Newsletter 1: Thoughts on Fun From a London Starbucks

Thoughts on comedy, reflections on clown school, and making a new show.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Queen’s Park, London, working on my new show called, Spills. I want to be able to tell you more about this show, this clown-like cabaret, musical stand-up solo hour. I want to, I really do. But, I’m not quite sure how yet. I’ve been staring at a Google doc titled “Spills, Draft 1.5” for 3 hours, whispering ideas out loud just to see how they sound when voiced, and typing various possible outlines. I say draft 1.5 to soften the fact that it is still very much a draft 1, just a draft 1 I’ve been staring at for so long that I gave it that “.5” to spice things up. 

I’m in England to perform this new show as a work in progress in two weeks while on a break from theatre/clown school in France.

I do probably deserve a little bit of judgment for being surrounded by hip coffee places and choosing Starbucks, but hey, I know what I like and I am who I am. The barista’s name is Eddie and he is very sweet, plus, wrote “have a nice day” with a smiley face on my cup. Basically, this is my home now.

I just finished term 2 at the École Philippe Gaulier in France. We ended with three weeks of studying and performing Bouffon. Bouffons are the people kicked out of society who come back to mock the people who cast them out. Bouffons are smart. They are delicate. They make the people they are making fun of, laugh. They make fun of the audience while knowing the audience has the power to kick them out whenever they want if the Bouffon doesn’t strike that delicate tone. If you can do that, you are brilliant. 

It’s been one of my favorite sections of school here so far. I just love being on stage in this way. I love being able to be nasty and find complete pleasure in mocking. To have a place on stage where I’m allowed and free to process the Bouffons of my life by becoming them. Being on stage is my favorite place in the world. 

I’ve been thinking about the phrase “making fun of something”. When you dissect that idea,  and actually imagine the visual act of making fun, or creating fun, out of something or someone, is that not the highest compliment of all? To truly create fun, out of the things and people in your life? 

I hate the idea that “some things should not be joked about” — as if joking is a form of disrespect. When actually, I think finding the fun in something delicate is one of the highest forms of respect. When people laugh at the things that I’m insecure about in myself, it helps me be a little more secure with them, because at least I know fun lives in them, too. 

I think the line between “making fun of” and “being mean” lies far more in the spirit of the joke than the joke itself.

I’ve said the phrase to my dad many times, “daddy, making fun of you is my love language”. He’s the funniest person in the world. Almost everything that comes out of his mouth makes me laugh, and stopping to mimic him or joke at him is a representation only of the fun that is to be made by his beautifully, wonderfully, absurd way of existing. 

There is fun in the people we love. There is fun in the people we hate. There is fun to be made out of whichever things in our lives ask us to make fun of them. I do find it beautiful to see the world in this way. To see whatever set of ingredients life gives you, and make fun out of them. Making fun just like you’d make bread or a craft.

Reading this over I find myself arguing with myself. I feel full of contradictions. I can argue the flipside to every thought I think. One thing I do hope to always stand by though is that joy lies in the spirit of what you do, not just in what you do. 

And with that, I begin draft 1.6.