.png)
Making the Case for Online Clowning
A few months ago, someone I deeply respect in the clowning world challenged me hard on what Clown Spirit is doing. The message was blunt: online teaching cheapens the art form, and anyone building a platform around it should think harder about what they're actually doing.
It shook me. But it also did something useful. It forced me to stop assuming and actually make the case, out loud, for why I believe in this work. Here it is.
Online Clown Training Isn't Replacing In-Person Classes. It's Supporting Them
There's a common assumption that clowning is moving into the virtual world, as if online training is slowly replacing in-person training. I don't see that happening. If anything, the opposite is true: in-person clowning is thriving. There are more teachers, more workshops, more people discovering this art form than ever before, and that growth is happening at the same time online spaces are expanding.
I'd go further and say the two are feeding each other. Clown Spirit was never built to replace in-person training. It's a pathway toward it. For someone dipping a toe in before committing to a full workshop, someone geographically isolated from any in-person scene, someone who can't currently travel or afford it, or someone who just needs a space to sustain their practice between in-person experiences, an online community is a bridge, not a substitute.
"As a new clown, this online platform [Clown Spirit Village] has been invaluable. Nowhere else could I get access to so many different teachers, resources, courses, and community. ... This platform opened a door to clowning for me that otherwise would have remained shut due to financial limitations." - Nova, reflecting on experience in Clown Spirit Village
Almost nobody in our village is online-only. Often, people take masterclasses with different teachers until they find the one they click with, then go study with that teacher in-person. They come back from in-person workshops and tell the community how it went, integrate their experiences and often send others toward that same teacher. The community also plays a quieter role: helping newcomers who can't yet tell an experienced, well-trained teacher from someone barely qualified, a real problem given how crowded this space has gotten. That kind of guidance happens in conversation, in community, in a way a website bio alone can't provide.
“As a former Cirque du Soleil clown and Director of the Clown Conservatory, I didn't know how much new I would learn about clowning. I was very pleasantly surprised. The materials go so deep and wide...” - Jeff Razz, reflecting on his experience with the Clown Connection course
So I don't think online clowning erodes in-person practice. I think it feeds it, and acts as a kind of quality control alongside it.
Why Human Connection Doesn't Require Being in the Same Room
The strongest argument against online clowning is that clowning can only exist in live, embodied connection between people in the same room. I'd push back on the "same room" part. On a video call we're still live, simultaneous in time, and still fully in our bodies. We're not physically close, but that doesn't have to matter. I don't think physical proximity is a requirement for real connection.
As a teacher, I've found genuine creative possibilities in the medium itself, playing with the camera, the frame, the domestic space someone's clown now inhabits, in a lineage that includes silent film clowns who found comedy specifically through the constraints of the frame. And beyond that: I've had moments of real intimacy and presence on video calls. Different from in-person, but not inferior. Some of my best coaching calls leave me lit up with connection; some in-person meetings leave me flat and depleted. That tells me connection isn't strictly bound to physical distance.
“I really love having a safe space I can return to every week - a space filled with kind people and even kinder intentions. It’s great to know that in the middle of the week, I can log in and step into play, lightness, and clown connection. This is especially important for me as a professional clown living in a place without many clowns! ” -Tatiana, on her experience in the Clown Spirit Village
What It Actually Takes to Learn Clowning, Online or Off
Clowning depends on two things: technical skill with body and voice, and enough human connection, especially between clown and audience, for transformation to happen. A screen is clearly no barrier to the first; film and television clowns proved that decades ago. The second is harder to pin down, but from years as both teacher and student, I believe it's possible on video. Harder, yes. We're working with less sensory data, and energy moves differently through a screen. But it still moves.
Working online has actually sharpened skills I use everywhere. I can't see someone's whole body, so I've had to get better at reading faces and at simply asking how people are doing. I have to concentrate harder to stay connected on a call than I do in a room, and that's sharpened my focus generally. I can't tell who's looking at whom, so I've had to deepen my read on group dynamics. None of that is a lesser version of in-person skill. It's a different set of muscles, and clowning is better for having both.
This is true of any practice shaped by a real constraint: it doesn't just take something away, it redirects effort and often deepens skill elsewhere.
My working relationship with my co-founder Dan is a good example of a hybrid model in practice. Most of our meetings are online; once a year we spend three or four intensive days together in person, and it's a wonderful, different texture, playful, easy, high-bandwidth. When we're back online, we work a little harder for that same energy, so we deliberately play at the start of meetings and give space for authentic check-ins to keep the connection alive, and the Clown Spirit flowing in the work. It's not a replacement for the in-person time, but it's still genuinely valuable on its own terms. The same is true in our online masterclasses: games, clown exercises, live pieces, done with enough intentionality to produce moments as transformative as anything in a room.
“As a theatre-maker, clown, and teacher working in South Africa, the Village Coaching Sessions have become an invaluable part of my creative practice. Clowning can be a lonely path here... The coaching sessions provide a rare space where I can connect with others who share a deep commitment to the craft. It is a community where one feels seen, understood, and supported.” - Sjaka, reflecting on his experience in Clown Spirit Village
What Clown Spirit Village Is Actually For
I don't think anyone becomes a great clown performer from online workshops alone, and that's exactly why I keep actively pointing people toward in-person training. But performer training was never the goal of this community. The goal is bringing the lightness, joy, and connection of clowning into daily life more broadly. Not just training performers, but making the practice of clowning usable and applicable for people wherever they are.
For that mission, online isn't a compromise. It's the perfect medium. It means someone can discover clowning from a place where there are no clown teachers nearby. It means someone can keep playing between in-person workshops, connect with people on the other side of the world, or simply make an hour in the middle of a busy week for play.
That's really what Clown Spirit Village is here for. To make clowning more accessible, to keep people connected to the practice, and to create more opportunities to play, wherever you are. If that sounds like something you need in your life, come join us. You can try it for yourself and see what happens.
Comments