Written by CIIS MFA Candidate Joan Howard
This post is part of a series by MFA candidates in their first year of study. Students were asked to inquire into developing art and how they prepare to create.
Attempts to define, demystify, or even disparage ‘clown’ abound in American culture. And, while my overarching project at CIIS is to address and reframe the understanding and role of the Clown in American consciousness, for now I simply want to talk about Play.
“Another hallmark of play…it has improvisational potential. We are open to serendipity, to chance…You never really know what’s going to happen when you play.” ¹
Play is the world in which the Clown lives, the air she breathes. The Clown never knows what will happen next, just that she is delighted with WHAT IS NOW…and NOW…and NOW…
It is this Play with Delight that drives the Clown’s actions and inevitably leads her down a path of Sublime Stupidity — a space of radical presence and radical imperfection that allows the rest of us to laugh at her, and so at ourselves.²
And so, when Cindy Shearer asked us to, “List the vocabulary that will shape how you develop your essays or the actions that will drive your next steps,” ³ I did what any clown-in-academic-headlights would do — I called on Play. Play jumped up, shouted AH-HA and pointed at the first game she saw: LIST THE VOCABULARY. Throwing open a dictionary, we started looking for definitions. Delight, discovering that list was a barrier used to create a jousting arena, and vocabulary is a body of words, gleefully offered, “Let’s Embody Clown Words and Joust!”
And so we did! I entered the List — or Jousting Arena — and let Play and Delight lead.
In a soon-after serendipitous visit to the Chicago Institute of Art and its Armor Room (my NOW), I met the ancient heroic Foot Tourney,⁴ and the Knights of the Clown Table were born. Stupidity came first, and Naivete and Trip soon joined the court.⁵
With Delight demanding I outfit my Knights per the costumes and trappings of this sublimely stupid noble sport⁶, and Play directing my process, I created Asinine Heraldic Achievements (AHA)⁷ for each of my knights and presenting Stupidity, Naivete and Trip with appropriately ridiculous skirts, helmets, lances and courtly banners.
And so, here we are now, at the brink of whatever Foot Tourney awaits. Stupidity, Trip and Naivete have been helmed, and their sublime stupidities evoked. It’s hard to see what will happen next when you’re wearing a bucket, but for now… with Play as my Arena and Delight as my gateway… I present to you, my KNIGHTS of the CLOWN TABLE!
[1] Stuart Brown, Play (New York: Penguin Group, 2009), 18.
[2] The Clown is a very precise and rigorous poetical dis-order. It is the poetical transposition of the unique silliness of the artist. It’s a state of presence, completely rooted in the here and now of the action in the space. The sublime stupidity of the clown is his radical presence and openness to life, despite his radical imperfection. Giovanni Fusetti, “THE SUBLIME STUPIDITY: Theatre Clown and the Essence of Physical Comedy,” (August 15, 2011)
[3] An Artist Prepares: Part One assignment
[5] Stupidity is a lack of good sense while Naivete is a lack of any sense whatsoever — both bring us to a place of making art from non-sense and letting beginner’s mind lead. Trip is continuously falling on its ass, and in so doing, shifting perspective while simultaneously bouncing back up with a renewed sense of direction or Essay — as it were — setting off to try anew.
[6] For me, the Foot Tourney is the epitome of sublime stupidity — it is a radically imperfect activity adopted with radical acceptance. High nobles dressed in skirts and tights on bottom and full armor on top. They wore ridiculously tall plumage on their helmets and ceremoniously and rigorously poked one another with long wooden poles over a very small bit of wooden fence. There is literally no ‘sense’ in this activity whatsoever, and yet, an entire culture embraced it and bestowed the highest honors on those who ‘won’.
[7] A Heraldic Achievement is difficult to define as it includes components that are intangible as well as tangible. In general, the HA encompasses all the courtly components associated with and worn by a knight.
To learn more about Joan’s work visit www.clowncorps.org
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