Clowns: A Role Throughout History

 

Clowns have played a role throughout history and in the beginning were known as the fool.  In general, these fools suffered a mental defect or physical deformity.  Clowns have come a long way and in the 21st century they are performance artists who play a role in ensuring laughter in our lives.
Clowns are silent entertainers and use their elaborate costumes and clumsy nature to endear their audience and specialise in playing pranks on fellow clowns and also pranks on the audience.
Common characteristics of most clowns are oversized brightly coloured overalls, oversized shoes, elaborate face painting, a big red nose, wild and colourful wig oversized painted on lips and of course a flower that squirts water.
Where clowns appear on stage, they act out humorous scenes and may or may not engage with the audience.  Both acting approaches have equal success in getting participation with the audience.  Children take great delight in trying to warn a clown (who is not aware of the audience) of impending danger.
Party and carnival clowns work on their own or in pairs. These clowns are popular forms of kids entertainment and in some instances clowns can make upwards of €100 for a comical performance at kids birthday parties.  Many family restaurants also have a resident clown on staff to entertain kids while parents enjoy a relaxed meal.
Rodeo clowns represent the more serious side of clowning around.  These clowns pay a critical role in the bull riding rodeo events.  Their primary purpose is to distract the bull when the rider falls from the bull.  It’s a dangerous role and injuries are common.
It’s not unusual for a pair of comical clowns to be the scene stealers at Circus performances.  Circus clowns pay the role of getting the crowd enthused and keeping the crowd on their toes during breaks between each of the circus events.  These clowns will entertain with slapstick humour, clumsiness, playing tricks on each other and the audience as well as impressing the audience with juggling tricks and speeding around the circus ring on a unicycle often crashing comically to get a response from the crowd.
With the increasing popularity of kids entertainment, in particular the demand for clowns, clown schools and clown camps are increasing in popularity.  Participants work together with fellow clowns and learn all aspects of the clown business from interacting with audiences both children and adults, skills based training and costume and make up advice. 

There is some recent research that suggests that children dislike clowns and feel scared.  Certainly a chance encounter for a two year old with an over exuberant clown may create this response initially, however you just need to listen to the laughter of children during a clowns circus performance to realise that these are far from fearful entertainers.  Anyway, one of the world’s most successful companies has a clown as a mascot and this mascot has played a key role in their success – so clowns can’t be that scary can they?

 

 

 

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