Clown: A misfit by profession — Misfitness and clown's principles of practice

Beré, Marcelo

doi:10.1386/cost.4.2.205_1

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…2 Some of the ideas presented in this article were first published by the Comedy Studies Journal (2013) in an article Clown: A misfit by profession -Misfitness and clown's principles of practice. (Beré, 2013). Although the themes might be recurrent (misfitness, principles of practice), here is an opportunity to scrutinize the subject in a deeper way and summarise my doctoral dissertation.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misfitness: the hermeneutics of failure and the poetics of the clown - Heidegger and clowns

Beré

2020

Rev. Bras. Estud. Presença

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The article presents some Heideggerian ideas applied to the art of clowning. Four principles of practice of the clown’s art are analysed in the light of misfitness - a concept based on the clown’s ability not to fit into theatrical, cinematic and social conventions, thus creating a language of his own. In an ontological approach, this article seeks to examine what it means to be a clown-in-the-world. Following a Heideggerian principle, the clown is analysed here taking into account his artistic praxis; a clown is what a clown does: this is the basic principle of clown poetics. The conclusion proposes a look at the clown’s way of thinking - which is here called misfit logic - and shows the hermeneutics of failure, where the logic of success becomes questionable.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misfitness: the hermeneutics of failure and the poetics of the clown - Heidegger and clowns

Beré

2020

Rev. Bras. Estud. Presença

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“…Those rules concern not only 'the rules of performance, governing the mimetic conventions being used', but also the 'social rules, governing the cultural norms of the world being imitated on stage' (13). This can be brought to pedagogical thinking through the practice of misfitness (Bere ́ 2013). Littlewood and Mnouchkine proliferated from the clown's misfitness to call for social justice but this could not have been achieved without training the actors to use clown techniques, which, inevitably, disrupted their biases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine against the canon: developing the actors’ social representations through clowning

Stamatiou¹

2022

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

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The investigation of how Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine used clowning to develop actors with social purposes responds to the current interest in the neglected counterhegemonic training processes of women. It also contributes to current efforts to decolonise and decentre actor training. Using Theatre Workshop's Oh What A Lovely War (1963) and Théâtre du Soleil's Les Clowns (1969) as exemplars, this article traces how Littlewood and Mnouchkine trained actors on clowning to theatricalise social struggles and develop their social representations. Through ensemble improvisations that exploited clown devices such as the master-servant, clown logic, object misuse, misfitness, and the flop the actors tackled their biases in two stages: the serious/comedic dissonance alienated the actor to critically explore social gests, and the process of finding the appropriate social representations during group improvisations. Contemporary actor training that wishes to invite students to explore how their body, voice and imagination in performance can resist dominant ideologies and historical stereotypes might proliferate from the use of clowning to create social representations. The tracing of Mnouchkine's and Littlewood's clown training processes through the deconstruction of their key works, can inspire and offer insights to pedagogues who wish to decolonise and decentre their processes.

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Hdidouane: an Algerian clown and a marginalized comic icon

Belkhiri¹,

Douifi²

2022

Comedy Studies

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Clown: A misfit by profession — Misfitness and clown's principles of practice

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

Misfitness: the hermeneutics of failure and the poetics of the clown - Heidegger and clowns

Misfitness: the hermeneutics of failure and the poetics of the clown - Heidegger and clowns

Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine against the canon: developing the actors’ social representations through clowning

Hdidouane: an Algerian clown and a marginalized comic icon

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