The clown disease

Alex
Hi, Meaghan.

Meaghan

Hi, Alex. Thank you for chatting. I feel like I’ve been texting you, always being like, “Can you perform at this fundraiser?” (laughs) And now I’m just happy that we’re connecting doing this and talking about clown.

Alex

I’m shocked anytime anyone asks me to perform at a fundraiser because that context is not good for me, Meaghan. I just make everyone uncomfortable and they don’t wanna donate. That’s not correct. For funders, donating is not the impulse that I inspire in them. But I’m still flattered you asked.

Meaghan
Well, I think we have the same disease, because I also do that. 

Alex

Yes. Okay, let’s start there. How would you describe the disease you have? The clown disease, talk to me.

Meaghan

The clown disease I have is that I have to push the red button. I have to do the thing that no one wants me to do.

Like at the fundraiser we did for this show (Meaghan Robichaud Is The Greatest Show on Earth), there was a drunk guy in the audience talking during everyone’s performance and I was like, “perfect, I have another scene partner here with me. ” (laughs)

I had jokingly said something like, “Oh, now I’m gonna kill myself.” And he was like, “You should.” And I was like, “Let’s go. (laughs)  Let’s talk about it. Me and you.”

Alex

It gets really psychological really fast (laughs). Where did you catch the disease?

Meaghan

Well, all I’ve been doing in therapy is talking about my show.

Alex

Why else are we in therapy but to talk about our clown shows really at the end of the day? 

Meaghan

Literally.

Alex

I remember one time I was in an improv troupe, if you can believe it, with this amazing improviser who turned out to also be like, you know, really nice, kind, married Christian father and husband. He requested that I please stop humping so much in our shows. Of course, he says that right before we go on stage, at one of our biggest gigs. And, of course, the only thing I could do was be a character who couldn’t stop humping. (laughs) Do you know what I mean? 

So I deeply relate; I hear you saying that somehow, the clown releases this permission to play with boundaries and authority and rules.

The horrible question that I have to ask because it’s really exciting: what is this show about for you?

Meaghan

Oh my god (laughs), that’s  the last question I want to answer.

Alex

Why is that question so hard for us? We could also talk about that.

Meaghan

You’re an artist I respect very much and you’re an artist that I see other people respect. I’m like, “this person’s crazy is tickling a part of my brain that I like.” I’m wondering how you find meaning. In the workshop I took with you, I found it really freeing to think that content can come from this very subconscious place; there wasn’t so much emphasis on intellectualizing what it was we wanted to do.

When you’re making something, are you thinking of its meaning, throughout the process or does that come later? For me, it’s coming right now two days before the show. (laughs)

Alex

That’s early, man. It usually doesn’t come for me until the morning of or after (laughs) the show is done. I learn so much with the audience. I really appreciate your articulation of the workshop experience: just trusting impulse and trusting desire and trusting the subconscious where all of this crap is swirling around. The stage, then, is a place where we can let it come to the surface and reveal certain things to us. I feel like the body knows more than the brain, which is just one part of the body. If we activate the whole expressive instrument, there’s more wisdom and insight there. So the things that come out in performance are so rich. Then the analyzing and shaping and editing, for me, comes after. The presence of the audience– the terror and the intensity of that– allows all this swampy stuff to bubble up. It [often] takes a long time to know what it is. But you seem to be suggesting that you have had some two-day-before-the-show insights. (laughs)

Meaghan

I mean, everything happens, for me, when the audience is there. It’s probably because I feel like I’m gonna die right before I go on stage.

Alex

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Meaghan

Part of me maybe does die and within, as I’m dying,I hope something funny happens. 

Alex

Like humor or comedy potentially saves us from death or something. It really is interesting how those two things are so entangled and also opposed. There’s a beautiful tension between the life-giving quality of comedy and, um, death that’s always lurking around the corner. The way you described your interaction with that overly involved audience member, him egging you on, it sounds like–

Meaghan

He totally egged me on.

Alex

What happened?

Meaghan

 So this man was blackout drunk and this light cue wasn’t working, so I just say, “I’m gonna kill myself.” He goes, “Do it. ” I go, “Sir, you really want me to kill myself?” And he was like, “Yeah.” And I just get up over him. I put my arms above his head and I go, “I’m gonna slit my wrists and let the blood flow all down your face.” (laughs)  And then I wrote a suicide note dedicated to him. 

Alex

So brilliant.

Meaghan

It was great. But another thing I am having a hard time coming to terms with–another death, if you will, a grieving– is that that exact thing won’t happen again.

There was another instance where this photographer was coming [to my show] and she texted me, “Is it okay if my mom comes?” And I was like, “It’s more than okay.” So I’m in an apartment in Bushwick, everyone there is in their 20s, and there’s this older woman watching with this look of absolute horror- (laughs) as I’m completely naked and using my boobs as balloon animals. And I get to this point in the show where I do a somersault attempt, and I’m naked. I’m naked. And I’m upside down and I look at her and I just cannot tell, for the life of me, if she is loving or hating every second of it. So I look at her and I’m like, “What’s your name?” she has a Scottish accent and she’s like, “My name is Susan.” And I’m like, “Susan, do you think it’s worth it? ” And she was like, “I absolutely think it’s worth it. ” (laughs) And I was like, “Why is it worth it? ” And she’s like, “Because art has the power to heal people. “

Alex

Oh my God. 

Meaghan

And I just look at her and I’m like, “Is this healing to you? ” And she said, “Yes.” I was like, “That’s amazing and incredible.” Moments like that are so exciting to me, with clown, because you never get that when you go see a play.

Alex

Yes.

Meaghan

Right now I’m trying to think of this show as a show that happens in a theater, for multiple nights, with a set designer and a lighting designer who want to know when the lighting cue[s] happen.  I’m like, “Oh, how can I feel as free as I have at these smaller gigs when I’m in a theater?”

Alex

It’s such an ongoing question for those of us working in this bizarre niche field: finding the balance between planned and unplanned, known and unknown, scripted and improvised; figuring out how to score something or how to create a shape that’s repeatable; being in communication with designers, but [allowing] for these extremely beautiful, spontaneous encounters to erupt through the plan. I do feel like that experience of clown is why it’s so thrilling. And metaphorically, we do all we can to structure life or to plan life, but often the things that break the plan or that interrupt are the most magical. Leaving room for that possibility, and welcoming it when it happens, is the unique magic and gift of the improviser.

 It’s really lovely to hear you describe those encounters because also I find that filmed documentation, for instance, sometimes kills clown because clown is being performed for the audience who have been through a whole durational journey together; the temperature of the room, what was on the news that morning, the smell—all of that is affecting people’s relationship to the material, and you on stage are responding to all of that. The audience watching the filmed documentation is not the same audience. So often they’re just like, “What?” 

Clown is also this constant letting go, letting go, letting go, this dance with how ephemeral live performance is and how it often stays most alive in these, like, retellings. There’s a lot of performance theory around the afterlives of performance  through rumor and hearsay and someone describing what happened to them at a show: this myth-making and the way that audiences almost reperform to each other what they saw. I think that’s very beautiful also. But I totally hear you on the tragedy at the heart of it: all that work on these shows and they just disappear. (laughs)

Meaghan

They just disappear. The terrifying thing for me is, like I was saying, every time before I go on stage I feel like I’m gonna die. Which is perfectly healthy (laughs) … Basically there’s a huge risk when you leave things open to be affected by the room, by the people in the room. There’s a risk that it will just be a big fart. (laughs)

there’s huge risks that you could just completely fail. Which– every clown is always in relationship with failure. 

But to answer your actual, your original question- (laughs) … What is this show about?

Alex

Horrible question. (laugh)

Meaghan

It’s a terrible question, but I hope everyone has a bunch of rumors about this show after,. I hope the history of this show is quite, um, colorful. (laugh) I think if I were to try and say it in words: it’s me, Meaghan– the performer, the creator, the person who made this show–trying to get as close as I can to the perversity I find in fully grown men wearing clown makeup. (laughs) If I were to really boil it down. Maybe it comes from anger I’ve had about male comedians, personally. I don’t know if anyone will watch the show and think that’s what it was about, but that’s what it’s about for me.

Alex

I remember that your other show, MEOW!, was running at the same time as the show I was doing, so I didn’t get to catch it, but there were some thematics that felt really similar to questions I was thinking through. A fading starlet glamour, and its relationship to a fading, decaying American empire.

Meaghan

Yes.

Alex

And then an earlier piece of yours, Service Queen, about this bouffant sex worker mermaid, power dynamics and clowning on gender. 

Meaghan

Mm-hmm.

Alex

I’m curious to hear you talk more about this rage at male comedians or fully grown men in clown makeup. How have ideas around clowning and gender and power been developing for you?

Meaghan

So many famous clowns are men, and I was doing research on just the history of clown, and there was this one clown, Coco (laughs)

Alex

Tell me more. (laughs)

Meaghan

Coco’s dead, but Coco was this really famous, latvianclown. He has 15 grandkids. I was like, “That’s insane.” If I were to point to specific instances in which I have been in contact with those power dynamics in a room, it would be in a workshop of a clown teacher who will  remain nameless, and there was an exercise to make a mess and clean it up (very classic clown).So I was watching people do exercises, and I thought, “Oh my God, wait, I have a hilarious clown bit. I am gonna come on stage and I’m gonna have to pee.” That’s, my whole thing: I’m coming out, and I have to pee somewhere, and the only thing I can find on stage is a tiny little espresso cup. (laugh) So I’m gonna go behind the flat, and I’m gonna pour water and make it look like I pissed on stage, and then I’m gonna come out, and I’m gonna roll around in the piss to clean it up.

Alex

I see the vision. 

Meaghan

You see the vision. So I do that, and–mind you, almost this entire class is men, and the teacher’s a man. I didn’t know much about his taste, but I found out after that his tastes lean towards the conservative when it comes to clown, like, “clowns are not sexual” and things like that. So I do this piece, and everyone loses their mind laughing, and I’m feeling really good about myself. 

Alex

As you should.

Meaghan

As I should! Everyone’s laughing, so I know it went well. And then the teacher goes, “You know, Meaghan, it just really missed the mark on funny for me. “

Alex

Oh my God.

Meaghan

And I’m like, “Then why was everyone laughing?” And everyone was shook that I said that, but I also was like, “No, like, fuck that.” There’s a lot of people who make these clown teachers acolytes in their mind. There is something in me that just does not respect authority in that way, which I think is what a clown would do anyways. 

I think that rage also probably stems from a more personal place of rage towards men. And then we just add the layer of clown with it

Alex

I hear that. It definitely taps into something deep in our socialization, where you find pleasure and delight in play with your body, feeling free and playful and confident in your body. Mm-hmm. All of that gets shut down and shamed and disciplined out of us from a really young age. The stage is one place where similar impulses emerge (laughs) for me, because I don’t feel empowered to be that way generally in my life. There’s so much conditioning to be ashamed of my body, to never seize power in a space, to cede space to other people, be polite and make sure everyone’s comfortable and taken care of.

The clown can just not give a fuck about that, can either not know those rules or can take pleasure in breaking those rules, dancing at the edge of what’s acceptable. So it totally makes sense that it would be a really powerful form and state to be playing in for you. 

I’m also noticing this pattern of fluids (laugh) in a lot of your work.

Meaghan

Yeah.

Alex

That’s also a really enticing thing to think about, the grotesque of the body. I remember one of the most transcendent moments [in The Barn workshop] was this, like, titty puppet show (laugh) you were doing with a lot of smeared makeup, and maybe there was beer involved?

How do you read those, those symbols of, like, the wetness and the gush and the mush? The grease paint, the smear– what have you been finding in all of that, or what does that release for you?

Meaghan

I find pleasure in being disgusting. The funny thing is I keep saying that I’m finding myself doing things on stage that, if I were to sit on a laptop and write out what I was gonna do on stage, these are not lines I would cross.  I’m doing things that maybe I genuinely don’t like doing. Like, I don’t like wearing clown makeup when I perform. I don’t like how it feels. It’s a very visceral, grotesque feeling for me, and it kind of makes me think about my flesh in a very … I can’t think of better word than visceral, but it does make me aware of my flesh.You said something once, in the workshop, it was, like, how sometimes you think of a fluid, or a thing you wanna explore, like a texture– you said something about peanut butter and jelly.

You’re like, “I just wanna make a peanut butter and jelly.” I thought about that and I was like, “Yeah, what are textures or substances that I find very evocative to play with? ” And I was like, “Oh, beans. I wanna make a bean martini.” I didn’t rehearse it. I got in front an audience and I had a can of beans and bar tools and I made a bean martini and it was very, like, yeah, visceral. I love… when it’s something you can smell.

Alex

That’s another thing that seems uniquely special about live performances, that we’re in this space of contamination. We’re in this room together, we’re breathing the same air and smelling the same things, the smell itself is little particles of stuff entering our body. We’re entering each other’s bodies in this deeply intimate way. I recently learned something about how when you’re in that kind of proximity with other people, something does shift in your body in terms of how close you feel to others that can’t be replicated by any of these screen-mediated ways of being together, because you’re blending your biomes, you’re physically becoming a part of each other. So, of course you feel more connected. I feel like if nothing else, theater is that ritual to bind us together physically and kind of ecologically; clown often brings that to an extreme.

I love your use of the word visceral. That’s the word that comes to mind as being the most accurate because of its super embodied nature, right? The viscera are our internal organs, the gushy stuff, the digestive stuff, the excretory stuff, the reproductive stuff, lungs, heart, intestines. So the clown’s desire to create a visceral response makes so much sense. “Yeah, there’s no other word. It’s visceral. It’s visceral.” (laughs)

Meaghan

Delicious. No, thank you. My final question is actually for you, Alex.

Alex

Mm-hmm.

Meaghan

Clown has– not a bad rep, but it has maybe a misunderstood one. If we were to blame someone for the way that clown has taken off in New York in a really fucked up way, in a way that must be stopped, do you think you would be the person to blame?

Alex

What a question to end on. (laughs) Well, I’m currently sitting on a patch of AstroTurf on Melrose Avenue in LA, and it’s really been amazing talking to you from this vantage point, because I’ve slowly increasingly become aware over the course of this conversation that I’m sitting in dog piss. Like, this is AstroTurf for dogs. (laughs) This is where all the dogs of LA come to piss. So I’m just sitting in piss having this conversation with you. I guess from my vantage point over here, there’s lots of people to blame. There’s lots of people to blame. Perhaps that’s a whole other conversation, but thank you. I’m honored. I’m honored to be blamed for the horrific rise of clown in New York, so thank you. I’m touched.

Meaghan

I’m glad you’re sitting in a pile of piss right now contemplating that question.

Alex

It’s good. It’s a good place to be.

Meaghan

Good place to be. No, yeah, I think I’d probably blame you. I’d probably blame a few other people too, but you’re on my list. Can we end here?

Alex

Aw, well, that’s a lovely place to end I think. Meaghan, I’m so excited for your beautiful show. I don’t know when this piece is coming out or I’m sure someone else will write the vital contextualizing details, but everyone go see this beautiful show, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Meaghan

Someone wrote in Staff Picks, “I don’t know if it will be the greatest show on Earth, but it’s something you’ve never seen before.”

Alex

That’s great. They were doing you a service. Set the expectations real low. (laughs)

Meaghan

We’re setting the expectations as low as possible. (laughs) Truly always.

Alex

That’s beautiful.

Meaghan

Thank you for taking the time. I’m so happy LA gets to see your show; I saw your show twice and I loved it so much.

Alex

Thank you, that means the world. Now I’m going to move back from my piss-covered AstroTurf into the car where other people are driving me around because I don’t know how to drive. This has been such a treat, such a delight. There’s hours more of clown theory and practice I’d love to get into with you another time. This is so fun.

Meaghan

Thanks, Alex. It was a pleasure.