Interview with Jean-Pierre Weyland and Alan Tallec
L’histoire de l'humanité (en toute simplicité !)

I saw ‘L’histoire de l'humanité (en toute simplicité !)’ during their general rehearsal before the beginning of the festival. A clown show for a young public, clowns Jean-Pierre Weyland and Alan Tallec take the audience on a journey throughout time and history through playful vignettes.

Jean-Pierre greets me at the theatre door, red nose on, and greets me with warmth and playfully speaks with me in English. This warmth continues as I watch the show in rehearsal. It is interactive, spontaneous and silly with Jean-Pierre and Alan bringing multiple characters (and animals!) to life and recreating a feeling of history that is fun. They cover multiple eras throughout time so the show is engaging and changes frequently to allow us to enjoy their duo in different ways. 

I caught them later in the week to talk further about their process and sense of connection to their work, each other and their audiences’. Throughout our conversation I was prompted to think about what it is that makes clowning, clowning. I remarked that often I have an innate feeling when watching a show, performance or performer that it is clown but I struggle to articulate what exactly gives me that feeling. When do I know a performance centres on direct response and contact with me, the audience? 

When I ask the duo about what brings them joy in their work, at the end of our conversation, Jean-Pierre confers with Amélie Rodrigues who joins us midway through to aid in translation to explain the moments of response between clown and audience member when the player connects with the laughter of the audience. The word in English that Amélie and I arrive at to capture this feeling  is “fleeting”. 

Alan says that clown is a childish way of looking at things. He pauses and adds, “and also playing with the sparkle in the eye”. Jean-Pierre tells a story of running errands around town with his red nose with him and having people ask him to make them laugh… but that’s not how clown works. So how does it work? 

At one point when Alan is answering what it was like working with Jean-Pierre for the first time he becomes fixated on a gesture Jean-Pierre makes with his hand and suspends his thought to quickly pluck an apple sticker stuck to Jean-Pierre’s arm. Our focus is pulled to this moment and the timing is puntacted by the quick pluck and Alan discarding the sticker. We laugh and Jean-Pierre exclaims, “that’s clown!”. 

Jean Pierre tells me about the creation of the show and his background. When I ask him what has influenced him in becoming an artist he answers, “I was always a little bit clown”. The show was first created by Jean-Pierre and another clown, Sebastian, 11 years ago. Jean-Pierre tells me that before this he was not playing professionally, although he had always played, working on theatrical productions. Jean-pierre says;

“We had no show but someone called me and said we want to have a show about the story of humanity. And I say, we make it. We go to make it. And it was made quickly, in three weeks. We made it with Sebastian, the other clown and after…the character of Sebastian is different to Alan, so we adapted the show.”

Eight years ago Sebastian left the show and Alan joined, so there was a process of adaptation to capture the connection between Jean-Pierre and Alan. Alan tells me about his journey becoming a clown, starting around 1999 with a clown teacher, a common friend between Alan and Jean-Pierre, Alan says;

“She was doing clown training every week twice a week. And she had a little company and she wanted to mix clown and literacy, with Moliere. My first time playing clown with her was ‘Le médecin malgré lui’. That was a work of clown itself plus text. Injecting the state and emotion into every word. So every word we said has to be full.”

Because they adapted the show to suit Alan and I ask, “In that process was there a process of creating the clown state or did you come with your clown?”

Alan: No, we did not have that look on the clown, it was not a research of our clown or something like this. For me, it came later with the amount of what I played. But this route… it’s not that creation. 

Jean-Pierre: We don’t learn, what is my clown? That is not our learning. 

Alan: Now we can say, my clown is like this or like that.

Ellen: But that’s not what you started with. 

Jean-Pierre: It’s not a method (for us). 

Alan: What is your clown, is that your clown, I don't plan this. 

Ellen: Does it come naturally through play or just through work? 

Alan: For me, it came after years of clown play.  

This complicity between each other's clowns is seen in their collaboration. On how they communicate as a duo when making work Alan aptly remarks, “simply”. There is no boss of this show, no director.

Sometimes they receive feedback from other members of the company on the work but ultimately the creative collaboration comes from the dynamic of play that is years in the making. Alan says conversations are often about timing but that “we know how it works”. 

I ask if the show changes or adapts based on the audience’s response and Alan responds that the structure is fixed and based on what works best for him and Jean-Pierre but includes flexibility for audience interaction, improvisation and timing. He touches on the effect place has on their theatrical space as they often perform ‘L’histoire de l'humanité (en toute simplicité !)’ outside in non-traditional theatre spaces. 

Alan: We play out and in, it’s different. Sometimes when we are outside we see that we must go fast and to start quickly.

Jean-Pierre: We make a mix of experiments.

Alan: It’s a play without text (as in a traditional written script), based on canva, do you say canva in english? 

Ellen: Like a canva from commedia dell’arte? (Canovaccio is a list of acts and scenes written on canvas backstage by the players to reference throughout show)

Alan: Yes, we have a canva so we can improvise the text and know that the text is about what we played with the repetition (rehearsals). But we have the freedom of improvising so we play with the public. Today we had a nice family of eight so we played with everyone. We can use… Jean Pierre is good at getting the names of the people.  So he uses some names or refers to Mr. or Mrs. somebody. I get to get out of the stage and into the public, when I get the horse (there is a wonderful entrance for a character on a hobby horse) and go across the public. 

Jean-Pierre: Today a little boy said to me. He started to make a fight with me, I was alone (on stage) because Alan was changing outside (outside the playing space, backstage) and the little boy… 

(Jean-Pierre makes jovial tussle noises and recreates the french banter between him and his small audience member which ends in a high pitched “Booop!” There is sword fighting between Alan and Jean-Pierre within the show which I imagine stirred the imagination of this young audience member!)

The improvised nature of the show has had to change somewhat In the theatre, this sense of timing has become stricter with the technician who follows a script for sound and lighting cues. 

Ellen: Do you ever play… Oh, this is an obvious question.. Do you ever have the same show?

Alan: Never. 

Jean-Pierre: No, no. 

Alan: We have a structure but.. 

Jean-Pierre: We played a lot this year and now it’s more.. There are a few moments where we change (Jean-Pierre laughs) it’s the first time where he says to me and me to him… “ah, you don’t usually make this movement”. Before we don’t (Jean-Pierre laughs again) speak like that because now for the technician, Alan is writing what we do. 

There is a pause after I ask how Jean-Pierre and Alan view the artists they were in the past,  it’s a personal question. After a moment, Alan says: “I am not as worried about being good. What I care about is the playing”. The external feedback, the concern about the audience’s opinion and the self criticism of the artist he was in the past doesn’t affect him so much. 

Conversely, Jean Pierre says “I used to be less afraid and now I’m more afraid”. There is a fresh challenge in presenting this long-running show during the Festival OFF d’Avignon and these challenges might sometimes manifest in an over-investment in the audience’s response. 

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)

Jean-Pierre notes the difference between working on clown within a masterclass, where there is a way, a person to guide you compared to the journey you undertake alone with the audience. There is fear, doubt and I underline in my notes: ‘it’s hard’. 

But Jean-Pierre continues his reflection to say; “the joy is making the other laugh (referring to Alan) After working together for so long, this is joy”.

We muse on these bubbles of joy, the ones that surprise you when they emerge with the partner one has worked with for years and the bubbles of joy that ripple in the audience; a fresh interaction each time. This is the moment where we sit thinking about the nature of clowning and Jean-Pierre describes a feeling in French and the best word we can find in the moment to summarize, in English, is ‘fleeting’.

Weyland et Compagnie: https://www.weylandetcompagnie.fr/

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