De Castro is a clown. But don’t ask her to wear a red nose. And, just for the record, she doesn’t perform at children’s parties either. You’re more likely to find her conducting workshops on clowning in London, or around the world, interacting with business people or training with scientists. To assist her in her work, she has recently been awarded a £39,200 Dream Time Award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).
It seems that clowning has come a long way, and the court jesters of old are no doubt cheering from their graves.
‘I was in Europe when I first saw theatre clowns,’ says the Brazilian-born de Castro, who trained as a professional actress in her homeland before touring to Europe. ‘I always knew I was a different actress. I liked to work with the audience, communicate with the audience. In Europe, I saw some guys performing a show and I was completely bemused by it… I asked what kind of theatre they were performing and they told me it was clowning… and, like everybody, I said, “But where is the red nose?” They said, “Oh no, this is theatre clowning, like Laurel and Hardy or Fellini,” and I thought, well, this is what I am.’
Not that contemporary clowning, in the style adapted by de Castro, is completely removed from the familiar icons of the circus, however. According to de Castro, modern clowning has simply taken on other influences and emerged into its own artform.
‘The history of the silent movie stars – Charlie Chaplin for example – and vaudeville had a big influence on theatre,’ she comments. ‘A new way of clowning started happening that wasn’t [found only] in the circus, but in cabaret halls and vaudeville halls. A new act was born between the disciplines, and a new skill started to develop that was a cross between circus clowning, cabaret acts and comedians. Now it is highly recognised.’
Indeed, so highly recognised has clowning become, that de Castro has performed and taught clowning around the world, in addition to founding the Why Not Institute in London – an organisation dedicated to all aspects of contemporary clowning.
‘Recently, there was a big boom in clowning,’ she remarks, when commenting on increased recognition for the form as art, and as a useful educational tool. ‘People started discovering that clowning is something other than the perception that they had. Clowns allow people to laugh at their own stupidity, and to realise that mistakes are actually part of learning.’
As a challenge to values dearly held by our society, largely driven by academic and economic success, de Castro believes that clowning provides relief and liberation across a variety of disciplines.
‘Clowning is essentially about liberation of yourself and of your imagination,’ she explains. ‘You can value that in many disciplines. For example, this year I worked with a group of teachers… [For them, clowning is] relevant because it works with failure and fear. In the modern world, failure is seen as the worst thing that can happen, and clowning challenges this. If you can learn to accept failure, it removes the pressure. The focus of education is then on the learning rather than achieving.’
De Castro is now taking this approach to trainee teachers at a university in Amsterdam, where clowning has been incorporated into the curriculum. The business and scientific communities have also started to embrace the clown’s work, and she will use the NESTA grant to further her research into the importance of clowning in contemporary society.
‘I teach business people, I work with writers and I work with scientists at universities – where people can use creativity to transform materials to research different things,’ she says. ‘I also work with actors and theatre professionals and people who are not performers but who want to discover the clowning side of themselves to become a better person.’
Perhaps it is this breadth of vision that has resulted in de Castro’s success with NESTA. ‘Clowning has taken another turn in terms of how we use it,’ she says. ‘That’s why I got all this money. It’s not just about me performing or developing my theatre shows, but about the help or collaboration that can be had [between art and the] society of the moment.’
But despite de Castro’s personal and professional recognition, however, clowning remains an art that struggles to be taken seriously in the wider world. For clowns, particularly female ones, competition for performance space and audience remains fierce.
‘The word “clown” at the moment is so undervalued,’ laments de Castro. ‘I think people feel that theatre which uses mime, or more physicality than text, is easier to do, and that we [as performers] are less intelligent. That is such an ignorant point of view, because for you to express without words you need to have such a skill.’
De Castro also points out that the contribution made by clowning to many modern comedy acts is often hidden from the audience.
‘French and Saunders are clowns,’ she asserts. ‘The way they perceive their work and the way that they create their parts comes pretty much from a clown point of view. Even if they don’t call themselves clowns, they use clowning through their work. You can see the influence of the clown in many aspects of the theatre, but the word has been so devalued that people don’t call themselves such.’
Another challenge facing de Castro and her contemporaries – like that facing many women in the arts and other disciplines – is being accepted as female activists in a traditionally male dominated sphere. In recognition of this challenge, an International Festival of Women Clowns was held in Andorra in 2002, and will again be held in 2003. The festival combines performances and workshops with talks and conferences about the issues affecting female clowns. At the same time, however, de Castro remains philosophical about gender issues in the world of clowning.
‘When I started clowning, I didn’t even notice that there weren’t other women doing it. I just did it,’ she recalls. ‘It is difficult, because the role models we’ve got are all male… and is hard to see a clown as a woman, so we also have women clowns projecting the male persona. But I think the problem is not competition among the clowns but among the producers and organisers. You need to have a very good act, and men have been doing that for longer than women. If you have a good act you have a space and, because we are a minority, women need to be very good. We cannot be excused because we are women.’
And what makes a ‘good act’ in clowning? According to de Castro, it is one that provides a link between the world of the everyday and the land of the imagination.
‘I think that clowns are like angels, because they bridge the gap between earth and the infinite. Like angels, they either bring you a message or they are the message themselves… They [open up] the land of “why not?” – where everything is possible.’
