"Don’t be funny, be human!"
I teach at a major Australian acting school ( Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University). Initially I only taught movement for the actor. Then one term, I introduced a 6 week clown course. It was so successful that the head of the department asked me to turn it into a whole semester course.
Why?
Because for the serious actor, the red nose is not a disguise—it is the smallest mask in the world, one that reveals more than it hides. It demands vulnerability, generosity, active listening, creativity,spontaneity and most importantly, authentic joy. These are all great virtues for an aspiring actor.
Clown training is rapidly becoming an essential component of conservatory curriculums worldwide, and for good reason. It teaches the one skill that Stanislavski and Meisner cannot fully unlock: the courage to fail.
Vulnerability and Resilience
Most acting techniques teach you how to succeed in a scene. Clown teaches you how to survive when you don’t. In the clown world, the “flop”—that terrifying moment when a joke lands flat or a prop malfunctions—is not a mistake. It is an opportunity.
Clowning trains an actor to stay present in the face of failure. Instead of shutting down or panicking when things go wrong, the clown-trained actor breathes, makes eye contact, and uses the vulnerability of the moment to connect deeper, find a deeper and honest place to work from. This builds an emotional resilience that makes you bulletproof in auditions.
Destroying the Fourth Wall
In naturalistic acting, we pretend the audience isn’t there. The clown, however, lives and dies by the audience.
This training heightens your sensory awareness. You learn to listen not just to your scene partner, but to the room itself. You learn to calibrate your performance based on the energy of the house. It teaches you that acting is not a soliloquy; it is a dialogue with the energy of the spectators. I call this the ‘contract’. Clowning teaches you to feel your audience.
Rediscovering Play
Finally, clowning forces you out of your head and into your body. It demands a childlike sense of wonder and impulse. It strips away the intellectual vanity that often plagues actors, leaving behind something raw, honest, and incredibly human.
Ultimately, you don’t study clown to become “funny.” You study clown to become truthful.
The first instruction I give in my clown workshops is : “Don’t be funny, be human!”
From our common humanity comes the best comedy and the best acting.