What is it about?
Adventures as a clown with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus are the frame for exploring the process of learning the craft of engaging an audience, in the 13-show weekly crucible of professional performance. The subtitle suggests the basis of that education: "Mentors, Audiences, Mistakes."
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Why is it important?
One of the rare books on clowning that looks squarely at the WORK. Avoiding the usual sentimentality, including the modern romance of the trickster, the book explores how the work requires dealing with an audience, not at them or despite the audience, but WITH them.
Perspectives
Joining circus with a full load of sentimental notions, I shed them as I learned how shallow sentimentality is, and how much deeper clowning can go when dealing honesty and directly—and comically—with audiences.
Dr David Carlyon
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Education of a Circus Clown, January 2016, Nature,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547439.
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