We’re all usefool

Meditations on the art of clowning

Let’s talk about authenticity

There's a moment in Fellini's La Strada that captures the essence of what I witness in my clown workshops. The Fool, in his peculiar wisdom, picks up a pebble and declares it must be useful, even if he doesn't know why. "If it's useless," he says, "everything is useless. So are the stars!"

This beautiful absurdity – this cosmic importance of seemingly meaningless things – is what clowning teaches us about being human.

Every workshop, I watch them arrive: adults wrapped in their carefully constructed dignities like overcoats. Some hover at the edges making polite small talk, others wear the slightly lost expression of someone who's wandered into the wrong room, and a few bounce with barely contained excitement. They're all wearing what I call their "adulthood armor" – those layers of respectability we accumulate like barnacles on a ship.

Then we play "Soul Train."

It's remarkable what happens when you permit people to be ridiculous. Music flows through the room, and suddenly these proper adults transform. Their movements become wild, uninhibited, gloriously awkward. We're not trying to create the next viral star or Broadway sensation – we're excavating something far more precious: authenticity through absurdity.

The magic isn't in the individual performances (though some are spectacularly, magnificently terrible). It's in the alchemy that happens when a group of strangers collectively decides to elevate their stupidity to an art form. Jacques Lecoq, my theatrical north star, called this phenomenon "complicité" – a shared understanding, a collective surrender to joy.

Think about it: from childhood onwards, we're bombarded with commands. "Sit up straight!" "Get a real job!" "Act your age!" "Eat with your mouth closed!" "Be normal!" Clowning is our gentle rebellion against all that. It's our chance to say, "Actually, I think I'll be gloriously abnormal today, thank you very much."

In these workshops, I've seen accountants discover their inner rock stars, lawyers transform into rubber-limbed dancers, and the shyest wallflowers bloom into magnificent idiots. A shared laugh becomes a shared secret, a conspiracy of joy. We're all in on it together, this beautiful rejection of "proper" adulthood.

When the workshop ends, some participants linger, reluctant to put their overcoats back on. They've tasted freedom in foolishness, and returning to the "real world" feels a bit like leaving Narnia.

People often ask why I teach clowning. The truth is, I teach to learn. I'm not really a teacher – more like a gardener of absurdity, creating conditions where people's inner fools can flourish. Every workshop teaches me something new about human nature, about our desperate need to be seen and accepted in all our imperfect glory.

Is it useful? Like the Fool's pebble, I don't know exactly why or how. But I know that something profound happens when we permit ourselves to be stupid, to play, to fail magnificently, and laugh about it. Perhaps that's usefool enough.

Remember: Be honest. Be stupid. Be interested. Play. Be vulnerable. Play. Play. Play.

And maybe, just maybe, keep that adulthood overcoat in the closet a little longer next time.