Interviews

Jean Félix: The way we see clowns, and that we can see a difference between theatre and clowns, is that what you bring on stage is what you are. Most clowns know this, you are working on who you are, you're working on your qualities or your flaws and you bring that on stage, and then you can have a real interaction with the-

Rémi: Connection

Jean- Félix: With the connection with the audience. 

Rémi: Each show I create, it's an inspiration with different types of the clown so for Brotipo  it’s an American clown or for Kombini  it’s the Russian clown. So you study the character of this country and you search in your personality what is the connection with that? And so, okay, for Kombini, Jean-Félix is so sweet in real life so for this show I search in your personality and your character the… anger. What's your anger part and I work with that. For me, I work the vulnerability. Okay, vulnerability, okay. And this show, you concentrate on that.

So you pick up all the time, one.. Parcel? 

Jacinthe: Pieces… a small part. 

Rémi: Pieces, a small part in your personality and you work on the show with this particularity. It's a big engagement because you don't have a choice and you have a big confrontation with…. With…

Jean-Félix:  Who you are. 

Rémi: Who you are. But I like that. 

But if the work is becoming ‘trop sombre’ Lucie says they need to ‘bring more absurd’.

Ellen: What techniques do you use to inject absurdity into your work? 

Lucie: When you are bad and true, we have fun about that. And I think that when there is some challenge, there are always absurd things. In my life, always. 

Romane: Yes, yes. When we… not us, people, when people are mad they say some shit and it’s like, what the fuck. That’s nonsense, we don’t have to talk about this. Why do you talk about that now? It’s nonsense, they make some weird twist of an experience and that’s absurd. When people are mad, they do some things that are…

Lucie: Absurd.

Romane: Nonsense... In the absurd theatre, the thing we love and we think is very important to talk about it’s when we are absurd, we are true. Because we don’t control. We like control, but in the absurd we don’t control things and that’s really our point; to touch the true and concrete things, the real shit of humans. 

Alan reflects further that a key idea he carries as an artist and performer is to think in sequences of thought and expose those sequences to the audience, so they might understand the cognition and psychology of the person on stage. To see how a character arrives at an action or text is the interesting thing. It makes me wonder how this is specific for clown work and how a clown’s logic is revealed to an audience. 

I ask what the joy is in the work;

Alan: Play. The state of play. 

I turn to Jean-Pierre;

Jean-Pierre: When it’s over 

(Laughter)

Rémi: So the rhythm in this show, all the time, has to listen to the audience. They give a good rhythm for the clown.

Jean-Félix: That’s one of the biggest points of work in the company, it’s about rhythm. The clown that we're doing, the physical theatre that we are doing, even the acrobatics. It’s about rhythm. Every movement has to be either fast or slow… and this is how we work generally.  

And for this show, we'll say…. Let's put ourselves in slow. 

Rémi: Sloooow down. Slow down.

Ellen: What is in between you and the audience when you are performing?

Sophie: There is nothing in between us. 

[laughter]

They are so close. There is nothing. That's why we were so afraid. And that's why we love that. We really see people. We really speak to one person in particular or another one. And we have reactions. In fact, it's not like a show, it's a moment together that we spend together.