Not funny for the clown

As you might or might not know, I studied philosophy some years ago in Rotterdam and learnt some lessons in logics there. They taught us that:

If (A) then (B)
doesn’t mean that
if (B) then (A)

For example:

If (A) it’s raining then (B) the streets get wet
doesn’t mean that
If (B) the streets get wet then (A) it’s raining,

as we know that there can be other reasons for a street to be wet, for example the neighbour is cleaning it, kids are playing with water, etc.

A lot of clowns and clown teachers nowadays say that ‘clowns don’t have to be funny’, maybe because a lot of people came to associate the word funny with people cracking jokes that are good for their ego, on expence of others rather than on their own expences.

My first clown course, in Vienna, with Hubertus Zorell and Verena Vondrak was called:
‘Clowns haben nichts zu lachen’ – ‘Clowns have nothing to laugh about’.

In other words, for the clown it’s not a funny situation, he is in a painful situation. For example:

I trie to read a poem that means a lot to me and that I have worked hard on to know by heart, but by bringing it for audience after the first part I forget my text.

Or: I should play a piece of theatre with my partner and the audience is already there but my partner is not, so I go on stage and try to fill the time until my partner arrives.

These are painful situations where we feel awkward, where everyone would feel awkward. Then, where other people would get frustrated and tension would grow, the clown role is to find an out of the box, clown like, silly, naive, solution for the problem and stay in the joy. If he does, people start laughing because the actually painful situation is now turned into a pleasurable, funny, situation and that’s why audiences like clowns for being so funny.

To return to the logical basis of my argument now, to say:

If (A) it’s a clown then (B) it’s funny
doesn’t imply saying that
If (B) it’s funny , it’s (A) funny for the clown