Creating Clown Performances
“What’s my plan? And how do I perform now what I planned earlier?”
25th-26th October 2025
Venue: Bold Elephant, London SE1 6ES
Cost: £130
Time: 10am-4pm Saturday and Sunday
To book your place, email info@jondavison.net
Maximum: 18 participants
This workshop is aimed at those who have already done some clowning or related performance previously.
In this workshop we will explore in depth the material you create to clown with and the relationship with the in-the-moment performance. What’s my plan? – what and how to plan, create, devise what you’re going to clown with How do I perform now what I planned earlier? – keeping your in-the-moment responsiveness while performing an already created piece.
How do we bring together your own particular way of clowning (your stupidity and craziness) with careful crafting and composition of performance material?
We shall be looking at how to make sure the material you create really works for you. There are countless practical ways of devising material appropriate for your clowning. Awareness of and understanding of these is far preferable to just a single idea will survive the real stage situation. This work fuses a personal approach to your clowning together with taking care to set up and structure your performance. Other kinds of comic performers habitually spend a lot of time and effort on ‘material’. Stand-up comedians worry over joke structure, sketch comedians search for strong premises for their ideas. Why should clowns be different? Just because clowns incarnate the chaotic, the inept and the disruptive, doesn’t mean that clowning is not, in part, a craft.
The workshop is suitable for differing levels of experience. You might have begun to create your own performances as clown. You might be stuck and want to find a way to complete your creation, or want to revisit your material and improve it or change it, or find a way to make your ideas suit your own way of clowning more closely.
Clowning with Skills
“How do I clown using the skills I have? How can I integrate clowning with what I am good at?”
6th-7th December 2025
Venue: Bold Elephant, London SE1 6ES
Cost: £130
Time: 10am-4pm Saturday and Sunday
To book your place, email info@jondavison.net
Maximum: 18 participants
How can we bring together your own particular way of clowning (your stupidity and craziness) with the discipline of a particular skill, the things you are good at.
These might be ‘recognised performing arts’ which people habitually pay money to go and see, like music, dance, circus. Or they might be eccentric abilities with no ‘value’ such as waggling your ears, crossing your eyes, or singing while gargling water; that you might entertain your friends with at a party.
How can you be both a stupid, incompetent clown and at the same time remain focused on the skill, without simply being ‘bad’ at something?
There are numerous ways to clown even while being a virtuoso (you don’t have to be a virtuoso!), where your skill presents itself in surprising and unthinkable ways.
This workshop is suitable for those with an interest in clowning and have a minimum level in a performance or eccentric skill.
We will aim to cover the following:
– what makes your skill ridiculous?
– generating clown performance material:
– assessing your individual discipline and skills from clown points of view
– clown scripting: structures, formats, paths
– using clown/audience dynamics of laughter response
By the end of the workshop, individual participants should each:
– have gained an understanding of how the conditions of clown performance may apply to their own skill (at whichever level of skill they are)
– generated sufficient clown material relating to their discipline to continue working
– have begun the work of creating a piece of clown performance intended for public display
Clown Dynamics
How do I get into the mood for clowning?
How do I get over not being funny? Explore the fundamentals fully, whether you’re experienced or new to clowning.
13th-14th December 2025
Venue: tbc, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cost: tbc
Time: 10am-4pm Saturday and Sunday
To book your place, email Dmitry Ratushnyy d.ratushnyy@gmail.com for details
Maximum: 18 participants
How can we bring together your own particular way of clowning (your stupidity and craziness) with the discipline of a particular skill, the things you are good at.
These might be ‘recognised performing arts’ which people habitually pay money to go and see, like music, dance, circus. Or they might be eccentric abilities with no ‘value’ such as waggling your ears, crossing your eyes, or singing while gargling water; that you might entertain your friends with at a party.
How can you be both a stupid, incompetent clown and at the same time remain focused on the skill, without simply being ‘bad’ at something?
There are numerous ways to clown even while being a virtuoso (you don’t have to be a virtuoso!), where your skill presents itself in surprising and unthinkable ways.
This workshop is suitable for those with an interest in clowning and have a minimum level in a performance or eccentric skill.
We will aim to cover the following:
– what makes your skill ridiculous?
– generating clown performance material:
– assessing your individual discipline and skills from clown points of view
– clown scripting: structures, formats, paths
– using clown/audience dynamics of laughter response
By the end of the workshop, individual participants should each:
– have gained an understanding of how the conditions of clown performance may apply to their own skill (at whichever level of skill they are)
– generated sufficient clown material relating to their discipline to continue working
– have begun the work of creating a piece of clown performance intended for public display
Three-Week Clown Course
6th-24th April 2026
Venue: Longfield Hall, London SE5 9QY
Cost: £900 (payment in full) £350 (per single week)
Time: 10am-4pm Mondays-Fridays
To book your place, email info@jondavison.net
Maximum: 18 participants
The Three-Week Clown Course starts with the fundamentals of clowning and works towards creating your own clown performance in the way that suits you and performing it in the place that suits you.
We begin with the dynamics of clowning: when we present ourselves as ridiculous for each other’s own amusement, and when we laugh (or don’t laugh) at each other.
We then look at how to make sure the material you create really works for you. There are countless practical ways of devising material appropriate for your clowning. This fuses a personal approach to your clowning together with taking care to set up and structure your performance.
In the third week, we will create unique clown performances that work for you, in the style that suits you best.
The course will end with a public performance of participants’ newly created clowning. Depending on your style of clowning, you may choose to present your performance in other settings: in an outdoor setting, in a specific site, online, at home, one-to-one, etc. there are no rules about where or for whom we should clown!
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