The questions you never thought to ask; before becoming a clown

Hey, all Cupcake and Dizzy here. Today we thought we would talk about some of the questions that you likely never even thought to ask before you became a clown. When we became clowns there were many questions swarming our heads, but after awhile we learned that there were EVEN more questions that never would have even dawned on us to ask, that maybe we should have asked. (We are not trying to scare anyone away from clowning, we think that it is a wonderful experience! We just want others to know what we might have wanted to know when we first started

Am I willing to change into costume in a nonhome setting?

This is a weird one, but you will likely want to put some thought into it. When you change at your event then you can get the advantages of not having to dress ahead of time, or risk anyone seeing you getting out of your car, or walking in with someone if they drove you (therefore there is less of a risk of being recognized,) and instead can just “appear”. However if you change at your (or if you are spending your day with someone else - their) house you get a clean environment, more room and you also have no risk of anyone walking in on you halfway through your transformation. This really is a personal decision there is no “right” or “wrong” here, just a personal choice that can really help you if you make it. To really get a feel of all of the pros and cons to each you may well want to try both, and choose your favorite. Just make sure that you will have enough time to change either way.  

How much time will clowning take?

When we originally started clowning we were unaware of the time commitment. With clowning, it will often take up to an hour when starting to get into makeup and costume. Even now it takes us 30+ min to get into makeup and costumes and that is after 4+ years of practice. This is one of those things that you just have to plan will take time. When starting we would have never thought that we would have to spend as much time as we do writing or finding scripts and getting everything together. After we have material for our performance we must practice and memorize everything that we have found. Then we find 2-3 times to rehearse the whole performance to work out any kinks, and make sure that everything runs smoothly. Then we can finally do the performance. Clowning takes time, but it also takes work.

How much work does it take?

Clowning- it sounds easy, and fun, right? When we first started clowning we thought something similar, however I’m afraid it’s just not so. Being a clown involves a lot of time, as addressed above and a whole lot of work as well. When you’re first getting started you will, of course, have the added stress and work of developing your character and their personality, and even after you have a base to work from, if you are anything like we were, your personality will continue to deepen and grow with time. On top of that you will have many personal developments. You are also going to need to learn the lay of the land on performing and making your character shines through a skit that may or may not have been written for them. You may well be thinking “But this is all initial starting out stuff. I figured that I would have a little bit to learn when I just started out.” Trust us, even after you have the lay of the land on performing and your character figured out, you will still have work to do. Performances need to be planned, practices need to be scheduled and run, and sometimes we find it really helps to just have a general meeting to just talk about ideas and plans for the future. Skits need to be found or written, and if they are found online or elsewhere, they often need to be customized to fit your characters (although a practice with the raw material and a sense of humor can often help with this quite a lot). Of course unless you’ve decided to go it alone, (which we would not necessarily recommend, and at the very least not until you have a LOT of experience.) you will not need to do all of these things on your own or even necessarily work on all of them personally, but it’s not really fair to expect your other clowns to run it all, no matter how much or little experience as you may have. This may well seem very overstimulating but trust us, if you REALLY are a clown in your heart it will all be more than worth it.

Should I develop my character before my costume?

This is one that is very personal to us. Our stories will be in a later post, but basically Dizzy started with a minimal idea of who Dizzy was before she started gathering her costume, and I Cupcake had literally no idea of who I would be or even what my name would be before I first started gathering my costume. We both later changed parts of our costumes (for various reasons) and realized that they fit our personalities MUCH better and we are still looking for ways to improve our costumes and make them more “us”. This is obviously something we feel very strongly about, but please don’t think that looking at pictures and various costumes should not be started until you have a full personality, looking at various ideas may even help you to get started! We just feel that having some good basics should help you to not need to redo your costume, as we had to.

Where am I moving with this group?

This is one that may take a little while to get to, but you really should be thinking about where the group you are with (assuming you are with one) is going. Are they growing where they are based? Are they branching out from their base? Is anyone even certain of the direction that they are moving in? Assuming you have a lead clown or two that you can go to, you should probably ask them if they know. If not then it may well help you to start thinking about these questions yourself.

Am I moving within this group?

When you first start you have a strong learning curve that you have to tackle before you can really be set, but after awhile you may want to start asking yourself if you really want to remain in the same place within the group as where you started, or if you want to start moving forward in some way or another. This may be through writing skits, taking on learning other skills (like juggling or balloon animals, or even something that is unique to your character!). Or you may even want to be helping in planning the programs or even help to set up before them. The options are pretty much limitless.

What kind of clown do I want to be?

Often people don’t know when they are starting that there are even different types of clowns. The 3 main types of clowns are white face, Auguste, and character. White face like it says in its name has a white face, and are usually silent. Then there is Auguste, which is normal skin color with bits of white around the eyes and mouth. I, Dizzy am most closely related to an Auguste. Then the last type of clown is a character clown. Character Clowns have similar makeup to an auguste clown but have that costume and personality of a specific occupation, like doctor or hobo. And then you have Cupcake, who is her own breed. So you can choose to go more traditional or you can just decide to have fun, you are a clown after all.

 

     




Am I REALLY committed to this?

As we have already mentioned clowning takes a lot of work and a lot of time and you need to know if you are in it for the long haul. Before you start clowning you need to think about what you want to use your time to do if you are more strongly committed to other things that take up much of your time, maybe you should reconsider being a clown. Clowning is fun and rewarding, but only if you put the time and energy in. Otherwise maybe clowning is not right for you.

We hope that this gave you a more realistic idea of what clowning entails. These are some of the things we wish that we had known before we started clowning, that we hope will help you on your clowning journey.

Hope you enjoyed!

Feel free to post any questions that you may have below, and we will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible. Please follow us to keep on track with our posts (we are planning to try to post about once a month). 



Thanks for joining us,
Something Silly Clowns
(Cupcake and Dizzy)

Two clowns trying to spread God's love to everyone.
 Watch our videos here.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCez3BioDPoBsYrxnePMM4pg