"That Girl" and the Merry-Go-Round That Really Broke Down!

This is a story of the world's saddest clown. This story begins when TGI signs up for a week-long intensive clowning workshop, focusing on the red nose and the dark aspects of the style. TGI was anticipating the course for weeks, and, though full of trepidation about the newness of the experience, was ready for 40 gleeful hours. Had the workshop gone that way, this would be a very different story. Instead, our story here begins with the image of That Girl International wearing a red clown nose and crying... enough to fill a clown-sized bucket. Savor that image for awhile.

It seems that, for TGI, three days of intense clowning have awakened a host of strong and mostly unpleasant feelings. Please, allow me to introduce you them. There's Ada Inadequacy -- her high-pitched nasal voice resonates in TGI's ear, telling her that she's never quite good enough, especially where performance is concerned. For TGI, Ada often seems to speak for the audience, very insistently in her ear. There's also Tommy NotFunny, who insists that TGI ISN'T funny, will never BE funny, and should write FUNNY a Dear John letter. Most perilously however, Ada and Tommy have a silent but deadly friend. We'll call him Jed. Jed is sneaky. Instead of defining one tedious characteristic, Jed has a much deeper message. Jed takes TGI and turns her inside out. He sits on her little traumas, her collection of tiny little hurts, and pokes with pinpoint accuracy the bruises of her unpleasant thoughts. He rears his ugly head at inconvenient moments. Because of Jed, TGI sometimes fears being "authentic" or "real" or "honest" onstage or not. When someone tells TGI that she's 'at her best when she's not trying to perform' or 'most appealing when she vulnerable,' she cringes, because she knows that Jed takes those statements as open invitations. Jed is visiting our sad little clown right now, as she stands before you.

So, childish naming aside, let us return to Clown Central. Look at our sad clown. Her tears are bouncing off her little red nose. Look at her closely. You can see the insecurity, the fear of the not-funny, and, if you look very very carefully, you'll see the hurt. Our sad clown is not so much sad, as tender - tenderized like a steak that will next be grilled. She's whacked her insides so much with Jed's spiky little mallet-words that now she can't help but feel tender all over. She wants to be on the course. She wants to get more ease with improv, find more joy in the unexpected, see more wonder in open-ended play. But, our little clown is tender, and these very activities seem to be the salt in her teeny little pulverized places.

You see, TGI spends most of her time living in Fight or Flight. She's not sure why... life is altogether pretty good. But she finds that, if she's really being honest with herself, she feels quite bruised-up on the inside. There's probably some deep-seated reason for this, as this sad clown was once a very silly, very young, very naive clown, who took some fantastic and awesome (in the most somber sense of both of those words) tumbles... In the putting-back together, she lost both the negatives of that naivity and also some degree of the positives... Our little sad clown is usually saddest when she's longing for those good little innocent qualities. It seems that the thus far 24 hours of clowning she's been testing out crossed into those places a little too quickly and a little too unexpectedly for her. For a fight or flight kind of gal, that speed is terrifying and takes the wind out of the little clown's sails.

TGI has been hanging with Ada and Tommy and yes, that terrible influence Jed for so long now that they're all part of each other. TGI is a sad little clown because she simultaneously wants the red-nose joy and regrets that she's already had it and sort of lost it. She is sometimes very guilty (as people quickly point out) of "performing" because it can be too painful to show her little interior bruises to other people... she doesn't think she could ever handle it if you, her audience, laughed at her real little sore places. She has cultivated her tiny little hurts for so long now that they are grossly precious to her, and hard to let anyone else have a peek at. When she surprises herself, like when her clown-self improvises and something (anything) happens, those things reveal themselves so terrifyingly quickly. In those moments, she finds that "realness" that you ask for, and they display themselves automatically, with terrifying speed. It has it's very specific cost though, as we're now watching. She knows she "performs." She cries a little when she gets home after someone has repeatedly pointed that trait out to her. She knows. She really, really does.

So. Let's look again at our sad little clown, our TGI with a red nose and watery eyes. She's sorry for "performing" instead of always inviting this intense vulnerability to join her onstage and off. She protects herself in her tiny little clown armor because she sometimes needs it to face the world. Sad, she knows. She's working on it. She really is. But sometimes, she is just a sad little clown.