‘The game and the imagination are thick as thieves’ (2007:
196).
Play is one of the most familiar terms in the discussion of clowning, especially at Gaulier’s school. This chapter examines the various meanings for play, and the types of behaviour that are invoked by this word. I suggest a particular
characteristic of play evident in the Clown and Le Jeu courses, by combining the observations and analyses made by Kendrick and Murray. Drawing on terminology from the school I call it ‘complicit play’. Complicit play holds together multiple competing strands in a way that is engaged, but never fixed, meaning that no player is ever fully in control. I begin with an exploration of theoretical approaches to play as a human behaviour, before going on to examine what happens when play is professionalised. This is followed by a detailed example of play in Gaulier’s classroom. A combination of my own classroom experience with insights from other commentators – including potential neuroscientific
explanations for what might take place – allows me to develop the concept of complicit play as a clown practice learned by clown students at École Philippe Gaulier.
In the teaching of Gaulier, Pagneux and Lecoq, play is a basic element of all performance styles. Wright (2006) identifies Lecoq’s ‘levels of play’; Tragedy,
Melodrama, Psychological Realism, Commedia dell’Arte, Buffoon and Clown.
Lecoq students learn to play at each of these levels, and Wright suggests that each actor will find a level of play that gives them the most pleasure. Gaulier emphasises that each genre of performance demands play equally, and should be entered into with the same spirit of pleasure:
What are we going to play this evening? “Antigone”? Or “La Porteuse de Pain”? Or “Victor ou les Enfants au Pouvoir”? Comedy? Tragedy? Clown? The same pleasure leads the bacchanal (Gaulier 2007: 211). Gaulier offers a choice between texts in different genres, but implies that the same pleasures of play are present in each genre, and also in ‘the bacchanal’,
which refers to drunken revelry.54 Play is not solely found in clown, but this
genre has been conceived as a particularly pure form of play, even in the playful syllabus of Gaulier’s school. Though Kendrick examines Gaulier’s use of the ludic in actor training, she considers clown ‘the ultimate player and arguably an entirely ludic construct’ (2010: 113).55 For Wright, clown is the most direct and
life-like level of play:
It’s not about character, it’s not about routines, or structured
material of any kind. Clowning is no more than a credible idiot playing for an audience – it’s theatre’s first base (Wright 2006: 184).
He suggests that clown is without tradition, characters, or narrative, an
interpretation that has been firmly dismissed by Davison, as will be discussed in Chapter 4. Wright suggests it is lack of ‘structured material’ that leads to
‘purity’ of play, and he deprioritises clown routines in favour of the relationship with the audience. Wright further separates ‘different levels of play within clown’: simple, pathetic and tragic. Simple Clown debunks any and all dramatic action, and Pathetic Clown sustains ‘credible emotional engagement with the dramatic situation (Wright 2006: 226). At this level of play, the audience see an idiot negotiating relationships, and after they laugh at this idiot, their emotions are provoked. It shares territory with melodrama but maintains an ambiguity between optimism and hopelessness (2006: 233). Tragic clown plays games beyond the point at which the audience stop laughing, so the clown might begin by showing ‘stupidity and ineptitude’ but eventually becomes determined and tragic (2006: 247). These levels of clown play are associated with dramaturgy and plot in devised or scripted scenes.
Play Theory
There exists a small but inter-disciplinary 20th century field of play studies, within which key writers include Johan Huizinga (1949), Roger Caillois (2001),
54 Victor ou Les Enfants au Pouvoir is a surrealist comedy by Roger Vitrac, La Porteuse de Pain a
melodrama by Xavier de Montépin.
55 Kendrick uses ‘ludic’ to describe rule-bound play. This will be explored in greater detail later in
the chapter. The word ‘ludicrous’, a synonym for ‘ridiculous’ is derived from this term, connecting the ideas of play and amusement.
James Carse (2012 first published 1986), and Brian Sutton-Smith (1997).56
Huizinga felt that the human species, Homo Sapiens, could be usefully renamed ‘Homo Ludens, Man the Player’, because play is such a ubiquitous element of human culture, and its irrational, social and fun qualities make it ‘one of the main bases of civilisation’ (Huizinga 1949: 5). Play is understood to be voluntary, separate from ordinary life, limited to a particular time and place, ordered (and thus, perhaps, beautiful), and it can be either a contest or representation, or both (Huizinga 1949: 1-13). These characteristics have been replicated in the more recent studies, and Huizinga’s ideas have been formative to the field since.
Rhetorics of Play
Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) sets out to explore The Ambiguity of Play. He suggests that play is not inherently ambiguous, but that its definition has been made so by the existence of multiple competing and divergent rhetorics on the subject, located in different disciplines and value systems. Seven different ways of discussing and conceptualising play are examined:
• play as power (as in contests or sport)
• play as identity (as in community celebrations) • play as fate (chance and gambling)
• play as progress (a tool of learning and development) • play as the imaginary (flexibility and creativity)
• play as selfhood (enabling high-level experiences for players)
• play as frivolity (opposed to work, and relating to the carnivalesque). Play as progress, as the imaginary and as selfhood are the most frequently used when discussing contemporary clown play, as will be seen below. The first three rhetorics listed (play as power, fate and identity) are understood by Sutton- Smith to be ‘ancient’, since they are identifiable in mythology and ancient history. According to these rhetorics, participants are not in control of their play. When play is understood as contest, players are challenged by the skill of their opponents, and must play in order to represent and claim their status. When it is considered equivalent to fate or chaos, people are ‘played with’, by gods or chance and luck. In play as identity, all members of a community are
56 There is a proximate but separate field of games studies, which takes a mathematical and logical
approach to choices available to players of rue-bound games. The fixity of game theory is not applicable to clown play, which as we shall see depends on flexibility and ambiguity.
expected to engage in shared play forms such as carnival, and in play as
frivolity, a trickster or shaman is expected to play for the sake of playing (1997: 9-11). Sutton-Smith suggests that in the seven rhetorics of play, the players might be children, sports players, artists, gamblers, or performers. However, he suggests that there is a group for whom play is axiomatic: ‘dilettantes,
harlequins, clowns, tricksters, comedians, and jesters who represent a kind of characterological summit of playfulness’ (Sutton-Smith 1997: 6).
Peacock (2009) briefly indicates that different contemporary clown traditions may emerge from the different rhetorics of play as delineated by Sutton-Smith. She suggests that the tradition of clown doctors originates in the rhetoric of play as progress, which sees clowning as a tool for healing or learning, a way by which patients can find optimism or healing pleasure.57 Meanwhile, Peacock
suggests, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) and the clown ministry understand play more along the lines of identity formation as used in carnival or festivals.58 By engaging with communal play in these contexts, clowns
and their audiences reinforce their communal identity. These are ways of using clowns to social ends.
Theatrical clowning, though, Peacock understands to best fit the two rhetorics of play as imaginary and frivolous. Sutton-Smith gathers under the heading, ‘rhetorics of the imaginary’, all writers and artists ‘who believe that some kind of transformation is the most fundamental characteristic of play’ (Sutton-Smith 1997: 127). Play as imaginary thus includes writers who value the play of
children as a creative tool, those who see art as play, and writers who play with language. Sutton-Smith considers actors to be ‘players’ according to this
rhetoric. Romantic theories in the late 18th century conflated art with play, and idealized play as pure imagination, leading to creativity. The rhetoric of the imagination thus ‘dignified’ play in comparison to the older rhetorics. Play was seen as a valuable and creative act, rather than a low-brow and timewasting activity. This was the play of dreaming and of creative ideas, and also of
57 Clown Doctors visit hospital wards to play with or perform for children there. See
http://www.heartsminds.org.uk
58 Clown Ministry decribes a movement where the skills of clown performance are combined with
Christian ministry. CIRCA are a group of political activists using clown performance skills to create playful and subversive demonstrations. The connections are traced to a longer tradition of clowns working in spiritual and political contexts: see (Peacock 2009 Chapter 5)
slippery, multiple meaning, and Derridean ‘play of signifiers’ (Sutton-Smith 1997: 144). ‘Play’ as behavior was conflated with ‘the playful’ in writing and art. Sutton-Smith suggests that:
usage might be clarified by reserving the concept of the playful for that which is meta-play, that which plays with normal expectations of play itself, as does nonsense, parody, paradox and ridiculousness (Sutton-Smith 1997: 147-148).
If dramatic theatre is understood as play, clown performance might be understood as ‘meta-play’, and thus ‘playful’, as ‘normal expectations’ of performance are played with.
In reference to Sutton-Smith, Peacock suggests that contemporary clown is not part of the rhetoric of ‘play as self’, because of the limited personal risk
involved. However, she does later place a great deal of emphasis on the self of the individual performers, contrasting this to the work of actors playing written characters.
When a clown performs, the audience sees the ideas and attitude of that individual conveyed by an adopted persona that has developed out of the individual’s personality and which could never be adopted and lived in the same way by anyone else (Peacock 2009: 14).
In fact, Peacock’s vision of the clown as individual could be seen as exemplar of this rhetoric, as it prioritises the flow of the individual, the peak experience of play, and the personal performance of skill. In this way, clown play is aligned with contemporary physical theatres, where presentation of the performer’s self is frequently valued above representation of externally created characters
(Murray and Keefe 2007: 21). Murray and Keefe see a hidden complexity in the invocation of ‘self’ in performance, explaining that while the instruction ‘be yourself’ seems to be ‘an easily translatable code towards honesty, economy and simplicity […] it also covers a complex range of issues surrounding the nature of identity’ (2007: 21). These issues contain intangible concepts: ‘we are in the world of charisma, of corporeal qualities which transcend rational or
acculturated explanations, and of mystique and mystery’ (2007: 21). To consider clown play as play with identity and the self is to discuss ungraspable
the discussion of ‘self’ is common among students after class. This will be explored further in Chapter 5.
Types of Game
Kendrick’s thesis (2010) is a coherent application of the ideas of play theorist Roger Caillois to Gaulier’s classroom.59 Kendrick hypothesises that Gaulier seeks
free and pleasurable play, created using rule-bound and strict teaching. This correlates with Caillois’ concept of paida, and the ‘complimentary, and in some respects inverse’ ludus (Caillois 2001: 13). It seems that Kendrick’s impulse is to create a systematic understanding of Gaulier’s play, which can be analysed in a straightforward manner, and this terminology helps her to break up play into constituent elements. However, another effect of its use is to describe an abstracted concept of play, rather than the ambiguities and confusion experienced by many students of the school (Danzig 2008: 16).
When looking at classroom play, Caillois’ four types of game are especially useful. These are: agôn, competitive play and sport; alea, play with chance and the uncontrollable; mimicry, the play of pretending; and ilinx, the bodily
experience of dizziness or vertigo. Kendrick identifies moments in the Gaulier clown workshop where each of these game-types appears – often in short
succession, so that the player must shift between them. Her example is a game of musical chairs, in which two players circle a chair, and try to sit when the music stops. With the winner of the chair ‘in major’, they improvise a scene – the ‘major’ player taking control in centre stage, while the ‘minor’ player supports her. Kendrick identifies all four types of game in this exercise – the competition for the chair is agônistic play, but the fact Gaulier controls the music means that winning is out of the players’ control, so the outcome is aleaic. When the music stops, the dash for the seat gives ilinx, and the
improvisation could be called mimicry. Kendrick’s analysis demonstrates that the transitions between game types must be smooth, so that the ways of playing are blended together. Using examples from the workshop, Kendrick illustrates that these sequential types of game require subtle but visible changes in tactic. The
59 Caillois wrote Man Play and Games in 1958. Sutton-Smith refers to Caillois’ study as an
‘excellent account’ (Sutton-Smith 1997: 65) but only draws on the theorist’s earlier analysis of games of chance, not on his categorizations of play and games.
wrong type of playing at the wrong point causes a lack of pleasure, meaning that students fail in their attempt. One pair, she explains, were stopped because their agônistic play over the chair looked to the audience like a fight between ‘two chair maniacs’ (Kendrick 2010: 148), too competitive and not pointed toward the pleasure in mimicry which is the intended outcome.60 Gaulier stops
the game if the player cannot shift between types of game (Kendrick 2010: 151- 152). Strict adherence to one type of game is interpreted by Kendrick as too rule-bound, or ludic. Mimicry that is inflected with agôn, alea, and ilinx gives a pleasurable, free play called paida. Gaulier’s game rules, or ludus, become ever quicker, more complex and more difficult to adhere to, creating the necessity for the rules to be broken. In this moment, the student is a ‘bad student’ and, at the same time, experiences a childlike pleasure, which is ideally shared with the audience.
Ludus and paida are not opposites but have a relational existence (Kendrick 2010: 54-55). The relationship is explained using the game Kendrick calls ‘Name Tag’, which I know as ‘Mr. Hit’. Players stand in a tight circle, with a player (A) named ‘Mr. Hit’. I noted the rules in my journal during Le Jeu, ‘A hits B, and B immediately says the name of C. C is [now] “Mr. Hit”’ (2008). The structure of the game is that players are ‘out’ when they are too slow or otherwise make a mistake. This continues until there is a winner, meaning that all but one of the players inevitably fail during the course of the game. It is a game with simple basic rules, in which the demands on the player get ever more urgent and
complicated, which Kendrick calls ‘increasing ludus’. Each student, according to Kendrick, experiences pleasure when she breaks the ludus and is ‘out’ of the game:
The failure of playing this game is always expected but the experience is nevertheless a surprise when it arrives and this is almost always pleasurable for the player (Kendrick 2010: 129).
The pleasure experienced is one of freedom and Caillois’ term ‘paidic’ is applied to it. Paidic pleasure is created from confusion, and surprise, which have been generated breaking away from the impossible ludus of the game. Kendrick
60 Kendrick cites the following article: Spencer Sochaczewski 2001 'Find Ze Kom-Plee-Ci-The'
acknowledges that this moment is short-lived, but maintains that the experience of this paidic pleasure is valuable to the learning process:
In the moment of sheer confusion lie many possibilities for Gaulier’s theatre, in particular training for the clown. Though the player may be at this point jettisoned from the game, in failing they have found a state that is useful for performance (Kendrick 2010: 131).
For Kendrick, the ideal playful ‘state’ is located in failure of ludus. In a contrasting approach, Murray (2010a) deliberately avoids pinning down the techniques or experiences of students or teacher. This follows Gaulier’s own playful way of writing and speaking:
Central to Gaulier’s tactics of teaching and of rehearsal is the indirect vision, an arrival from the oblique or - in his own words - exploring the “angle of aberrations”. In practice these are manifested in a constant destabilisation of the student actor in the belief that out of such perturbation dynamic dramaturgical solutions will be found which would be elusive or impossible through a more straightforward approach (Murray 2013a: 217).
While Murray observes ‘perturbation’ leading to ‘dramaturgical solutions’, he mimics this approach by finding oblique and metaphorical ways to discuss it. Kendrick’s writing appears to take a more straightforward approach, but like the straightforwardness described by Murray, this writing style creates an impression of Gaulier’s school that makes it difficult to see the nuances and paradoxes of the classroom. Perhaps to continue Kendrick’s line of thinking, her analysis and its precision could be thought of as ludic play, in which a thorough
understanding of the types of play function as rules to be followed for student success. As a performer and former student of Le Jeu, I would have found this terminology impossible to use in the classroom. I picture myself running back to my seat to rifle through the pages and decide whether I should play ‘musical chairs’ in an ilinxic or aleaic way. These boundaries and distinctions are difficult to keep in mind during performance, and it is likely that the student experiences something less defined. It may be the case that for some students or teachers, ludic play seems more attractive, if they want to know what to do and how. However, Kendrick’s analysis suggests that the difficult games do not offer the chance to learn complex ludic skills, but instead, as Murray indicates,
destabilisation leads to a fugacious experience of play, which can be understood better when considered obliquely rather than directly.
Pat Kane embraces the multiplicity of play, as a potential philosophy, in his book
The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living (2004). Kane
acknowledges the usefulness of Sutton-Smith’s rhetorics of play for a history of the ways in which play is discussed. However, he considers that all seven
rhetorics of play should be understood as a multi-stranded definition of the same phenomenon. Thus Kane reinstates the unfixed ‘ambiguity of play’ as a valuable and generative way of seeing all the activities of play as part of the same
behaviour. In part, this is a way to integrate the modern definitions of play (progress, imagination and selfhood) with the ancient rhetorics (fate and chaos, identity, contest). As a result of this combination, his concept of play becomes complex, because although ‘[t]he player as a richly potentialised individual, imaginative, energetic and freely intending, is attractive and appealing’, play