Nola Rae "Nola's Nasty Mime"

Somehow I secretly hoped that the clown courses would teach me ways to become a ‘better’ person, to become ‘nicer’. But instead, they forced me to show the things I don’t like about myself and to play with these things and that remains very difficult. But in fact they are more fun because they are more human, more vulnerable. Clown workshops are always about accepting who you are and getting rid of false proud and survival techniques. For example if you consider yourself to be a person who can’t dance in ordinary life, dancing could be the perfect thing to do in clown, if you enjoy it. It’s in what you tend to hide but secretly love to do where your typical clown energy lies. Exactly that is what makes you charming. As Hubertus says it: “We don’t have to act strange while playing clown, our real strangeness will be more than enough.” A clown is not always nice, they can be very naughty, nasty, cruel and mean sometimes, but it’s always very visible. A clown can lie, but you will always see how much he is lying. In that sense he’s honest again. With this video of Nola Rae I want to point attention to the fact that clowns can make nasty themes light by being sincerely surprised when something is considered unethical that they felt was just right, by being extremely self convinced at times where others would doubt and insecure where everybody is certain. Clowns are very much in touch with their emotions, they feel happy, angry, sad, surprised, in love, disgust, satisfied, but they don’t feel ashamed, shy or guilty, they can pretend to feel like this but they won’t and it will be obvious that they are just pretending. In fact, feeling ashamed, shy or guilty is not really feeling but rather a survival technique not to feel what you really feel. Clowns don’t do complicated things like that and that’s why they can make us feel at ease.