CLOWN SHOOL

If you were a minute late, you wouldn’t be let into the school. I arrived in France with no sleep, having come from a party in Venice, so this happened to me on the first day, and I was left to entertain myself and walk around the strange town. That night, however, I still went and met the fellow clowns in an old crumbling courtyard where one was staying. We all sat around and drank beer, exchanging myths about [Philippe] Gaulier and the place—and I felt at least a bit comforted.

On the second day, the day was split into two parts. You started off with physical movement, and the second part was improvisation and basically playing games. You were taught to find the limitations of your movement and to push past those to see what you could do with your body. You could see people become trapped in certain ways of moving.

Then the second part of the day was with Gaulier himself, the man. There was a huge poster of him in the courtyard; absolutely huge, covered the size of the wall. He is definitely a character, and visually captivating.

Everyone was rejected in the group, one after the other. For example, from the start, your nationality would be picked apart, things about how you looked—they will judge you on these outward factors, and all of these were received and then rejected. It was quite powerful for a lot of people, particularly a man who worked in finance, and also an actor, who are both always working to please and to better their work outwardly. There was a freedom, they both told me, in different ways of being rejected and still being part of the group. Being rejected was actually the job this time, which is really different to what they’d been used to.

It was very freeing to perform with no expectation of praise and to not feel shame with any kind of ridiculousness that you showed everyone; to be witnessed in being ridiculous.

I think the most powerful performance was someone crying on the stage, for a lot of people. This beautiful, wonderful woman genuinely started to cry because she felt like she had got to the bottom of herself and still not been able to produce anything that was good enough. So, she began to cry, and instead of comforting her or moving off the stage, she stood there, and she cried and she cried. As we watched, she cried more and more, and she and everyone were in complete silence and awe of this powerful gesture. It was a show of emotion with no fear and no apology, and there was such a beauty in this show of vulnerability.

Eventually, she started to laugh that she was crying, and she laughed at the fact that she was being witnessed in this act. She stood there in the same position the whole time. By the end, we all burst into applause, because it was so fearless and so bold. Part of it is not being scared of feeling things, I think. Some people idealised Gaulier very much, in a bit of a terrifying way, to be honest.

Finally, the way we ended the course was running down a sand dune stark naked. The whole group ran down. Well, not everybody, but most stripped off while the sun was setting, naked, rolling down the hill. Someone was doing flips, a guy who was a circus performer.

I’ve seen a space which is: to be able to look at life and not laugh cynically, but to just laugh at the beauty of it somehow.

-FLORENCE BARSHALL

Sophie Barshall: You imposed an extra layer of isolation on yourself [this year] by spending time in solitude in Scotland. We were in the middle of quite a lonely time anyway.

Florence Barshall: I want to see the limits of things. In Scotland I wanted to see how much I could be with myself. I now realise in terms of how I’d like my life to look that I have [a lot of] energy for people. I know that that is what makes my life joyful. Nothing else really does.

I create so much more, and so much more intensely, when I’m stimulated and in an environment where I’m being challenged by people and I have to come out of myself.

And now you’ve just come back from clown school in France.

Clown school I’d say was testing the limitations of my outward-ness. I felt so connected to everyone there. I made the most incredible friends. We all cried when we left. It was the most part of a collective I’d felt for a long time.

That’s such a special thing to have at the end of such a strange time. So, is there an overarching thing that you left clown school with? An overarching feeling that you hope for other people to feel coming out of the pandemic?

I think the way I felt most alienated this year was through feeling the intensity of the visual culture we’re in. My first EP is called Use for Decoration. It’s about the line between what’s purposeful and decorative being blurred. I find it funny how something like a flower, to me, symbolises both beauty and utility. That will never stop fascinating me.

I think at a time when people are fearing being made redundant from work, what it means to be purposeful and what it means to just be decorative.

I wanted to be challenged to show every side of my being. There was an activity where we had to make the most ugly, ugly faces and distort yourself, distort and contort everything about your being; and then try and sing a sexy song. That was probably my most memorable activity. I think that was what I’d been craving; it’s just so human.

MAKE-UP: NICOLA BRITTIN AT SAINT LUKE ARTISTS. SET DESIGN: PHOEBE SHAKESPEARE.