The Lost Art of Clown Schtick

by Barnaby King

The vast majority of clown workshops today focus on helping people discover the clown state. These workshops are often improvisational, centering on self-discovery and play. But in so doing they also exclude a vast and vital area of clown technique sometimes known as ‘clown schtick’, the ability to craft effective, dependable and repeatable gags and routines.

The lost art of clown schtick was the impetus behind two workshops at the recent CLOWNVERGENCE conference: ‘Finding The Funny Bone’ taught by experienced circus and healthcare clowns Dick Monday and Tiffany Riley, and ‘The Clown, The Comical and the Beyond’ taught by renowned clown theatre director Hernán Gené.

The focus on clowning as self-discovery and self-expression has tremendous value. In fact, it is central to the Clown Spirit ethos: to awaken your clown spirit, to discover your essence. This kind of work became fashionable in the second half of the 20th century, partly through teachers like Jacques Lecoq, who intentionally carved out a vision of clowning distinct from circus clown traditions.

This type of clowning practice overlaps with the worlds of personal development, therapy, and self-help. Clowning is a unique practice that supports people to actively and playfully embrace their flaws, failures, our weaknesses, while also celebrating their strengths. The process can be cathartic, liberating, and deeply transformative.

And yet, as Dick, Tiffany, and Hernán pointed out in their sessions, this emphasis has created an imbalance: a plethora of colorful and courageous students of clowning who lack the tools to create strong clown performance.

In this blog I'd like to address this issue through the lens of the two workshops I mentioned, as well as in reference to my own pedagogical experience of moving from spirit to structure in my clowning.

The Missing Piece: Composition and Craft

In many workshops, we spend hours improvising and watching each other improvise. These experiences can be rich, insightful and deeply connecting. But what they don’t often teach is how to build repeatable material.

In his workshop Dick Monday shared that when he asks workshop participants to present just two or three minutes of material, many freeze. They may be quite familiar with their inner clown and his or her desires and behaviors, but they don’t have acts or gags that reliably work for an audience.

In his book, Clown Dramaturgy (which I translated into English), Hernán Gené makes a related point:

In many clown courses, truth and spontaneity play an essential role, particularly in the early stages, when the character has not yet appeared, and there is only a human, full of neurosis, fear, and prejudice towards the other humans who are observing them. But little by little, as the character emerges, the actor must improvise less and less, and instead focus on the construction and development of a character with these same neuroses, fears and prejudices.

In my opinion and my pedagogical experience, this is what the vast majority of schools and their teachers suffer from: they get carried away with the common error of confusing the means with the ends, and transforming the search for one’s own clown, as Lecoq called it, into more of a therapeutic process than an artistic one.

When we step onto a stage, into a hospital room, or onto the street, audiences are not attending a workshop. Their attention spans are shorter. They are not there to help us explore our inner clown. They expect us to hold their attention, build a situation, sustain the tension, and deliver a payoff. That requires technique.

Tiffany Riley and Dick Monday: Gag Composition

In their workshop (see below) Dick and Tiffany emphasized the importance of learning the craft of clowning: how to construct a gag, how to build repetition, how to hold an audience in suspense until the blow-off. This is not improvisation. It is composition. It is dramaturgy. It is shtick.

One example of this from Dick and Tiffany’s workshop is the simple 3-beat or 5-beat gag, in which a simple action is repeated 3-5 times before the ‘blow-off’ in which the gag is resolved with an unexpected reversal or change in the action. Having the basic structure of such a gag is essential. It has a beginning (the set-up), a middle (the repetition, which is variable), and an ending (the blow-off). However, as a clown you then need to know how to play the timing of that gag for the particular audience. Some audiences, for example children, love repetition and the clown is able to extend the middle to satisfy that enjoyment, but you still have to be able to sense when they’ve had enough and when is just the right moment to button it up with the blow-off. 

To help us visualise this delicate balance of tension Dick used the image of a thread which you must hold taut. As long as the thread - the tension between action and audience - is taut, you can continue repeating the action ad infinitum. But if that thread should start to become slack and you lose that tension, you may already have missed the moment to close out the gag. So the skill of comic timing is being so attentive to that tension that you sense when to move to the blow-off before (but not too long before) the tension starts to dissipate: a subtle art indeed.

Hernán Gené: Dramaturgy and the Art of Clown

While Dick Monday and Tiffany Riley’s concern with schtick and gags pertains mostly to the content of circus acts and healthcare clowning, Hernán Gené comes at the same problem from the perspective of the playwright and theatre director, but in many ways they are talking about the same thing.

In his workshop Gené gave us a thumbnail of the methods he sets out in his book, focusing on the importance of the relationships between characters, spaces, words, and objects. He emphasizes a key distinction between the fictional world of the play, where the clown is a simple-minded character in service of a story arc, and the real world of the clown artist, who is hopefully not simple-minded because he or she actually needs to create a sophisticated framework for the clowning to be sufficiently entertaining and stimulating. Dynamic live performance requires careful building and release of dramatic tension, where each gag helps to shift the story on and to build the tension to just the right level.

My Own Journey with Craft

This was something I had to learn myself. When I created my first show with Sue, I had a gag involving a piano. As I played, the piano began sliding away, leaving me desperately reaching for the bench that kept moving further from reach.

The basic idea was funny, but it only worked sometimes. Sue kept reminding me: precision matters. The rhythm of the movement, the timing of the struggle, the exact beat of the blow-off—all had to be consistent. Eventually, I discovered the “backwards logic” solution: instead of pulling the bench back to the piano, I danced the piano around the stage until I arrived back at the bench. With repetition and precision, the gag began to land every time.

Later, with Clowns Without Borders, I learned the classic newspaper routine from experienced clowns. At first, I stumbled. But through repetition—like practicing a dance or piece of music—the beats became second nature. That experience taught me how rhythm, timing, and structure could be applied to other gags. To this day, I use the newspaper routine as a teaching tool, because it so beautifully illustrates how precision transforms chaos into comedy.

Re-discovering The Lost Art of Clown Schtick

So, what’s the takeaway? Discovering your clown is vital. But if you want to perform - whether in a hospital, on a street corner, or in a theatre - you also need craft. You need repeatable, reliable material. You need shtick.

Seek out teachers who can guide you in this: Dick and Tiffany, Cal McCrystal, Aitor and Toby from Spymonkey, Hilary Chaplin, Avner, and others who carry this technical lineage. And remember that character and improvisation become even more powerful when grounded in solid technique.

Because when your clown essence meets crafted material, the audience is not just witnessing your discovery. They are laughing, crying, and connecting with you—reliably, every time.

Join the Clown Spirit Village

If you’re inspired by these conversations and want to go deeper, we invite you to join the Clown Spirit Village. Inside the Village you’ll find an ever-growing archive of masterclasses with leading clown teachers - including many that focus specifically on practical skills, gag structure, and the craft of performance.

And we’re excited to share that, following our recent Clown Spirit strategy sessions, we’re launching a brand-new mini-series—each session dedicated to a different clown skill, gag, or shtick. It’s a chance to learn the nuts and bolts of the craft in a playful, supportive community.

👉 You can join the Village here: https://www.clown-spirit.com/village

Come and be part of this learning journey. Because when we balance discovery with craft, the clown truly comes alive.