of 1948, which followed the assassination of Jorge Elicer Gaitán and led to the ten-year period of bitter civil conflict known as La Violencia (1948–58). The parallels between the 1980s and 1940s are worth dwelling on. Medófilo Medina argues that both these periods were characterized by significant economic growth in parallel with escalating conflict: ‘the coincidence of violence and the expansion of the economy during two different periods suggest a relationship between the two phenomena that is not simply fortuitous’ (1992: 156). Through much of the twentieth century, while its neighbours were suffering financial meltdowns, savage dictatorships and military coups, Colombia remained economically and politically stable, and the middle class grew (Roldán 2002: 11). Why, then, has Colombia been unable to shake the destructive consequences of a civil conflict rooted in the bi-partisan rivalries of the nineteenth century (Bushnell 1993)? As Gonzalo G. Sánchez points out, ‘contrary to a supposed automatic correlation between violence and poverty […] violence has been concentrated in zones of great dynamism and economic expansion’ (2003: 5). Crucially, of course, economic growth does not affect everyone equally, and, in the context of concerted liberalization, tends to exacerbate rather than reduce

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inequality. This provides a possible explanation for the coincidence of economic growth and violence in certain regions: ‘more than their overall poverty, it is the internal imbalance of these regions, the corrosive coexsistence of prosperity and poverty, and the sense of injustice which results, that may function as a detonator for violence’ (Sánchez 2003: 5). From a slightly different perspective, Medina argues there is an obvious link between economic growth and increased violence, because ‘high rates of capital accumulation awaken extraordinary expectations of profit making’ (1992: 161). That is, those who are likely to benefit most from economic growth are motivated to create conditions in which they can maximize their gains: hence the desire to curb workers’ rights, social welfare and trade protection, which all limit profitability, and to encourage the influx of foreign capital, which undergirds it. Both the periods in question had experienced a sudden economic growth prompted by strategic liberalization. In 1945 President Camargo dramatically implemented a rolling back of workers’ rights in order to encourage industrial expansion. State regulation was dismantled as economic indicators shot up, accompanied by a trend towards monopolization in industry and the intensification of foreign investment, particularly from North America (Medina 1992: 156). The denouncing of the union movement along with bloody repression of strikes led to a renewed urban radicalization and a steady growth of violent outbreaks which finally erupted in 1948, prompted by the assassination of the workers’ hero Jorge Elicer Gaitán. A similar pattern can be detected in the economic growth and rise of violence that occurred in the mid- to late 1980s. Following a worldwide recession in the early 1980s, Colombia became the country with the highest average rate of economic growth in Latin America thanks in part to a seemingly miraculous recovery in practically all branches of manufacturing (Medina 1992: 161). Yet



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this coincided with a proliferation and diversification of conflict that Medina describes as ‘a patchwork quilt of violence’ (1992: 161), now more divisive and multilateral than in the 1940s. The distinctive feature of the new violence was its multiplicity, argues Sanchez, including the struggle for land by guerrillas, the conflict around labour conditions and repression of union movements, the acts of forced displacement that accompany resource extraction, the growth of self-defence units known as paramilitaries and new and pervasive impact of illegal drug trafficking. The political and social crisis mounting in the 1980s also had a symbolic and cultural dimension suggestive of the ‘breach’ in Turner’s social drama model. Assassinations in universities and kidnappings or hostage-taking in churches constituted what Sánchez calls ‘the trespassing of certain symbolic frontiers’ (2003: 7). While extreme acts of violence were to some extent already the norm in Colombia, this incursion of the conflict into ‘sacred places of thought and religious practice’ constituted a cultural violation that precipitated a renewed crisis (Sánchez 2003: 7). Another cultural dimension to the social crisis was to be located in the disturbing levels of involvement of young people, including girls, used by all sides in the armed conflict as military recruits and paid assassins called sicarios.2 The proliferation of gangs in Medellin between 1985 and 1990, whose young members committed acts of violence as a means of accessing the consumerist culture they saw all around them, was partly the result of economic deprivation but also of the breakdown of traditional social relations of family, school, religion and community (Sánchez 2003: 8). Alonzo Salazar describes an endemic link between violence and consumerism: Sicarios take consumer society to an extreme: they convert life, their own lives and those of their victims, into objects of economic transactions, into disposable objects. The sicario transforms death into a daily occurrence. To kill and to die is normal. (Salazar 1990: 200)

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The fact that the violence has taken on characteristics of consumption and commodification is perhaps not a surprise when we reflect on the fact, as argued by Medina, that this period of violence was also, like La Violencia, accompanied by a flourishing of neoliberal economic policies: increased foreign investment, dismantling of social welfare and workers’ rights and removal of state regulation. This neoliberal economic policy was just one aspect of a threepronged strategy implemented by President César Gaviria in 1990 to redress the deepening crisis. First, in relation to the armed conflict, he instituted a pragmatic approach to negotiating with armed groups while allowing paramilitaries to operate as a kind of unofficial and unaccountable counterinsurgency force. Second, he created a new Constituent Assembly that would include elected members of demobilized military groups and indigenous organizations. The Constituent Assembly subsequently ratified the radical Constitution of 1991. The writing of the 1991 Constitution was also part of a cultural strategy to address the crisis by responding to the popular perception that the traditional two-party system was unrepresentative, corrupt and elitist. Just as Turner describes in the ‘redressive action’ phase of social drama, the Constitution narrativized and interpreted the past in order to forge a path to a new future. In particular it articulated a critique of the idea of representative democracy, blaming it for the failure of political processes to resolve the violence, and proposing to replace it with a more enlightened and egalitarian principal known as ‘participatory democracy’. Although Bejarano judges that this was no more than a ‘panacea’ (2003: 56), it was highly successful in implanting these notions into the national psyche. Over the next two decades successive leaders, presidents and mayors constantly invoked values of conviviencia (living together) and participación (participation) as fundamental to social progress. The third prong in Gaviria’s redressive strategy was an economic one: the infamous apertura or ‘opening up’ of the economy, heavily



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incentivized by the IMF and World Bank. Apertura essentially meant the embracing of neoliberal reform known as ‘structural adjustment’ that was implemented across much of Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s. This entailed widespread privatization, phasing out of welfare and eradicating of trade barriers in order to facilitate the flow of capital (Nielson and Ybarra 2012, Macdonald and Ruckert 2009). In Colombia, these reforms were publicly promoted as beneficial for everyone, since the influx of foreign investment and aid would grow the economy and facilitate the peace process (Rojas 2009: 233). However, neoliberal economic reform also placed Colombia into a global marketplace with little protection for its own industries and products, and gave it little incentive to invest in social care. While the neoliberal ‘opening up’ of the economy was imposed as a supposed solution to the country’s problems and certainly promoted the accumulation of capital through much of the 1990s, it has done little but broaden the social rift, breed economic inequality and exacerbate violence (Urrego 2003: 171). These three elements – dialogue with armed groups, the 1991 Constitution and the implementation of apertura – constituted a concerted effort aimed at resolving the widening social schism. But these political, legal and economic actions could not by themselves propel a social transformation. Over the following two decades, the state came to realize and utilize the potential of cultural channels such as theatre, street arts, festivals and visual spectacle in consolidating socioeconomic transformation. While in the 1960s and 1970s theatre had often been a tool of radical expression and political dissent for left-wing artists and activists and seen as a threat to dominant orders, the 1990s saw the state increasingly accepting and even sponsoring it. This echoed developments seen in the UK under New Labour, in which the arts were rebranded as ‘creative industries’, whose value to society was measured in terms of job creation, economic stimulation and other quantifiable forms of urban regeneration.3

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In 1997, the Colombian government created a ministry of culture and established a range of grants that facilitated cultural production but also enhanced their ability to control it. As we shall see, the communicative potential of the arts, as well as their ability to generate consensus around values and beliefs, was enlisted to promote particular ideas which were particularly conducive to the neoliberal state – ideas about participation, citizenship, public space and collective responsibility. Turner specifies that in ‘redressive action’, a range of liminal spaces, including ‘the performance of public ritual’, is created in order to ‘resolve certain kinds of crises or legitimate other modes of conflict-resolution’ (1987: 34). The government’s promotion of cultural projects, particularly those which seem to legitimate the state’s approach to managing the conflict, might thus be regarded with some cynicism. The Iberoamericano theatre festival was one such cultural project, opening up a liminal space for intercultural exchange that offered clear benefits for citizens and at the same time justified a policy of opening up the economy to global investors which served very particular interests. Of course, in fostering creative, liminal spaces for dialogue and exchange, the government provided a stage for a range of voices, some of which would inevitably challenge the dominant ideology. That is, they generated a conflictual field of competing voices and values into which many artists were recruited but which the state could never fully control.

The Iberoamericano and El Clu del Claun The Iberoamericano theatre festival is a loudly heralded highlight of Bogotá’s cultural calendar that every two years brings together the elite of international theatre from typically around thirty-five countries. Often claimed to be the largest of its kind in the world (in



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terms of audience numbers), the festival takes over the city’s major theatres for two weeks with a cosmopolitan programme of experimental and mainstream drama, dance, physical theatre, comedy, mask, puppetry and clown. There are workshops with international teachers, panel discussions and talk-back sessions with invited artists, as well as an extensive programme of street performance in all the city’s parks and plazas. In short, it is a bonanza of theatre and now, in its fourteenth edition, is a central pillar of the city’s cultural identity as a twenty-first-century globalized capital. At its inauguration in 1988 the Iberoamericano was already a highly institutionalized cultural event, relying upon a range of heavyweight financial donors, as expressed in the festival’s official brochure: Such a huge and complex business as the festival is, would never had been possible if it had not received, from the very beginning, the fundamental backing and patronage of the President of the Republic, the Mayor, numerous governmental departments, as well as the collaboration of the private sector – businesses, industry, commerce, banking, corporations – on the local front, while on the international level, fundamentally, the sponsorship provided by governments of the groups involved, and the collaboration of their embassies. (De Zubiriá 1988: 7)

Both government and private sector were clearly enthusiastic to invest in such a safe yet promising venture. What better way to symbolize Colombia’s emergence into the global marketplace than a massive international theatre festival that would facilitate the kinds of international networks, public/private partnerships, and cultural exchanges that are central to the notion of the modern neoliberal state? Groups from twenty-one foreign countries participated in the first Iberoamericano, performing twenty-five different plays, with special invited guest countries including Poland, USSR, Canada, France, Belgium and Italy. But fundamentally the festival was promoted as an exercise in intercultural dialogue and exchange

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between Colombia and the rest of the world, as suggested by its marketing strapline: ‘The best of world theatre in Colombia and the best of Colombian theatre for the world’. Indeed the festival was not just about importing international culture, but also promoting and selling what was great about Colombia. To this end, thirty-three groups from Bogotá, Medellin and elsewhere were also programmed, showcasing what festival director Fanny Mickey described as ‘the high levels of development that the Colombian theatre has reached in the last two decades’ (1988: 13). The significance of the festival’s inauguration in 1988 is manylayered. As we have seen, the country was engaged in a renewed effort to open its borders to the global economic community and was itself enjoying a period of significant economic growth. ‘Cultural integration’ – one of the principal objectives stated in the festival programme – could be seen as an important accompaniment to the building of economic and political ties, thus serving a broadly neoliberal agenda. The more explicit reason for having a festival in 1988, however, was to mark the 450th anniversary of the founding of Bogotá itself. As a self-conscious act of celebration and commemoration, ‘a fervent homage to Bogotá’, the festival became automatically identified with an overwhelmingly positive mythologizing of the city’s roots, even though as a cultural event it was brand new. The rhetorical identification between the Iberoamericano and the city was strongly sustained through subsequent years and the festival played a key role in the attempts by mayors through the 1990s to galvanize a major urban transformation, by inspiring residents with a sense of pride in their home. Indeed in the 1990 programme, Mayor Andres Pastrana wrote: Bogotá is not only a political and administrative centre. It is above all a space that represents the totality of the Colombian temperament […] As such Bogotá is proud to represent Colombia to the world with the second Iberoamerican Theatre Festival. (1990: 4)



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Less overt in the rhetoric of the inaugural programme, yet equally significant, was an acknowledgement of the social crisis the country faced, tempered by optimism that theatre itself could make a difference. In particular, Fanny Mickey described the 1988 festival as ‘an act of faith’, making an implicit yet unequivocal reference to the conflict: ‘In Colombia’s current circumstances, our festival will renew spirit and stimulate hope. This beautiful, huge and fascinating force will be an act of faith’ (1988: 13). The naming of the inaugural festival as ‘an act of faith’ self-consciously invokes a quasi-religious and ritualistic potency that once again reminds us of the redressive phase in Turner’s social drama model, which may utilize ritualized or symbolic actions. The festival seems to be providing ritualistic accompaniment, or perhaps symbolic reinforcement to the more formalized economic and political solutions that were being proffered at the same time: both pointed in the same direction, and though using different mechanisms, both were supported by the same powerful union of cultural, political and economic leaders. The festival set an important example, one that has been replicated and refined over and over again during the decades since 1988 by governmental bodies, mayors, institutions and corporations of various kinds: an example of how culture can act as a strong supporting arm for enacting policies and social transformations of various kinds. Chapter 4 will look more specifically at how clowning has been complicit in this co-option of cultural means for political and social ends, for example the use of clowns on the streets to reduce traffic and pedestrian infractions and, more recently, in the government’s use of clown performance to promote certain models of citizenship. But this general acceptance and respect for clowning might not have been possible without the earlier contribution of the Iberoamericano, through which a new, more theatrical brand of clowning was introduced and legitimized in Colombia. Of course, the fact that this renovation of clowning occurred in part as a result

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of the state’s opening up to globalization did not (and does not) mean that the clowning itself was always supportive of or agreeable to the state’s neoliberal agenda. On the contrary, the work of companies such as La Troupe, as well as that of Ku Klux Klown who came before, was often overtly critical of official corruption, violence and social injustice. The potential of clowning to be critical while excusing itself as ‘not to be taken seriously’ was foreshadowed by the work of Argentinian company El Clu del Claun at that very first Iberoamericano in 1988. Clown has always made a significant contribution to the Iberoamericano programme. Festival director Fanny Mickey herself was an enthusiast of clowning and was often seen and photographed wearing a red nose. Over the years a number of the world’s biggest names in clown theatre have performed at the festival, including Nola Rae, Jango Edwards, Slava Polunin, John Wright, Paolo Nani and Avner Eisenberg. The inaugural 1988 festival featured up-andcoming Argentinian company El Clu del Claun with a show that had premiered in 1986, Escuela de Payasos (School of Clowns). The show had been a critical success in Argentina and El Clu del Claun were considered pioneers in what was rapidly becoming a significant movement within Buenos Aires’ theatre scene. Luis Mazas, writing for Clarín, Argentina’s biggest newspaper, was particularly impressed by the production, which he said fostered ‘the recuperation of play as a fundamental element of representation’ (1986). According to the review, the show’s director, Juan Carlos Gené, ‘rediscovers the possibilities of play, providing the performance with a critical and imaginative freedom worthy of note’ (Mazas 1986). Meanwhile, the satirical magazine Humor Registrado saw in the play a demonstration of the critical and political potential of clowning (A.P. 1988). While the review insists that Escuela de Payasos has no message per se and that ‘the only commitment of these seven frenetic clowns is to partying’, it goes on to argue that in the physicality of clowning, as



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well as in its refusal of textual metaphors and realist claims, there is an even more radical potential: If the body of the clown is a prodigious field of exploration […] it is also a weapon of ridicule and an instrument for evading the wilful power of the teacher: the pirouette, the basic component of the clown’s language, is at the same time a gymnastic figure and a political tactic. To leap over someone, to balance your feet on someone’s head or your head on someone’s feet, to mutter in an indecipherable language, even to cry, are, in Esceula de Payasos, acts of resistance, manoeuvres for confronting authority. (A.P. 1988)

Escuela de Payasos revolves around a group of male clowns, who are subjected to the arbitrary whims of an old-fashioned and authoritarian professor in a school for clowns. When a woman tries to join the class, the group, knowing that the professor will not allow this, tries to protect her, conceal her and later to incorporate her into the group, with comedic results. Despite protestations to the contrary – the 1998 festival programme claimed, for example, that the play was ‘without didactic intentions, philosophies, or politics’ (Reyes 1988: 30) – Escuela de Payasos mobilized carnivalesque revelry and virtuosic circus skills in order to deal with notions of authority and delivered an acerbic critique of the education system. The disclaiming of didactic intentions was perhaps a pragmatic move, given that the object of the play’s critique was itself education. As the programme notes also pointed out, we are left with a rather intriguing paradox, since it simultaneously aims to deliver ‘learning and a critique of learning, a lesson and satire on the education system’ (Reyes 1988: 30). Alongside this denial of a political agenda the programme for Escuela de Payasos is also notable for its fervent insistence upon the seriousness of the group’s endeavour and its claim to an artistic status not previously assigned to clowns, at least in Colombia. While the group of young artists who comprise El Clu del Claun may have

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originally learned their trade busking in the main plazas of Buenos Aires, we are told they later decided to ‘create clown pieces for the theatre stage’. Almost in pre-emptive anticipation of judgemental attitudes toward this new form of theatre, the programme assures the audience member of the ‘great technique and substantial training that is required to make the game seem real and not left to chance’ (Reyes 1988: 29). Of course technique and training are as much a facet of traditional circus clowning as any other, and yet we are told that in Escuela de Payasos, ‘the ridicule transcends the traditional gags of circus clowns who perform short numbers amidst displays of contortionists, jugglers and acrobats’ (Reyes 1988: 30). In the final paragraphs of the text, the word ‘clown’ is used instead of payaso in an explanation of the group’s philosophy and approach to their art form: The clown is you; it’s that vulnerable part of you; and where vulnerability appears, play also appears. It’s about not being constrained to one pre-determined direction […] You have to discover that part of yourself that usually stays hidden in society, your ridiculous side, and when people see that they laugh. (Reyes 1988: 30)

The idea of the clown as a unique expression of your own ‘unique’ ridiculousness is now a familiar one, thanks in part to the widespread dissemination of Jacques Lecoq’s teaching methodologies, and is central to the techniques taught by many of today’s most influential clown teachers.4 Just as El Clu del Claun did in 1988, many contemporary teachers feel they must self-consciously distance themselves from what they variously term as the traditional image and technique of the circus clown. Each, in its own way, rejects the idea of fixed routines, gags and stale repertoires of the circus and identifies more closely with the more refined and existential aesthetics of theatre. In reality there is often not as great a distinction between these contemporary forms of theatrical clowning and circus clowning as is claimed. The fact that clown artists feel the need to distance themselves from tradition may have more to do with the negative



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stereotypes which persist around circus clowns. Furthermore, like all artists, clown artists need to be seen to be innovating and often a disavowal of the past (or forms associated with the past) is a function of the pressure for novelty, even though the idea of the clown as an expression of one’s own ridiculous is hardly new. But for the Bogotá theatre audience in 1988, there were at least two important novel aspects to the work of El Clu del Claun: one stylistic and the other political. The inclusion of Escuela de Payasos in the festival was itself a declaration that clown was now an acceptable, even privileged, form of expression that stood alongside classical tragedy, dance, dramatic comedy and the other more established theatre genres. The adoption of the English word clown in the programme note was also a prescient sign of change. Increasingly, through the 1990s and 2000s, the foreign term became a marker of this newly recognized and respected art form, which was wedded to the theatre as both a form of actor training and a genre of performance in its own right. Payaso, meanwhile, continued to refer to the more traditional forms of clown, in particular those of circuses and children’s parties. But the linguistic distinction implied more than a difference of kind. It also reflected and reinforced a stratification of status that linked aesthetic distinctions to social ones, since the devalued payaso was rooted in and associated with low and popular culture, while the newly discovered clown was legitimized through its connections with high culture and a level of cultural refinement and sophistication. Also innovative for the Colombian audience was the way in which the aesthetics of clowning were being applied to deal with topical concerns such as power, authority, knowledge, education and youth. In Argentina, still emerging from a period of oppressive dictatorship, it is easy to see why the story of a despotic authority figure and a bunch of rebellious students, portrayed through the acerbic and anarchic lens of clowning, would be well received. In Colombia, given the conditions of conflict just at the time that Escuela de Payasos

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featured in the inaugural Iberoamericano, it produced a different resonance, though no less impactful. In fact it fitted perfectly with Fanny Mickey’s declaration that the festival would be an ‘act of faith’ and would ‘stimulate hope’ in relation to Colombia’s current circumstances, since it both allowed for a reflexive critical interpretation of the dynamics of power and violence, but also presented a positive and celebratory image of the potential of the new generation to overcome the injustices of history. The participation of El Clu del Claun in the first-ever Iberoamericano, then, was a significant moment that was to have deep and lasting implications for the evolution of clowning in Colombia. El Clu del Claun was one of a number of foreign groups and artists whose presence in Bogotá over a period of more than a decade stimulated the emergence of a new style of theatrical clowning in Colombia that sought both to emulate the international movement but also to mould it to its own social and cultural contours. Many Colombian groups and artists have been influenced by El Clu del Claun, not only the production of Escuela de Payasos in 1988 but also the workshop taught by one of its members, Hernán Gené, in Bogotá nine years later. The founders of the group Ku Klux Klown, to which I now turn my attention, were particularly inspired by Gené’s approach to clown theatre, though of course their work reflected a much wider range of influences, both local and global.

Ku Klux Klown and clown violence Two important facts should immediately be noted in relation to Ku Klux Klown’s provocative choice of company name: its similarity to El Clu del Claun, and its parodic allusion to the American white supremacist organisation. The first point reflects an important point of origin and stylistic inspiration, while the second is suggestive



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of the group’s insatiable appetite for mining socially controversial terrain using an aesthetic that repeatedly scours the more repugnant aspects of society’s underbelly. Mario Escobar, co-founder of Ku Klux Klown, left his native town of El Doncello in Caquetá and came to Bogotá at the age of 17 with the intent to study theatre.5 There he met Fernando Rojas and four other performers, all of whom had studied at one of the two main drama schools of Bogotá: ENAD (Escuela Nacional de Artes Dramáticos) and ASAB (Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá), and together they formed a new company, Flores y Tomates (Flowers and Tomatoes). At this time their guiding influence was not that of clown but corporeal mime, specifically under the tutelage of Colombian mime artists, Edilberto Monje and Hernán Santiago Martínez, who had both studied with Étienne Decroux in France. During this time Mario made his living performing as a mime and living statue in prominent public spaces around the city. Flores y Tomates’ first show, Ahogamientos (Drowning), was literally an exploration of different ways of drowning, setting the tone for what would become Escobar and Rojas’s signature obsession with violence and the macabre. Stylistically, the show was grounded in the mime techniques they had learned with Monje and Martínez but already at this stage incorporated aspects of clown they had picked up informally, for example by watching clown theatre shows at the Iberoamericano. In 1997 Escobar and Rojas took a week-long workshop with Hernán Gené of El Clu del Claun at the National Theatre in Bogotá, an experience which fanned the flames of a growing attraction towards the clown aesthetic and a suspicion that it would provide them with a more visceral and direct medium through which to explore dark and controversial social themes. This shift of focus led to disagreements over the artistic direction of Flores y Tomates and later that year Escobar and Rojas broke

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away from the rest of the group to found Ku Klux Klown. However, despite the reference to clowning in their new company name, they still considered themselves primarily a theatre company rather than a clown company. Consistent with the approach of Hernán Gené and El Clu del Claun, they saw themselves as theatre artists using clown as a creative tool, a particular approach to character construction, rather than as clown artists per se.6 This distinction was a crucial aspect of the new wave of clowning. Just as El Clu del Claun had felt the need to justify the validity of their art by associating themselves with the theatre and disassociating themselves with the circus payaso, so Ku Klux Klown articulated a manifesto for their particular blend of clown and theatre, focusing on three underlying principles that avoid any explicit reference to clowning: the use of dramatic narrative; presence or being ‘in the moment’; and a sense of the ridiculous. The first of these most clearly grounded the company in a theatrical tradition. The second, as well as referencing an important aspect of clown technique (the clown’s presence), also expressed the need the company felt to speak about what was all around them, that which could not and must not be ignored, a dogged and unflinching pursuit of truth. Thirdly, their interest in the ridiculous reveals their interest in exploring the extremes of life, the surreal, the dark and the absurd, for which the art of clowning is ideally suited. In my interviews with Escobar, he explicitly distanced himself from any political position or overt didacticism, just as El Clu del Claun had done. Nevertheless, it was apparent that his first-hand experiences of the conflict as a child were influential in his development as a theatre artist, providing context and fuel for his pervasive interest in death and violence. Caquetá, the department in which Escobar grew up, had been a FARC7 stronghold since the 1980s, an epicentre of conflict between guerrilla, paramilitary and state forces that was also heavily complicated by the economic dependency of illegal armed groups on cocaine production and trafficking in the region. As a young boy he



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remembers witnessing piles of dead bodies, victims of the conflict, near where he lived. As an artist he felt it impossible to ignore the reality of senseless violence and the horrific nature of the conflict that he had been exposed to from an early age. But clowning finally provided a medium through which he could respond to such real-life extremities through an art form that itself thrived on extremity. Ku Klux Klown’s great success has been founded upon their ability to tackle the most macabre of topics head on, leaving little to the imagination. At first, the laughter produced by depictions of the most cruel and unusual forms of death, taken to ridiculous extremes, even took Mario and Fernando by surprise. ‘It was never our intention while on stage to make people laugh,’ Mario explains, yet paradoxically, ‘the more violence we put in the shows, the more laughter we got.’ This unexpected result led to the company’s guiding philosophy: ‘we said that our plays should make people laugh so that they wouldn’t cry.’ Thus, Ku Klux Klown’s work embraced the humourous potential of unflinchingly representing the gruesome extremities that were right in front of them, not only naming them but pointing out their innate ridiculousness. A case in point is Ku Klux Klown’s first production, El Krímen: Historias del Desiquilibrio (Crime: Tales of Inequality), which tells the story of a young clown who falls in love with a beautiful girl. The girl’s father does not approve of the match because he dislikes clowns. He agrees to give the payaso a chance, however. All he has to do is make the father laugh and he will be permitted to marry the daughter. The clown tries every trick and joke he knows but fails to make him laugh. Finally the father shoots the payaso. Clowns and clowning are exploited at many levels in El Krímen. First, at the level of theme and character, a clown is the subject of the action. That is, one of the characters within the world of the drama is actually a clown. This kind of reflexivity became characteristic of Ku Klux Klown’s work and clown characters made appearances in several

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of their shows. Yet Fernando Rojas, who played the part of the clown, was not simply playing a character who happened to be a clown. He also mobilized elements of clown technique, both traditional and contemporary, in his performance. The script, for example, incorporated traditional clown gags and routines while also leaving space for moments of spontaneity and improvisation with the audience. In one scene, for example, he attempts to sit down in a tiny chair. After many ridiculous and failed attempts, he sees a string hanging from the ceiling. He pulls it and the lights go off. A few seconds later they come back on again and he is inexplicably sitting in the chair, staring at the audience. In being shown these scenes, the audience is in effect put in the position of the father and asked to judge whether or not they are funny. Their judgement, however, does not alter the end result and the clown dies whether or not they find it funny, implying perhaps the powerlessness of comedy in the face of certain arbitrary and oppressive forces represented by the father. In addition to these explicit, self-conscious references to the genre and the practice of clowning, Ku Klux Klown’s work also adopted a particular view of clown performance that resonated with that of El Clu del Claun, as Escobar explained: ‘the clown is a character that the actor-creator constructs from a starting point of personal intimacy. In it, the actor presents to the spectator his transparency, his nakedness, his availability, his ingenuity.’ While the clown character in El Krímen was clearly a payaso – that is, reminiscent of the traditional circus clown – Escobar uses the word clown when describing the process by which the actor exposes aspects of his or her own identity through the character. A distinction is thus drawn between the payaso, when referring to the clown character within the drama, and clown, when referring to the performance techniques used by the company. This distinction is characteristic of the elitism implicit in the new wave of clown theatre, which, as described above, simultaneously devalued historical clown archetypes associated with circus and



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popular entertainment while elevating the more refined theatrical clown technique associated with the European and North American culture. As was the case with El Clu del Claun, the seeming neutrality of elements of clown technique, and even the explicit rejection of didacticism does not mean that the play itself lacks political resonance and social critique. The subtitle of the piece, Tales of Imbalance or Tales of Inequality, provides a clue here as to the political metaphor at work. While the violent and aggressive father character is not explicitly associated with any real armed or political group, his use of force to exercise control, disguised as protecting his daughter, serves to satirize a prevalent discourse in the conflict that couches violence within a rhetoric of defence and security. While the company never makes such a critique explicit, the intention to make a political and social intervention with their work is unmistakeable in the tone of Ku Klux Klown’s publicity materials: Our inspiration is based in the personal need to discover laughter in tragedy, to affirm that a society like ours, perverted, lacking dignified leaders, where everything is possible except justice, can exorcize its crimes and its madness with laughter.

This particular phase of development came full circle in 1998 when Ku Klux Klown presented El Krímen at the Iberoamericano festival, exactly ten years after they had seen El Clu del Claun performing Escuela de Payasos. Over the course of those ten years, not only had clown theatre – originally introduced by foreign companies – been assimilated by the Colombian cultural elite as a legitimate dramatic form, but now it was considered that Colombia itself had developed the art form to the requisite standard to be presented on the same platform. The company, meanwhile, retained an ironically self-deprecating tone in their programme note, explicitly rejecting the optimistic tone sometimes applied to theatre in Colombia and

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perhaps directly critiquing the kind of romanticizing rhetoric that Fanny Mickey had used in the first Iberoamericano: For some people this is a sad story. Other will think it is repulsive, which does not shame the company in the slightest because we know that it is only in our ability to laugh at one’s own sad human situation that we can find the strength to survive amidst such pig shit. Warning: this plays does not offer hope. It only provides laughter. (Reyes 1998: 162)

After the success of El Krímen, Ku Klux Klown went on to explore similar themes in a follow-up production, Krímenes Doméstikos (2000), a production which garnered great critical acclaim and sustained the company financially for several years. During this period Ku Klux Klown established a growing reputation for innovation and excellence in the emergent field of clown theatre. While they continued to reflect aspects of clown theatre that El Clu del Claun pioneered throughout the continent – the embedding of clown within a dramatic narrative, the use of clowning as an acting technique and the politically satirical tone – the Colombian company also developed its own identity, rooted in the unapologetic and comically grotesque rendering of violence. Escobar and Rojas became sought after as teachers. Escobar taught clown at ASAB (Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá) and Rojas established his own independent clown school. Just as El Clu del Claun had inspired and influenced Ku Klux Klown in the 1990s, the latter, through its productions and teaching, began to influence a new generation of emerging Colombian theatre artists in the 2000s. While the company itself disbanded in 2010, both Escobar and Rojas continue to operate successful clown-based theatre companies. The lasting influence of Ku Klux Klown can be detected in the work of companies such as La Troupe, whose artistic director, Diego Figueroa, studied clown with Escobar at ASAB.



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Figueroa later invited him to be a mentor and adviser in the creation of El Viaje, which owes a clear debt to the aesthetics of both Ku Klux Klown and El Clu del Claun. La Troupe’s production also employed a dramatic narrative, clown ‘characters’, an engagement with the here and now of social reality, and a keen sense of the ridiculous, though it tended more towards the comical slapstick of Escuela de Payasos than the macabre violence of El Krímen. La Troupe’s performance at the 2012 Iberoamericano engaged in what García Canclini calls the ‘game of echoes’ or the ‘circularity of the communicational and the urban’ (1995: 212). The red noses in the audience were reflected in the red noses on stage and vice versa, bouncing back and forth in an endless reverberation. It neatly sums up the theoretical journey of this chapter, then, by demonstrating how clowning has become a social performance inextricably entwined with a broader set of social and economic concerns that have both given it new life and threatened its raison d’être. In fact all three productions described in this chapter are linked by this self-reflexive thematic concern with clowning itself. Escuela de Payasos suggested that traditional clowning was dying and needed to be resuscitated or replaced, made relevant and modern once again. In El Krímen, clowning of all kinds literally perishes in the face of overwhelming forces. El Viaje, finally, critiques the popularization of the clown and its reduction to pure commercialism. In all three, clowns are seen to be struggling indefatigably withstand social trends, political forces and economic pressures. Yet, particularly in the Colombian performances, there are troubling signs that the clowns are not winning and that they are, often, overwhelmed by fashions of the moment. This brief history, then, establishes the landscape of contemporary clowning in Colombia as a battleground in which outcomes are subject to continual review and reassessment. Clowning and clowns reveal themselves to be, just as Handelman suggested, ‘the very stuff of motion and flux, of the potential for dissolution’ (1981: 345).

4

Neo-Clowns: Culture, Citizenship and Public Space

December 1995 It is rush hour in central Bogotá.1 On Calle 19 three solid lanes of growling, spluttering buses chunter down the hill towards the intersection with Carrera 7 while motorbikes and small yellow taxis buzz around them like flies. At the intersection, contained by traffic on one side and a string of cafés and sweet stalls on the other, a crowd of pedestrians jostles and grows, threatening to spill out onto the road. Those who cannot wait for the lights to change make a dash, navigating the brief gaps between the cars and buses, whose drivers, safely encased in steel, flagrantly ignore them. The only signs of law and order are the punctilious traffic lights, outposts of a distant and invisible authority, working overtime to regulate the competing, yet evidently unequal rights of human and vehicular traffic. Whenever the lights turn red, this seemingly unstoppable phalanx of motorized steel and glass screeches to a halt, sometimes before and sometimes right over the faded blackand-white zebra crossing that supposedly protects the pedestrians’ passage across this treacherous expanse of asphalt. Then they are forced to weave a path between and around the offending vehicles to reach the other side. Such is the custom and routine on these streets, where vehicles rule and pedestrians must obey. On one occasion, just as the lights on Calle 19 turn red, the swelling pool of pedestrians bursts out into the road, unaware of the bus honking loudly and accelerating towards the intersection and straight towards

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them. They jump instinctively back out of the way. Simultaneously the bus emits a high-pitched squeal and comes to a lurching halt directly over the zebra crossing, its nose poking dangerously out into the intersection. The pedestrians, their path completely blocked, shout and wave indignantly at the bus driver, who honks his horn and gesticulates at the powerless foot traffic at his door. The war of words and gestures escalates, and nobody can proceed. A few of the crowd begin whistling at the driver, who defiantly pulls out a newspaper and ignores them. Just at that moment a curious figure cuts through the crowd and strides out into the road. He is dressed in black tails with an extravagantly embroidered vest over a red-and-white polkadot shirt and a blue bow tie. His face is painted completely white except for black diamonds on his eyelids and thick black painted eyebrows. As the incongruous individual marches confidently into the middle of the intersection, a motley procession of similarly dressed characters emerges from the crowd behind, dancing and playing a variety of musical instruments. The mime-clowns – as they appear to be – stand in formation in front of the bus while the leader, feet planted wide, hands on hips, stares at the driver with an expression of exaggerated defiance.2 Just feet from the windscreen, the clown performs a mimed reenactment of driver’s recent actions: accelerating, slamming on the brakes, honking his horn and then finally pulling out the newspaper. Mimicry turns to overt ridicule, as the clown portrays the driver picking his nose, filing his fingernails and combing his hair. Seeing his efforts are having no effect, the clown rolls up his sleeves, flexes his muscles and attempts to push the bus back off the zebra crossing. He takes an imaginary bottle of pills from his pocket, swallows a couple and then tries again. His struggle to shift the bus becomes ever more ridiculous. Finally, in an act of futile desperation, he kneels down and clenches his hands together as if in prayer. Meanwhile, the pedestrians have been following the whole performance, laughing and cheering in support of the clown’s cause. By the



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time he is on his knees praying, the driver’s stony-faced countenance has also relaxed and he is laughing along with everybody else. He holds his hands up in mock surrender and then slowly reverses the bus off the zebra crossing. With the bus safely out of the way, the clown claps his hands in delight and gestures grandly to the pedestrians to cross. They applaud as they pass and he takes a bow. The troupe plays a celebratory tune and together they merge back into the crowd. A few minutes later, at the same intersection, a taxi overshoots the zebra crossing and again the way is blocked. The same musical procession ensues and the clown steps out. But this time, despite the keenly observed mimicry and ridicule, the driver fails to budge. At this moment, another character makes a sudden and unexpected entrance. Instantly recognizable from his khaki uniform and fluorescent jacket, a police officer walks up to the taxi driver’s window and issues a fine for violating traffic regulations. The onlookers laugh and applaud again, but for different reasons. And by the time the lights turn and the traffic moves away, the clowns and the police officer have vanished into the crowd again, where they lie in wait for the next misdemeanour.

Mockus and cultural citizenship During the nineties Bogotá went through a radical urban transformation that led to tangible improvements for vast swathes of the population. Andres de Guevara notes that in 1992 Bogotá was ‘a dirty city, disorganized, with a chaotic system of transportation, parks covered with garbage, wild grass, a no-man’s land with a police force that was better to avoid’ (2001: 96). By 2000 the city had reinvented itself as an ordered and modern metropolis, embracing both vastly increased safety and a range of new cultural amenities. In 1993 the homicide rate in Bogotá was 81 per 100,000 inhabitants; by 2002 the rate had dropped to 30 (Melo 2009: 108). During the same period

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traffic fatalities in the city also halved, falling from 1,300 to 745 (Rojas 2004: 314). At the same time, new bike paths, libraries, bridges, parks, music and theatre festivals awoke a new generation to the possibilities of enjoying their city like never before. During the 1990s, Cristina Rojas claims, Bogotá was ‘highly innovative in its pedagogical and communication strategies, and in its approaches to culture’ (2004: 291), a fact which owed much to a succession of independent mayors elected during that period: Antanas Mockus (1995–7), Enrique Peñalosa (1998–2000) and then Mockus again (2001–3). Crucially, in the manifestos of Mockus and Peñalosa, culture was seen as a channel through which to achieve social change. As Mockus himself stated, ‘a conscious modification of habits and community beliefs are a crucial component of public management and a common agenda of governments and civil society’ (Mockus 2001: 1, my italics). The 1991 Constitution, discussed in Chapter 3, provided the framework for this cultural transformation. First, it opened up the field of potential mayoral candidates and demanded a much higher level of transparency and accountability in their campaigns, paving the way for the election of independent ‘civic’ mayors such as Mockus and Peñalosa. Secondly, it advocated the idea of ‘citizen participation’ in economic, political and administrative spheres, in response to a perceived crisis of democracy and a public disenchantment with the monopoly of the conservative and liberal parties. The public’s perception of its own role and responsibility in the democratic process was seen as central to any proposed social change. Thus, cultural approaches were threaded through the administrations of both iconoclastic mayors: in Mockus’s diverse ‘cultural citizenship’ policies and in Peñalosa’s initiatives to reclaim ‘public space’. While on one level these were both strategies for achieving social transformation by altering citizens’ relationship to and perception of the city, they were also evidence of a new mode of governance associated with the global evolution of neoliberalism in



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the 1990s. In fact they were particulary good examples of what Craig and Porter have termed ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ (2006: 2), glossed by Maurya Wickstrom as ‘the softening of neoliberalism into social partnership initiatives’ (2012: 6). Mockus’s ‘cultural citizenship’ approach was built upon the conviction that citizens could, given the right stimulus, effectively regulate their own behaviour. Drawing on the theories of sociologist Douglas North, he argued that conflict and violence resulted from a disconnect between three types of behavioural regulation: legal, moral and cultural. In an ideal society, there is harmony between the three and thus auto-regulation of behaviour occurs with little outside coercion or incentivization. But when there is a contradiction, say because certain types of illegal behaviour are culturally encouraged or felt to be morally justified, auto-regulation breaks down and official deterrents such as the threat of punishment or fear of intimidation become increasingly relied upon as means of social control. Mockus felt that the best way to bring the three regulatory forces back into alignment was by manipulating cultural understandings, since these are relatively flexible compared to legal and moral norms. A university professor, who had studied philosophy, mathematics and economics, Mockus understood at a profound level how culture – people’s everyday behaviours as well as their understandings, values and beliefs – was not inherited and reproduced in a static form but rather evolved and mutated through everyday social interactions. If culture is thus conceived as an ensemble of communicative acts, or as Rojas puts it, ‘the result of social interactions between citizens and between citizens and public institutions’ (2004: 293), it follows that it is manipulable through specific communicative strategies ‘intended to create a feeling of belonging, facilitate coexistence in the urban space and leading to respect for collective goods and recognition of citizens’ rights and duties’ (Mockus 2001: 3). ‘Intensified communication’ was the term Mockus used to describe

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his cultural interventions, a heightened form of interaction that was ‘more intense, more intimate, more face-to-face, [that] could in effect help to reduce violence and contribute to the reduction of the distance between cultural and juridical regulation’ (Mockus 2001: 8). Crucially, these interventions had to be channelled through ‘forms that were innovative, attractive, and of high visual or psychological impact’ (2001: 7), hence Mockus often harnessed social media and free press to disseminate his ideas rather than paying for corporatestyle marketing campaigns. The notion of ‘intensified communication’ informed nearly all of Mockus’s iconoclastic reforms and initiatives, many of which are still talked about today. The infamous Ley Zanahoria (Carrot Law) restricted the opening hours of bars and nightclubs in an attempt to reduce high levels of alcohol-related domestic violence and traffic accidents. Rather than use punitive measures to enforce the restriction, Mockus created a multifaceted communication strategy that encouraged a change of attitude to late-night drinking. Ley Zanahoria was a deliberate play on words, since as well as meaning ‘carrot’, zanahoria was also a pejorative slang expression for a person who does not like to drink or party (i.e. a ‘square’). Relying on a strategically informal PR campaign, real carrots, drawings and images of carrots, alcohol-free carrot cocktails, carrot-wielding government officials, verbal games and jokes around the word carrot, carrot references of all kinds flooded the media and wormed their way into the public discourse. The negative associations of the word began to shift as it took on a new connotation of personal and collective responsibility. As Mockus explains, ‘to be zanahorio consists of following your own conscience instead of folding under the social pressure to act counter to your conscience or to the law’ (2001: 23). When the Ley Zanahoria seemed to be taking effect and the number of fatalities was seen to be reducing, Mockus took the controversial step of extending opening hours to 3 a.m. and let it be



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known that this was an act of trust and confidence in the capacity of drinkers to control themselves. The evidence suggests that the improvements continued. The effectiveness of the Ley Zanahoria is a clear example of Mockus’s conviction that altering ‘habits and community beliefs’ (i.e. culture) could effectively underwrite a dramatic social change. While ‘cultural citizenship’ embraced a broad range of behavioural habits and communicative symbols, Mockus also recognized the value of culture in more artistically structured forms: ‘it’s about improving the capacity for expression, understanding and interpretation via art, culture, recreation and sport’ (Mockus 2009: 11). Rap a la Torta, Rap and Roll and Rock al parque were just a few of the festival-like events engineered by Mockus’s administration that explicitly sought to promote a politics of tolerance and coexistence by means of music, for example. Foreshadowing Peñalosa’s more overt championing of public space, Mockus’s administration also introduced the Septimazo, in which a long stretch of Carrera 7 was closed to traffic once a week for an evening of semi-organized, semi-spontaneous festivity, music, street theatre and storytelling, which survived for sixteen years.3 While some of Mockus’s cultural citizenship initiatives used cultural forms as a means to directly communicate a message, others tended to work more indirectly as a means of cultivating a sense of inclusion, cooperation and belonging. There were projects, however, that tended to blur these boundaries, where cultural interventions served both to entertain and to teach, where performers or cultural symbols had a clear social message but also seemed to provide an enjoyable collective experience, often in public space and often utilizing the unifying power of laughter. The army of 400 mime-clown performers he installed on the streets in 1995, ostensibly to enforce proper use of zebra crossings, later emulated in Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, is perhaps the most iconic example of Mockus’s clownish blending of efficacy and entertainment.4

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Hegemonic humour Antanas Mockus, the former mayor of Bogotá, glanced around the room as he tried to think of an appropriate way to answer my question, ‘how did you come up with the idea of using clowns to enforce traffic laws?’ I could see a slight sparkle in his eyes as he looked back at me and began tracing a circuitous intellectual pathway that took in Heidegger, Kant, Marx and Bourdieu, as well as his intellectual mentors Douglas North, Basil Bernstein and Jurgen Habermas, peppering the narrative with colourful personal anecdotes such as that of his wedding, which took place in a circus ring. He was unlike any politician I had encountered, more interested in the pleasurable interweaving of theoretical threads than promoting or defending a particular ideology. Some of these theories I had already encountered in Mockus’s writing, but it seemed to me as though new connections were being forged even as he spoke and it was sometimes hard to follow his train of thought as he jumped unexpectedly between highlevel concepts and mischievous anecdotes. Finally, his appetite for philosophical virtuosity apparently sated, he answered my question very directly: We had reached a point of crisis, where nobody had any confidence in the police. Mimes attracted me straight away because they represented an authority that was doubly non-violent, pacific. First because they don’t use weapons. They work without touching the other. And secondly because they don’t talk. And as you might have noticed in Colombia we like to talk.5

Using Turner’s social drama model, elaborated in Chapter 3, we might thus see the insertion of the mime-clowns into the urban landscape as a kind of ‘redressive action’ aimed a tackling a social crisis (1982: 71). It invoked a liminal state in which normal proceedings were suspended and new possibilities envisioned. The mime-clowns’ behaviour might be seen as a symbolic inversion of that expected of



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the police and other, often corrupt, authority figures, but it also transgressed social boundaries of normal behaviour in the streets. Many people old enough to remember speak of the initiative as a welcome and diverting episode in their city’s history, albeit a temporary one. Converting the zebra crossing into a temporary stage, they transformed a busy and stressful rush-hour routine into a space of fun, laughter and entertainment. But, despite the symbolic inversion, social transgression and pure entertainment value of the mime-clowns, Mockus acknowledges that they nevertheless ‘represented an authority’. Was one representative of authority – the police – therefore simply being replaced by another, apparently more benign but implicitly bound to the same power source? In fact, was the weapon of ridicule being appropriated here to enforce a social agenda, barely disguised by the mask of innocent entertainment? It was suggested in Chapter 2 that clowns’ social agendas, whether critical or conservative, may be partially masked or concealed within an envelope of seemingly innocent joking. The joking is not incidental, but may rather be instrumental to the social objective, giving the performance impunity to ‘disclaim what it articulates’ (Prentki 2012: 1). Indeed there was a double edge to the mime-clowns’ mimicry: it provided a fun, transgressive and incongruous alternative to everyday normality, entertaining drivers and pedestrians; but it also punitively ridiculed a wrong-doer by inducing a laughter of superiority. The laughter of the pedestrians on the pavement was directed at the bus driver, who was the butt (or object) of the clown’s mimicry. The pedagogical intention of the intervention was, according to Mockus, to ‘use shame as an educative weapon’ in order to ‘instruct citizens of Bogotá – without words or yells – how to respect the conventions of pedestrian and vehicular traffic’ (2001: 10). The socially corrective force of laughter and the link between humour and discipline has been a much-repeated theme in the

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history of humour theory. As John Morreal bluntly puts it ‘humor is one of the most effective weapons in the repertory of the human mind’ (1987: 256). Mockus’s mime-clowns served as an educative weapon in two respects: both to punish wrong-doers and to deter spectators from future infringements. According to official figures, the number of drivers who obeyed the traffic lights rose from 26.2 per cent in 1995 to 38 per cent in 1996 (Mockus 2001: 11). Yet, it is important to note that the mime-clowns were not acting alone: When the driver did not move back in response to the friendly and playful invitation of the mime, the transit police intervened. The people applauded the actions of the police officer who imposed the fine. Thus, police repression was the last resort in pedagogically ordered sequence, and thanks to the clear reading of the situation, and the social support of sanctions, the pedagogical effect was reinforced. (Mockus 2001: 14)

The mime-clowns and police were clearly operating in tandem, not in opposition. The applause of the people for the actions of the police officer suggests that not only did the mime-clowns’ pedagogical sanction help to reduce traffic violations, but their ‘friendly and playful’ demeanour also had the effect of generating solidarity and unity between the police and the people, where previously there had existed distrust and cynicism. The evidence that this really happened is anecdotal, but Mockus’s words suggest that the mimeclowns were consistent with a broader public relations exercise in which the intention was to build such alliances, so evocative of what Wickstrom called ‘social partnership initiatives’ (2012: 6). The example, set by Mockus and followed by other political and corporate bodies over the following twenty years, demands a deeper reflection on the relationship of clowning, society and power. In his book Clowning as Critical Practice, William Mitchell aptly describes the type of power wielded by clowns as ‘hegemonic humor’



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(1992: 22). Such humour may be critical of established values, but more typically it is a sanction against deviation and a way of imposing moral order: ‘Mocking laughter – even when expressed gently – is a political act of ridicule against a person whose actions are rebuked’ (1992: 22). Thus, Mitchell argues, clowning may be ‘an abettor of cultural reproduction’, since it ‘ridicules and parodies deviations from the norm’ (1992: 24). This interpretation might do well as an explanation for the effectiveness of Mockus’s mime-clowns. However, according to Mitchell, ‘hegemonic humor’ is not always of a conservative, preservative ilk: A hegemonic clowning performance may be subversive or conservative; the former when it ridicules culturally accepted practices, persons, and ideas, the latter when it ridicules the culturally unacceptable. Both are representations of clowning as critical practice. (1992: 24)

The clown’s capacity for critique is not politically predetermined, therefore. Indeed its political orientation and effect may often be ambiguous. The clown’s act of ridicule, as we are seeing, support existing power arrangements by enacting in a safe frame what is considered off-limits. But, says Mitchell, it is not easy to know the long-term effects of subversive clowning, which may ‘persist in the memory as images of difference that continue to challenge the known and the now’ (1992: 25). Meanwhile, the practice of critical mockery, aimed specifically at authority itself (or authoritative ideas) ‘is not necessarily a futile exercise but may be a harbinger of creative change’ (1992: 25). The notion of ‘hegemonic clowning’ reminds us that clowning is indeed a social phenomenon. It may be critical or supportive of the status quo, or it may be both, in different moments and for different people. The importance of Mitchell’s theorization is that it predicts a complex interlacing of ‘subversive’ and ‘conservative’ elements,

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which is particularly apt for considering the curious role of clowning within shifting networks of power in the contemporary Latin American city. It also emphasizes the importance of a historical perspective: effects may occur immediately or over many years or centuries. While the conservative effects of clowning tend to be more visible in the short term, social change may only become apparent in the long term, through a slow drip or a gradual ‘chipping away’ at convention that takes time and must be in concert with other social and economic movements. Mitchell recognizes the limits of clowns’ real ability to transform society: ‘I am not implying that subversive clowning alone can create revolutions in the social order’ (1992: 25). After all, ‘clowns are not kings in terms of political clout’, he reminds us (1992: 19). But the example of Mockus collapses this binary distinction between kings and clowns. For Mockus was considered – and still is considered – somewhat of a clown himself. Yet he was also a mayor with considerable political influence. Structuralist explanations are not adequate to describe the function and meaning of clowning within the neoliberal urban context, where power is itself is often diffused and ambiguous. The peculiar conjoining of clowning and power that Mockus himself internalized is suggestive of precisely the ambivalence of ‘hegemonic humor’. While Mockus’s adoption of a clownish attitude in the political sphere certainly had transformative effects in the immediate urban reality, it also set up an intriguing possibility for long-term change of a more profound and structural nature.



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Symbolic violence and Mockus’s moon In October 1993, when Mockus was Dean of the National University, the campus was a scene of daily protests by radicalized Marxist students, who denounced him for having connections to rightwing politicians. On one notorious occasion, when he and senior colleagues tried to address students in the Leon de Grieff auditorium, they booed and whistled and would not let him even speak. Grainy video footage of the event, still accessible on YouTube, shows students hurling live fireworks at the stage, while Mockus stands silent and impassive.6 The footage then shows Mockus unbuckling his belt with complete calm and composure, pulling down his trousers and underwear, turning around and finally bending over to ‘moon’ the audience for several seconds. Mockus’s impulsive and defiant ‘moon’, recorded and broadcast on national television, was exemplary of what Turner has called the breach: ‘the infraction of a rule of morality, law, custom or etiquette in some public arena […] Once visible, it can hardly be revoked’ (1982: 70). Dramatically transgressing the most basic social norms, in particular the behaviour expected of a university dean, the act fatally undermined his position of authority and he was forced to resign. Yet while shockingly self-destructive in its immediate aftermath, it contained the seed of something so unexpected and irreverent that it might be considered an example of everyday or social clowning that critiqued and deconstructed authority, albeit his own. In particular it was a moment of performative excess that connected incongruous ideas and redefined cultural perceptions: I think the feeling was very similar to when one becomes very violent. Maybe murderers feel like this. They can’t take the humiliation. They have to do something. What I did was to connect two extremes: extreme contempt and extreme submission.7

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This connecting of extremes, ‘extreme contempt and extreme submission’, suggests the ambivalence of the act as a moment of ‘hegemonic humor’ (Mitchell 1992: 22). For while its shocking transgression had reactionary short-term effects (e.g. Mockus’s resignation), it also created new possibilities through the sudden collapsing of boundaries that Freud associates with certain jokes, in which ‘new and unexpected unities are set up, relations of ideas to one another, definitions made mutually or by reference to a common third element’ (1960: 66). After the initial uproar around the ‘moon’ had died down, its associations, like the zanahoria, began to mutate: ‘There was a paradox’, Mockus explained to me. ‘When I transgressed the cultural code the reaction, the punishment, was immediate. But afterward people got curious and started to ask me why I did it.’ People began to see him as a symbol of honesty, very different from politicians they had known, and influential friends encouraged him to run for mayor. He entered the race at a late stage and beat Enrique Peñalosa, the populist front-runner, by a landslide in October 1994. True to his electoral pledge, Mockus appointed academics and thinkers who were outside the ring of corrupt self-interest that had previously dominated the administration. Surrounded by like-minded progressive individuals, Mockus was then able to enact the kinds of social experiments he dreamed of, which in turn generated a phase of unprecedented urban transformation. A propensity to surprise and delight is evident in many of Mockus’s iconoclastic ideas for how to manage the city, often seen initially as jokes, suggesting his predilection for short-circuiting logic and shifting cultural frames. His absurd ideas and clownish acts in all these cases tended to create sensations. But they also critically questioned the nature of authority, shaking up conventional binaries associated with discourses of domination and power. In speaking of the ‘moon’ incident some years later, Mockus



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described it as an example of ‘symbolic violence’ which, he says, is defensible as long as it ‘does not cause physical hurt or trigger violence, and generates a positive pedagogical outcome’ (Mockus 1998). The term ‘symbolic violence’ was borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu, who described it as ‘a gentle violence, imperceptible and invisible even to its victims, exerted for the most part through the purely symbolic channels of communication and cognition (more precisely, misrecognition), recognition, or even feeling’ (2001: 1–2). In particular, Bourdieu stresses that the effects of symbolic violence are as real and dangerous as other forms, often working to justify and legitimate oppression by convincing ordinary people – through symbolic means – to internalize and therefore collude in their own domination, to misrecognize it as part of the natural order of things rather than recognize it for what it is. Significantly, Simon Springer notes that ‘neoliberalism is symbolic violence par excellence’ (Springer 2010: 943), because of the way that the neoliberal discourse of good governance and social partnership distracts our attention away from the true imperialist agenda of restructuring markets in order to facilitate the amassing of capital. Did Mockus have this rather insidious idea in mind when he spoke of ‘symbolic violence’? Was he suggesting that his own cultural strategies were covertly legitimating certain forms of authority? Were Mockus’s clown spectacles distractions, misdirecting our attention away from the darker operations of power? In some ways this seems consistent with the ethos of ‘cultural citizenship’, in which the citizen’s cultural perceptions were manipulated in order to align his or her behaviour with the state’s agenda. But perhaps Mockus’s use of the term is itself another example of his clowning, a cultural mutation that is provocative and controversial because of its initial associations, but that also proposes a new understanding or configuration of meaning: symbolic violence not as a covert form of coercion, but rather an alternative to physical violence that also challenges and exposes the nature of such violence.

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Indeed the ‘moon’ was a parodic response to a physical threat that both rejected the possibility of violence and revealed the humanity that lies within and behind it. Like the mime-clowns, it checked aggressive behaviour in its tracks, cracked open the possibility for humour in an embattled situation and opened up what Mitchell called ‘impossible possibilities that can affect the future’ (1992: 25). Indeed the repercussions of that act continue to affect Colombia in very significant ways. Despite the initially punitive response to the ‘moon’, then, the incident actually paved Mockus’s way to power, suggesting a certain tense collaboration between clowning and power in the late capitalist era, though perhaps his continued tendency to act clownishly paradoxically placed limits on that power. Notwithstanding his populist appeal, he has twice stood in presidential elections (1998 and 2006), failing on both occasions. Nevertheless he continues to be actively involved in politics, heckling from the sidelines, keeping the leaders honest and true in the traditional manner of the court fool. His latest clownish act came on 22 May 2015, when he sent an open letter to President Juan Manuel Santos, ‘confessing’ to having helped members of the FARC guerrilla in the past and offering to receive the same sanctions as the FARC leaders. In the letter, which was clearly aimed at re-energizing a stumbling peace process in Havana, he called on other leaders to confess and accept their punishments as way of allowing the country to move forward. Recognizing the hallmark performance of authenticity, Semana newspaper speculated whether this letter was yet another example of ‘the pedagogical exercises to which Mockus has made the country accustomed’ (La sorprendente confesión 2015). Like all his pedagogical exercises, the short-term effects of the mime-clowns’ hegemonic humour were rather conservative. The aim of the initiative was not only to educate citizens about adherence to traffic law but ultimately, like ‘symbolic violence’, to ‘convert the very same citizens into judges of the offenders’ (Bourdieu 2001:



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10). But, remembering the importance of historicizing the effects of hegemonic humour, what kind of long-term influence did the mimeclowns have? What ‘remembered images’ of their subversive acts have been ‘kept alive as impossible possibilities that can affect the future’ (Mitchell 1992: 25)? During our meandering conversation Mockus hinted at one long-term goal not mentioned in the literature, one that focused on social equality and justice: In discourse there is a certain assumption that we’re all equal. But in the street we’re not all equal, because one of us is protected by a ton of metal. In Colombian society it was important that a project about order and mutual respect should include difference. The mime had to mediate between the more powerful and less powerful. There’s also the advantage that the same driver could become a pedestrian the next day. What we created was a paradigm of social reality that involved sanctions without brutality.

Imagined thus, the zebra crossing constituted a microcosm of a wider encounter between differently empowered subjects. There is an implication here that at the heart of Colombia’s problems lies a structural imbalance that urban improvement alone cannot solve. Mockus’s intention was that by addressing a simple, everyday problem on the streets, he would also be addressing a much deeper and more intractable problem of economic and social inequality. Mockus did much to demonstrate the transformative potential of clowning. His own brand of clownish public life led to dramatic changes in the way the city was administrated. The mime-clowns led to a reduction of traffic violations and deaths. These changes did not have lasting impacts for the most vulnerable in Bogotá or indeed really tackle the deepest structural and economic problems faced by the city. But these are not the only measures of success. Mockus contrived new symbolic languages based on the unimaginable and incongruous that often met with incomprehension because they strained at the limits of our meaningfully bounded culture. His

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actions prompted curiosity and intrigue: ‘why did you do that?’ people wanted to know. But his explanations were also playful and contradictory. They resisted assimilation and interpretation while at the same time demanding confrontations with others. Crucially, used as a sustained communicative strategy, pedagogical or hegemonic humour generates live encounters that occur in the heat of the moment, suggestive of what James Thompson calls ‘a person’s encounter with the face of the other’ (2009: 173). They are performative moments that cause breeches and schisms that may or may not be resolved but nevertheless always demand a response. They have social effects, to be sure. But they also generate ‘affective’ responses of laughter, irritation, anger, gratitude and pleasure, revealing their fundamental playfulness and ambiguity and making them difficult to attach to a clear political agenda or message. According to Thompson, shifting focus from the ‘effects’ of performance to the particular ‘affects’ it awakens, invokes ambiguity as a source of power, because it ‘resists the absorption of the work into problematic discourses (its taming) and keeps meanings deliberately murky’ (2009: 127). The untameable and deliberately murky encounters with others that Mockus generated had precisely this kind of power: a radical relativizing of social norms that first shocks and later transforms, introducing new possibilities where none had previously seemed possible. Displaying one’s naked posterior to a theatre full of aggressive students or putting clowns on the street as an antidote to urban inequality are similarly nonsensical, shocking and transformative acts. Both were thus examples of clowning as social performance that can lead to long-term transformation. A more tangible legacy of the mime-clown project was the flourishing of clowns in public spaces in Bogotá in the post-Mockus era. He was certainly not the first leadership figure to exploit clowns for political purposes. But his suturing of their playful and transformative potential to the conscious shaping of urban citizenship and



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governance was his innovative contribution, and once established, it became a paradigm that lasted beyond his tenure as mayor and even into the 2010s, where it lives on in the work of numerous clown companies such as Buenavista Social Clown. But just as Mockus’s harnessing of clowning was ambiguous in its eventual outcomes, subsequent examples of social clowning in this paradigm were also fraught with tensions and hidden agendas that must be evaluated on an individual basis.

The unknown limit between public and private December 2011 Six clowns in spotless white overalls and red noses arrive in the Parque Nacional (National Park). It is the Sunday before Christmas and the park is overflowing with families, couples and dog-walkers, enjoying the morning sunshine. Running alongside the park, Carrera 7 is shut off to motorized traffic and transformed into a giant cycle path for the weekly ritual of ciclovía. Alongside the road, kiosks with official logos jostle with temporary bike repair stations, unlicensed food stalls, cigarette sellers and shoe-shiners. Everywhere leisure blends with commerce, the authorized with the opportunistic, the corporate with the makeshift. The six performers look around for the ideal spot, mark their territory with a large plastic sheet, of the kind street vendors often use to display their merchandise, and on it lay out an array of musical instruments and other incongruous objects: signs, whistles, balls, jackets. One of the clowns starts to beat out a loud rhythm on a drum, another blows a whistle at passing bikes to catch their attention, while others, wielding shakers and rattles, round up audience members: ‘Tickets please. Step this way, madam, there’s a place reserved specially for you. Best view in the house.’

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After five minutes only a small huddle of perhaps seven or eight has been persuaded to stop, so the clowns encourage them to cheer and applaud, quickly attracting more people. Soon there is a small crowd of nearly twenty curious spectators, which seems to be enough for the clowns, as they lay down their noise-makers and form a chorus line. The clowns grandly announce that they are ‘Buenavista Social Clown’, presenting a show called El Desconocido Limite Entre Lo Publico y Lo Privado (The Unknown Limit Between Public and Private). There is a rapid costume change and two of the clowns turn to the audience dressed in headscarves and eye patches, clutching a giant map and evidently hunting for hidden treasure. After some comical misfires, they discover a giant ‘X’ on the ground. They look at each other, at the audience, back at the ‘X’ and cackle triumphantly. Just then two more clowns enter arm-in-arm, kissing and cooing: a couple in love and looking for their first apartment together. Our two pirates, who have quickly thrown on jackets and ties, accost the young couple, introduce themselves as ‘property developers’ and dazzle them with promises of a soon-to-be-built luxury condominium with a host of attractive amenities, including a ‘private’ children’s playground, ‘private’ parking facilities, and a ‘private’ social room. They present a contract for the couple to sign, but when they try to read it, the disguised ‘pirates’ contrive various ways to prevent them. The couple seem reluctant to sign, so the property developers offer one final enticement: a private shopping mall inside the apartment complex. Delighted, the couple sign the contract without bothering to read it properly and the property developers run away laughing. In the next scene, we skip to the couple’s first night in the new apartment. After some suggestive but comical frolicking under the covers, they try to sleep, but are kept up all night by loud music, which they find out is coming from a party being held in the ‘private’ social room. In the next scene the couple visits the ‘private’ play area, fantasizing about the day that they have a child to bring there. But their romantic reverie is



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rudely interrupted by a street vendor, who tries to interest them in some special products hidden in the inside pockets of his overcoat. Despite the protestations of the couple, the trader refuses to leave, claiming that this is public space and that he has every right to be there. Discouraged, they

Figure 3  Paula Malik of Buenavista Social Clown in El Desconocido Limite Entre Lo Publico y Lo Privado (December 2011).

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decide to go out for a ride in their car and are confronted at the exit by a parking attendant who demands payment. ‘But this is our private car park’, complains the irritated woman. The parking attendant thinks this is a great joke and laughs heartily. Realizing that the dream apartment is not what it appeared to be, the couple tries to contact the property developers but they have mysteriously disappeared. In despair, they call the Defensoría de Espacio Publico (Defender of Public Space), whose number they have seen in an advert. In slow motion, to the Chariots of Fire theme, a caped (and red-nosed) crusader with a corporate logo emblazoned on his chest arrives to save the day. He takes them to the city planning office where they review the contract together and discover, to their dismay, that they have in fact been deceived. What they had been told were ‘private’ amenities were in fact not so. Next time, the superhero warns them, they should be more wary and learn to recognize the line between public and private. The skit is over, but the show concludes with some audience participation. The two ‘pirate’ property developers return and try to convince members of the audience to sign a contract, using the same promise of private amenities. The spectators they approach laugh and refuse the offer, demonstrating to the rest of the audience that they have learned the lesson of the play. By the end of the ten-minute performance, a crowd of over forty has gathered around the playing area. They applaud the clowns, who bow and once again announce the group’s name and the title of the play. The crowd disperses. The company takes a break. Ten minutes later they are once again banging drums and gathering their audience for the next show.

Peñalosa and public space Enrique Peñalosa succeeded Mockus as mayor in 1998. Like his predecessor he challenged the dominance of motorized transport



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in Bogotá and perhaps his most enduring achievement was the consolidation of the ciclovía. Every Sunday, seventy miles of major roads in the capital are closed off to traffic and become a giant cycle route. An army of yellow-jacketed monitors rides along with the two million cyclists, policing the route. Increasingly, the ciclovía is not just about bikes. Aerobics and yoga instructors lead classes, jugglers and acrobats perform, young people sunbathe, walk their dogs, play soccer, on what Peñalosa calls ‘a paved beach’. The concept of the ciclovía, which originated in Colombia, has been exported to cities all over the world, and Peñalosa has been active in promoting its socially democratic impact: ‘When people come together – young and old, and rich and poor, and male and female, and fat and skinny, and tall and short – everybody … then it becomes such a fantastic togetherness, and the complaints go away’ (interviewed in Hernández 2008). This rhetorical claim demonstrates the justification and intention behind Peñalosa’s policy centrepiece: the reclaiming of ‘public space’. Just as Mockus had been interested in levelling power relations between users of the city’s amenities, Peñalosa – dubbed the ‘Egalitarian’ in El Espectador (Baute 2011) – was also concerned with fostering fairness and equality. But while Mockus had used specific forms of ‘intensified communcation’ to achieve social transformations, Peñalosa was ‘a great believer in the power that space has in shaping people’s behaviour and enhancing democracy’ (Rojas 2004: 304). During his administration, he constructed 1,000 public parks, almost 600,000 square metres of walkways, and 120 kilometres of cycle lanes, often protected from the road by concrete bollards. He cleansed San Victorino market, which had been a vast maze of temporary market stalls in the city centre, converting it into a regulated commercial zone (described in Chapter 2) centred around a large open plaza. He demolished a notoriously violent and crimeridden neighbourhood known as El Cartucho and built Parque

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Tercer Milenio in its place. In culturally neglected peripheries of the city, he erected innovatively designed libraries containing toddler playrooms and public theatres. He implemented the Transmilenio, Bogotá’s mass transit system, which has transformed citizens’ ability to move around the city as well as their use of public space. These policies were founded upon similar rhetorics of social justice to those of Mockus, but with the emphasis on the production of a particular kind of public space that would enhance democratic, egalitarian encounters between citizens of all social classes: Parks, plazas, pedestrian streets are essential for social justice. High quality sidewalks are the most basic element for a democratic city. It is frequent that images of high-rises and highways are used to portray a city’s advance. In fact, in urban terms a city is more civilized not when it has highways but when a child on a tricycle is able to move about everywhere with ease and safety. Parks and public space are also important to a democratic society because they are the only places where people meet as equals. (Peñalosa cited in Rojas 2004: 304)

David Harvey questions the assumption of a straightforward relationship between ‘the proper shaping of urban public space and the proper functioning of democratic governance’, strongly rooted in the political imagination through the foundational ideal of the Athenian agora (2005: 17). ‘Public space’, he says, is a discursive construction that interacts with and is often subservient to the movements of capital and, while it suggests inclusiveness, is dependent upon a series of exclusions that may reinforce boundaries of gender, class and race. Harvey describes how the renovation of Paris in the eighteenth century, the demolition of traditional poor neighbourhoods and the creation of new parks, squares and boulevards in their place, reorganized public space for the mundane purpose of ‘facilitating the freer circulation of money, commodities and people (and hence of capital) throughout the spaces of the city’ (2005: 25). Crucially, Harvey critiques the cleansing of public space as part of the defence



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of middle-class private property and ultimately serving the interests of the upper echelons of society. No doubt on one level the building of the Transmilenio and the removal of the chaotic market vendors from San Victorino as well as the drug-dealers from El Cartucho was driven by Peñalosa’s intention to create a more ‘democratic society’. But its effects were more beneficial for some than others. The growing middle classes felt safer and more welcome now in the commercial zones, and of course it also benefited the larger, more legitimate businesses that remained after the cleansing. The opened-up Plaza San Victorino symbolized this new alliance between the middle classes and the commercial sector, providing an unobstructed view of the attractive department stores, inviting and accessible, a short walk from the Transmilenio across a stretch of concrete monitored by armed security guards. It remains a space for consumption, but privileging a more affluent kind of consumer. While Peñalosa describes plazas such as this as ‘places where people meet as equals’, a kind of symbol of civic harmony, the reality is a far more complex blend of conflicting uses and encounters between differently empowered citizens. While for middle-class consumers, for example, it is a transitional space that must be negotiated in order to get somewhere else (the shops, for example), for a plethora of homeless people, hawkers, shoe-shiners and other marginal groups it is a space that must be riskily occupied in order to make a living, while their right to do so is constantly being challenged by the guards who remove them on a daily basis. As Harvey points out, the mixing that went on in the streets of Paris created ‘a sense of insecurity and vulnerability, of bourgeois anxiety behind the turbulent mask of spectacle and commodification’ which led to stricter surveillance of the porous boundaries between the respectable and illegitimate (2005: 29). Policing alone was not enough to enforce the proper usage of public space in Bogotá, and perhaps also did not suit the tone of the era, set by

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Mockus’s playful and non-coercive forms of civic education. The very spirit of Peñalosa’s rhetoric of public space as democratic space required something more participatory, in which the public themselves learned the value of their public space and, crucially, were enlisted in the task of policing it. The Defensoría del Espacio Público was established to fulfil just this task. Created in 1999 under Peñalosa, the Defensoría is a governmental agency whose stated mission is: To contribute to the improvement of quality of life via the effective defence of public space, appropriate administration of real estate, and the construction of a new culture of public space, that guarantees its collective use and enjoyment and stimulates community participation. (Defensoría website)

According to this logic, public space is not just a physical reality to be designed and built, but a ‘culture’ to be constructed and utilized by an unspecified ‘community’. But who is this community? Who precisely gets to construct this new culture and then to use and enjoy it? The words ‘public’ and ‘community’ imply inclusivity and yet behind the seeming neutrality of the Defensoría’s rhetoric there are concealed certain exclusions and implicit social values which begin to define a more specific and limited idea about public space and its legitimate uses. One page on the Defensoría’s website encourages citizens – and provides them with the means – to denounce specific infringements of public space, including illegally parked cars, unsightly trash or debris, physical obstructions such as temporary fences or walls, noise or atmospheric pollution, loitering homeless people, or illegal street vendors. Certain social actors, objects or actions are deemed to threaten the very notion of ‘public space’ and are thus excluded from the contract of ‘community participation’. The Defensoría is thus not only defining and defending a physical space but also defining and defending a set of cultural values



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through its mobilization of public space. Such values overlay and determine the use of public space, scripting performances which in turn produce differentiated social relations. What is more, the citizen is recruited as a partner in the Defensoría’s task of policing public space. The Defensoría has a battery of educational strategies designed precisely to produce this idealized citizen, for example through programmes in schools and clown performances in parks. A closer inspection reveals the way in which Peñalosa’s notion of ‘public space’ functioned to define boundaries and practices which exclude as much as open up. Such boundaries might be advertised as protecting the weak and vulnerable. But boundaries work in two directions. Just as Harvey argued in relation to the reconstruction of Paris, the demarcating and defending of public space also serves to protect and shore up privately owned space, that is to protect and defend wealth, and thus the Defensoría’s intentions begin to look less egalitarian. Before analysing more precisely how Buenavista’s performance supported the Defensoría’s agenda, I will make one final point about the latter’s strategy. The recruitment of the citizens in the task of policing of their own public space is one example of the ‘social partnership initiatives’ that Wickstrom associates with models of neoliberal governance (2012: 6). Here, ‘construction of a new culture of public space’ (Defensoría website) is dependent precisely upon the partnership between citizenry and government. The relationship, again, is symbiotic, since this alliance is required to produce public space that in turn, through its favouring of particular cultural values, serves to reproduce and uphold that alliance. The clown’s ability to soften hard forms of power through humour made it well suited to the job of bringing the public into such an alliance and thus provided the ideal type of performative support to the new ‘inclusive’ brand of neoliberalism. Significantly, this was a different kind of clowning from that of Mockus’s mime-clowns. While the latter drove a pedagogical

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message home using sharp and pointed ridicule that could cut through the chaos of the city street, the clowns hired by the Defensoría used a soft and inclusive form of theatrical clowning that gently but persuasively reinforced cultural values and social distinctions.

The solitude of the clown Judith Segura was one of the performers employed in Mockus’s original mime-clown initiative and she has always been convinced of the social efficacy of clowning: ‘if you can get people laughing, you can teach them almost anything.’8 Ten years later she founded Buenavista Social Clown, a company that generated income streams from three distinct kinds of clowning: artistic, corporate and educational. She has been particularly successful in applying for grants and winning contracts for their corporate and educational work, allowing the group to employ sometimes as many as twenty clowns in the delivery of large-scale projects. In 2011 she responded to the Defensoría del Espacio Público’s call for a theatre-based project to raise awareness about public space with a campaign entitled ‘A espacio público arreglado, hay que mantenerlo cuidado’ (Our public space has been fixed up, now it’s up to us to look after it). The willingness of the Defensoría to embrace clowning as a means to achieve their objectives, Segura suggests, was in part a testament to the enduring legacy of Mockus’s cultural citizenship policies. The idea of clowning as an effective medium for delivering social change was already a familiar concept to politicians and private sector leaders. It took the company a number of years, however, to learn how best to exploit this potential. Buenavista’s first major educational project was undertaken in 2005 for IOM (International Organization for Migration), a global inter-governmental agency that seeks to ‘provide humanitarian



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assistance to migrants in need’ (IOM website). IOM wanted them to dramatize a range of situations in which children were lured into travelling overseas with the promise of work or money, ending up in abusive situations of prostitution, forced labour, organized begging or servile marriage. The show they devised was played entirely in red-nose clown, using a predominantly physical, comedic style, with minimal text. They felt that this approach would be effective in dealing with such harrowing subject matter and connecting with the young audiences they performed to across the country (including the cities of Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, Santa Marta, Tumaco, Putumayo and Qunidío). But early versions of the show produced a disturbing response. While the characters were all played in a clownish style, the audiences seemed to empathize more with the criminals responsible for these deceptions than with their victims. The latter, they theorized, were coming across as naïve and idiotic, inspiring ridicule and condescension rather than connection and empathy. The human traffickers, on the other hand, seemed funny, intelligent and sophisticated. Because the children could not identify with the young victims of the stories, they were naturally not treating the situations as relevant or applicable to themselves. Buenavista had to change their approach and in so doing they drew on a concept they referred to as ‘the solitude of the clown’: In the moment the victim has been tricked, he or she is left alone on stage. And there, in total silence and calm, she looks at the audience and realizes what has happened. This created a beautiful feeling that the whole audience could enter into. (Bachman, Villa and Segura 2009)

This moment of realization, played out for and with the audience, entailing a transformation of extreme suffering into a ‘beautiful feeling’, denoted more than a change of emphasis. Rather it was the beginning of a new stylistic direction, an embracing of a more

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poetic and existential clown that owed much to the influence of Jacques Lecoq and the ‘new wave’ of clowning discussed in Chapter 3. Indeed, the director of this show, Monica Mojica, had herself trained at L’École Jacques Lecoq in 2003/4. Like Mockus, then, Buenavista took advantage of a new movement in clowning, applying it to critical social themes. But while Mockus’s mime-clowns did this through ‘intensified interactions’ that ridiculed wrongdoers in the very moment of their transgression, Buenavista’s strategy was to invite their audience to ‘enter into’ an emotional state or journey through a foundation of empathy and connection between their audience and themselves. Since this initial project Buenavista have become experienced technicians of what might be called ‘clowning for social change’, harnessing stylistic, behavioural and cultural aspects of the clown to communicate messages more effectively, usually on behalf of public and private institutions. Their project evaluation for the Defensoría suggests the extent to which they see clowning as a powerful corporate tool: We are certain that this type of pedagogical action, backed by the playfulness of theatre, constitutes a valuable and powerful strategy that can and should be used institutionally in many scenarios and with different objectives, since it permits a message, whatever that might be, to be transmitted and received in an easy, energetic, fun, and most of all lively, way. (Segura 2012)

The use of clowning as a ‘strategy’ that ‘permits a message […] to be transmitted’ reveals the underlying debt to the cultural citizenship policies of Mockus. Clowning is employed as a communicative medium with a pedagogical goal, with the implicit recognition that a change of understanding will lead to a change of behaviour. Moreover, clowning is seen to be effective because its message is transmitted in an ‘easy, energetic, fun’ way, just as drivers would respond to the ‘friendly and playful invitation of the mime’ in Mockus’s initiative.



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In other words, humour functions hegemonically to communicate institutional messages and exercise a form of social control. Another passage from the report is suggestive of why clowning might constitute a ‘valuable and powerful strategy’ for institutional use, but in a manner notably different from Mockus’s mime-clowns: Through the language of clown we were able to exemplify everyday conduct which the audience could identify with, both correct practices and improper behaviours which they would always recognize and laugh at (we’ve all thrown a piece of paper into the street, for example). Seeing these behaviours from the outside allows us some distance from them, and in the best case scenario, we become conscious of our incorrect behaviours and modify them. (Segura 2012)

To emphasize the point, the report goes on to claim that the performance not only ‘generated learning about public space, but also generated a critique of improper behaviour in the city: critique through playfulness’. While ‘critique’ is often associated with a progressive politics, what is the nature of the ‘critique through playfulness’ here? What are the ‘improper behaviours’ being critiqued and who is defining them as such? Judith Butler describes ‘critique’ as having a self-reflexive quality, since it ‘risks the orderliness of the code itself ’ but also has ‘selftransformation at its core’ (2002: 217).9 Put simply, critique should involve an act of deconstruction, of revealing and potentially reconstructing the very basic rules upon which our conception of society rests. It is a radical agenda that has at its root an ethical imperative to change the world. Yet in order to do so, one must be open to change oneself. That is, one must be willing to reflect on one’s own imperfections. Mockus’s mime-clowns delivered a critique through performative ridicule and licensed transgression. Yet this kind of critique was aimed at the enforcement of the code rather than at its disruption. Buenavista, on the other hand, did not employ ridicule. Its forms of

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transgression were more subtle, suggesting an evolution in the critical use of clowning. In The Unknown Limit Between Public and Private, a strong empathy was created between the audience and the couple. In the moment they realized the couple had been conned, the audience recognized a certain foolishness, in which they themselves were complicit. By foolishness, I do not mean simply stupidity or idiocy, of course, but rather a profound sense of vulnerability and a questioning of the values upon which their assumptions were founded. This, then, is the moment of potential ‘critique’, in which the characters (and by extension, the audience) might open up to their own foolishness and pave the way for self-transformation. But is such a potentiality realized? And to what extent does it undermine ‘the orderliness of the code’? In contrast to the corrective and judgemental force of the laughter produced by Mockus’s mime-clowns, Buenavista’s performance seemed to elicit a laughter of sympathetic recognition, that is, to be generating community and intersubjectivity rather than division and conflict. But this may well be due to a difference in performance contexts. While the mime-clowns were performing in situations of heated conflict, Buenavista were performing within formalized rituals of democracy and peaceful coexistence (such as the ciclovía) that tended to emphasize consensus and solidarity. While the mime-clowns were working with multiple transgressions and conflicting claims on space, and their own appearance had the feeling of an incongruous intervention, Buenavista’s performance in the park was normalized, just one of an orchestrated set of public displays of citizenship that were occurring in the same space. But these juxtaposed performances of solidarity and community also concealed a conflict that was implicit in Buenavista’s skit and the audience’s identification with it. A brief survey of audience opinion after the show revealed some common themes:



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‘It’s true to life.’ ‘It’s what we struggle against every day.’ ‘It makes us more conscious citizens.’ ‘There are a lot of people like that.’10

These comments suggest that the skit did help to produce community: a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ based on an identification with the fooled couple. However, this identification and community did not necessarily emerge from a self-awareness or reflexivity, but rather a common experience of adversity: ‘it’s what we struggle against every day’. That is, the production of a collective sense of ‘we’ or ‘us’ also created, in its shadow, an imagined other: ‘people like that’. It was, in other words, an empathy that served to reinforce an intangible social divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. It facilitated a buying into precisely the socially exclusive notion of public space that the Defensoría was promoting. While the overt pedagogical focus of the skit was on the couple for misunderstanding the boundary between public and private, it also implicitly critiqued a number of ‘others’. The property developers, for example, are clearly the ‘bad guys’ of the piece, guilty of an act of deception that deliberately muddies the line between public and private. The noisy partiers, the irritating street vendor and the rude parking attendant, though theoretically in the right, come across as an unwelcome and undesirable intrusion into the idealized private world of the couple. While the couple are figured as rounded and empathetic characters, who are properly associated with the world of private ownership, these ‘others’ are played as fixed social stereotypes, revealing hidden assumptions and prejudices that go unnoticed and unquestioned. In the sketch, the couple are hapless victims of a plot, not genuine objects of critical attention. The right to private property is affirmed even as the piece sets out to defend public space. Furthermore, the piece implies that the couple have the power to move with equanimity

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between private and public spaces, crossing a line that others in the piece may not cross without breaking the law. The different levels of access to private (and public) space is not questioned by the sketch but rather naturalized and reinscribed. At the same time it also qualifies the term ‘public’ by regulating who actually gets to treat it as ‘theirs’. So while the word ‘critique’ may apply to Buenavista’s performance in the sense that it was critical of certain characters’ actions, it fails to comply with Butler’s notion of ‘critique’, since it did not question or seek to reveal implicit codes and power structures that underpin differing levels of access to space and property. The performance worked to sustain an exclusionary boundary between the law-abiding citizen/spectator, whose every laugh was a performance of his belonging to this category, and a certain group of others marked as bad or transgressive. Of course all the spectators I spoke to identified themselves on the law-abiding side. Inasmuch as they felt the sketch was speaking to them, it was not in approbation of something they themselves had done wrong, but rather as a warning to be on the look out for unscrupulous conmen or undesirable individuals trying to wring money out of them. What the sketch does not draw attention to is the artificiality of the boundary itself. As Harvey describes, notions of private and public space are not innate but a product of a particular socioeconomic interests, which must likewise be protected and defended, hence the need for a Defensoría del Espacio Público. Buenavista’s clown act supported the Defensoría’s agenda admirably by clarifying the location of this boundary and by drawing the audience into solidarity around the need to police and protect it. If, as the title of the piece suggests, the boundary is becoming fuzzy and ‘unknown’, all kinds of bad things may result for ‘us’ (the existing or aspiring middle classes). It is therefore in our collective interests to know where the boundary is and to act in a way that reinforces it, the performance asserts.



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This is not to suggest that the audience were dupes, fooled by the performance into passive acceptance of certain civic values. Indeed, some audience members had a sophisticated and discerning understanding of the methods at work here. One seventeen-year-old boy told me the performance ‘educated people by making them laugh rather than by being punitive or dictatorial’. As well as confirming the truthfulness of the story, others expressed appreciation of the medium as much as the message and saw the two as intrinsically linked. Some mentioned that they approved of this cleansed, socially responsible kind of clown, a welcome relief from the gaudy, flamboyant and grotesque behaviour of circus clowns. This general approbation, both of medium and message, suggested that this newly reconstituted clown – or neo-clown – has become a fitting spokesperson of a city that has itself been resurrected, reclaimed and is forging a new future for itself. These neo-clowns are not disrupting or inverting the normal structures of authority in a way that ‘risks the orderliness of the code itself ’ (Butler 2002: 217). Rather their starched white overalls and cosmopolitan demeanour resonate precisely with the tone of the newly cleansed public spaces. Backed by official logos, their presence in those spaces is reassuring and reverberates with authority that comes through and from them, fully assimilated as good neoliberal subjects engaged in ‘social partnership initiatives’ with the state (Wickstrom 2012: 6). Mockus saw the potential of neo-clowns’ silent authority to educate citizens and alter social behaviours, but he could not have predicted the enthusiasm with which they have been sutured to the spectacular and democratized performativities of neoliberal governance.

5

Dialogues and Divides: Humanitarian Clowning

The last chapter described the processes by which various leaders and institutions exploited the potential of clowning as a cheap and effective way to promote the kinds of social and economic development they desired. While new modes of clowning evolved, adapting to an increasingly globalized and technologized urban landscape, powerful entities were often able to instrumentalize these practices to serve their own agendas, for example by using clowning as a communicative strategy that would assimilate citizens into compliance with a particular set of values. This is not, however, the end of the story. On the contrary, during my fieldwork I encountered many clowns who were critiquing and challenging these values. In order to resist the instrumentalization of their art, clowns have had to activate the dialogical possibilities of clowning, embracing ambiguity, vulnerability and multivocality that disturbs fixed meanings and certain knowledge, entering a state of radical flux. This chapter explores the practice and the ideas behind of ‘humanitarian clowning’ through the work of two groups, Pasos de Payaso and Henyoka Clown, both of which use clowning intentionally as a tool to support and aid particular communities. It is important here to interrogate the imperialistic associations of humanitarianism. As I will explain more thoroughly, claims of ‘helping others’ that are used to justify humanitarian action can serve to deepen inequalities they purport to alleviate, for example by reinforcing cultural barriers and economic dependencies, which may not be in the interests of

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those that are supposedly helped. According to a recent exhibition of Colombian culture called Expoartesanías (2012) in which Pasos de Payaso were featured, the humanitarian clown ‘reconfigures the social fabric in urban areas affected by social violence, through laughter and games’.1 This might easily describe the intentions of both Pasos de Payaso and Henyoka Clown. Yet by claiming to be able to ‘reconfigure’ particular communities, they enter the controversial field of humanitarianism and open themselves up to the kinds of critiques outlined above. These two companies have done just that, but also, I argue, have found through their clowning ways to ‘reconfigure’ what is meant by humanitarianism and to elude some of its more troubling implications. Crucial to both groups’ practice is a restless sense of movement across borders, between geographical zones, social sectors, performance spaces and audience demographics. This restlessness becomes a source of strength, allowing for a fluid and light-footed approach to diverse conditions and promoting a kind of dialogical flexibility that makes them hard to pin down. In the case of Pasos de Payaso, this can be seen in the way their work speaks back to the group’s roots in Ciudad Bolivar and the socially oriented circus school in which they trained, Circo Ciudad. For Henyoka Clown it emerges in the circularity of responsiveness and dialogue sustained over a number of years from early projects such as ReClownSillación and ReClowntaMiento to their most recent production, El Escuadrón de PayAseo. Ever resourceful and ever playful, both groups have thus found ways to clown afresh that are both socially progressive and economically sustaining. They are living proof that these are not incompatible goals and that adaptation to modernity does not imply capitulation to its dominant ideologies.2



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Pasos de Payaso: defying discourse December 2011 Weighed down with bags and trunks, three red-nosed clowns snake their way across the asphalt of the basketball court, swaying and lurching this way and that. ‘We four are a professional circus company’, Lucho announces, when they finally arrive in front of the small gathered audience. Wilmar looks around and counts. He taps Lucho on the shoulder: ‘There’s only three of us.’ Lucho begins to call for the missing fourth member: ‘Carolina? … Carolina!’ Suddenly, from a portable toilet just off the playing area, appears a female clown in a frilly blue dress and bonnet. Issuing a series of nonsensical high-pitched sounds, ‘ooiy…ushh…ayyyy’, she struts onstage, winking seductively at the men in the audience. As she gets close it is obvious Carolina is played by a male performer in drag. ‘We four’, emphasizes Lucho, ‘are an Olympic swimming team.’ Carolina looks surprised. ‘We are?’ she inquires. ‘We are’, Lucho reassures her. ‘And today we are going to demonstrate synchronized swimming routine.’ ‘We are????’ Carolina asks in alarm. ‘We are’, reaffirms Lucho. They look around for the water. I had seen Pasos de Payaso perform this show many times in many different locations: in shopping malls, parks, children’s homes, community centres, in rural villages as well as in the city, in festivals, theatres, libraries and cafés. Though the core of the show usually remained the same, it always changed in response to the physical and social contexts in which it was performed. On this occasion, the performance took place as part of public community event, on a basketball court squeezed in between the ugly red-brick buildings of Unilago, a shopping mall specializing in computer technology. The event was intended to launch a campaign to rebuild a lake that used to be located here in the early part of the twentieth century but had

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long since been built over and erased from the collective memory. Black-and-white photographs mounted on display boards showed smartly dressed families promenading in the park and boating on the lost lake, nostalgically evoking a bygone era of harmony, tranquillity and communal leisure. To attract members of the community and garner the support of local businesses, the campaign organizers had invited Pasos de Payaso to perform along with a company called Stone River that specialized in puppet and mask theatre. Stone River opened the event with a short performance that told the story of the destruction of the lake through a series of expressionistic and evocative scenes. A white-faced marionette floated ethereally over an expanse of billowing pale silk. A dishevelled, cackling hand puppet appeared and littered the landscape with empty beer cans and crisp packets. A young girl danced over the lake and slowly disintegrated, her clothes turning to dirty rags and her scorched body collapsing among the detritus. A chorus of celestial figures carried her away. The tone of the piece was mournful and elegiac with undertones of violence. The symbolic degradation of the lake and the tortured death of the young girl suggested a loss of connection with nature as well as a loss of humanity. It was into this desolate and desperate scene that the clowns of Pasos de Payaso intervened with their chaotic, meandering entrance across the basketball court, finally announcing to the gathered crowd that they were going to give a display of aquatic gymnastics. When the clowns realize that there is no lake to swim in, there is some confusion and an argument ensues, which Lucho resolves by announcing that they are not actually a synchronized swimming team but a professional circus company. After more heated whispering, Lucho announces they will demonstrate an exercise they learned from the Russian circus. They take a deep breath and stare at the audience with ludicrous expressions of concentration. The audience laughs as the



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clowns get increasingly red in the face and eventually collapse. Next Lucho announces a routine learned from the Chinese circus and they begin a sequence of synchronized but childishly simple movements that end with a flourish to the audience. When no applause is forthcoming they look downhearted. Lucho announces that they will now each perform a solo routine. Wilmar says he can do magic. He holds out a bag and asks an audience member to think of something red. He closes his eyes, reaches into the bag and pulls out a pair of red lace panties. Wilmar looks disapprovingly at the audience member. ‘Let’s try that again’, he says, and this time a red apple appears. The audience member is asked to throw the apple onto the stage, where Wilmar catches it on the end of a fork to great applause. To a slow, sultry musical accompaniment Carolina begins her solo with a comically seductive dance, winking at the men in the audience and grinding her hips teasingly. She is thrown into panic when the music unexpectedly changes to a pulsing techno. But then, as if possessed, she springs into action and executes a sequence of polished breakdance moves. The crowd erupts in whistles and bursts of incredulous laughter. She staggers to her feet, shocked and confused, and then collapses into the arms of Lucho and Wilmar. Wilmar and Carolina remind a reluctant Lucho that it is now his turn to perform a solo. He retreats to the far end of the basketball court, stretches a few times and begins a long, balletic run-up, arms flapping, wheeling and circling through the audience onto the stage where he finally executes a sedate forward-roll. The audience rewards him with a big laugh and a cheer. Pasos de Payaso’s show, endlessly repeated and refined, was essentially a series of gags or jokes strung together into a loose narrative about a disorganized, dysfunctional circus troupe, constantly squabbling and falling out with one another. The audience quickly learned not to expect any spectacular feats of skill and were soon enjoying

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the comedic flow of incompetence and failure. At intervals through the piece, however, moments such as Carolina’s breakdance provided a pleasurable ‘pay-off ’, punctuating the underlying mediocrity with seemingly accidental bursts of virtuosity. The show’s success relied on a fundamental principle of many circus clown routines: an inversion of norms in which failure is celebrated and skill is mocked. It ridiculed the sense of technical superiority normally separating circus performers from audiences, and punctured the aura of wonder and amazement that typically characterizes circus acts. These clowns seemed ordinary, not that different from the audience, and any simple trick, such as catching an apple on a fork, could provide as much entertainment and pleasure as the most challenging circus feat, perhaps even more. The clowns of Pasos de Payaso, in their celebration of failure and ordinariness, in their dishevelled and disordered appearance, evoked the traditional circus clown while at the same time, paradoxically, satirizing its claims to professionalism and respectability. This celebration of disorder is a theme that runs through Pasos de Payaso’s work and is one aspect of what differentiates them from the neo-clowns described in Chapter 4. While both kinds of clown are successfully able to engage audiences, make them laugh and leave them happy, their fundamental relationship to clowning is quite different. Thomson and Shouse conceptualize this contrast when they describe the difference between monological and dialogical clowning. As soon as a clown is bought by a corporation, tamed, costumed and scripted, their performance quickly becomes a ‘monological spectacle’, warn Thomson and Shouse, a mouthpiece for the transmission of others’ ideologies (2010: 272). This might indeed be an appropriate evaluation of the neo-clowns described in Chapter 4. Monological spectacles of clowning ‘strip the performer of his or her agency’ and the resulting clown characters lack the vital ingredients of ‘autonomous creativity and free will’ (Thomson and Shouse



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2010: 272). The neo-clown, a cleansed and unthreatening entertainer, divorced from its roots in the circus and welcomed by audiences who saw it reflecting their own cultural values, projected homogeneity and consistency, both in appearance and in message. His or her individuality was erased by the uniform white overalls, accessorized only in order to portray different characters in their scripted narrative. The clowns of Pasos de Payaso, by contrast, were highly idiosyncratic, more reminiscent of the circus clown in costume and make-up. Far from articulating a clear message or even operating as a unit, they fought and failed their way through a distinctly non-linear structure of acts. The clowns of Pasos de Payaso are overflowing with autonomous creativity and free will, so much so that it is hard for them to get anything done. Unlike the neo-clowns, who perform scripted roles according to prescribed themes, Pasos de Payaso’s clowns lack any sense of purpose and coherence, struggling with their inability to

Figure 4  Lucho Guzman, Carlos Andres Niño and Wilmar Guzman of Pasos de Payaso (October 2011)

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do what they are apparently there to do, caught, as it were, in the audience’s gaze, unable to impress or even communicate anything logical. It is in part this lowering of status and embracing of the frailties of being human, which helps to generate their appeal to the audience. Of course, in order to perform failure convincingly as well as to accomplish the moments of sudden virtuosity, the performers must be highly skilled. At the very culmination of the show, the clowns perform a synchronized diabolo routine. It is technically accomplished, demonstrating real skill behind the feigned mediocrity. But the audience’s warm applause reflects more than just their appreciation of technique. In the overall context of the show and the relationship the clowns have forged with their audience, the routine has the feeling of an epic finale, an achievement earned and owned not only by the clowns but also by the spectators. Pasos de Payaso practises a more dialogical kind of clowning, then, in its reciprocal relationship with the audience, its celebration of the mundane and its critique of pretentiousness. Furthermore, it holds an ambiguous and critical stance towards history and the serious tone of the whole Unilago project. Stone River’s performance, with its mesmerizing puppetry and evocative imagery, communicated a historical sequence of events with a serious and purposeful tone. It suggested a disconnection with natural beauty as well as our historical roots. In the clown show, however, nature and history became objects of fun. The very idea of history, conceived as a knowable sequence of events, dissolved and dissipated in the anarchy and sheer playfulness of the clowning, which seemed to hold nothing sacred. Neither did they take seriously the utopian vision of the future that the Unilago project was attempting to construct. Rather the clowns simply played in the temporal and spatial reality they discovered, implying that community has more to do with an attitude or a state of connectivity than the physicality of one’s surroundings. Indeed the clowning highlighted the foolishness of building concrete



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structures as a means to produce social change. The way the clowns utilized the space drew attention to its utilitarian ugliness, its lack of natural beauty yet celebrated it for what it was: a basketball court, itself a site of play, community and sociability. The open, dialogical relationship of the clowns to their audience, history and space rendered impossible any straightforward reading of what their show was about, any attempt to attach it to a political agenda or ideology. It conformed only to its own logic, a clownish logic of inverted values in which talent was devalued and mediocrity celebrated. Their avoidance of politicization suggests the detachment that Prentki says is at the heart of fooling: ‘folly is the defiance of discourse, the refusal of category’ (2012: 10). This also relied in part on their own self-deprecating brand of humour. The clowns, in ridiculing professional circus artists, necessarily ridiculed themselves. In all their work, a combination of reflexivity and a refusal to comply with conventional logics provides a dialogical foundation for the company, which allows them to resist co-optation. In turn this has allowed the clowns to evade the traps of humanitarian rhetoric which, as we will see, have closely pursued them since their formative years at Circo Ciudad. Ridicule – in particular self-ridicule – thus enables a kind of resistance.

Circo Ciudad: Rags to riches? Ironically, Pasos de Payaso might not have existed if it were not for humanitarian initiatives associated with Colombia’s embrace of neoliberalism in the 1990s. Three of its members, Lucho, Wilmar and Caliche (who plays Carolina), received their training in Circo Ciudad, a circus-based social project established in 2001 through a strategic alliance between the European Union and the Colombian government that brought millions of Euros into the country in the form of foreign investment and humanitarian aid. One of many

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such social amelioration projects, Circo Ciudad had the objective of rebuilding communities in Bogotá’s most economically vulnerable neighbourhoods, supporting the reincorporation of socially marginalized young people into the labour market specifically by means of art, culture and creativity (Circo Ciudad website 2010). Lucho and forty other young aspiring artists from Ciudad Bolivar, a vast and constantly expanding suburb in the south of Bogotá, home to millions of desplazados (people internally displaced by the conflict), were offered a professional circus training that was intended to change their lives. For three years they lived as a close-knit family, travelling together, eating together, taking shifts to guard the tent overnight and, of course, learning circus skills together.3 While Circo Ciudad was founded as a circus school, it also operated as a semi-professional company, producing shows that toured nationally and provided employment for graduates while the school continued to accept fresh intakes of students. Thanks to the EU funds, the project was able to purchase a circus tent with specialized equipment and bring in a range of professional artists to support the work, including directors, make-up artists and costume designers, all of which heightened the energy and self-esteem of the young performers when stepping out into the ring. Their first two shows, Humedas Revelaciones and Chung Kwei, contemporary circus productions that blended circus skills with storytelling and physical theatre, played to packed houses and attracted lavish praise from the media. Encouraged by the founders of Circo Ciudad themselves, press and television coverage played up the inspirational narrative of the circus helping disadvantaged young people to overcome adversity. After the initial two years of runaway success, a number of personal and organizational problems began to afflict the project. In 2003 the circus’s core funding from the EU expired and was not renewed. Equivalent funding sources were not found. The basic allowance that the artists had been paid became sporadic. Many found their newly



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acquired technical skills commercially marketable and began taking jobs with corporate events companies. Missing rehearsals and performances, their absence created gaps, undermined trust and adversely affected the quality of the work. The infrastructure also suffered. Maintenance of the equipment and transport costs drained all the available resources. Changes in leadership caused instability and dissent, as long-standing members of the circus were passed over in favour of supposedly qualified outsiders. The euphoria and solidarity generated in those first few months and years slowly began to dissipate. The failure of Circo Ciudad to capitalize on its original promise may be linked to a number of factors, but key among them was the political agenda to which its income source was tied. The foreign aid upon which Circo Ciudad depended was ostensibly part of a humanitarian effort to improve social conditions for the worst-off sectors of the urban population.4 Yet it was also driven by a broader programme of reforms intended to facilitate the flow of capital. Within this programme, foreign aid tended to follow capital investment, which of course is not reliable or sustainable but rather speculative and profitdriven. As Maurya Wickstrom has shown, ‘implicit ties’ exist between humanitarian activity and neoliberal initiatives (2012: 3). There is a good reason for this. Following the Washington Concensus of the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank cajoled and coerced Latin American states such as Colombia into taking a neoliberal turn, using a combination of carrot and stick incentives. As I explored in Chapter 3, neoliberal economic reforms implemented in many Latin American countries in the 1990s included deregulation of trade and finance, privatization of national assets, reduction of social welfare and weakening of labour rights in order to stimulate competition, and was supposed to usher in a general increase in wealth. In Colombia, the policy of opening up of the economy to a global marketplace and global capital – known as aperture – was seem to be of benefit to the entire population.5

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Yet the evidence available today suggests that apertura did not improve social conditions for the majority but rather exacerbated poverty and inequality (Easterly 2003, Ocampo and Tovar 2000, Rojas 2009, Urrego 2003). In Bogotá, for example, the number of people living below the poverty line went up from 32 per cent to 50 per cent between 1997 and 2000, while those living below the destitution line rose from 6 per cent to 15 per cent during the same period (DNP 2002). Rojas also argues that the privatization of public enterprise and the influx of multinational corporations resulted in a significant deterioration of labour conditions, violent intimidation of workers and trade union representatives and an increase in forced displacement of communities from their land (2009: 238–41). In the late 1990s, as its promised economic benefits failed to transpire, neoliberalism began to take a new, softer form, which Craig and Porter call ‘inclusive’ neoliberalism (2006: 90), often reframed in terms of ‘community’ and ‘partnership’. As Wickstrom explains, such initiatives, while cloaked in the rhetoric of poverty reduction, human rights and humanitarianism, were nevertheless invested with an expansionist neoliberal agenda, ‘intended to open new markets, or […] to carve space for neoliberalism into spaces not yet fully integrated into global capitalism’ (2012: 3). An EU Strategy Paper produced in 2001, which recommended an investment of €105 million in Colombia, demonstrates precisely this rhetorical sleight of hand in its three primary goals: ‘fostering of sustainable economic and social development’, ‘the smooth and gradual integration of the developing countries into the world economy’, and finally ‘the fight against poverty’ (European Commission 2001: 4, my emphasis). There is an eerie likeness between the language of the EU Paper, which interlinks economic and social objectives, and the rhetoric used to promote Circo Ciudad. According to its website, Circo Ciudad’s activities constitute ‘a strategy for inserting participants into



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the labour market through art, culture and creative pedagogies, generating productivity and income for young people and their families’ (Circo Ciudad 2010, my emphasis). We find in both texts a common element: the ‘integration’ – in the case of the European Commission – or the ‘insertion’ – in the case of Circo Ciudad – of an individual, a community or indeed a whole country, into a marketplace that is assumed to be beneficial for them. In both cases, a recipient of help is identified as being external to a particular market or economy, into which they must assimilated in order to be productive and therefore happy. Such rhetoric deploys a self-justifying language in its attempt to win broad support. The emotive phrase ‘fight against poverty’ was employed in the EU Paper, for example, while Circo Ciudad had the slogan ‘For the right to happiness’ emblazoned on their merchandise, including t-shirts worn by the company. These kinds of language betray the problematic reproduction of what Wickstrom calls a ‘helper/victim’ divide in contemporary humanitarianism: ‘the divide that separates those who go to do good from those who are the alleged beneficiaries of that effort’ (Wickstrom 2012: 20). Such a divide, Wickstrom argues, is essentially disempowering, locking communities into mutually dependent relationships with humanitarian organizations through philanthropic acts of helping. On the ground, in Circo Ciudad itself, such a divide was keenly felt by Lucho and others, especially when things started to go awry with the school. They were conscious of being framed, by the media in particular, as vulnerable and ‘at-risk’ youths who had been rescued from an otherwise desperate situation by the philanthropic actions of the circus and the powerful institutions that backed it. This was disingenuous since, as Lucho explained, most of them were planning to go to university anyway when this opportunity arose. The rhetoric of humanitarianism was both self-aggrandizing and disempowering, failing to acknowledge the young people’s agency and strategic decision-making. However, the underlying complicity between the

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project and global neoliberalism had even more immediate consequences for those involved. Because the funding that sustained Circo Ciudad relied on strategic partnerships between governmental institutions with much larger agendas, it was subject to political fluctuations and economic factors. The problem was exacerbated because young members of Circo Ciudad were only trained to be performers, not administrators or leaders, so when things started to go wrong they didn’t have the resources to defend themselves. As the situation unravelled Lucho became increasingly conscious that, while he had certainly benefited from being involved, he was also being manipulated by distant forces that could not easily be addressed or resisted. In his own words, ‘Circo Ciudad was subject to enormous political pressures, used as a pawn by government and local agencies, while the members felt powerless to do anything about it’.

Redefining happiness The exploitative relationship between the young performers of Circo Ciudad and the institutions that founded and directed it was what Thomson and Shouse call monological: ‘The power in this relationship rests not with the performers but with those who have the power to author the official performance scripts’ (2010: 271). Monologue, as defined by Bakhtin, ‘is finalized and deaf to the other’s response, does not expect it and does not acknowledge in it any decisive force’ (1984: 292). This is precisely the problematic attitude that Wickstrom associates with much disempowering humanitarianism that produces a ‘divide of sufferers and addressees’ (2012: 129). The clowns and other circus performers of Circo Ciudad were indeed constructed as sufferers and were, moreover, drawn into collusion with such a construction. Lucho, reflecting wryly on the slogan ‘For the right to happiness’, admits his own initial naivety:



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At first I thought that was wonderful. But later, as I grew up, I began to feel it wasn’t so great, as if we weren’t happy before and this project made us happy. There is a social connotation, as if it were a project for people being rehabilitated, very poor people, implying poverty both in the pocket and in the mind. But most of the people who were in Circo Ciudad were not involved with gangs or crime. It suggests that we had nothing and then the circus came along like a fairy godmother and puf! But we worked for that. It was not a gift or magic. We got where we are today through our own effort.6

Lucho describes his own relationship to Circo Ciudad in terms of a personal evolution or a learning process. When the euphoria that had sustained the first two years expired and relations became strained, a different kind of happiness had to be constructed ‘through our own effort’. The title of the production that followed, La Llave de la Alegria (The Key to Happiness), reflects precisely this quest for something new and more sustainable. Because of the sporadic availability of performers La Llave de la Alegria saw a return to the structural principles of traditional circus: a variety-based show in which acts could easily be substituted without harming the whole. There was great artistic freedom and possibility in the variety format, since new numbers could easily be developed, tested and refined. It became a playground for an experimental combining of elements that they had at their disposal, including conventional circus skill acts and clowning routines, which they now began to blend in new combinations. Moreover, this production involved a new enhanced role for the clowns, who were no longer ‘serving’ the other acts, as they had done in previous productions, simply bringing set items on and off. Lucho explained to me how comedy became an important element in its own right, feeding off other acts but also sustaining the audience’s interest: We discovered for ourselves that after the acrobatics, which was very tense, followed by the aerial act, we needed the audience to have some

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air, to rest after so much tension, so that’s where we decided to do the parody based on acrobalance. And that became more and more important within the structure of the piece.

The plot, such as it was, revolved around a clown who, having been thrown out from an unspecified place, arrived at the circus and was allowed to work alongside the circus family. When it came time for him to leave, the circus embraced him into the family and brought him to be part of the circus forever. The emotional journey was simple: ‘At the start of the show he is sad and at the end he is happy.’ If this seems to echo the humanitarian attitude of benevolence that Lucho was so critical of, it does so ambivalently. For in the show, the circus was not something imposed, a tool employed to make people happy. Rather it was a community, a family, whose gravitational force pulled the clown out of his solitude and gave him a meaningful relationship with others. In the real world, meanwhile, reflecting this narrative of collaborative community, it was hard work and creative effort among the artists of Circo Ciudad – led by the clowns – that drove artistic innovation and held the ensemble together, despite their embattled condition. Lucho continued to work sporadically for Circo Ciudad until 2010, but the relationship was fraught. Meanwhile, however, he and the two other clowns, Loco and Caliche, started to develop their clowning independently. At the 2009 Clownencuentro they presented a thirty-minute show, which loosely threaded the various clown acts they had created together into a narrative. That is, having been broken down into a fragmented ‘variety’ format with all the creative potential that released, the material was now being reassimilated into a repeatable structure that was still rough but as such reflected the in-progress emergence of a new identity for the clowns in their new post-Circo Ciudad existence. Later in 2009, Lucho and his cousin Wilmar Guzman took part in a project initiated by Clowns Without Borders USA (CWB USA), in which they and four other international clowns, including myself,



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created a show and toured it to schools and orphanages in the environs of Bogotá. Ostensibly ‘humanitarian clowning’, this project proposed a model that was entirely different from the kind of top-down humanitarianism Lucho had passively experienced in Circo Ciudad. CWB was founded in Spain in 1991 but now has relatively independent operations in nine different countries. The approach of CWB USA is underscored by the slogan ‘No child without a smile’. Explicit engagement with social issues or local politics is avoided, while the bringing of laughter, levity and celebration is emphasized. Providing positive emotional experiences is seen as a ‘humanitarian’ contribution, perhaps not as vital as food and shelter, but nevertheless extremely valuable in crisis situations. This model resonates particularly with what James Thompson has identified as the need for Theatre for Development to embrace ‘affect’ instead of being beholden to ‘effect’. For Thompson, an over-emphasis on ‘efficacy’ leads to the ‘absorption of the work of applied theatre and community-based performance into the discourses of forgiveness, reconciliation and historical cause/effect’ (2009: 111). While the notion of efficacy is therefore problematic, the experience of joy, happiness and beauty invoked by theatre processes can itself foster ‘a powerful protection from, and perhaps alternative to, suffering’ (2009: 155).7 The CWB USA project suggested to Lucho the potential of clowning to produce a happiness radically different from the kind of imposed happiness associated with humanitarian efforts such as the project of Circo Ciudad itself. In particular it was an opportunity to bring his clowning back into a more intimate, dialogical relation with the communities from which he and the other members had originally come, that is, to extend the collaborative experience of happiness discovered in La Llave de la Alegria outwards to include a wider community. Pasos de Payaso, founded following the CWB tour, not only marked a final departure from Circo Ciudad, but became the vehicle by which Lucho could share this newly found happiness.

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Back to the source When Lucho returned to the Clownencuentro in 2010, it was clear that Pasos de Payaso was already forging an identity based on redefining the relationship between clowning and humanitarianism. He narrated stories of the company’s recent tour of Casanaré, a department on the eastern lowlands of Colombia, near the Venezuelan border, which since the 1990s has been subjected to large-scale oil speculation and extraction by multinational companies such as BP. Lucho described the disastrous social impacts of such foreign interventions: Alcoholism is a serious problem in this region. The only time we saw people get together was when the men gathered at the local store to get drunk. Dependency on hand-outs from the oil companies has tended to eliminate autonomous agricultural practices, and so people are left with little to do with their time. On our previous trip to Casanaré we observed communities of people spending all their time on computers which had been given to every child by the oil companies. Free Wi-Fi is also provided, and abuse of social networking sites such as Facebook has led to bullying among the community. (Guzman 2010)

Pasos de Payaso visited Casanaré on two separate occasions, the first to establish links with the local community, the second to present twenty-five performances and five circus skills workshops in the municipalities of Yopal and Orocué. Lucho was far from idealistic in his descriptions of the social problems faced by the mostly indigenous communities and the potential of clowning to improve conditions. Pasos de Payaso lack the infrastructure and funding to roll out their work on a large scale or to evaluate long-term effect. Lucho’s anecdotal evidence is suggestive, however, of localized impacts on people’s day-to-day lives: The performances provided a means of social integration and interaction which they did not otherwise have. It brought people together



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who would not normally come together, and gave them something to do other than drinking alcohol. While conflict is the underlying status of relations in many of these towns, during the period of the show, the community was taking pleasure in each other and in a shared experience of clowning […] In addition, the workshops were a great opportunity for the children to play and interact together, and to accept an alternative form of communication to the world of Facebook and YouTube which dominates their lives. We considered this to be particularly important, to get them away from the computer, exploring the beautiful space in which they live, playing physically in their bodies, and learning to communicate both with each other and with us. (Guzman 2010)

Informally, Lucho told me the story of a man who had approached him one day, obviously drunk, calling out, ‘Clown, clown, come here. I want to thank you. Because of you I learned that to teach my children I don’t have to make them cry. I have to make them laugh.’ These stories cannot be considered as systematic evidence. Nevertheless they provide an insight into the various ways in which Lucho and Pasos de Payaso produced an affect that could reimagine dominant, monological forms of humanitarianism. As we saw in the Unilago performance, the company’s practice is dialogical and playfully irreverent in its relationship to audience, history and space, avoiding didactic or condescending messages of any kind. The performance presented in communities such as Yopal and Orocué, while differing in small details, was essentially the same show they always performed, always seeking to be honest about the here and now, always skeptical of attempts to romanticize the past or idealize the future. The show fosters interaction and communication not just between the clowns and the audience but also between members of the community. While dominant forms of humanitarianism as we have seen, tend to equate poverty reduction with economic growth and encourage the insertion of marginalized communities in global markets, Pasos de Payaso’s reconfigured brand of humanitarianism offers a startlingly different vision that promotes embodied

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connection and relationship within communities rather than their need to be assimilated into virtual social networks. In contrast to the didactic function of the neo-clowns in Bogotá, Pasos de Payaso consciously reject specific educational objectives and see their role as social intermediaries, promoting communication, sharing and pleasure. It is significant here that members of Pasos de Payaso, while labelled ‘humanitarian’ at the Expoartesanías exhibition, were not aid workers representing NGOs, but young people who had recently themselves been defined as ‘beneficiaries’ in a humanitarian project. Their status therefore resists simple designation on one side or other of what Wickstrom calls the ‘helper/victim divide’ produced by humanitarianism (2012: 88). Their presence in the communities relied instead upon local support such as that of Fundación Emprendedores Sociales de Casanaré (Casanaré Social Enterprise Foundation), who provided transport, accommodation and food: as well as depending upon the entire community to contribute to and participate in the realization of the shows themselves: The next day we presented the show, but we never had to announce it. The houses are 30–40 minutes walk apart, but everyone arrived. We only had to tell one person. Someone arrived with sound equipment on a horse. Someone else brought lemonade. Someone else offered to help us put on the show in another village. We went in a truck full of stuff, squashed up in the back. It was just the same. It was a beautiful show. We decided to do some workshops. The children arrived at 4 p.m. on the dot. Women came down to watch the workshops. (Guzman 2010)

Rather than being delivered according to some pre-defined idea of what is good for a particular community, the tour evolved as a kind of spontaneous dialogue with local communities, as one show led to another in an continuous cycle of responses. Having responded to the community’s initial request for a performance, another request followed as a kind of response to the response. By listening to and



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respecting the needs of the other, the company fostered a sense of equality in difference that replaced a monological ‘helper/victim’ humanitarianism with a dialogical relationship that acknowledged the other’s ‘decisive force’. It might be argued that there was still a fundamental inequality between Pasos de Payaso and the communities they visited, given the former’s ability to return to the safe and relatively affluent confines of the city. Lucho readily acknowledges this divide, yet the company’s approach empowers communities to be in control of the border, rather than assuming the helper’s right to cross it at will. Social and economic barriers exist and must be acknowledged when engaged in the delicate business of trying to help others. Too often, however, those lines of social difference only exist as an imprisonment for those on one side, while those on the other treat them as an implicit invitation to intervene in the lives of those less fortunate. By responding to real invitations and building long-term relationships with communities, those barriers which at times function to contain communities may also offer protection, autonomy and a space of encounter based on mutual respect and understanding. Through this non-interventionist respecting of boundaries, Lucho and Pasos de Payaso have paradoxically been able to cross over many divides, oscillating across boundaries between rural and urban, high and low, young and old, centre and margin but always with care and caution. As well as travelling to remote rural areas with Pasos de Payaso, Lucho continues to teach circus skills at the Juan Bosco Obrero cultural centre in Ciudad Bolivar, maintaining strong connection to the neighbourhood where he grew up and where his family still lives. Remarkably, Pasos de Payaso has also succeeded in transcending the ostensible gap between humanitarian work and mainstream theatre in the city. Performing regularly in theatres and festivals, including the Iberoamericano, and receiving grants from the ministry of culture, the company is very well regarded within the artistic community in Bogotá. It is significant

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that, they do not change their way of working for these two seemingly different contexts, rural and urban. They perform the same show to audiences regardless of social background, though, as we have seen, it takes on it own distinct tone and critical voice in each and every setting. Having seen the show perhaps twenty times or more, in different locations, I am witness to the multiple, often unpredictable ways in which it can affect people. The performance on the Unilago basketball court was exemplary of its potential to cross the boundary between performer and audience, to be dialogical in the sense that Thomson and Shouse imply clowning should be: ‘fully embodied, ambiguous, multi-voiced’ (2010: 272). Not only, then, did Lucho and his colleagues discover through their formative experience in Circo Ciudad how to clown dialogically, but also developed an empowering counter-performance to the disempowering performance of humanitarianism that Circo Ciudad itself represented. Out of a defunct and monological brand of humanitarianism they crafted a radical responsiveness to the needs of dispossessed communities. Their dialogical clowning refigures humanitarianism as a way to reconnect with communities with which they had much in common but from which they were in danger of being separated.

Henyoka: Clowning peace While Lucho’s journey from Circo Ciudad to Pasos de Payaso took him from high-profile exposure to increasingly localized and intimate encounters with communities, that of Camilo Rodriguez and Henyoka Clown moved in the reverse direction, from humble and low-key beginnings towards an increasing level of financial and institutional prestige.8 Camilo studied political science as an undergraduate at the National University in Bogotá. At that time he developed an intellectual curiosity about the long-standing conflict in Colombia and romanticized about



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the possibility of changing society and contributing to peace. Pursuing his academic interest he travelled to Barcelona in 2004 and studied for a postgraduate diploma at the Escola de Cultura de Pau (School of the Culture of Peace). In the course of these studies he became disillusioned by the limits of academic theory and rational discourse in actually solving the problem of conflict. By chance, while in Barcelona, Camilo also started to attend clowning workshops and noticed that the practice helped him to be more at peace with himself. He noticed important points of contact between peace-building practices and certain clowning techniques: for example their acknowledgment of human frailty and foolishness, as well as their reliance on openness and vulnerability. In his study of conflict resolution at the school in Barcelona, Camilo’s ideas were particularly influenced by one of the lecturers, philosopher John Paul Lederach, who focused on the idea of the individual’s encounter with the other as central to peace building: ‘reconciliation is an encounter that demands a space in which we can acknowledge the past and imagine the future in order to rebuild the present. For this to happen people must find ways to encounter themselves and their enemies, their hopes and their fears’ (Lederach 1998: 55). According to Lederach, this space of openness and honesty requires a kind of stripping down of social masks and a willingness to expose one’s inner truth, however uncomfortable. Camilo recognized that certain clown techniques shared this concern with accessing an inner truth: ‘Many clowning activities create the possibility to be transparent, to declothe oneself. Often it’s extremely difficult, as we are full of barriers, but when we can take down those barriers we can truly start to be, not to do, but to be.’

This particular approach to clowning – by no means universal – is associated with the notion of the ‘inner clown’ and emphasizes the integral relationship between one’s clown and one’s self. The titles of

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recent clown technique books such as Caroline Dream’s The Clown In You (2014) and Eli Simon’s The Art of Clowning: More Paths to Your Inner Clown (2012), exemplify the popularity of this idea of clowning as both a process of self-exploration and self-exposure. Spanish clown teacher Jesús Jara emphasizes the need to access one’s essential truth and inner feelings: The clown is born from inside each person. It thus draws on our essential character and physical appearance. But essential does not mean everything we have incorporated into our behaviour through the pressure of social norms. That’s why we will discover to our surprise how our clown does things that we normally do not allow ourselves to do, because he is a free spirit who lives and acts with sincerity and in coherence with his inner feelings. (Jara 2000: 83)

During his studies in Barcelona, Camilo already envisioned a project in which clowning workshops and performances would be used in the rehabilitation of war-affected communities, but it was not until his return to Colombia that he had the opportunity to put the idea into practice. In 2006 the first Revuelta a Colombia (Riot in Colombia) tour took place. The concept was simple: a group of thirteen self-financing artists, including clowns, jugglers, puppeteers, dancers, stilt-walkers, musicians and acrobats, travelled through Colombia by bus, in particular to remote rural areas affected by conflict. The tour was explicitly conceived as a cultural exchange between artists and communities, in which the former contributed their skills through performances and workshops, while the latter taught the visitors about their first-hand experiences of the conflict and, more significantly, their strategies of resistance. Many of the communities visited were well known for their strident and vocal acts of non-violent rejection of the political and intimidation tactics exerted by all armed forces in their regions, including guerrilla, paramilitary and state forces. These included the much-celebrated peace community of San José de Apartado in



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Antioquia, created in 1997 in response to threats and assassinations by paramilitary groups. Revuelta a Colombia took the group to more than twenty villages and communities, with the intention of learning first-hand about the realities of the conflict rather than accepting the stories and images that arrived at the capital via the media. From a position of self-acknowledged ignorance, the central ethos of the trip was thus one of listening, rather than intervening or presuming to be able to help. Each community, they quickly discovered, had its own distinct and unique story. As they travelled around Colombia in their bus, the tour became a living archive not just of the local experiences of conflict but of the peaceful strategies being employed to counter various kinds of military repression and intimidation: a ‘travelling caravan of peaceful culture’, as Camilo called it. He employed a similarly evocative metaphorical language to describe the outcomes of the tour: ‘we returned with suitcases full of knowledge, full of people’s shared experiences and stories.’ A more concrete outcome was a documentary edited from video material that they shot on the trip that deliberately challenged and reappropriated the objectifying narratives of victimization typically produced by the country’s main television stations, RCN and Caracol. In evoking a bohemian circus world of caravans and suitcases Camilo was also drawing attention to an important facet of the tour: it was not based upon conventional, monetary forms of exchange, of the type that has historically disadvantaged poor and marginalized communities, but rather on a kind of informal and mutually beneficial cultural barter, in which intangible assets such as smiles and laughter were shared alongside stories of peaceful resistance. Nevertheless, despite the humanistic and egalitarian intentions, reinforced by Camilo’s metaphorical language, such exchanges are always subject to ethical fragility. While the artists of Revuelta a Colombia may have been well-intentioned, their social and economic

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status allowed them to travel unsubsidized to all parts of the country, while the populations they visited were locked in sometimes tense and fragile relationships both to illegal armed groups and judicial processes that did not always favour them. One way to evaluate the ethics of this encounter between differently empowered social groups is to track what happens to these stories and experiences after they have been collected in the metaphorical suitcases. To what use are they put? Where do they go? Whose interests do they serve? An ethically grounded theatrefor-development, says D. Soyini Madison, must generate ‘a cycle of responses that will let lose a stream of response-abilities that will lead to something more, something of larger philosophical and material effects’ (Madison 2010: 11). The notion of ‘response-ability’ is fundamentally linked to the idea of the dialogical, since both entail the kind of active listening that does not stop after an initial exchange but rather leads to a further set of exchanges, inspired by the first, which themselves provoke further responses. The first Revuelta a Colombia tour might be considered as the opening conversational gambit, a performative intervention that provoked a response. What, then, did Camilo do with his newly acquired knowledge and understanding of resistance movements, gained through the reciprocal exchange of clowning? A year later, Camilo embarked upon a second Revuelta a Colombia, but the aim was no longer simply gathering stories. Following the experiences of the first tour, a clearer political agenda was developing. This was reflected in a short clown piece which Camilo performed with a friend and clown partner, Jaime Fajardo, called La Silla (The Chair), a slapstick political satire of corruption and power in which two clowns fought over a chair. For Camilo the show reflected what they had learned about the situation in these rural areas and its performance in those same communities served to build upon the exchange that had already begun in the first Revuelta:



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The people who saw it realized they weren’t alone. The people from San José de Apartado realized that these young kids from Bogotá are supporting us and understand the situation. It wasn’t something distant and artistic any more, because they could identify with the character.

This sense of identification, then, suggests that Camilo and Jaime’s project was not only accurately reflecting the situation in the rural conflict zones but also making a deliberate political intervention. They were not only listening, they were actively responding, speaking back to the communities in what was now a true dialogue. Nevertheless, Madison’s notion of ‘response-ability’ suggests that such a dialogue, however productive and democratic, should not remain a simple two-way exchange between interlocutors, but rather makes an ethical demand to be shared with a wider audience (2010: 11). Witnesses to injustice, for example, are required to speak out to a larger public about the situation they have encountered and to engage that public in a transformative process. In between the first two Revuelta tours, Camilo happened to meet an old friend who was working for Fundación Social, a charitable organization which aims ‘to contribute to the overcoming of structural causes of poverty by building a more just, unified, productive and peaceful society’ and derives much of its income from a subsidiary banking operation, Banco Caja Social (Fundación Social 2010). Thanks to his credentials from Escola de Cultura de Pau, Camilo was invited to teach some workshops for young ex-combatants, specifically dealing with human rights and conflict resolution. It was the perfect opportunity to explore more specifically the use of clowning in the context of peace building. Camilo himself did not have a clear methodology or evidence to back up the theory, but the project provided a kind of laboratory in which he could begin to test ideas. He employed theatre games, improvisation and clown exercises. Sometimes they worked, other

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times they did not, but he began to understand more clearly the specific social value of clowning in the rehabilitation and integration of young people who had been involved with armed groups from all sides of the conflict: When we leave a clown workshop, we feel more ourselves, there’s a different atmosphere in the group. It might take a long time, but once you’ve created that atmosphere where you trust me and I trust you, that’s when you can begin to talk about the painful stories of the past. Not before.

As in the Revuelta project, clowning functioned as a means of opening up a dialogue. This was enabled specifically because of the potential of clown, noted earlier, to get beneath the surface and access what is perceived to be an inner truth. But unlike the Revuelta projects, which were financed and managed primarily by the participating artists, these workshops were fully funded and administrated by Fundación Social. Initial scepticism gave way to wholehearted enthusiasm as the Fundación saw the positive effects of Camilo’s approach and he was sent to Medellin, Cali, Cartagena, Armenia, Pereira and Bucaramanga to teach more. For the next five years this partnership evolved and the Fundación eagerly employed Camilo and Jaime to deliver clown workshops with displaced communities and ex-combatants, dealing with a range of social themes, from human rights to forced recruitment to reconciliation. In all of these cases it was the Fundación who determined the target groups and the educational objectives, raising the possible objection that the institution was now moulding Jaime and Camilo’s clowning to their humanitarian agenda, perhaps thereby denying the autonomy that in the Revuelta project had allowed them to build such meaningful links with specific communities. As we shall see, however, the use of clowning did not always sit comfortably within the Fundación’s programme and indeed, at times, exposed tensions and contradictions within it.



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Camilo and Jaime not only delivered workshops for the Fundación but also utilized short skits and longer clown presentations as a means of quickly and efficiently focusing in on social themes that the Fundación wished to address. Here they were able to reincorporate the satirical and critical force of the clown, which had been evident in their first show, La Silla. It was also at this time that Camilo and Jaime formalized themselves as a company with the name Henyoka Clown in an overt (albeit misspelled) reference to the heyoka, the sacred clown of the North American Sioux peoples, who ‘does not seek power, but on the contrary abominates power and relentlessly tries to denounce and subvert it’ (Valenzuela 2001).9 In 2008 they created their first full-length performance ReClownSillación, tackling the theme of reconciliation and its three major elements: truth, justice and reparation. Based on La Silla, it retained the comical trope of a power struggle but relocated it to a rural village, drawing significantly on Camilo and Jaime’s experiences from the Revuelta tours. It tells the story of an innocent and wellmeaning farmer whose possessions are stolen by a military dictator and then is forcibly recruited into active service by another (played by the same performer, but allegedly from a different armed group). He is finally chased off his land and escapes to the city where he hopes to find restitution. Camilo explained that this segment of the performance was perhaps the most interesting for him, since he, playing the role of the farmer, would literally enter the audience and ask for refuge and support: I tell everyone my story and ask for help. Usually they welcome me in and invite me to stay at their house or whatever. I tell them I’ve read in the newspapers about reparations and they would tell me to be careful what I read in the newspapers, you can’t believe everything you read and there is a lot of electioneering and corruption, and all we want is a real politician, an honest politician.

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At this point in the show Jaime enters as a comically grotesque authority figure, modelled on the mayor character in Gogol’s The Government Inspector, talking nonsense interspersed with grand promises about all that he would do for the people if he were elected. According to Camilo and Jaime, the audience would always see through the dishonest pledges and warn the naïve peasant. The audience would then grill the politician about the reconciliation process, but he would continue to spout lies and gibberish, evading the questions and eventually fleeing. ReClownSillación is founded on an ambivalent premise. In part it promises to deliver Fundación Social’s objective of educating young people about how to participate in official post-conflict reparation processes. It also contains, however, a vitriolic critique of corruption in politics and the oppression of rural communities, an exposé of social conditions that Jaime and Camilo had experienced first-hand. The playfulness of the title – combining clown, reconciliación (reconciliation) and silla (chair) – captures this ambivalence, gesturing towards the officially sanctioned objectives of the Fundación while also declaring Henyoka’s own critical stance. Such ambivalence accords with Prentki’s description of the fool’s role in relation to political systems: The politician’s job is to convince the voters that she has a plan to make everyone’s life better; that economic growth will trickle down to all and we can sleep soundly in our beds, knowing that the government is working in our interests. The fool’s job is to cast the searchlight of doubt on such claims; to peer around the corner of the grand designs at the all too fallible humans trying to implement them. The fool is not a subversive in the sense that he is not trying to put a spanner in the works of the five year plan, but he is subversive in the sense that he draws attention to the inevitable tension between human aspiration and human achievement; a tension which at times erupts into outright contradiction. (Prentki 2012: 217)



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ReClownSillación is surely subversive in this sense, casting ‘the searchlight of doubt’ on claims of politicians as well as drawing attention to the fallibility of other authority figures. Moreover, there is a tension at the heart of the piece which threatens to erupt into a full-blown contradiction: processes of reconciliation should be beneficial to ordinary people and yet they are revealed here as part of the political discourse through which the people may be manipulated and controlled. In performing ReClownSillación Henyoka Clown met the objectives of the Fundación Social, but they simultaneously used the subtle double-faced ambiguity of clowning to suit their own, more radical purpose. By accepting the support of a large institution such as Fundación Social they of course risk becoming instrumentalized and domesticated to an authoritative agenda and thus losing the ability to critique it. Yet without the platform provided by the Fundación it is likely that their political critique would be heard only by those who already sympathized with it. In some senses, then, Henyoka’s double game allowed them to meet the fool’s greatest challenge: ‘to expose the gaps, absences and contradictions which are at the core of the ideologies by which society is governed without himself falling prey to ideological constraints’ (Prentki 2012: 218). Unlike Mockus’s and Buenavista Social Clown’s exploitation of clowning, Henyoka’s pedagogical approach was not driven by a desire to modify public behaviour, but was more akin to Paulo Freire’s notion of education as ‘a critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action’ (1977: 41). Their process, from its early stages in the Revuelta project through to the work with Fundación Social, fostered a dialogical response-ability, which aspired to advocacy: ‘to be an advocate is to feel a responsibility to exhort and appeal on behalf of another or for another’s cause with the hope that still others will gain the ability to respond to your advocacy agenda’ (Madison 2010: 11). The notion of advocacy implies that Henyoka not only facilitates dialogue with interlocutors specifically designated by the Fundación Social as victims or

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potential victims of social injustice, but also extends and expands the scope of the conversation to a wider public, providing a platform from which specific social struggles can be seen and heard. In 2010 Henyoka created their second major educational piece ReClowntaMiento in response to the Fundación’s desire to tackle the forced recruitment of young people, especially in the cities. Like all their previous titles, this one playfully wove together contradictory concepts – clown, reclutamiento (recruitment) and miento (to lie) – suggestive of the deeper intentions and tensions of the piece. The main characters of the piece are identifiable both as clowns – from their red noses – and as cleaners – from their overalls and brooms – who have been called in to clear up the mess on the stage before the performance ‘proper’ can begin. The empty stage is strewn with scrunched-up paper and other bits and pieces of rubbish. Two clowns with brooms, wearing full-body overalls – one red, the other green – enter and begin sweeping, taking one half of the space each. The activity becomes competitive, as each tries to clear their area more quickly than the other. They begin sweeping their own rubbish into the other’s area as the contest escalates. When the green clown is not looking, the red clown dumps his whole rubbish bin in the other’s side and then puts down a boundary line between them with tape. The conflict builds, with each clown in turn indulging in more and more extreme tactics: strewing paper, spraying water, throwing flour and squirting foam in all directions, including on the audience. Having reached a climax of chaos, the two clowns turn to each other and look shamefully at the mess they have created. It seems there is going to be a reconciliation. But before this can happen, both clowns get a new idea. They both pick up a rubbish bin and hold it out towards the audience, as if asking for their help to clear up the mess. Maintaining a penitent and beseeching attitude they move out into the audience, looking



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for people who are willing to come out on stage with them. The invasion of the clowns into the audience’s space creates a frisson of excitement among the children. One boy hesitantly puts a piece of paper in the bin. The clowns shake his hand to say thank you but then keep hold of his hand and drag him up onto the stage. Much to the amusement of the audience, the boy is then put to work cleaning up the trash. Now the three work as a team, picking up trash, throwing it into the bin, but the boy becomes a pawn between the two of them, as each tries to control and manipulate him to their advantage. When they start throwing flour at him he runs off the stage and back to his seat. Once again the clowns pretend to be overcome with penitence and beg the audience for help. But this time the audience are savvy to them and the tactic fails, so they bring out wads of cash as an incentive and quickly they get a new volunteer, who is once again put to work.

Figure 5  Jaime Fajardo and Camilo Rodriguez of Henyoka Clown in ReClowntaMiento (May 2010)

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This plot line continues in a similar vein. The boy is made to copy some silly dance moves that the cleaners teach him. They become rivals once again and one of them uses the boy as a human shield to protect himself against the attacks of the other. When the boy tries to escape they try to intimidate and threaten him with their broomsticks. ReClowntaMiento, which I saw performed in Medellin in 2010 and also in Bogotá in 2012, demonstrates how Henyoka uses clowning to highlight dubious tactics used by armed groups to attract young recruits: We wanted to look at the causes of recruitment and show them in a symbolic form, to suggest that there is a parallel between joining armed groups and bringing a person onto the stage, which in general causes fear, shame and anxiety. It’s something that people don’t want to do, just as they don’t want to become part of an armed group. But to make the parallel, we wanted to show how easy it is […] to convince people. (Rodriguez 2010)

The ability of the clown to gain the trust of the audience helps them to make this point since it mimics the tactics used by armed groups to convince young people to join them. Indeed this might be taken as a moment of reflexivity or meta-commentary, implying that clowning itself may sometimes conceal hidden agendas (as examples in previous chapters have indeed shown). Of course, not all the young audiences are able to make the connection between the clowns’ game and the real-life forced recruitment. But for Henyoka, the show does more than warn young people specifically about the dangers of forced recruitment. Rather it fosters a critical attitude towards myriad persuasive performances that might well feature in their everyday lives. A questioning and discerning mind is more likely to be able to evaluate such performances, to read them as performances and to read them critically, as Camilo explained:



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Part of this is about reflection, to encourage a spirit of critical reflection in relation to things that happen, that the educational model really teaches them to think and speak for themselves, so that they’re not just repeating things because teacher told them so. Sometimes, like in the previous performance, when we have younger children, they all want to help with the cleaning […] they aren’t able to read it critically. But these older one are.10

The possibility of differing interpretations and understanding by different audience members demonstrates the complexity of the piece. As with ReClownSillación, there is an ambivalence at the heart of Henyoka’s work, a balancing of official agendas with a critical distance that stems from the grounded political convictions of Camilo and Jaime. In fact, there is much that is ambiguous and ambivalent about ReClowntaMiento. The contrasting colours worn by the two clowns, for example, might suggest allegiance to specific armed groups, for example guerrilla or paramilitary blocs. But since this is never specified, they might equally be implicating the national armed forces, drug trafficking gangs or the police in these insidious and illegal tactics. This refusal to attach specific political alignments to the characters requires the audience to decide for themselves which armed groups are under the spotlight. Ambiguity serves as a mask for the clowns, then, through which they can safely criticize and provoke reflection through the power of suggestion, imagination and play. The ambiguity in the piece concerning where power really lies is also reflective of the nature of the conflict in Colombia, what Sánchez calls ‘the multiplicity of violence’, in which ‘organized crime, guerrilla struggle, dirty war, and diffuse social violence – differentiated forms of violence but quite often intertwined – can be part of a single situation’ (2003: 3). While there are many distinct armed groups responsible for perpetrating acts of violence in Colombia, intimidation and coercion are often experienced similarly by the weakest

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in society, regardless of which ‘side’ is responsible. ReClowntaMiento drew attention to this situation by pitching volunteer after volunteer against the unpredictable alliance of the red and green cleaner/ clowns, who appeared to be rivals or allies as it suited them. That is, it also functioned as a critique of the institutionalized roots of the conflict and its entrenchment in political and neoliberal alliances as well as the struggle for individuals or communities involved in resisting such alliances, harking back precisely to the stories and experiences they collected in their ‘suitcases’ when touring the peace communities five years previously. Henyoka reached even headier heights in 2014 when the United Nations employed the company to contribute to its own reconciliation initiative. Under the auspices of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Henyoka toured with an adapted version of ReClowntaMiento, called Escuadrón de PayAseo, which has already reached at least 6,200 individual audience members in fifty-five schools and community centres nationwide. The changing of the show title also reflects a change of emphasis in the content. The guiding theme is no longer the topical and politically charged practice of forced recruitment, but rather the tendency for conflicts to arise out of seemingly inconsequential misunderstandings. The two cleaners start as friends whose minor argument escalates into a full-scale combat, leading finally to reconciliation. That is, in this new version, while conflict is still a central preoccupation, it is framed as the problem and responsibility of the individual, rather than a consequence of political and structural oppressions. One of the notable aspects of Escuadrón de PayAseo is the absence of a clear locus of power. While their previous pieces had tended to depict social problems as a result of the actions and interests of specific oppressors, who were physically present on the stage and thus available to be critiqued and challenged, in moving the focus to the individual as the agent both of conflict and resolution this



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piece apparently obfuscates the operation of larger social forces that might be at play. Whether this should be seen as reflecting a neoliberal agenda, albeit of the soft ‘inclusive’ variety, in which power is supposedly shared equally by the state and the citizen, or perhaps a strategic reclaiming and assertion of local agency within limited spheres that we can hope to transform, is not yet clear. It is certainly notable, however, that the United Nations, a transnational organization with strong historical ties to neoliberal financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, has adopted clowning within its communicative repertoire. Nevertheless, the title Escuadrón de PayAseo suggests the continuance of Henyoka’s playful attitude to power, provocatively juxtaposing the military overtones of escuadrón (squadron) with the less salubrious associations of payaso (clown) and aseo (cleaning). Camilo, in a new role as ‘methodological advisor’ to the UNDP, finds himself in a position to implement his clown-based methodologies more broadly than he could ever have anticipated when he was travelling in the ‘caravan of peace’ in 2006. The question for the future, now that the UNDP project looks set to continue beyond 2016, is whether Henyoka Clown can find ways to retain the truth-telling and critical playfulness of their inspiration and namesake, the heyoka.

6

Unruly Play: Clowns in Hospital

Hospital clowning has been a growing global phenomenon since the 1980s, becoming ever more widely recognized and accepted within the medical profession and supported by a significant output of academic research.1 Colombia has not been immune to this global phenomenon and currently has active hospital clown organizations in the cities of Bogotá, Cali, Medellin and Manizales. Like humanitarian clowning, then, hospital clowning in Colombia follows larger patterns of globalization and cultural trends that circulate across borders. Nevertheless, it has also adapted to local culture, responding to the concerns of communities that practise it. Hospital clowning is thus another example of social performance through which we can trace negotiations between transnational influences and their localized iterations. It is also a fertile and provocative context in which to explore the political dimensions of clowning and its potential to disrupt as well as to reinforce dominant value systems and networks of power, due to the fact that the hospital is a relatively self-contained institution in which a very particular set of rules and patterns exist: the perfect playground for a clown’s subversive influence.

August 2009 A tiny van packed full of clowns pulls up to the gates of Santa Sofía hospital at 10.30 a.m. on a typically cold, misty Manizales day. A cluster of dirty white buildings, nestled among the precipitous flanks of the mountain town, the hospital appears functional but neglected. As

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we arrive we drive past a long line of people at the front gate, waiting for the outpatient clinic to open or perhaps for visiting time in the main hospital. A snack vendor with a polystyrene box is doing good business selling frozen popsicles, strangely incongruous on this chilly morning. Once we have parked, I follow the six members of the group Titiriclaun along corridors and into a storeroom full of old trolley beds, wheelchairs and other archaic apparatus. Juan, Adriana, Leyla, Griselle, Anita, Sergio and I disappear behind screens. Five minutes later out come Juancho, Sofi, Lu-lu, Gri-Gri, Alegria, Loncho and Teddy. Gone are the jeans, t-shirts and trainers, and in their place an assortment of eccentric hats, comic glasses, bulbous shoes, striped stockings, eclectic accessories and, of course, red noses. My own clown costume, mostly black with yellow trim, feels sober and muted in comparison to the others, but a rush of nervous adrenalin helps lift my mood as we file out into the corridor, where nurses greet us with smiles and waves, treating the clowns like old friends. Passing into the hospital lobby, the group disperses. Juan and Adriana, the directors of Titiriclaun, consult with a nurse about which wards we should visit today. Sergio and Anita play a game of peek-a-boo through a window with some bemused administrators. Meanwhile the other clowns are jovially greeting whoever happens to come through: cleaners, administrative staff, nurses, doctors. Being the newcomer, I lack the easy rapport that the others clearly have with the hospital staff, and feel initially awkward. Whenever I catch someone’s eye I remove my hat and bow ceremoniously, which, in most cases, causes a reciprocal gesture, a smile, a slight bow or even a laugh. I am just beginning to enjoy this little game when, without any kind of discernible signal, I find we are once again on the move. We flow out of the reception area and up the stairs, driven by some unseen impulse. Arriving at the next floor, we barge noisily through the doors into the ward, where a doctor and several nurses are huddled around



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a desk involved in serious conversation. They look up and instantly drop what they are doing to exchange joking banter with us for several minutes. We split into smaller groups and begin working our way along the corridor, making exploratory forays into small rooms where the patients mostly seem to be convalescing rather than critical. I follow Juancho and Alegría into a room where two men are sitting in chairs next to their pristine beds. One is staring with a glazed expression at a television on the wall while the other is slumped in his chair, head lolling over awkwardly. Both men are attached to intravenous drips and heart monitors. As Juancho and Alegría enter, the patient watching television starts clapping and laughing. The connection is instantaneous and within seconds verbal joking progresses to singing and dancing. I see the sleeping man open his eyes and lift his head slightly, his face breaking into a sleepy but delightful smile, eyes creasing at their corners. The rest of his body does not move, but he keeps his eyes slightly open, his head semi-upright, and his mouth in a sideways smile. Juancho asks him how he doing. He acknowledges the question with a slight adjustment of the eyes and mouth. The other patient gestures towards the cumbersome heart monitor that is flashing and beeping next to his bed, as if to suggest he is fed up with its relentless surveillance. Juan looks curiously at it and asks if it is some kind of inter-galactic communication device. The patient laughs. Juancho asks if he can try it. Each time the patient blinks, Juancho proposes, he is sending a message to outer space, and for several minutes the clowns and the patients experiment with blinking, winking, fluttering, scrunching, opening wide, as if different variations could produce a range of different messages. The patients’ suggestions are eagerly accepted and incorporated. Finally they all hold hands to form a circuit through which the messages can flow. The energy builds until an imagined explosion sends the clowns gyrating their way out of the room.

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Figure 6  Members of Titiriclaun with the author in Santa Sofía hospital (August 2009)

In all my interviews with members of Titiriclaun I asked the clowns what they thought the effects of their interventions in the hospital were. According to Loncho, one of the newest and youngest clowns: Hospital clowning is like throwing around a pot of bright paint in the sterile white corridors of the institution. The costumes literally brighten the bare walls, and our high emotions inject a dose of fun and playfulness into the dull routine of hospital life.2

In Loncho’s colourful account, the hospital is figured as bare and dull, a place of routine and sterility. Sterility might be considered a positive attribute in a hospital. But here it is invoked negatively to suggest the absence of life and joy within the hospital institution. Ironically it is the hospital that needs healing and clowns have the cure: ‘fun and playfulness’ administered via a shot of ‘high emotions’. Fun and playfulness have a long association with clown practice



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and training. Indeed clown scholar Louise Peacock asserts that ‘play is the most vital element of clown performance’ (2009: 154, my emphasis). Curiosity, irrationality, interruption, disruption, subversion, deviance, irreverence and transgression are just a few of the specific ways in which clowns interact playfully with the world and with their audiences, according to Peacock’s sustained study of the relationship between clowns and play, aptly named Serious Play (2009). The significance of play as an apparently universal human phenomenon has been critiqued, analysed and hotly debated in a range of academic fields, most notably sociology and anthropology.3 For some theorists, play operates in its own self-contained sphere and so its effect on everyday life is limited: It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. (Huizinga 1949: 13)

Victor Turner, by contrast, considers play to be fundamentally free of boundaries and rules: ‘play is, for me, a liminal or liminoid mode, essentially interstitial, betwixt-and-between all standard taxonomic nodes’ (1987: 168). Being liminal does not imply it is disconnected from material and everyday interests. On the contrary, its very liminality gives it a critical potency: ‘there is no sanctity in play; it is irreverent and is protected in the world of power struggles by its apparent irrelevance and clown’s garb’ (Turner 1987: 170). Crucially, play is protected in the world of power struggles, not protected from it. For Turner, play is not only conducive of what Csikszentmihalyi has called ‘flow’ (1975: 11), but may equally function as a ‘reflexive interrupter’ (Turner 1987: 168), since it can appear innocent and disinterested while simultaneously mocking, ridiculing, critiquing, separating and recombining familiar cultural ideas. Play is grounded

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in a contradiction between appearance and reality, between seeming harmlessness and actual power, or, as Turner pithily puts it, ‘dangerous harmlessness’ (1987: 169). But Turner’s account of play, like Loncho’s description of the clowning, is overtly idealistic, utopian even. What relevance might the subversive overtones of ‘dangerous harmlessness’ have in the cold day-to-day reality of the hospital floor? Loncho’s was not a lone voice of optimism. The impact of the clowning on the hospital floor was variously described by members of the group as ‘an explosion of colour’, ‘a breaking of the routine’ or ‘a puncturing of the monotony’. Hospital staff also seemed to share this perception of the clowns as both powerful and transformative. One nurse, for example, commented: They transform the whole environment, the whole style of life in the hospital. For the hospital personnel they generate a really enjoyable ambience, because they change all the stress of dealing with the public, which becomes so monotonous. This change seems important, this moment when the clowns all arrive and everyone disperses and they bring something really positive to the work, to life and that whole world. The impact is supremely positive.4

A senior hospital administrator reiterated this sentiment: ‘for the employees it’s awesome because it breaks the routine and the stress that we have to deal with. We all join in with the ruckus.’ Ruckus is an inadequate translation of the original word used here by this administrator: recocha. This colloquialism, which hospital staff frequently used when discussing with me their experience of the clowns, lacks a precise equivalent in English, but refers to a limited period of chaotic horseplay that might arise at school or work when the teacher or boss is absent and the rules are temporarily suspended. Recocha and its suspending of conventions is reminiscent of play theorist Roger Caillois’s notion of ‘Ilinx’ (2001: 23), a kind of heady, vertiginous quality of play similar to getting drunk or being high on drugs, which contains a rebellious and destructive energy that



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tends towards dissolution: ‘this vertigo is readily linked to the desire for disorder and destruction, a drive which is normally repressed’ (2001: 24). This might also be linked to Clifford Geertz’s theorization of ‘deep play’ (1973: 433), games of chance which are not so much about winning as the pleasure of risk-taking, or Richard Schechner’s ‘dark play’, which involves dangerous and irrational behaviour that ‘subverts order, dissolves frames, breaks its own rules, so that the playing itself is in danger of being destroyed’ (1993: 36). Not all playing is of this vertiginous, destructive kind. There are clearly many kinds of play which are defined by rules and whose enjoyment is guaranteed precisely through the maintaining of those rules. Indeed certain theorists have pointed out that there is a fundamental dichotomy about the nature of play and its relationship to rules. Mihai Spariosu argued in Dionysus Reborn (1989) that there is, on the one hand, rule-bound play, which reflects order and civilization (note the similarity to Huizinga’s definition) and, on the other, the play of disorder, which includes carnival, forms of symbolic inversion, as well as deep play, dark play and all kinds of supposedly irrational play. Spariosu aligns the rational, ordered kind of play with an Apollonian worldview, while he associates the play of disorder and irrationality with Dionysian tendencies, suggesting that this dichotomy characterizes the history of Western philosophical thought, not just play itself. Crucially, because one is about the need for order and the other is about the rejection of order, both are equally concerned with ‘play as an instrument of power’ (Spariosu 1991: xii). A similar sort of distinction is made by Caillois between what he calls ‘paidia’ or childish play and ‘ludus’ or rule-bound play (2015: 27). Paidia may have its roots in ‘the elementary need for disturbance and tumult’ but it is soon develops into ‘a taste for destruction and breaking things’ (2015: 28). That is, it is not necessarily done as something entirely involuntary or unconscious of consequences. Nevertheless, ‘as soon as conventions, techniques and utensils emerge’,

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paidia begins to transform into ludus, in which skills, training and rules limit and control the playing into more formal kinds of social structure (Caillois 2015: 29). According to the staff of Santa Sofía and the clowns themselves, it seemed that the kind of rule-breaking and risk-taking activity that characterized the recocha of the clown interventions more closely matched the anarchic and irrational energy of paidia than the rulebound play of ludus, more Dionysian than Apollonian. The riotous charge of the clowns through the corridors and public areas of the hospital involved frequent breaking and disrupting of hospital’s rules as well as more general social conventions. Rule-breaking also took place within the patients’ rooms. The use of a heart monitor as an intergalactic communication device inverted conventional categories of meaning in the hospital. It specifically transformed a piece of medical apparatus, a reminder of the physical condition of the patient and a symbol of the medical institution upon which he is entirely dependent, into a channel of communication with an imaginary world. The symbolic shift here from entrapment to escape, from reality to fantasy, and the social transgression of treating something so serious and technically sophisticated as a mere plaything, invokes paidia in the sense that it challenges the dominant rules of the environment, and imagines their dissolution. Dissolution of rules is, at least, the temporary condition and the long-term promise of recocha. Having witnessed several interventions as an observer, I feel I am ready to have a go myself and I am paired with Loncho. In the first room we encounter three female patients. One is lying in bed, the other two sitting up in chairs. Loncho begins to improvise. He introduces me as ‘Profesor Amor’ (Professor Love) and explains that I am going to give a demonstration. I kneel in front of an empty chair and begin to declare my undying love for it, caressing and embracing it ludicrously. One patient talks in a lowered voice to Loncho, who passes on approval or



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criticism to me. She enjoys the spectacle, smiling and nodding, but not laughing out loud. Then I raise the stakes and start to focus my affection on one of the patients. This provokes a joking conversation about whether or not I am an appropriate match for her. While I am clearly much younger than the woman, she inverts the relationship, saying I am too old for her. I feign offence, but in reality am enjoying the banter as evidence that my clowning has provoked an active response. The ‘schtick’ seems to have worked. Buoyed up by our success, Loncho and I move further along the corridor and burst into the next room where three male patients lie quietly while two nurses with a trolley full of medical equipment are attending one of them. Without stopping to notice what is going on we begin the same routine, confident that it will work again. Since the patients are all male, I make the snap decision to aim my loving intentions at one of the nurses, who looks unimpressed but tolerates my sincere proclamations and proposals of marriage with a roll of surgical tape for a ring. They continue with their jobs and the men seem uninterested. The ‘schtick’ suddenly feels dull and uninventive, but we keep pushing. Nothing is having any effect. Nobody is responding, still less laughing. Eventually I give up on the improvisation and attempt some hat tricks, which fail dismally. I come out of the room feeling disoriented, disheartened and de-skilled. After every hospital intervention, the company’s two directors, Juan and Adriana, led a debrief in which the group could reflect on the day’s events. This would also be an opportunity for Juan and Adriana to reinforce important teaching points, especially for the younger clowns whom they found to be often volatile and unpredictable, perhaps dangerously so at times. The following lecture by Juan on this topic referred to a specific intervention by Loncho and Anita, but would have been an equally fair critique of my own misfired first attempt at hospital clowning.

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It takes time, it takes experience, observation skills, tact. To know how to approach a person, you have to respect the personal bubble of the person. In this case there was a person with heart failure and they had just put in a pacemaker that they were still synchronizing, which takes some two weeks. He was depressed because of the oxygenation process, which you didn’t understand, because that’s something you learn after several years of working in a hospital. It’s a risk and one thing is very clear for me: you have to know the world of the patient, from the moment you enter the door, you have to know who he is. Why? Because in this moment the patient becomes dependent and is carried into a euphoric state and happiness in which, if they had stayed like that, the person with the pacemaker would have gone into a biological crisis. That’s why I told them to stop right now, which upset them, but afterwards they understood that you have to observe the patient, sense and understand the hospital environment, and know what is the limit to reach.

My first hospital clown intervention was a humbling experience. I thought that my clown technique would see me through. Indeed from the outside it appeared that the clowns had little technique and that they were simply engaged in the free play of recocha, bringing disorder and mayhem to the otherwise carefully controlled environment. What became quickly clear was that the clowns were not simply working with the paidia energy of dissolution and chaos, but rather with a refined understanding and awareness of at least two sets of rules and conventions: those of the hospital and those of clown technique. As I learned through Juan’s sensitive coaching, you had to enter ‘the world of the patient’, and that requires knowing both their medical condition and what is appropriate to do in their vicinity, but also knowing their emotional state and how to connect with that. Crucially, through careful observation and understanding, the clown must ‘know what is the limit’. In other words, though play is part of the clowns’ modus operandi, the kind of play in which they engage cannot simply be just the unruly play



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of paidia, but rather the carefully delimited and rule-bound play of ludus. This was precisely the point which I heard Juan repeat frequently during the time I spent with Titiriclaun, particularly aimed at its younger members. It was perhaps the most overt outward sign of a deep-running tension within the group, between the older, more experienced members, who formed the consistent core of the company, and a more transient cohort of younger clowns. While the latter thrived on the anarchic playfulness of clowning, its physical and imaginative freedom, and the pleasure of recocha, the former tended to emphasize a slower, more orderly approach, characterized by dialogue, listening and respect. Going slowly, using all the senses to observe, taking time to connect all seemed to be things that the older clowns valued over and above the playfulness of recocha. Successful hospital clowning relied upon a knowledge of the rules and limits of the hospital and an intimate understanding and connection with the reality of the patients’ conditions, both physical and emotional, that is, their ‘world’. It also required the ability to subject those worlds to the logic of the clown, that is, to play with and in them. The technical apparatus around them or a suggestion made by the patient relating to their medical condition was often used as the starting point for an improvisation or game. On one occasion I witnessed Gri Gri and Loncho bringing a toy fish into a ward and declaring they were looking for somewhere for it to swim. A patient suggested they use the IV fluid bag he was connected to, and the clowns took up the offer, pretending that the IV bag was an aquarium for the fish. Reflecting on this, Juan explained that it was common for such scenarios, while emerging initially from spontaneous improvisations between the clowns and patients, to be incorporated into the clowns’ repertoire, their store of gags, bits and routines. They would then be repeated throughout the hospital, feeding a constantly shifting and

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evolving stock of material much of which was originally garnered through generative exchanges with the patients. The clowns thus demonstrated a dialogical sensitivity to their interlocutors and their environment. By responding playfully and systematically incorporating games which the patients had themselves proposed, they established a practice rooted in dialogue. This awareness, not readily apparent from a particular observed performance or interaction, reveals a hidden depth to the clowns’ work and complicates the view that it is simply paidia. While their rhetoric often centred on the breaking of rules and the anarchic and transformative flouting of routine, their moment-by-moment interactions implied a detailed knowledge of the rule-bound universe in which they operated and were conditioned and indeed defined by the presence of those same rules. Without the rules, their comedy would be meaningless and their irreverence would lack an object. Moreover, their games with patients did not represent an anarchic rejection of rules, but rather a collaborative process of re-writing and manipulating rules in a way that maximized pleasure and connection. This co-presence of paidia and ludus in Titiriclaun’s work in the hospital space signalled a tension, or a dual-awareness, whose significance reached farther than I had at first imagined. On the next floor the clowns shift up yet another gear and surge into a ward together, suddenly more animated and dynamic than before. Following behind, I enter to see five male patients lying in beds ranged around a large multiple-occupancy room, in various states of alertness. The clowns have separated again and are interacting individually with each patient at their bedside. Each has a personal ‘schtick’, a metaphorical bag of tricks, from which they can draw to break the ice with a patient. Lu-lu takes on the persona of a reporter with a large plastic microphone, which she uses to conduct mock interviews: ‘What is your favourite colour orange?’ she asks nonsensically. Sofi



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has a colourful toy parrot, which she holds out in front of her as she approaches a patient. The person’s attention is focused on the animal, which seems to function as an unthreatening intermediary between performer and patient. Loncho has a small wooden flute, which he plays softly to several non-responsive patients. He finally comes to an older man, who has been quietly observing the clowns working the ward, his head titled over to one side. Loncho hands him a plastic tambourine and the man starts to beat a soft rhythm. The music fills the room and becomes contagious, invoking a new energy of playfulness. Juancho starts singing an invented song with nonsensical words. For the last few minutes in this ward the clowns play together, weaving in and out of beds and singing: an exceptionally sensitive and respectful outburst of carnivalesque energy. As this reserved revelry continues, I notice one patient who is less engaged than all the others. He is a young man, possibly in his teens, with a shaved head and a smooth face, who has been brought into the room in a wheelchair by a nurse. He is sitting motionless, his hands and arms hidden under a blanket, which he holds tightly around his upper body as he watches the clowns. From beneath the blanket a solitary leg extends down to the footrest. The clowns, perhaps sensing his discomfort, leave him alone. But as the music and dancing start to dwindle and the clowns move towards the door, Sofi goes to him and leans down with her parrot, whispering something too quiet for anyone else to hear. Lu-lu the reporter then approaches with her microphone and facilitates a brief exchange between him and Adriana’s parrot. It is a passing moment. I am soon caught up in the flow of energy and movement, and hustled out of the ward with the others. But as I leave, I look back to see the man smiling, the blanket now no longer wrapped around him but falling loosely over his shoulders, revealing his bare chest and his hands laying on his lap.

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I later learned that this young man was a member of one of the guerrilla forces and had lost his leg in action. The hospital was always full of casualties of the conflict, according to Juan and Adriana, including guerrillas, paramilitaries, state army soldiers and civilian victims of bombings, shootings and other forms of violence. It was not uncommon to see a guerrilla and a paramilitary in the same room lying in adjacent beds. Sometimes armed police would be posted outside or even inside rooms to guard or to protect military personnel. While names over patients’ beds were changed to avoid identification, affiliations and loyalties were often impossible to erase and the presence of armed guards served to emphasize them. Thus while the hospital might seem on one level to be a neutral space in which outside conflicts might be left behind, in fact the institution more often served to heighten and exacerbate such differences. Social divisions such as these were in fact always invading and penetrating the enclosed space of the hospital, presenting particular challenges for the clowns, who of course professed to treat all equally. Being the only facility in the city that offered free public healthcare – as well as a range of more exclusive private options – Santa Sofía housed the broadest possible range of economic sectors. Yet treatment and conditions were by no means equally distributed within the institution. Conditions for patients varied considerably. Those with sufficient economic means enjoyed private rooms on the lower floors, with tables, chairs, en-suite bathrooms, TVs and – perhaps most important for personal well-being – unlimited visiting hours. Those relying on public healthcare, meanwhile, typically shared large dormitory-style wards on the upper floors and were only allowed visitors during two specified hours of the day. The concrete walls and floors dividing up the building thus served to segregate according to economic means and political affiliation,



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replicating in microcosm the macro-social inequalities that divided the country as a whole. In this context the clowns’ carnival procession took on a disruptively egalitarian aspect, their free-flowing movement between different floors and wings temporarily erasing categories and delineations of difference, transgressively merging spheres that were – culturally, socially and economically – worlds apart. This socially democratic aspect and its benefits did not go unnoticed by the hospital staff, as the comments of one senior doctor demonstrate: I think it’s really great that they visit the offices in the north wing and the general users in the south wing. They don’t look to see what social status they are, they just go to everyone who needs it. They don’t go, for example, separately to the private rooms on the second floor, where people are a bit more affluent, but they go everywhere, and they see everyone regardless of the ranks or social strata, and I think that’s very good.

It was not only the patients who were affected by divisive and hierarchical conditions in the hospital. Santa Sofía was of critical importance to a swathe of the population both in Manizales and in rural coffee growing areas for miles around, and thus in high demand. Yet, Juan informed me, it was critically under-staffed, under-equipped and under-financed. Staff worked long hours under stressful conditions and were often paid several months in arrears. Rigid hierarchies of status and importance, as in many modern hospitals, produced a microcosm of a class-differentiated society among the resident staff, exacerbated, I learned, by an institutional culture of rivalry and self-interest across departments. When the staff said that playing with the clowns removed the stress of the everyday, they were not just referring to the stress of caring for patients but also that of working under dominant regimes of power that operated within the institution. Certain theorists have noted the egalitarian character of play, its

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potential for levelling out social imbalances. Turner relates play closely to concepts of ‘communitas’ and ‘antistructure’, for example, which do not refer to a simple structural reversal or mirror-imaging of the everyday, but rather ‘the liberation of human capacities of cognition […] from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses’ (1982: 44). Communitas produces the sensation of unity similar to that described by Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘flow’ or Martin Buber’s ‘Essential We’, in which social boundaries and hierarchies are temporarily lifted, such that ‘boundaries are ideally coterminous with those of the human species’ (1982: 47). True communitas is characterized by a feeling – not a thought, but a feeling – that all people are one. The difficulty with communitas, of course, is keeping it going for longer than an instant. The tendency for anti-structure to revert to normative structure stems from the fact that ‘the experience of communitas becomes the memory of communitas, with the result that communitas itself in striving to replicate itself historically develops a social structure’ (1982: 47). The play of the clowns is likewise transient and quickly moves from experience to memory when work and routine kick back in. If the two are distinct and separate entities, as they appear to be, how can the clowns hope to impact in a permanent way upon the deeply entrenched social inequalities that reiterate themselves daily through the performed routines of work? The clowns have now been improvising their way through the hospital for over two hours and the intervention is nearing its end. On the way back to our makeshift dressing room there is time for one final diversion, into the hospital call centre, where around ten administrators in headsets sit at desks, focused on screens. The clown have hardly entered before some of the workers take off their headsets, lean back in their chairs and start bantering with them. Within minutes one of



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them has got Lu-lu’s plastic microphone and is singing karaoke, while others dance and cheer her on. Another has stolen Loncho’s hat and is teasing him by passing it around among his co-workers and running away while the hapless owner pursues. It is as though the clowns have given permission to the workers to behave like raucous teenagers. With great élan they seize the opportunity and play. But although ‘recocha’ is the dominant activity in the space, not everyone is participating in the same way or to the same degree. Neither does the arrival of the clowns signal a total abdication of responsibilities and hospital duties. Looking around the room I see a range of people at very different levels of immersion. While the ringleaders are singing and playing catch with Loncho’s hat, others continue to take calls, quietly tapping their feet to the rhythm of the music, or smiling quietly while the ‘recocha’ circulates around them. There is in fact a whole range of levels of participation in the carnivalesque revelry: some enter fully, some continue to work and others occupy a middle ground, a twilight zone, half-playing, half-working. The clowns, meanwhile, do not force themselves on anyone who does not actively engage. Theirs is not a demand but an open invitation to play. Staff members’ comments indicate that the clowns’ interventions transformed the atmosphere of the hospital for the better, bringing temporary release in the form of recocha. I have also proposed that these interventions temporarily disrupted institutionalized inequalities between patients. But a question still remains about the permanence of any socially equalizing effect on the work environment. The words of one call centre worker suggest that these episodic periods of play do little but allow the staff to return to their jobs with new vigour: For us as administrators it helps us a lot as a form of distraction, because they come here for us too and greet us, and we disconnect from the work, from our concentration, and go back to work with renewed energy and in better spirits to keep working.

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In a similar vein, another administrator told me: ‘after they go we continue working but with more enthusiasm. It helps us to work with more commitment and love, to provide a better service.’ The implication here is that the clowns – while transforming the space temporarily – do not structurally alter the conditions of the hospital, which are at times oppressive and hierarchical. They may, on the other hand, reinforce those conditions by giving the staff a momentary distraction that allows them to commit to their jobs with ‘renewed energy’. A common feature of play theory and popular perceptions of play for several centuries has been the tendency to draw a hard line between categories of work and play (Lancy and Tindall 1976). Sutton-Smith suggests that the existence of this binary – in which work is seen as productive and play as trivial escapism – is advantageous to some because it discredits realms of imagination and fantasy as insignificant: the ‘cultural attempt to make work and play quite distinct’ has led to an assumption that ‘play is supposed to be non-productive and not to intend serious consequences’ (2001: 189). The serious/non-serious dualism of work/play, while still culturally persistent, is quite unjustified by current evidence, which rather suggests that ‘play always involves multiple personal and social goals as well as solely instrumental play behaviors’ (Sutton-Smith 2001: 188). What this dualistic perception ignores, claims SuttonSmith, is the complexity of the relationship between work and play, how the rules of one intersect with the other: ‘the intertwining of these aspects of behavior makes their separation possible only in abstract terms’ (2001: 189). Just as seemingly frivolous play involves the re-negotiating of external rules and pressures, and as such is an activity crucially concerned with enforcing or contesting power, goal-oriented and seemingly serious work can mask all kinds of more-or-less hidden playful behaviours: ‘nor is it possible in adult



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life always to say that what is happening at the work desk is work, when what is happening in the mind is often play’ (Sutton-Smith 2001: 189). Many of the staff during the call centre intervention were not fully working and not fully playing. Theirs was a liminal participation, in which the carnival atmosphere was overlaid and integrated with their habitual work routine. For many staff, then, the arrival of the clowns was not temporary ‘time out’ from their own world but rather an opportunity to travel playfully between worlds of equal importance and seriousness. The blurring of boundaries between work and play helps us to see that play is not discrete, but is infiltrated by the realities of work. Equally it requires us to accept that work is not a static or simply goal-driven activity, nor immune to the contagion of play. In the clowns’ recocha, the two messily overlap, each susceptible to interference by the other. The hope that the episodic periods of playful transgression instigated by the clowns filter out beyond temporary moments of recocha and instigate long-term transformation is one expressed by the members of Titiriclaun themselves, as demonstrated here by Leyla: The objective is just to have an effect in the moment. We don’t know if the effect lasts more time. I would hope so. If it lasts longer that’s marvellous. Maybe a memory remains, especially for the companions of the patient.

The notion of ‘memory’ is one way in which we might consider the long-term effects of the clowning, recalling Mitchell’s assertion that clowning ‘may persist in the memory as images of difference that continue to challenge the here and now’ (1992: 25). Adriana describes the trace left behind not as a memory but as a ‘wave’ or ‘wake’: For the care staff it’s a long-term effect, but for the patients it’s only in the moment. In the moment, but hopefully we leave behind a wave, a wake, or a feeling in the atmosphere that stays for a little while and

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changes the hospital’s atmosphere, and it changes because they are always waiting for us. They always want us to arrive.

There are several important points to note here. First Adriana believes that the long-term effect pertains more to the staff than the patients. This of course implies that the effect she is most concerned about is a social effect, rather than a physical or medical one. Secondly, she observes – just as I did during my interventions with the clowns – that the change in environment is demonstrated through the expectations that have evolved over time. If memory is the intangible and evanescent product of the clown’s recocha, expectations are the motor that turns those memories back into transformative action, since it is now the staff who actively await the clowns and invite them in. Expectation have clearly altered over the years. Juan explained how things have changed since their early interventions, when staff and patients were bemused: The first four months were very difficult […] Since then the atmosphere has totally changed. With the care staff we have established a lively friendship, a sharing of happiness. On occasion I go in normal clothes and they ask me when are the clowns coming, what day are they coming, why haven’t you come back, what’s happened? They tell us they are bored and they miss us. They say, ‘you’ve changed the atmosphere, you de-stress us, you make us happy, you make us laugh’. So now there is a good feeling.

The clowns, it seems, while disrupting and playing with hospital routines, ultimately become co-authors of a new set of routines, not entirely erasing or replacing the former but nevertheless posing alternatives to it and thereby holding it up to a critical light.



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The politics of hospital clowns In the preceding section I employed theories of play to help explain hospital clowning specifically because they help to elucidate its political dimensions. If one thing is clear, it is that the playfulness of clowning does not just have a solitary objective or outcome. Rather, it tends to reflect a field of multiple and competing interests that circulate and collide around the institution, including those of patients, staff members (of various kinds and levels) and the clowns themselves, each with their own agenda and perspective. A clear example of this came from a conversation with the head of corporate marketing: At Santa Sofía we have all kinds of alternative therapy: we have the clowns, we have therapeutic dogs, we have religious services, we provide company, so people can say ‘I like going there because they have totally different things’. So any time they get sick again they’ll want to return to Santa Sofía. In the short term and in long term, they can say ‘I know Santa Sofía, so I’ll go there. It’s totally different from the conventional care you get in hospitals and clinics.’

This perspective reveals just how people’s roles within the hospital shape what they value about the clowning. For the marketing team the clowning represents a selling point for the hospital, something that made it unique and memorable. Clowning as social performance does not take place in a vacuum but rather always in relation to particular social contexts. Neither should the hospital, as one of these contexts, be mistaken for a monolithic or singular entity, but must rather be envisioned as a network of intersecting activities. Sociologist Barbara Czarniawska reminds us that all institutions are indeed ‘nets of collective action’ (1997: 41). Conceiving of the hospital in this way allows us to debunk the idea of the clown as disrupting or deconstructing any singular dominant power but rather intervening in networks of conflicting narratives, perhaps aligning itself

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with some while seeking to challenge or disrupt others. Very often these competing narratives and agendas reflect broader discourses of society (medical, humanistic, or corporate, for example), which blend and collide in very particular ways in the context of the modern hospital. The existence of hospitals cannot be purely determined as an inevitable or ideal response to the biological reality of human malfunction, but rather as a particular consequence of much broader cultural, social and economic conditions and developments. Clown Doctors, a UK-based hospital clown programme, claim on their website that ‘the implications of hospitalisation are far wider than simply those relating to medical conditions’ (Clown Doctors 2015). Indeed, hospitalization and the very notions of sickness or illness that justify it, must be understood as social and cultural phenomena as much as biological ones, effectively functioning as self-reinforcing discourses that both validate and uphold a clinical-medical institution that itself reflects a political and social status quo. Talcott Parsons, in a seminal work on the social structures of medical practice, reflected on how ‘being sick’ is in fact an institutionally determined social role in which the patient – defined by his or her lack of medical knowledge – is placed in a subordinate and relatively powerless role vis-à-vis the physician – defined by his or her superior medical knowledge (1951: 288–322). Sickness itself is a socially produced category that therefore logically disempowers the sufferer, who has little say in the matter: ‘the fact that others than the patient himself often define that he is sick, or sick enough for certain measures to be taken, is significant’ (1951: 320). While sickness as a social category also represents a ‘deviance’ from social norms, the labelling of the sick person as ‘patient’ and their subsequent envelopment in an institutionalized relationship with a field of healthcare represented primarily by the physician, averts the danger of this class of deviants forming a solidarity that might threaten the social



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order. Today, the idea that the medical profession is permeated by (or perhaps consists of) a network of sometimes competing, sometimes allied corporate and governmental interests, is a widely accepted critical perspective. If one considers the hospital as a complex institution that mirrors or even reinforces social hierarchies and stratifications, it is unsurprising that it should be a stressful and anxiety-producing place, or, as Robert Wilson describes it: ‘a battleground, often ripped by a crossfire of professional purposes’ (1963: 73). Wilson’s critical analysis of the general hospital presents it as a social microcosm that is ‘inherently divisive’, in which lines of authority are often uncertain, and in which competing interests of disparate groups threaten to dissolve the efficacy of the institution: Underlying the disparate goals of patient care, teaching, and research is that first necessary aim of any institution: self-maintenance, or corporate survival, with its human and economic imperatives. If it is not quite all things to all men, the hospital is very many things to very many different kinds of people. Occupational specialization, the compounding of professional groups, the demands of patients, physicians, trustees, or whomever, all imply that the organization is likely to be marked by conflict and confusion. (1963: 69)

For the institution, the inherent conflictuality of this situation is a problem to be constantly battled with, yet it is often not clear who is in charge. Wilson describes the ‘diffusion of authority’ whereby at least two distinct lines of command, one medical technical, the other administrative, jostle and compete for control. Within such a conflictual context, things can only get done as a result of informal and temporary alliances among networks of people, a simulacrum of wider society in which social crises must often be negotiated in ad hoc and improvised fashions, leading to shifts in power. That is, the hospital, like any large institution, consists of ‘patterned relationships among people’ (Wilson 1963: 68) – human networks that are

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constantly in flux, though the rate of change may vary. For the professionals such flux may not be a problem, or may even work to their advantage. According to Wilson, it is the patient who suffers most from this constant conflict of power and interest: ‘his body, mind and purse are scarred by the zealous attempts to do for him what each staff member’s specialty dictates’ (1963: 73). Even without this conflictual pressure, simply entering the hospital requires the patient submitting themselves to a set of rules, a time schedule and pattern of activity that is entirely alien, so giving up crucial elements of identity: ‘As he strips off his clothing, so he strips off, too, his favored costume of social roles, his favored style, his customary identity in the world’ (1963: 70). Exacerbating the already dehumanizing effects of the hospital environment is what Wilson calls the ‘rising tide of bureaucracy’ and the ‘shaping patterns’ of commercialization and corporatization, which are progressively supplanting the needs of the ill (1963: 74). As doctors become increasingly disciplined and constrained by increasing levels of professionalization and the constant struggle for occupational prestige, they also lose their identity and independence, which has clearly detrimental effects for the patient and their care: ‘from a wise healer who often possessed charismatic qualities and enjoyed a very generalized respect, he is becoming more nearly a technical specialist who works as part of a close-knit medical team’ (Wilson 1963: 74). All kinds of relationships are thus potentially deteriorating in hospitals, given the current trends towards technologization, professionalization and privatization. The warmth and intimacy of the staff–patient relationship is diminished, while the patient–patient relationship is neglected, despite the fact that in shared wards they spend more time with each other than with the medical staff. The staff–staff relationship is dominated by departmental rivalry, competing agendas of medical and administrative branches, and, says Wilson, a lack of motivation due to rigid structures of hierarchical specialization that do not allow for promotion or mobility across



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the organization. In general the picture of the modern hospital is an increasingly bleak one. A cause for optimism, for Wilson, is the belief that the problems of social structure and conflict that threaten to dehumanize the modern hospital can be mitigated, if only we are willing to broaden our thinking: ‘there is room for considerable maneuver and for entertaining alternative structures’ (1963: 76, sic). Typically, organizational change has tended to lag behind technological development, failing to keep step, yet ‘there are indications that an attitude of social experiment may begin to parallel the propensity to scientific experiment’ (1963: 76). Wilson’s optimism may have been prescient, given that he was writing twenty years before the first professional hospital clown organization, the Clown Care Unit (CCU) in New York, was established.5 The idea of clowning as a ‘social experiment’ rather than a clinical practice or a marketing tool, for example, is suggestive of the ways in which clowning implicitly challenges the normative agendas of the hospital rather than supporting them. Even now that hospital clowning has been embraced by the medical profession in certain countries (Canada and Sweden, for example), it is rarely presented in the public forum as a solution for the systemic failures of the hospital institution, the damaging effects of technologization, professionalization and privatization. On the surface, clowning is more typically understood as supporting medical outcomes or, more generally, the psycho-social well-being of patients. But a cursory examination of the way organizations and researchers describe the benefits of clown care reveals that their impact is not only providing something that is felt to be missing, but in some cases directly challenging the dominant philosophies and procedures of the hospital institution. Hospital clown organizations often invoke quasi-medical terminology to emphasize the role of play and laughter in supporting the clinical objectives of the hospital. The Theodora Foundation, originally

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founded in Switzerland but today supporting over 170 clown doctors in eight European countries, claims on its website that ‘laughter is the best medicine’ (Theodora 2015). Yet behind such metaphorical clichés there remains a lack of clarity about what precisely are the benefits or effects of the presence of clowns in the hospital. A plethora of scientific studies have made seemingly conclusive claims about the various health benefits of laughter and humour, with particular focus on the strengthening of the immune system (Berk, Tan and Fry 1993), increasing pain tolerance (Weisenberg, Tepper and Schwarzwald, 1995), improving blood pressure and increasing longevity. However, a comprehensive review of research findings by Rod A. Martin asserted that ‘despite the popularity of the idea that humor and laughter have significant health benefits, the current empirical evidence is generally weak and inconclusive’ (2001: 516). Linda Van Blerkom has argued that contemporary hospital clowns are cultural descendants of the ritual healers and shamans of non-Western societies (1995: 463). Emphasizing a distinction between the biomedical institution and certain kinds of holistic medicine, Blerkom argues that both the shaman and the clown share a ‘concern with the whole patient and the mental predicates of disease’ (1995: 464). She thus contextualizes hospital clowning within a increasing integration by the medical institution of what she prefers to term ‘complementary’ or ‘additive’ approaches which may ‘enhance the efficacy of biomedicine’ (1995: 465). Her participantobservation of clowns from the Big Apple circus’s Clown Care Unit (CCU) working in five New York hospitals leads to the emphatic conclusion that the clowns do not cure anyone, but nevertheless have a beneficial role to play in collaboration with physicians, nurses and other mainstream health care providers. Notably, the clowns’ ability to ‘operate outside of and, in this case, contrary to the usual cultural rules and norms’ (1995: 468) through the use of ‘outlandish costumes’ (1995: 466), ‘weird costumes, props and behaviour’ (1995: 472),



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allows them to make the hospital a more hospitable place, in effect healing the social milieu rather than the individual patient. Perhaps because of the ambivalence of the medical research, some hospital clown organizations prefer to describe their efficacy in non-clinical terms, emphasizing patients’ well-being and the general easing of stress for families, staff and patients. In Sweden, for example, where clowns are present in almost every university hospital, a seven-year research project looking at the encounters between hospital clowns and sick children identified three practical benefits for medical care (Linge 2013). The first was the creation of ‘a magical safe area, where demands and adjustments are temporarily set aside and where the lighter side of life takes precedence’ (Linge 2013). The second benefit was ‘a perceived feeling of joy’ that creates an increased well-being and a moment of relaxation for everyone involved. The third and final benefit was described as ‘a defusing quality of care, a positive counterweight, a dimension that is lacking in medical care’. This is particularly invoked by the clowns’ tendency to ‘use different solutions that bypass regular hospital routines’ (Linge 2013). This final benefit is particularly noteworthy, implying that the activities of clowns may sometimes be in conflict with those of the hospital. They ‘bypass’ hospital routine, act as a ‘counterweight’ to negative aspects of hospital culture and offer that which is ‘lacking’ in institutionalized medical care. For obvious reasons, clown care professionals must be strategic when describing the benefits of clowning, finding ways to reassure the institution and potential funders that their aims are complimentary to those of the hospital rather than antagonistic towards them. It would not be in the interests of clowns to openly critique the hospital’s institutional culture or its treatment of patients. Yet existing research and my own observations of Titiriclaun demonstrate how such critiques are often implicit in the clowns’ practice as well as latent in their rhetoric. Whether we see

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this as yet another example of a ‘hidden transcript’ (Scott 1990: xii) or the clown’s ‘semi-independent’ relationship to institutions (Bratton and Featherstone 2008: 11), we are reminded yet again of the clowns’ ability to play a double game of insider and outsider, finding ways to challenge dominant forces without necessarily seeming to.

The House of Charm Aside from the hospital, the place where Titiriclaun most often gathered was La Casa del Encanto (House of Charm), a rented house that served as meeting space, studio and guest accommodation. This light, airy space, perched on a steep hillside overlooking miles of rolling coffee plantations, provided a respite from the busy and traumatic hospital, a safe haven in which practice could be reflected upon and refined. I also came to see it as a kind of alchemic laboratory in which multiple pedagogical influences converged to produce Titiriclaun’s particular brand of clowning. Here I was able to spend time with the group’s members, interview them and take part in their training workshops and weekly meetings. These weekly meetings were an opportunity for performers to reflect on their practice, share with the group what they had learned or process a particularly difficult encounter. On one occasion two of the younger members of the group, Anita (19) and Edwin (21), were recounting a particularly affecting experience with a patient, which had occurred that day at Santa Sofía, while the other members of Titiriclaun, seated in a circle, listened attentively. Edwin:  there was a person, an old man, I think he was maybe 85. He was on a trolley in the corridor; and a nurse, an orderly and the man’s daughter were there with him. But he was in very bad state, very bad.



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Anita:  he was like a skeleton, a cadaver. It was deeply affecting to see him because he was completely bald and yellow like my shoes. Edwin:  we entered talking loudly. I mean we entered like this (claps his hands together forcefully) – you know what I mean? Like a wild horse. We completely overwhelmed him. We totally invaded his bubble. So he said to us, ‘Ah! Ugly people’. We didn’t know what to do so we kept babbling until he rolled over and turned his back on us. He was very tense. His daughter was holding his hands and stroking his head. So we went back to Juan and said ‘we can’t work with him. He’s in a bad way.’ Then Juan said we had made the mistake of simply going and talking. It’s not always necessary to talk. Juan Carlos said that our intention should be very simple, that we should just be with him, soothe him, calm him. So with Anita’s toy flower we went back to him, took his hand and put the flower in his hand. ‘It’s very pretty’, he said. And he began to touch and handle the flower. He looked at us and stroked the flower and I was holding his hand and caressing it to calm him. So then he started to feel more comfortable with us and he reached out to grab my nose. I didn’t know whether or not to let him, but Juan said we should let him. It was like an impulse, an expression of emotion towards us. And so in the silence we let him touch us. He touched our hands. He took his daughter’s hand and placed it in Anita’s hand. Then he touched our noses and her nose. His daughter’s he touched like this (stroking motion) and with ours he grabbed hold of the nose and pulled it … but he didn’t pull it in a nasty way, but more like in an emotional way. It was really beautiful. He rolled over on the stretcher until he was practically lying in my arms. Then suddenly on impulse he took my hat off and threw it. I didn’t feel like he threw the hat out of bad intention. It was a game, his game. It meant he was responding to what we were doing. He didn’t throw it with a lot of force, because he was weak, but somehow he summoned the energy where previously it had not existed and threw it and it made me laugh. And he was laughing too. Anita:  a very beautiful thing happened. Before he had been saying things like ‘that’s horrible; you’re ugly’ and now he was saying, ‘you’re beautiful’. It was a change and we felt it. We didn’t have to tell a story.

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We just had to touch him. We touched him, stroking his fingers until he began to have impulses. He wanted to pull the petals off the flower … Edwin:  … but very gently. Anita:  and I think the daughter felt all of this. The man took her hand and put it in mine and took Edwin’s hand, as if he was in despair and he wanted everyone to be together with him in this moment. When we left the nurse said ‘thank you’. Edwin:  it was a really strange feeling. I’d never experienced anything like that. Anita:  we both felt this moment that was different from anything, because before we were always arriving like ‘Hello!’ and whatever, talking a lot, but this was something very subtle. Edwin:  intimate. It was something very simple but really wonderful. Anita:  that was when I really discovered the essence of looking someone in the eyes, because if he hadn’t looked us in the eyes, all that would not have happened. He saw us and realized we were clowns. Juan:  we humans spend a lot of time talking. It’s our affliction. We talk and talk and talk and we want to saturate people with conversation. Often it’s because we have ideas, theories, which we think are the truth and we want to tell people our ideas. When one is with a patient, the only theory that matters is contact, interrelation. Edwin just said: ‘Today I finally understood something, after two years … not to move so quickly.’ The man was moving slowly. He was dying. If you do something to him … the first thing he’s going to say is ‘you’re ugly’, right? Why? His world is different from yours. ‘You come here to impose something on me? To convince me of something? I’m sick of the whole world looking at me, pushing me around, moving me …’

The episode that played out between Anita, Edwin and the old man was transformative, not only for the patient but also for the two



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young clowns. As Juan said of the dying man, ‘his world is different from yours’. Anita and Edwin’s achievement on that occasion was to connect with the old man’s world, bringing their own into playful relation with his, thus awakening his own sense of playfulness, which in turn brought him out of his world. Their naturally exuberant playfulness, tempered by the guidance of a mentor, had unlocked a playful impulse in the old man, relieving him and his family members from the alienating paralysis of the hospital environment, as he lay forgotten in a corridor moments before death. The process of discovery for Anita and Edwin underscored precisely the point that Juan had been making consistently to the younger clowns about their volatility and the need to slow down and observe. The way in which the experience was articulated and understood by the clowns suggests that they had indeed finally understood what he had been saying all this time. Juan’s delight at this was palpable. It felt like a significant step towards his personal objective of taming and focusing the wayward energies of his young recruits. Titiriclaun was established in 1993 when three friends – Juan, a psychologist, Tuto, a theatre director, and Adriana, a photographer – motivated by the desire to contribute something positive to a society which they saw as deeply broken, began making informal clown visits to children diagnosed with cancer. From these modest beginnings they expanded, establishing their own charitable foundation to support the clowning as well as other kinds of alternative therapeutic care. They invited international teachers to deliver training both in therapeutic practices and clown technique. Others joined over the years, many of whom were of a similar age and background, including Griselle and Leyla. But in 2007, feeling that they were running out of energy and needing a new focus, Juan and Adriana began recruiting new, younger members from local colleges and universities. This decision changed Titiriclaun fundamentally by introducing

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a potentially disruptive divide, oriented around a stark and defining difference of age, life experience and physical energy. The influx of younger clowns, mostly high school and university students between the ages of 16 and 19, brought a much-needed energy to the group. But it also caused conflict and disagreement. As we have seen, Juan was concerned that the clowns’ volatile energy posed a real risk to the patients’ health. IIn fact this complaint was echoed by other, older members of the group, such as Griselle who also defended her own, more restrained approach to hospital clowning: Unlike other clowns who talk about putting on the nose and becoming another character, I am more connected with the other person […] I’m less interested in the show, being spectacular, performing or being the centre of attention. It’s more about the intimate contact with the patient, sharing something.

At times the group’s very identity came to be defined by a generational difference of approach, where the younger clowns valued the disruptive energy and flow of recocha, while the older clowns desired intimacy and connection. For Juan and Adriana themselves, the entire project has become as much about supporting the development of the young people in the group as it is about transforming the hospital space. In particular, learning to control oneself, listen and connect with others is seen as a potentially transformative ability (as reflected in the example of Anita and Edwin). For Juan the tendency toward volatility and unthinking action reflects a broader cultural problem in Colombian society: You have to be more delicate, and to control impulses to do things, like one of them was saying the other day that they touched a patient’s medical equipment. He could see that he shouldn’t but he did it anyway. That’s something you have to control. Colombians have a cultural characteristic: we are very competitive. We want to excel at everything. We don’t have a balance, in terms of listening and understanding, instead we impose ourselves. Whatever region we’re from we



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think we are the best, everyone is the best, we all want to be the best. It’s our reality, in politics and society. Colombia is the best.

Juan’s critique of the young clown’s uncontrolled impulses morphs here into a critique of Colombian culture, which Juan even implies is one cause of the country’s social and political problems. Indeed clowning in practice becomes for him a channel through which to both critique and respond to what he sees as the realities around him. Colombians lack moderation, control, balance, listening, understanding. People in all walks of life impose themselves, compete and claim to be better than others. This harmful characteristic, Juan proposes, can be moderated by learning the control and sensitivity that comes with clowning, and thus clowning in the hospital is figured as more than a cure for patients or even for the culture of the hospital: for Juan it is a social performance that acts as an antidote to Colombia’s deepest and most damaging flaws. On one hand this suggests a condescending, top-down attitude within the group, in which the older members ‘teach’ or transfer their experience to the younger ones. On the other, there was in fact a pragmatic flexibility at the core of the relationship between young and old. For Juan and Adriana, continuing to grapple with the challenges of having two distinct, generationally divided, groups within the larger group was of strategic importance. Because of their untamed energy, the younger members bring something of great value to the group, specifically an ability to play more freely and with more abandonment than the adults: ‘Us older people are more afraid. The young people risk more, they are more intrepid’, Juan admits. The balance of the group relies in part on the youthful energy of the adolescents, which they see as reflecting their innocence and obliviousness to suffering. In the hospital context, this youthful energy buoys up the rest of the group, sustains it and in some respects allows them to have a greater impact, especially in their relationship to the staff. For this reason,

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Juan and Adriana, while trying to contain and control the energy, must also nurture it and not let it be entirely suppressed. To lose the paidia and the recocha would be to risk losing the young people altogether and the benefits they offer to the group and the hospital: It’s important that we watch them and observe them, but also let them flow, let them be, let them grow. Because otherwise we run the risk that they’ll leave and not come back. For them part of the exercise is the play.

As I spent more time with the members of Titiriclaun, both in the hospital and in the Casa del Encanto, I came to understand how deeply clowning interconnected with their own lives and social realities: as a way of escaping painful memories, exceeding personal limitations, and connecting with others. It was not just about the chaos of recocha or the sensitive playing with others. Clowning was a practice that helped young and old make sense of and take control of their own lives. The transformative effects of clowning were not only felt in the hospital but also within the community of Titiriclaun on an individual and collective level. And just as the hospital was a network of intersecting activities reflecting differing agendas, Titiriclaun as an organization also had to contend with and balance numerous perspectives and agendas. In fact, in its openness to multiple experiences and voices, its encouraging of debate and conversation, Titiriclaun’s practice constituted a reflexive inquiry into the very problems posed by clowning as social performance and its ambiguous relationship to power. Even as the group dealt with the tense networks of competing power that inhere in the hospital, power was ambivalently negotiated within the group itself in the voices of the older and younger members. Together, the qualities brought by each group work dialogically and reciprocally, supporting and complementing each other in producing an intervention that is both disruptive and reflexive.



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What is so important about holding together these two groups is how their contrasting desires and strengths can create something that neither group could produce alone. Out of the strategic flexibility and inclusivity of the group’s ethos there also emerges a notional and embryonic model for a dialectical clowning that connects the general social processes with individual and personal experiences of suffering, love and connection. Edwin and Anita’s formative experience with the dying man in a corridor of Santa Sofía hospital suggests the tone for this model of clowning. It is one in which intuition and impulse, a deep listening and active responsiveness produce playful and intimate encounters with others. On a broader social level, the conjoining of control and chaos – ludus and paidia – holds the potential to redress an imbalance between self-seeking competitiveness and collective responsibility.

Playful travelling between worlds We have already seen how multiple stakeholders involved in hospital clowning express radically different ideas about what its impacts and benefits are. This echoes Sutton-Smith’s idea that there are in fact multiple ‘rhetorics of play’, which ‘express the way play is placed in context within broader value systems’ (2001: 8). As we have already seen, the young clowns describe it as a bomb going off in the hospital, an image that is unpopular with the older clowns, who prefer to imagine clowning as an intimate form of interaction that is lacking in everyday patient care. Hospital staff welcome the clowns as a kind of recocha that breaks the routine, yet many of them choose not to enter the party atmosphere but rather stay on the peripheries, half-in, half-out, able to work and play simultaneously. Interviews with the senior management and public relations teams at the hospital reveal that clowning might represent a profit-related

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opportunity. At the other end of the scale, some doctors even refused to talk to me as they felt that the clowns were overly disruptive or simply childish and pointless. In this fragmented landscape of multiple stakeholders, agendas and interpretations, are there any cohesive ‘rules’ within the hospital that the clowns might be able to break or at least play with? Sutton-Smith proposes a useful distinction between the concepts of play and playfulness, in which the former is defined as a ‘stylized form of house play, truck play, contest, or carnival in which the expected routines or rules guide and frame the action in a steady way throughout’ (2001: 148) while playfulness refers to ‘that which plays with the normal expectations of play itself ’ or ‘that which plays with the frames of play’ (2001: 147–8). It might be said, then, that the clowns are engaged in ‘playfulness’, playing with the various frames and sets of rules that others have created. However, the difficulty of theorizing play’s relationship to rules is that rules seem to exist in an almost perpetual state of flux and multiplicity, or a process of rewriting in which a rule-breaking activity in one moment is considered within the rules the next (or vice versa). The examples of Titiriclaun in the hospital demonstrate this again and again: in the slow adaptation of the hospital to the playfulness of the clowns, for example, or in the spontaneous improvisation of new material, gradually honed into repeatable structures. What this suggests is that their particular kind of play does not involve simply transgressing the rules of the hospitals for a particular purpose. It is more accurate to conceive of the hospital as a flowing and evolving field of conventions and behaviours, which those in positions of authority within the hospital are constantly trying to contain and control. Such power is never water-tight and into its cracks and fissures the clowns insert alternative sets of possibilities, priorities and values, a contrasting influence on the shaping of hospital culture.



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Maria Lugones’ notion of ‘playful “world” travelling’ provides a more flexible image for describing the clowns’ practice than that of rule-focused notions of play. Lugones imagines a sense of playfulness that resists the ‘agonistic’ definitions of play developed by mostly white male play theorists, which ‘have, ultimately, to do with contest, with winning, losing, battling’ (1994: 15). In their accounts of play, competence and knowledge of the rules are paramount. Historically it is an attitude that has defined Western men’s desire to travel to others’ worlds and conquer them. Such an attitude is characterized by ‘arrogant perception’ (1994: 4), a phrase Lugones borrows from Marilyn Frye to describe a failure to identify or empathize with another: a failure to love. In particular this has to do with the destruction of rules and their replacement with other sets of rules, often more restrictive and brutal than the first. While rules belong to discourses of power, control and enforcement, Lugones’ notion of worlds provides us with an alternative, equally complex but perhaps more appropriate model to apply to the subtleties of playful behaviour. Worlds are defined by Lugones as particular constructions of society, of which there are often many within one society, some of which follow the ‘dominant culture’s description and construction of life’, while others represent a ‘non-dominant’ or ‘idiosyncratic’ construction (1994: 10). It is possible to travel between worlds or indeed to inhabit more than one world at a time, but not with an agonistic or antagonistic attitude to playfulness since this only leads to assimilation and erasure of other worlds. Successfully crossing racial, social or other kinds of boundaries requires a different kind of attitude, a loving, non-competitive, vulnerable and personally risky playfulness that has no rules: The playful attitude involves openness to surprise, openness to being a fool, openness to self-construction or reconstruction and to construction or re-construction of the ‘worlds’ we inhabit playfully. (Lugones 1994: 17)

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Lugones explains that playfulness, thought of negatively, may involve the breaking of rules. It may often have seemed that the clowns were, on a superficial level, breaking the rules of the hospital, bringing their carnivalesque and transgressive revelry to the white corridors, temporarily inverting the dominant hierarchical structures of the hospital, as many participants suggested. Beneath this, however, was a playful travelling between worlds, a dialogical process of connection that depended upon their ‘openness to surprise, openness to being a fool, openness to self-construction and reconstruction’ (1994: 17). This, says Lugones, is the positive way to envisage the playful attitude. Many of the acts in the hospital were improvised and built collaboratively in the encounter between clowns and participants, such that it was not always possible to say from where a structure emerged. The acts were emerging conversations, dependent on a loving perception of the other, which themselves flowed through the diverse worlds of the hospital and evolved in responsive relation to these worlds. But the playful world-travelling extended further, into La Casa del Encanto, where clowning and its relationship to society was debated and members were able to reflect upon its role within their own lives. Here, differences of experience and approach were held in balance in order to produce a clowning that was both reflexive and critical. The playful traversing of worlds outside the hospital thus served and supported the clowns’ collaborative playfulness inside the institution. In the social performance of clowning, previously unconnected worlds productively collide, coalesce and form themselves anew.

Conclusion: A New Map of Clowning

In transcribing, filtering and ordering the traces of lived experience that constitute ethnographic evidence, then organizing them into coherent arguments and cohesive narratives, one must make many decisions that fundamentally alter the way the reader will envision the subject. Like a sculptor chiselling away at a shapeless hunk of stone, there is a sense that the truth lies hidden beneath, waiting to be exposed, if sufficient excess noise can be removed. Yet, the reality of course is that this act of carving up and shaping the raw material is also a creative act that reveals as much about the desires and beliefs of the sculptor as it does about any objective truth. There is as much truth and value in what is left out, the lacunae, the detritus that remains on the cutting room floor, as there is in what remains on show. The shadow of that discarded material, its ghostly image, hovers reproachfully over the so-called ‘finished’ work, asking questions that undermine its seeming solidity and authority. For every story and every clown performance that I include in this book, there are twenty more whose inclusion might subtly shift the emphasis of the narrative. The more time I spent with Colombian clowns the more questions seemed to arise and, as new work was continually being produced, the landscape was continually shifting. For example, during my most recent trip to Colombia, in November 2015, I saw Lucho performing his new solo clown show, Ceniza, which was produced with financial support from the Ministry of Culture. Ceniza means ‘ashes’ and the show tells the sombre story of a lone soldier who finds shelter from battle in an abandoned circus tent. He discovers a clown costume in a battered old suitcase. He puts it on and slowly assumes the role of the clown. The piece is

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full of dark humour, including a poignant friendship with a severed arm that the soldier finds in the ring. His faulty radio occasionally crackles into life, reminding him of the ongoing battle outside. He finds pleasure in entertaining the audience, making them laugh and cheer when, after several attempts, he pulls himself awkwardly onto a trapeze. Finally he takes off the clown costume and leaves the tent. Seconds later a gunshot rings out. In the final image of the show, the lights fade to a single spotlight on the suitcase that he left behind. The piece brought Lucho’s story full circle to the place where he began his life as a clown, the circus tent, a potent symbol of the strange intermingling of hope and violence that still, even today, hangs over the Colombian nation. It allowed Lucho to showcase his abilities as a clown but also to reflect upon the personal losses that he has experienced in his life, in the context of a broader cultural meditation on tragedy and redemption. In the world of Ceniza, the soldier and the clown are one, or, at least, are never far apart. The clown is animated by everyday tragedy, social conflict and the interconnectedness of the two. Meanwhile, tragedy and conflict are, the play seems to suggest, mitigated by the existence of the clown’s undying spirit. While the ending of the play was certainly a reminder of a bleak reality, the underlying story was also one in which fun, play and humour become tools of resistance, alternatives to the resigned acceptance of violence and inequality. While the soldier dies, the clown’s spirit survives, waiting for a new pair of feet to fill those big shoes. As well as being a potent metaphor for the elusive persistence of clowning as social performance in Colombia, this story also hints at one of the lacunae I mentioned earlier, a particularly troubling example of the intrumentalization of clowning that I became aware of in the latter stages on my fieldwork but was never able to fully investigate: a curious alliance between the clown and the military. The Colombian army in fact operates its own circus – complete with a troupe of excellent clowns – which tours to rural conflict zones, not



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entertaining troops but performing for communities in towns and villages where the army’s image is suffering due to decades of violence and corruption. Framed as humanitarian work, demonstrated through workshops and social visits made by soldiers to schools and orphanages, the National Circus of Colombia, as it is known, is a public relations exercise that utilizes cultural ammunition in a war of hearts and minds. During a brief three-day visit to the circus, while it was stationed in the province of Huila, it was even suggested to me by one of the performers that the circus was engaged in covert surveillance and intelligence-gathering about guerrilla sympathizers in certain communities. This would seem to be another sign of the value and potency assigned to clowning in Colombia, which, as we have seen, is rooted in cultural and social developments of the 1990s and 2000s. In a similar vein, I recently became acquainted with a clown who was working voluntarily for the army in some of the most troubled guerrilla hotspots in the country, performing skits on the street that sought to humanize the mistrusted figure of authority represented by military officials. Images and videos of this clown standing alongside camouflaged soldiers sporting red noses and goofy smiles, circulating on social media and strategically placed in local news channels, are no doubt welcomed by senior commanders and military PR staff. Precisely where this new twist in the clown’s evolution might lead is impossible to predict. It certainly suggests that the future of clowning in Colombia is likely to be as ambivalent and fraught as the last two decades have been. It also adds a new dimension to Lucho’s Ceniza, which might be envisioned as a wry reflection on the problematic and long-standing relationship between comedy and violence. Indeed it was Lucho who first told me about the existence of the National Circus of Colombia. While some may be celebratory about such activities, Ceniza functions to complicate the cultural relationship between the playful spirit of the clown and the

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darker purposes of the military machine, putting in question the entire construction of ‘social clowning’. Just as Escuela de Payasos, El Krímen, and El Viaje commented upon clowning and its social relevance in their particular eras, so Ceniza reflects on the increasingly convoluted relationship between clowns and the institutions to which they all too easily become accountable. Throughout the preceding chapters we have seen examples of clowns who find themselves tethered to various organizations, some of whom are more successful at negotiating and maintaining their autonomy than others. Bratton and Featherstone’s analysis of the clown as ‘semi-independent’ (2008: 11) and Prentki’s assertion of the ‘semidetached relation’ of clown to society (2012: 16) are highly apposite when contemplating the messy and tense networks of dependency and accountability within which clown must function in a modern Latin American state such as Colombia. In his relationship to the big and little circuses of Bogotá, for example, Jhon Freddy Angulo has found ways to adapt to adverse conditions and his persistence in touring to small peripheral communities is a remarkable act of resistance in the face of an increasingly corporatized circus economy. Likewise, Joaco’s volatile performance on the street challenges the unchecked power of the ‘bosses upstairs’, while his rejection of my own ethnographic intervention asserted his resistance to another kind of institutionalized power. The pragmatic playfulness of Antanas Mockus challenged the status quo of corruption and vice in the city’s political arena and yet his manipulation of the clown for the purposes of cultural communication led ultimately to a cleansed neo-clown who could easily be disciplined by later politicians. In Santa Sofía, meanwhile, Titiriclaun’s work on the margins of hospital culture, transforming the experiences of the most vulnerable sometimes close to the end of their lives, was simultaneously seen by the hospital’s administrators as serving a brand enhancement objective.



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As clowning has become more a part of people’s everyday lives in Colombia, it seems, the more entwined it has become in the competing agendas of institutions and various networks of power. Sometimes these aesthetics function as a mask to a deeper intentionality; sometimes they are the very means by which transformation occurs; sometimes the interests that clowning serves are those of powerful and influential institutions (even the state itself); and sometimes they are those of small, peripheral groups, families, communities or individuals, for whom clowning represents a chance to resist various forms of domination. The move of certain scholarly theorists of clowning away from structuralist and essentialist positions and towards a more pragmatic, ambivalent approach (e.g. Bouissac 2015; Prentki 2012; Davison 2013) indicates an acknowledgement of the complexity of the field, allowing for the possibility that history and society can be elucidated through the lives and performances of clowns, just as the significance of clowning can only be evaluated with reference to broader social and historical contexts. The present study hopefully adds something of value to the rising tide of clown studies. In applying the concept of ‘social performance’, I suggest that key ideas and concerns within the field of performance studies may be particularly resonant and productive for the analysis of clowning. While clowning is often dismissed as an archaic and unchanging form, the application of contemporary performance theory to clowning practices in Latin America reveals more than ever the central role they play in ongoing cultural struggles in that part of world where the effects of globalization have tended to exacerbate pre-existing social inequalities. I have attempted both to explore and trouble long-standing assumptions about the relationship of clowning to authority. But the ways and forms in which authority clothes itself have never been more complex and any study that seeks to comprehend clowning’s relationship to power must at least engage with the specifics of how that power manifests in the locality of those specific clowning

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practices. The examples of Bogotá provide both instructive models of how to retain an open dialogical practice and stark warnings of what happens when clowning become overly monological.

Murky clown maps While it does not follow that my particular conclusions about clowning in Colombia will apply to practices in other cultures and other parts of the world, my hope is that my approach may offer some helpful orientation for further culturally specific, crosscultural and intersectional studies that might ultimately lead to a more thorough explanation of clowning’s relationship to lived social realities. Such studies might reinforce the conclusions reached in this book or they might contest and challenge them. In either case, the field of clown studies will no doubt be enriched through debate and dialogue. With this in mind, I wish to end by proposing a map – albeit partial and incomplete – for possible future clown research. The map consists of four directions or orientations, bringing together particular clusters of theoretical and conceptual pathways that run through and across the six main chapters of this book. The directions are by no means to be treated as isolated and autonomous. Neither are they opposed and divergent in the way of the cardinal directions in a conventional map. Rather they tend to bend, twist, cross over, merge together, disappear underground, only to reappear in the least expected place. In its fluidity and unpredictability, my clown map takes its cue from Jesús Martín-Barbero’s notion of ‘el mapa nocturno’ (1991: 229), a nocturnal map that brings marginal and everyday practices into view, disrupting academic objectivity and authority. A communications scholar from Colombia, MartínBarbero suggests that a nocturnal map is necessary for studying



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the ‘murky intertwining daily behaviours’ of the modern Latin American city. Perhaps such a map – and the four intertwining directions I detail below – would also be helpful for studying the murky behaviour of clowns everywhere..

Clowning as utilitarian practice Clowning often serves a very practical and pragmatic purpose, both for those performing and those paying the performers. Unpicking who benefits materially from different examples of clowning has been a primary analytical focus of this book, peering beneath the surface of PR campaigns, glossy publicity images and romanticized rhetoric in order to deconstruct agendas and speculate as to concrete outcomes. Considering clowning as utilitarian practice concerns power and the ways in which clowning, in different people’s hands, begins to be shaped by their own relationship to networks of power. Power, as Foucault reminds us, should not be understood as ‘a general system of domination exerted by one group over another’, but rather as ‘the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate’ (1990: 92). That is, ‘power is everywhere’, defined more by its inherent contradictions and internal conflicts than by its seeming cohesion and finite sovereignty. In Bogotá, clowning too is everywhere. And we can see how clowning plays its part in cementing and concealing the alliances that create the illusion of power as emanating from a central point. A study of clowning as utilitarian practice must pay close attention to how clowning functions discursively to facilitate or destabilize networks and alliances of power, patterns of domination. It might draw on the work of scholars who have theorized how power is produced, disseminated and contested. In Chapter 2, for example, I drew on Michel de Certeau’s notions of space and

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place (1984) to analyse how the police are assisted in their task of disciplining bodies in San Victorino and other commercial zones through strategic alliances with clowns such as Zapatín. In Chapter 1, meanwhile, James Scott’s theories of domination and resistance (1990) were instructive in interpreting Jhon Freddy’s acts in and out of the ring as disguised expressions of dissent. The ways in which the neo-clowns in Chapter 4 supported particular constructions of public space through their clowning was helpfully glossed through David Harvey’s analysis of the cleansing of public space in eighteenth-century Paris (2005). The seminal work of Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu and Antonio Gramsci might equally be considered as helpful when considering clowning as utilitarian practice. Crucially, this theoretical direction suggests the use of cultural and historical materialist approaches as well as methodologies that seek fully to historicize and contextualize their objects of study within patterns and networks of competing force relations.

Clowning as intimacy At its heart clowning is about relationships. Whether one thinks of the historical on-stage relationship of the whiteface and auguste, or the unique audience–performer relationship that transforms conventional boundaries of spectatorship, clowning invokes intimacies that help us reflect upon and re-shape human relations. But clowning is also potentially a kind of intimacy in its own right. My fieldwork experiences, as evidenced in these pages, are replete with instances of clowning as a kind of intimacy. One might cite, for example, the tender exchanges between Anita, Edwin and the old man and his daughter in the corridor of Santa Sofía hospital. Or the family intimacy articulated by Ancor Angulo when he



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showed me his photo album and talked to me about how his family being together made him happy, which is reflected in the clowning of his grandchildren Samir and Said in the ring. Here clowning practice can be usefully understood through the lens of feminist and queer theory or various branches of postcolonial theory. In relation to the two examples just cited, I drew on Maria Lugones’s notion of ‘loving perception’ (1994: 5) and Sara Ahmed’s theorizations of happiness (2010), but one might easily think also of the feminist philosophy of Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt and Lauren Berlant as being highly applicable to clowning in the context of intimacy. Methodologically, clowning as intimacy implicates the very intimate act of ethnography itself. This can clearly be seen in the relationships which developed between myself and various of my interlocutors. While several of them developed into close friendships, other ethnographic encounters involved moments of extreme intimacy that were contained, limited or cut off by specific circumstances. In the case of Joaco, it was he who resisted my attempted intimacy, thereby reversing the dominant researcher–object gaze and playing me for the fool. The centrality of relational intimacy to clowning makes ethnography seem like a well-suited approach to take to any research project, but of course it also has its dangers, since closeness can blur one’s ability to evaluate objectively. For any clown who is also a researcher (or ethnoclownographer), however, getting ‘up close and personal’ is difficult to avoid, since this is precisely what we are required to do as clowns and as ethnographers. Perhaps then, a research project considering ‘clowning as utilitarian practice’ and ‘clowning as intimacy’ imply distinct research methodologies approaches, but since I have not been able to achieve such separation in my own work I prefer to think that what I have lost in critical objectivity I gain through critical closeness. My own study has tended to fluctuate between the two

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positions, not always in keeping with my own intentions but rather in response to the unpredictable vagaries of fieldwork.

Clowning as play From my very first baptism into clowning in Colombia in 2004 with members of Circo Ciudad to the clowning interventions of Pasos de Payasos and Henyoka Clown in rural communities and schools, a fundamentally playful spirit guides and underlies all the examples of clowning presented here. Play overlaps with the categories of clowning as utilitarian practice and clowning as intimacy, of course. Mockus’s project of putting mime-clowns onto the streets to police unruly traffic could be framed as a conscious ‘playing’ with expected norms and routines, just like all his other consciously ‘playful’ policies as mayor. It is the playfulness of clowning that in some cases activates the utilitarian possibilities of clowning. Likewise, by linking ideas of ‘loving perception’ and ‘playful world-travelling’, Lugones suggests how playfulness can unlock intimacy and connection across social and cultural boundaries (1994: 4). However, beyond the simplistic affirmation that clowning is indeed playful, considering clowning ‘as’ a kind of play opens up a potentially fruitful theoretical avenue, since play itself is such a contested and ambiguous term in the scholarly literature. What kind of play might clowning then be? As mentioned in Chapter 6, Brian Sutton-Smith has provided a particularly useful breakdown of seven ‘rhetorics of play’ that reveal how the apparently diverse theoretical approaches to play in fact reflect diverse ‘ways of thought’ rather than actual differences between kinds of play (2001: 8). Louise Peacock (2009) has very productively employed Sutton-Smith’s rhetorics of play to analyse various examples of contemporary clowning.1 However, Sutton-Smith’s analysis suggests not only that there are



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different kinds of play, but that the various rhetorics of play represent an ideological battleground in which play is mobilized. Applying Sutton-Smith’s rhetorics of play to clowning, rather than simply using them to differentiate kinds of clowning, offers an intriguing way to unpick the various agendas which might underlie the mobilization of clowning. As we saw in relation to Santa Sofía hospital, the same example of clowning might be understood, justified or promoted for very different reasons depending on the agenda of the person or group, in much the same ways that play is understood differently. Just as Sutton-Smith’s notion of play rhetorics could helpfully be applied to clowning in order to tease out its political and ideological entrenchments, it is incumbent upon any scholar wishing to apply play theory to clowning, to seek opportunities to deconstruct false binaries and point out where reality exceeds the rhetoric in its complexity and ambiguity. Examples of festive play, which include carnival as well as clowning, have been subjected to a divisive and oversimplified debate. On one hand, scholars such as Alessandro Falassi have focused on carnival as contained and licensed moments of ‘reversal, intensification, trespassing, and abstinence’ that ultimately reinforce and renew community identity (1967: 3); others, such as Babcock (1978), Scott (1990) and Turner (1982), have stressed the dangerous and radical potential of seemingly frivolous play, which might ultimately bring about social change. It is fortunate that some scholars of carnival (e.g. Riggio 2004) have argued that in fact festive play involves the overlaying of multiple agendas and rhythms, embracing both the rational logic of the everyday and the intuitive and organic spirit of imaginative play.2 This more complex reading of carnivalesque characterizes the episode I described in Chapter 6 in which call centre staff engaged with the clowning while also remaining connected to their work environments. Considering clowning as play, then, introduces the welcome possibility of these, more fertile interrogations of the pragmatics

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of play, in which multiple tonalities and dynamics promiscuously interact.

Clowning as pedagogy Clowning, as we have seen, is sometimes used as a didactic tool to teach values, concepts, rules and limits. In Mockus’s civic clowning project, the mime-clowns exploited the power of ridicule to teach drivers to observe the rules of the road. Buenavista Social Clown employed clown street theatre to educate audiences about the boundaries of public and private space. Mockus’s self-declared intention to ‘use shame as an educative weapon’ is evocative of sociétés joyeuses such as the Mère-Folle in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century France, in which groups of amateur fools used the power of carnivalesque ridicule to ‘correct improper conduct’ (Towsen 1976: 20). Although clearly overlapping with notions of clowning as utilitarian practice and clowning as play, a more focused study of clowning as pedagogy would consider how specific educational objectives have been wrapped up in the production of clown performance. However, the notion of pedagogy embraces a much broader and more radical idea than simply that of transmitting values. My fieldwork was replete with what we might call transformational learning moments, in which clowning unlocked a new insight, perspective, or ability. We can see this in the context of clown technique itself, for example when Joaco learned from Tuerquita how to perform the classic circus routines with the requisite salsa. Similarly, in Santa Sofía, the young clowns Edwin, Anita and others were learning from Juan and Adriana how to go more slowly, listen and respond to patients in their hospital clowning. As we saw from Circo Mexicano and from Ku Klux Klown, clowning is typically passed down either through familial relationships or between teachers and



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students, often across generational divides. Paying attention to the modes by which the ephemeral embodied repertoires of clowning are circulated and transferred, for example by constructing genealogies and histories of particular clown routines, might allow us to gain a clearer understanding of clowning’s pedagogical potential. However, it is not only clown technique that is passed along when a senior clown instructs a clown acolyte, whether that be in a formal workshop context or an informal social space. When the significance of that teaching moment exceeds the simple replication of physical routines and becomes a vehicle for the replication and transference of social values, we might speak of clowning functioning as critical pedagogy. When Juan talked of his clowns’ need to slow down and observe, he was not only advocating a particular practical technique; he was also offering a critical commentary, an evaluative provocation relating to broader social behaviours among young Colombians. Anita and Edwin’s reflection demonstrated how a new critical understanding was emerging through the practice of clowning itself. As emerging young adults, learning to clown was not only providing them with social skills which would serve them in their everyday lives, but also encouraging them to reflect critically upon those skills and behaviours. That is, through the practice of clowning, they were engaged in active learning about themselves and their place in the world. In all the preceding chapters there are similar examples, where the passing on of clown technique has also contained a pedagogical practice that gestures outward into the world beyond the clowning itself. Clowning as critical pedagogy also manifested itself in ethnographic moments between myself and interlocutors in the field. With Titiriclaun I was invited to lead workshops familiarizing the performers with my own clown technique while I learned about theirs through the hospital interventions and reflections. This interactional process of learning transcended a simple unidirectional information transfer from teacher to pupil, famously described by

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Paulo Freire as the ‘banking approach’ to education, and instead instituted a critical pedagogy in which teacher and student grew together through an active dialogical inquiry (1977: 48). This was perhaps the ideal, but it was not always so. Joaco showed me how structural inequalities limit the possibilities of dialogical inquiry. In successfully teaching me how to be a better ethnographer, he enacted a critical pedagogy of his own. These four theoretical directions – clowning as utilitarian practice, clowning as intimacy, clowning as play and clowning as pedagogy – draw together various threads and examples that run across my case studies. They also gesture towards new lines of inquiry, which I hope this work may inspire. While this book is about clowning as a grounded and material practice, it is also about much more than clowning. Perhaps most importantly, it is about the ways people find to make meaningful connections with each other and how they salvage these human bonds in the face of overwhelming pressure, conflict and social privation. The value of any practice that fulfils everyday utilitarian needs, nurtures human intimacy, provokes playful interventions and invokes a critical questioning of the world, cannot be underestimated, especially in societies where these rights are not universally available. Clowns are not often taken seriously, a fact which, ironically, has often enabled them to survive. No doubt they will continue to survive whether or not we take much notice of them. But it is clear that when we do stop and pay attention to our clowns, there is much to learn.

Notes Introduction: The Politics of the Ridiculous 1

2 3

I explore the relationship between classic whiteface and auguste circus clowns more fully in Chapter 1. Bouissac describes this ‘iconic pair’, as involving ‘a dominant character and an underdog’, as ‘a focal point of circus performances’ (2015: 172). Translated from Spanish by the author. Hereafter all quotations from originally Spanish texts are also translated by the author. In an essay by David and Dorothy Counts, the objectifying approach to ethnography becomes particularly evident: ‘Our analysis of the content of clowns’ messages is necessarily inferential, for we have never systematically pursued the meaning of clowning with our consultants’ (Counts and Counts 1992: 99).

Chapter 1: Happy Families: Clowns in the Circus 1

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This is particularly true of circuses since the early twentieth century when the prominence of the clown as a solo act was surpassed by other, more spectacular acts, relegating the clown to a more mundane function. Janet Davis argues that this was largely a result of the introduction of gigantic three-ring circuses in the USA around the turn of the century (2002: 172). All the spoken text quoted in this chapter was recorded during fieldwork observations and interviews with the clowns of Circus Las Vegas and Circo Mexicano between January and April 2012. All interviews were originally conducted in Spanish and translated into English by the author.

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Chapter 2: Mangos and Salsa: Clowning the Marketplace 1

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All the spoken text quoted in this chapter was recorded during fieldwork observations and interviews undertaken with restaurant clowns Joaco Krosty and Zapatín between November 2011 and April 2012 in Bogotá. Originally in Spanish, it has been translated into English by the author and hereafter only the English is given. In his fascinating book Machine-Age Comedy, Michael North argues that Chaplin cleverly exploited the mechanical quality and rhythm of the film medium in his routines, characterized by their repetitious motions, which North describes as ‘intensified reflex versions of the repetition intrinsic to film’ (2009: 4). I have learned from informal conversations with people who grew up in Bogotá during the 1960s and 70s, that publicity clowns used to be common on the streets of a neighbourhood called Chapinero, for example. This area has been subject to zoning restrictions which made the use of amplification for publicity purposes illegal and the clowns no longer operate there. I refer here to theorizations of performance in the field of performance studies, in particular those that draw a distinction between ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’. For example, Elin Diamond glosses performativity as the ‘thing done’ or the ‘cultural apparatus that coerces certain social acts and excludes others’, while performance is a ‘doing’ that ‘puts conventional […] attributes into possibly disruptive play’ (1996: 4–5). In Chapter 3 I discuss the involvement of children in the conflict as a violation of cultural norms that contributed to a mounting crisis in the late 1980s. While up until the twentieth century, in philosophy and psychology, childhood was romanticized as a state of purity and innocence in polarized distinction to adulthood (Piaget 1929, Rousseau 1762), such understandings have been deconstructed and complicated in recent years by a variety of perspectives that see childhood itself a site of conflict and cultural construction (see, for example, Mason and Fattore eds. 2005).

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Chapter 3: Acts of Faith: Clown Theatre and the New Wave 1 2

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From e-mail communication with Diego Figueroa, 14 February 2012. Translated by the author. See pp. 80–1 for a fuller discussion of contradictory cultural attitudes to childhood, characterized by a split between childhood and innocence on one hand, and, on the other, the fetishization of children in the public domain as symbols of hope and peace. The implicit link between neoliberal governance and the embrace of the arts as an economic driver, encapsulated in the UK Labour Party’s advocacy for the ‘creative industries’, is documented by Jen Harvie in Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism (2013). This idea is perfectly articulated by Sue Morrison in her clown workshops: ‘Let’s work with that idea. That what is interesting about us, that what is beautiful about us, is what is ridiculous about us – our vanity, our pomposity, our stupidity. It’s the flaws that make us interesting, not our perfections. For me clown is not about being funny. Or “doing” anything. It’s about you. This exercise is about “you” arriving in the space’ (Coburn and Morrison 2013: 81). This section draws on a personal interview with Mario Escobar (12 March 2012) and a panel discussion at the Clownencuentro International (6 November 2012), in which he participated. Both were originally in Spanish and both were translated by the author. This perspective on the relationship between clowning and theatre, in which the clown is a character played by a specialized actor, is exemplified by Hernán Gené in his recent book, La Dramaturgia del Clown (2015). FARC, one of the largest and most significant guerilla groups in Colombia, stands for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). On 23 June 2016, the FARC and the Colombian government signed an historic peace agreement which, if it is ratified through a public vote, will include a complete demilitarization of the organization and their transition into the political realm.

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Chapter 4: Neo-Clowns: Clowning, Citizenship and Public Space 1 This is an imagined reconstruction, based on newspaper reports and interviews with two of the performers involved, Juan José Aguirre (31 October 2012) and Judith Pérez Segura (17 January 2012), also drawing on reflections by Antanas Mockus (3 February 2012). 2 Although Mockus and others referred to these performers as ‘mimes’, I call them mime-clowns, drawing on Louise Peacock’s distinction between the ‘illusionary mime’ of Marcel Marceau, which communicated a simple narrative or physical representation for entertainment purposes, and the connotative mime of Barrault and Lecoq, which encouraged a subjective response through the poetic use of symbol and metaphor. The latter she refers to as ‘mime-clowns’. My own interpretation of the performers used by Mockus to control traffic conforms to the connotative kind, since their primary concern was to connect and communicate with the audience on a ‘visceral and subconscious level’ (Peacock 2009: 75–6). 3 The Septimazo was originally a street market that took place regularly on Carrera 7 (known as La Septima). In 1995 Mockus appropriated the name for this weekly night of festivities, a custom that continued until 2011 when it was curtailed by the government. 4 Readers familiar with performance theory will recognize the allusion to Richard Schechner’s ‘efficacy-entertainment braid’ (1988: 120), which he uses to explain how performance’s purpose may range between social transformation (efficacy) and pure fun (entertainment). Despite justifiable critiques of this dyad (e.g. Bottoms 2003), the balancing of fun with social purpose is a useful way to envisage clowning as it came to be used in Bogotá in the 1990s and beyond and indeed to describe the balancing act that socially engaged clowning has always had to perform. 5 This section draws on an interview interview with Antanas Mockus, conducted in Bogotá on 3 February 2012 originally in Spanish and translated into English by the author. Unless otherwise specified, all further quotes from Mockus are also from this interview.

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The video can be found at the following URL: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=8aB4iTA9iZM (accessed 23 March 2013). 7 Mockus interviewed in the documentary film Cities on Speed: Bogotá Change (2009). 8 This section draws on an interview with Judith Segura conducted 17 January 2012, translated by the author. Some material is also taken from informal conversations with Segura before and after performances of El Desconocido Limite Entre Lo Publico y Lo Privado between 17 December 2011 and 7 April 2012. 9 Judith Butler’s ‘What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue’ (2002) was originally delivered as the Raymond Williams Lecture at Cambridge University in May 2000. It is based principally on the ideas set forth by Foucault in his essay ‘What is Critique?’ (1997). 10 These comments were recorded during informal interviews with audience members after performances of El Desconocido Limite Entre Lo Publico y Lo Privado between 17 December 2011 and 7 April 2012, translated by the author.

Chapter 5: Dialogues and Divides: Humanitarian Clowning 1

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Within the gigantic international craft fair, Expoartesanías (2012), Pasos de Payaso was featured in a pavilion curated by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The three clowns were in character, roving around the exhibits and interacting with audience members, but they also had their own exhibition stand and a number of large information display boards with photographs and the following descriptive text: ‘Circus, clown and social work. This is an educational project in performing arts, focused on the work of the humanitarian clown. These clowns reconfigure the social fabric in urban areas affected by social violence, using laughter and play. They deliver workshops especially for the young, bringing happiness through music and circus arts.’ This is the central argument of Néstor García Canclini in his seminal work, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving

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Modernity, that while the pressures of capitalism have limited and contained cultural production, it is still possible to conceive of ‘festive expenditures that go against the logic of capitalist accumulation’ (2005: 198). In other words adapting to the market does not mean being entirely subservient to its logics. My account of Circo Ciudad’s history was obtained through many interviews and conversations with Guzman over an extended period from 2004 to 2015. Antanas Mockus was instrumental in securing this international aid. He signed an agreement with the EU Commission for Latin America in 1995, securing the investment of over 7,600 million pesos in zones of extreme poverty in Bogotá such as Bosa, Usme and Ciudad Bolivar. Following the intensification of the domestic conflict and a worsening economic crisis, Colombia became eligible for humanitarian aid in 1997 and received €4.5 million in 1997 and €6.5 in 1998. In 1999, according to a European Commission report (2001) President Andres Pastrana requested a $2.7 billion Extended Fund Facility from the International Monetary Fund, which explicitly ‘supports the Government’s agenda of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms’ (European Commission 2001:12). As a result of this investment, ‘the IMF considers that considerable macroeconomic stabilization has taken place since 1999’ (2001: 12). Meanwhile, growing unemployment and deterioration of social conditions, particularly in rural areas since 1996, were addressed through the creation of a social safety net ‘with the support of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank’ (2001: 14). Text attributed in this section to Lucho Guzman was from an interview on 1 June 2015. The interview was originally in Spanish, translated by the author. This echoes Maurya Wickstrom’s proposal for a ‘Theatre for Redistribution’ as an alternative to conventional monological forms of humanitarianism, based on the sharing of happiness: ‘joy, affirmation of the possibility of thought, of the imagination of the Good as an unknown possibility that breaks radically with what is, could be central’ (2012: 129).

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The material in this section is based largely upon interviews with Camilo Rodriguez and Jaime Fajardo, conducted between 25 July 2011 and 19 January 2012, as well as observing Henyoka Clown’s performances at the Clownencuentro in Medellin (2011) and the Iberamericano theatre festival in Bogotá (2012). 9 This quotation from Luisa Valenzuela’s ‘Las Máscaras Sagradas’ (2001), which Camilo used in a lengthy description of Henyoka Clown in 2012, reveals the political intention behind the decision to name the company after the native American ritual clown. Coburn and Morrison offer another evocative account of the pivotal social role of the heyoka in times of suffering and oppression: ‘the heyoka were part of the dispossessed and the heyoka were also at risk of dying but by finding it within themselves to poke fun within their own misery and fear, to make delight amidst the bones and debris of hardship, the hardship becomes a shared burden and in being carried by many it is lighter’ (2013: 5). 10 Extracted from a post-show interview with Camilo Rodriguez on an internally produced video of ReClowntaMiento produced by Fundación Social.

Chapter 6: Unruly Play: Clowns in Hospital 1 2

3

4

See, for example, Gryski (2003), Fernandez and Ariaga (2010), Klein (2003), Linge (2008, 2015) and Spitzer (2006). All interviews with the members of Titiriclaun were conducted during three separate periods of fieldwork between July 2006 and August 2009. All interviews were originally in Spanish and were translated by the author. For a very thorough survey of play theory across a range of academic disciplines, see Brian Sutton-Smith’s The Ambiguity of Play (2001), which draws attention to the gap between the reality of play and the diverse ways in which it is interpreted both by academics and others. I conducted formal interviews with a range of staff at Santa Sofía, as well as informal conversations with nurses, doctors, administrators

260 Notes

5

and orderlies. In the interests of privacy names have been removed and the interviewees are referred to in the text according to their role in the hospital. It should be pointed out that Patch Adams was already beginning to experiment with the concept of the clown doctor as early as the 1960s. Adams, a trained medical doctor, founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971 with a vision of integrating health care with other areas of social life: ‘for us, healing is not only prescribing medicine and therapies but working together and sharing in a spirit of joy and cooperation. Much more than simply a medical center, the Gesundheit facility will be a microcosm of life, integrating medical care with farming, arts and crafts, performing arts, education, nature, recreation, friendship, and fun’ (Adams 1991: 2).

Conclusion: A New Map of Clowning 1

Peacock suggests, for example, that the political protest clowning of CIRCA (Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army) is an example of Sutton-Smith’s rhetoric of power and identity because they ‘use play as a way of highlighting conflict’ and also ‘of diffusing the potential aggression of conflict’ (2009: 124–5). Cirque du Soleil’s whimsical clown routine ‘Storm’ from the show Alegría, meanwhile, is likened to the rhetoric of play as imaginary, since it highlights the poetic and artistic qualities of play (2009: 60). 2 In Carnival Culture in Action (2004), Milla Riggio argues that contemporary Trinidadian carnival involves an overlaying of two worlds or rhythms: the festival world associated with community, family, public space, imagination, art, constructive play, transgressive behaviour; and the workaday world of regularity, punctuality, infrastructure, regulation, logical cause and effect, science. Neither transcends the other, since both are continual play, leading sometimes to a flow experience of celebration, other times to outbreaks of violent conflict when the two worlds collide irreconcilably.

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Index

agency 19–20, 46, 77–8, 168, 175, 199 Ahmed, Sara 55–7, 247 Angulo, Ancor 46–7, 51, 54–6, 247 Angulo, Jhon Freddy 39, 46–55, 242, 246 authority alternative forms of 134–5 challenging 3, 16, 77, 115, 117, 137, 140, 193 crisis of 43–4 official 79, 127, 139, 141, 161, 223, 243 and status 27–31, 35, 85 Bouissac, Paul 19–21, 28–9, 65, 85, 104, 243, 253 n.1 Bourdieu, Pierre 134, 141–2, 246 Bratton, Jackie 17–19, 21, 228, 242 Brecht, Bertold 16, 98–9 Buenavista Social Clown 8, 145–7, 153–60, 193, 250 Butler, Judith 157, 160–1, 247, 257 n.9 carnival and carnivalesque 65–6, 115, 207, 213, 217, 219, 236, 238, 249–50, 260 n.2 Cascarín and Cascarita (clowns) 25–33, 37–8 Chaplin, Charlie 13, 16, 63–4, 254 n.2 Charles, Lucille Hoerr 15, 65, 75–6, 103 children and childhood 40–2, 74–5, 79–81, 155, 233, 254 n.5, 255 n.2 Chung Kwei 1–3, 172

Circo Ciudad 1–2, 8, 164, 171–9, 184, 248, 257 nn. 2, 3 Circo Mexicano 25–33, 37–40, 46–57, 250, 253 n.2 Circus Las Vegas 23–5, 27–37, 39–48, 50–1, 53, 253 n.2 circus in Chile 24 in Colombia 6, 23–57, 69 in Europe 6, 13, 18, 32, 75, 85 management 45–51, 68 in Mexico 6 narrative structure of 33, 36, 39 skills 2–3, 37, 115, 170, 172, 177, 180, 183, 186 social 1–2, 54, 164 in United States 13, 28, 60, 75, 85 citizenship 110, 113, 130–3, 141, 144, 152, 156, 158 Ciudad Bolivar 1, 164, 172, 183, 258 n.4 clown auguste 13, 20, 27–9, 36, 85–6, 246, 253 n.1 costume and make-up 13, 23, 26–9, 60, 63–5, 82–6, 90, 194 demonization of 65–6 double-acts 27–33, 35–7, 41–4, 85, 246, 253 n.1 the fool 16, 18–19, 65, 92–4, 142, 171, 192–3, 238, 247, 250 grotesque 13, 65, 76–7, 85, 91, 124, 161, 192 hospital 9, 11, 21, 201–38, 250, 259 n.1 humanitarian 21, 163–4, 178–84, 257 n.1 image 60, 73, 77, 83–6, 93, 116 instrumentalization of 16, 77–8,

274 Index 135, 154, 156, 163, 193, 207, 240 in the military 240–1 mime 119, 128–9, 134, 143, 256 n.2 native American 14–15, 18, 75–7, 103, 191, 258 n.8 neo-clown/new wave 95, 100, 120, 122, 156, 161, 168–9, 182, 242, 246 payaso 12–13, 61, 98–100, 114–18, 120–3, 125 red nose 6, 13, 96–9, 114, 125, 155, 194 restaurant 6–7, 13, 59–94, 254 n.1 slapstick 2, 27, 35, 70, 125, 188 study of 14–21, 244–52 teaching 17, 69–70, 116, 119, 124, 156, 186, 209, 231, 233, 250–1 theatre 95, 113, 116–18, 120, 123–4, 154, 255 n.6 whiteface 28, 85, 246, 253 n.1 Clown Care Unit (CCU) 226 Clownencuentro 12–14, 178, 180, 255 n.5 clowning ambiguity in 18, 53, 138, 140, 144–5, 163, 170, 184, 192–3, 197 and consumption 14, 87, 99 critical 15–16, 53, 71, 79, 83, 86, 114–15, 137, 160, 191–3, 198–9, 220, 251 dialogical 71, 163–4, 168, 170–1, 179, 181, 183–4, 188, 193, 212, 234, 238 everyday 5, 20, 75, 76, 100, 104, 139, 243, 251 inner truth 88, 94, 185–6, 190 and intimacy 56, 122, 224, 232, 235, 246–8 inversion 29, 52, 83, 134–5, 161, 168, 171, 207–9, 238 and laughter 20, 40, 67, 121–4,

133, 135, 137, 158, 164, 179, 225–6, 257 n.1 monological 71, 168, 176, 181, 183–4, 244 and playfulness 3, 18, 144, 157, 170, 192, 199, 204, 211, 221, 231, 236–8, 248 and professionalism 13, 21, 73–5, 78, 86, 99, 168, 172, 223–5, 227 and reflexivity 11–12, 62, 118, 121, 125, 157, 159, 171, 205, 228, 234 and status 2–4, 13, 27–31, 35–6, 39, 85 and technology 63–4, 254 nn.2, 3 clown-thinking 10–11, 15, 17, 62 Clowns Without Borders (CWB) 178–9 Colombia 1991 Constitution 104, 108–9, 130 apertura 95, 102, 108–9, 174 see also globalization, neoliberalism armed groups 68, 80–1, 105, 107–9, 120, 123, 186, 190–1, 196–7, 214, 255 n.7 causes of poverty 174, 180–4, 189 ciclovía 145, 149 conflict 7, 40, 43, 80–1, 86, 105–10, 113, 120–1, 184–90, 192, 198, 240–1 forced recruitment 80, 190, 194–6, 198 globalization 7, 77–8, 95, 111, 114, 174–6, 181, 201, 243 internal displacement 81, 91–2, 107, 172, 174, 190 La Violencia 6, 63, 105–6, 108 peace building 9, 40–2, 46, 108–10, 142, 179, 185–94, 198–9, 255 n.2 political corruption 108, 114, 135, 140, 188, 191–2, 241, 242

Index social crisis 102, 104–10, 113, 134, 232–3 urban regeneration 129–30, 140, 161 Conquergood, Dwight 10, 67 critique 51, 53, 79, 83, 99–100, 115, 137, 157–61, 164, 193, 196–8, 233, 251 Davison, Jon 17–18, 21, 28, 243 de Certeau, Michel 87, 246 Defensoría del Espacio Público 148, 152–4, 156, 159–60 El Clu del Claun 95, 110, 114–20, 122–4 Escobar, Mario 119–20, 122, 124, 255 n.5 see also Ku Klux Klown Escola de Cultura de Pau 185, 189 Escuela de Payasos 114–18, 123, 125, 242 ethics 157, 187–9 ethnoclownography 9–11, 14–15, 247 failure 11, 93–4, 168–70, 173, 209 see also foolishness family 32, 39, 43, 45–6, 50, 55–7, 97, 107, 247 Featherstone, Ann 17–19, 21, 228, 242 foolishness 11, 93–4, 158, 170, 185, 237–8 see also failure Foucault, Michel 89, 245–6, 257 n.9 Freire, Paulo 193, 252 see also pedagogy Freud, Sigmund 74–5, 136, 140 see also joking Fundación Social 189–94, 259 n.10 García Canclini, Néstor 59, 91, 125, 257–8 n.2 Gaviria, César 102, 108 Gené, Hernán 118–20, 255 n.6

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Guzman, Lucho 1, 2, 165–72, 175–84, 239–41, 247, 258 n.3 see also Pasos de Payaso Handelman, Don 15, 76–7, 103–4, 125 happiness 40, 42, 55–7, 88, 175–9, 210, 220, 247, 257 n.1, 258 n.8 Harvey, David 150–1, 246 see also public space hegemonic humour 15, 134, 137–8, 140, 142–4 see also Mitchell, William Henyoka Clown 9, 163–4, 184, 191–9, 248, 258–9 n.8 hospital corporatization 224–5 environment 204, 206, 208, 212, 217–18, 220, 226–8, 231, 235 healthcare professionals 222–4, 226 politics 210, 214–15, 221–8 Santa Sofía 201, 204, 208, 214–15, 221, 228, 235, 242, 246, 249–50, 259 n.4 sociology of sickness 222 humanitarianism 154–5, 163–4, 171–6, 178–84, 190, 241, 257 n.1, 258 nn.5, 7 Iberoamericano theatre festival 95–8, 110–14, 118–19, 123, 125, 183, inequality 4, 21, 39, 50, 89, 94, 102, 106, 109, 123, 143–4, 174, 183, 214–17, 252 Joaco Krosty (clown) 60–2, 67–71, 75–9, 85–8, 90–4, 242, 247, 252, 254 n.1 joking educated 73–6 envelope 135 gags 29, 31–2, 69, 74, 116, 122, 167, 211, 251

276 Index logical short-circuit 140 tendentious 74–5, 161 verbal banter 29, 56, 203, 209, 216 Ku Klux Klown 95, 114, 118–25, 250 La Troupe 95–100, 114, 124–5 Lecoq, Jacques 17, 116, 156, 256 n.2 Lugones, Maria 9, 237–8, 247–8 Madison, D. Soyini 83, 188–9, 193 Martín-Barbero, Jesús 14, 244–5 memory 137, 166, 216, 219–21 Mickey, Fanny 96, 112–14, 118, 123 migration 6, 28, 73, 88 Mitchell, William 15, 137–43, 219 see also hegemonic humour Morrison, Sue xi, 17, 255 n.4, 258 n.9 Mockus, Antanas clownish behaviour 138–44, 242 cultural citizenship 130–3, 141, 154, 156, 256 n.3 intensified communication 131–2, 149, 156 mime-clowns 7–8, 127–9, 133–6, 142–4, 153–4, 157, 161, 248, 256 n.2 National Circus of Colombia 240–1 neoliberalism and capitalism 46, 77–8, 80, 84, 99 creative industries 109–10, 255 n.3 economics of 50, 104, 108, 192 and humanitarianism 173–6, 258 n.5 inclusive/soft 130–1, 151, 153, 174, 197–9 Latin American embrace of 7, 78, 102, 108–9, 171, 173–6 social partnership initiatives 110, 131, 136, 141, 153, 161

Pasos de Payaso 8, 163–71, 179–84, 248, 257 n.1 see also Guzman, Lucho Peacock, Louise 27, 30–1, 205, 248, 253 n.1, 256 n.2 pedagogy 130, 135–6, 141–2, 144, 153, 156, 159, 193, 228, 250–2 Peñalosa, Enrique 130, 140, 148–54 Performance studies 10, 15, 243, 254 n.4 play chaos and disorder 206–8, 210, 217, 235 improvisation 2–4, 27, 32, 70, 98, 122, 189, 208–9, 211, 216, 236, 238 liminality 76, 103, 205, 219 paidia and ludus 207–8, 210–12, 234–5 playfulness 204, 231, 236, 237–8, 242, 248 recocha 206, 208, 210–11, 217, 219–20, 232, 234–5 rhetorics of 235, 248–9 rules 201, 205–8, 210–12, 218, 224, 226, 236–8, 250 theory 9, 15, 204–8, 216, 218, 221, 235–8 work/play binary 218–19 power contesting 188, 191, 199, 242 domination 18, 51–2, 82, 94, 115, 140, 176, 188, 215 institutional 7–8, 33, 46, 142, 157, 201, 221–2, 236, 243 instrument of 135, 137, 141, 207 location of 89, 198, 245 nature of 31, 199, 218, 245 relations of 7–8, 19, 31, 89–90, 149, 205, 245 shifts in 102, 153, 223, 236–7 structures and systems of 20, 79, 137–8, 160, 201

Index struggles 29, 188, 205, 221, 223–4 Prentki, Tim 18, 21, 135, 171, 192–3, 243, public/private binary 111, 52, 145–8, 151, 153–4, 156–7, 159–60, 214, 250 public space defence of 87–90, 150–3, 157, 159–61, 246 gentrification of 66, 254 n. 3 performance in 199, 144, 153 reclaiming of 130, 148–50 San Victorino 61–2, 86–9, 149, 151, 246 street vendors 72, 87–9, 147, 151–2 resistance acts of 46, 52, 54, 94, 115, 242 infrapolitics 52–4, 246 see also James Scott peaceful 186–8 popular 63 response, response-ability 144, 176, 182–3, 187–9, 193, 238 see also Madison, D. Soyini Revolledo, Julio 6 ridicule 3–4, 7, 15, 29, 94, 115–16, 128–9, 135–7, 153, 155–7, 168, 171, 250 ritual 19–21, 44, 52, 75–7, 100–4, 110, 113, 158, 226 Rodriguez, Camilo 184–99, 247, 258–9 n.8, 259 nn.9, 10 Rojas, Cristina 7, 174 Rojas, Fernando 119, 121, 124 Ronald McDonald 77–8, 82 Rusbelín (clown) 23–5, 29–31, 35–6, 40–2, 44–6 Schechter, Joel 16, 98–9

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Scott, James 51–4, 228, 246, 249 see also resistance Segura, Judith 154–7, 256 n.1, 257 n.8 see also Buenavista Social Clown social drama 7, 19, 100–2, 107–8, 113, 134 see also Turner, Victor social performance 4, 20, 83–4, 100–1, 104, 125, 144, 201, 221, 233, 244 social process 15, 17, 76, 235 see also Turner, Victor Sutton-Smith, Brian 218–19, 235–6, 248–9, 259 n.3, 260 n.1 Thompson, James 144, 179 Thomson and Shouse 168–70, 176 Titiriclaun 9, 11, 201–38, 242, 247, 251, 259 n.2 Tuerquita (clown) 69–71, 77, 250 Turner, Victor 7, 15, 19, 101–4, 107–10, 113, 134, 139 see also play, social drama, social process violence children and 80–3 in clowning 29–31, 35, 40–6, 70, 118–19, 121, 124–5 cultural acceptance of 42–4, 46, 80 in society 105–9, 114, 118, 120–1, 131–2, 164, 197, 214, 240–1 structural/systemic 7, 21, 40–3 symbolic 139–42 Wickstrom, Maurya 84, 86, 136, 153, 173, 175–6, 258 n.7 Zapatín (clown) 62, 65–6, 71–7, 81–92, 135, 246, 254 n.1