Clowning as problem solving - an interview with Avner Eisenberg

On the leftside of the stage there’s a chair, in the middle there’s Avner, wearing a bowler hat, putting a ladder on his chin to balance it, then his hat falls on the floor. He puts down the ladder, grabs the hat, does some skillful hat manipulation tricks as a way to put it back on, the audience laughs, he is on his way back to the ladder, the audience applauds. He goes back to the centre and does more skillful hat manipulation tricks and when it’s back on his head he walks back to the ladder, the audience laughs and applauds again. He gestures he gets tired of it but goes back and does more. Again, when he has it on and walks towards the ladder people laugh and applaud. This time he throws the hat on the floor with a big gesture of the arm and grabs something from the little table with blue tablecloth standing there. There’s also an oldfashioned alarmclock and a rose on that table. He walks back to the centre with a small notebook in his left –, and a pencil in his right hand. He imitates the audience clapping and signals he will write down whoever does that….

‘Clowning happens when you find complicated solutions to simple problems, it is a way of solving problems that begins with finding the situation interesting. I don’t admit the existence of clowns. To clown is a verb. There are lots of people who dress like clowns and do very little clowning. And there are those who do not dress like clowns and are clowning all the time’, Avner tells me. I find the video described above to be a very clear example of his principle that ''laughter is an interruption''. A disruption of the problemsolving the clown was doing, because it means you have to do it again. The intention Avner has in this video is to balance the ladder on his chin, the hat that falls is the problem, the laughter the interruption, and the hat manipulation a ‘complicated solution to a simple problem’. He explained me that the problem is more like a mathematical problem, ‘there is a solution, we only need to find it.’

On the question whether clowns should be funny he said ‘well, the question is more, who has to have a sense of humour, the clown, or the audience? The clown is likely to be the last person in the room to be getting it. I played one time in Germany and the audience just didn’t laugh. So a guy came to me after the show and said: ‘Awful, wasn’t it?’ And I said: No, interesting! I have enough problems out there without people laughing at me. Laughing is an interruption, not a goal. The problem solving is what you’re doing there. You can’t make them laugh, you can be surprised when they laugh...’

Avner asked me if my clown teachers have been telling me I should get out of my comfort zone. I didn’t remember if they said that, but of course you often do try to get out of your comfort zone in the clown workshop. Then Avner says: ‘Don’t ever leave your comfort zone, make it bigger. If something makes you feel uncomfortable, find a way in which it feels okay for you. The first thing I say during a workshop is: you don’t have to do the exercise, if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. That’s like if you want to go to the toilet, go, it’s normal. When we perform we’re terrified of being boring, well: don’t be interesting, be interested. You don’t have to look at the audience. Why? Only look at them when you really have something to share. Looking is demanding a reaction, passive agressive, like telling a story and asking ‘right?!’ all the time. When someone does an improvisation during a workshop I tell them: okay, you looked at the audience fifteen times, now do the exact same thing without looking at the audience. Afterwards I ask the audience which version they preferred and they always choose the second. If you feel you don’t want to look at the audience, don’t do it. When you’re sincerely trying to solve your problem, there’s nothing to fear.’