Returning To Clown School

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

Clown Module Summer 2025. Left to Right, Back to Front: Back Row: Cieran (spy from the year course) 2nd Row: Ryan (Boy Scout), Maya (MGM lion), Tessa (Cave Woman), Loki (post- or pre-Dracula), Alvin (Elmer Fudd) 3rd Row: Daniel (Pope with Barbie), Francesco (American Wrestler), Lucy (King Kong), Amy (Snow White), Sam (Bird of Paradise), Mike (Lucky Luke), Baran (Firefighter), Alex (Popeye), Lorenzo (Gigolo) 4th Row (2nd from front): Nona (butcher), ME! (Peter Pan), Lily (Sheriff), Chelsea (Big Bad Wolf but slowly turning into Dog), Chloe (Mother mother mother mother mother), Henry (Gladiator) Front Row: Binji (Chef/Bad Student), Mahsa (Runaway Bride), Jessica (Mosquito) Absent: Candy (Witch)

As outlined in my first article I intended to return to Ecole Philippe Gaulier. The year course is broken up into many modules, split across three semesters, ranging from Greek Tragedy, Neutral Mask, Bouffon, etc. Last time I was there I completed Le Jeu and this time I have just completed the clown module (the only other module I was interested in). 

Below you will find three sections: Another Day In The Life, What I Think and How I Feel, and finally a broken down budget (all in NZD). 

The “Another Day In The Life” is an amalgamation of things that happened across different days (if clown peeps try come after me for continuity) and if after all of this you’re interested in seeing the clown in action: The Devils Are Coming is at Whiskey & Wood on the 28th August and my solo clown show that I’ll be touring has one night only at the Hannah Playhouse in Wellington NZ on the 1st November. 

​Another Day In The Life
You wake up soaking wet at 9am. You can’t sit straight up or else you’ll smack your head against the ceiling. Daniel is still asleep next to you and he’s bone dry. You realised that the AirBnB was smaller than the pictures when you arrived in Etampes a while ago now, and it dawned on you pretty quickly that you’d be sharing a bed. It was surprisingly all good sleeping with Dan since you were already good friends. That, and you have partners back home so are both in the habit of having someone else in the same bed as you. 

The nights are somewhere between 20 and 30 degrees and since the bed is in a 4 foot tall (if that) mezzanine against the ceiling: all the heat rises. You don’t wake up during the night, which is good for rest, but sweat profusely, which is bad for dehydration. Every morning you’re a little envious of Daniel who doesn’t seem to sweat at all. You crawl off of the bed and gather up some clothes to change into once you’ve showered.

You make noise going down the steps of the mezzanine, clutching your clothes to your chest and straightening slowly upward now that you can without giving yourself a concussion. Your footsteps are deliberately heavy- a warning to Michael and Tessa who sleep on the fold out couch immediately underneath you. You haven’t known them for long, Michael was a long-time estranged cousin until about 2 years ago, but you’re enjoying every opportunity to piece together the picture of who they are. 

In the shower you turn off the water between rinses because the hot water will run out otherwise. The towel you had to buy from the carrefour (because the AirBnB didn’t come with any) leaves bright blue residue against your stubble and in your hair. You have to lean specific ways on the toilet to not make any noise ever since all four of you learnt the awkward way how thin the door is from the toilet to the rest of the single-room palace.

Once one of you is up, the others follow quickly. Soon there is life in this sleepy street-side kiwi cave. You open the two tall windows next to the door and let the natural light stream in as well as the noise of the township: some birds, the same sad-looking woman dragging her dog around, the buses that speak in robotic French. While you’re getting yourselves organised, Alice from upstairs walks past the window. She’s on a different schedule since she’s in the year course and they have class earlier than those of you in the afternoon class. She catcalls you which makes you jump but quickly remember you asked her to do that at dinner the other night. You don’t know it yet but at the end of all this you and her happen to book the same Eurostar to London and will have a positively domestic afternoon going through customs together. 

It’s your turn to get breakfast. This means walking the four minutes up the road to the belangerie and ordering in french: “cat crossont et do bagette see vu play- oh, tray espresso see vu play” and as the woman bags up the hot fresh bread she turns to you and asks you something. You are looking straight at her and you definitely heard her but it was in French. You shrug, eyebrows pushed loftily up, eyes closed a little- “weh”, you say. She nods and goes back to stuffing things in paper bags. You wonder what you just agreed to.  

It doesn’t cost you ten euro to buy breakfast for everyone with bread to spare for sandwiches. You used to buy more sweet treats but then peoples guts weren’t coping and, well, you know how thin the walls are. In the sunshine walking back to the AirBnB (which you’ve started calling The Flat) your mind percolates on how easy it is to live with others now that you’re a little older. Sharing a bed isn’t a problem. Funny how as people get older they tend to drift away from the communal lifestyle (until they blossom into families).

The Kiwi Contingent! Daniel, Lucy, Mike, Tessa and Myself

​The four of you sit around the little white square table by the window topped with a spread of breads, cheeses, salted butter, tomatoes, leafy greens, ham, coffees; chatting about today and yesterday and this thing and that thing. We’ve got autocore training today with so-and-so. Might go for a walk in the park before class today to clear my head. I don’t think I like my costume, I think I want to change. You know who’s been growing on me? You know what I learned the other day… When you arrived in Etampes together you had met Mike only twice so only possessed basics: he is very tall, the family had a few generations of getting split up, he is funny and cares a lot about those around him. Now you are living with him for a month. Plenty of time to plumb further than the basics. You are consistently energised by opportunities to talk meaningfully with him and every morning is a chance to plumb further than just the basics.

You often find yourself alone in the flat for an hour or so before class starts. The others have methods or habits about learning and decompressing which they are dutifully adhering to. You just think about food mostly, or have a song stuck in your head. But this hour does give you some time to chill out and do your morning pages in your “Outside” notebook (the other one stays at the school and is used in class). This also gives you some time to do laundry and hang it up without getting in anyone else's way.

At school you rock up just before 1pm, which is when movement class starts. You take your jandals off, spray them down with the unnamed clear fluid in the spray bottle by the door, and walk bare-footed into the reception room/kitchen/place-where-all-the-cubby-holes-are for peoples belongings. Loki is at the counter (pronounced Lachie) divvying out candy bars, coffees and keeping tabs on people's debts. 

Loki and yourself are autocore partners and you decide at the bench to perform a scene where you make a cocktail which includes many uncomplimentary but sentimental ingredients, blend it, then drink it in front of the class. When you do perform this scene the blender won’t turn on. Loki, dressed as Dracula, will run around the stage frantically trying to plug in the extension cord to any socket that is free, and you, bursting out of a Peter Pan costume, will try and stick your hand into the blender to do it manually. The class will erupt into a war of people for and against what you’re doing and you both will have heaps of fun.

​After you decide on the blender scene you go to your cubby hole, unzip your belongings bag, retrieve your movement clothes and inside shoes (and inside notebook) and leave your phone and backpack. You aren’t allowed phones into any of the classes and you’re not on it heaps anyway (there’s hardly any news in this small town) so it’s not a huge deal. Movement class with Dain proceeds to be 90 minutes of stretching, running, dancing, playing, touching and sweating. The first 48 hours in France were the most uncomfortable, after that point you have gotten used to dripping with sweat. 

It’s Friday, which means in the 30 minute break between classes everyone is allowed to buy Michiko’s salad. It’s only a euro on your tab for some of the best salads you’ll eat. They’re light, filled with nuts and leafy greens and come with optional meats, cheeses, breads and boiled eggs. This window between classes is the time you are given to go to the bathroom, eat and get changed before Improv class as well as being exactly when the first years finish for the day and all peel out of their costumes at the same time. You plan accordingly and make sure to eat in the first 15-20, bulk up your notes by recording what you all went through in movement today, and then spending the last 10 minutes (after the rush) getting into your costume. 

Improv class is 2 hours and often looks like the 25 of you sitting besides Carlo (and on Thursdays: Michiko) facing the stage. There will be a number of clowns asked to get up, and you/they do, then an activity will be described where you have to come out and be funny. The music will start, the clowns will march out from the wings and circle the stage before coming to a stop as the music ends. From here comes a familiar rhythm of someone trying something, getting a laugh or flopping; if they flop, their partner tries something to save the show. Soon there will be another flop, perhaps another attempt to save the show, another flop, and then a drum beat. Carlo will perhaps say “ay ay ay”, or he will leap into a joke about the two who just performed. 

Sometimes the clowns will be guided, goaded or coached while they are on stage. Today, your new friend Chloe (dressed as the reverend mother) is being pushed towards anger but can’t quite get there. She is Canadian and happens to be stereotypically nice. Her frustration is betrayed by her gentle voice and open face. The back and forth becomes comedic as she insists lilting and mildly that “I am angry, Carlo- I’m enraged!” To be funny is paramount and thus trumps whatever the instruction was. You are coming to terms more and more with the idea of finding your own way, becoming a maestro of whoever you are. Today, for Chloe, there is laughter in how her rage doesn’t come across as anything more than mild irritation. It makes everyone love her (if you didn’t already from knowing her).
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​After class, someone is getting frustrated with their autocore teammates because they don’t want to shaving cream pie each other this afternoon. The discussion is happening above your cubby hole so you stand patiently in your costume, sweaty, while your friend Lily twerks, gripping the kitchen bench, and Dan chants at her: “Pervert!” 

You get drawn into the discussion and try to play all sides, but when you get called out for doing so, you resort to honesty: listen to your teammates. The novelty of being here has settled into a routine of normalcy and so doesn’t outweigh any of the regular bedbugs of collaboration anymore. The garden gnome choking on Nesquik at a music stand outside is charming because it’s normal, not because it’s odd. 

Finally changed and on the street by 6ish you know you’ve got about two and a half hours before Cabaret Du: the name of the student organised cabaret hosted at Cafe Du Depart by the train station. Cousin Mike and yourself have signed up to do an act together and it didn’t take you long to discover “Watermelon Smash”. Mike will play the gracious and suave host of a much beloved NZ game show where audiences write on pieces of paper how many kicks it’ll take Watermelon Boy (you in a red morph suit) to bash apart a watermelon. 

In the meantime you’ve got dinner to think about. It turns out that the hob at the flat short circuits itself and the rest of the electronics in the kitchen if you use 2 or more of its 4 elements. You opt instead to not stress yourself out hunting for ingredients at the carrefour and lugging them back to cook in an ill-equipt kitchen and instead purchase a plantain burger for something like 6 euro at the chicken shop down the street. You eat at the flat while rehearsing the performance with Mike; the others freshen up around you.

Cafe Du is a beautiful place that loves clowns. There are printed pictures stuck up behind the bar of many people who have passed through the town learning. The owner John-Francois is a charming Turkish man who adores clowns and consistently takes pictures of them at his establishment to post online. Probably the only business instagram page I’ve seen that’s private. Watermelon Smash is a hit (literally) and it was a point of pride to say that you have performed at a Cabaret Du considering you missed out last time you were here in 2023.

​The performance space is in a room beside the main bar space that should fit around 25 people, but tonight is packed to 50 something. It’s quite hot outside of a crowded room with no air conditioning, so at half-time 6 determined clowns move the entire set up to the smoking courtyard out the back of the cafe. You watch women smoke with babies, knees sing Shallow, a trash creature politely ask to bring their gnashers closer to whoever has the softest skin. The temperature becomes comfortable around midnight and all the clowns stick around for drinks out on the street as the cafe closes up around you.

More people have come up to you now and tell you that your blog influenced their decision to come to the school. Turns out that so few people write about the place that your local Wellington, New Zealand online publication comes up as one of the first results online. You talk about how the school is a secret and how you reckon the magic comes from the pilgrimage. No one from the town comes here, no one from France really comes here. Everyone has come from far flung places and since no one in town speaks english other than the clowns you only have each other for support and conversation. You all agree it’s a beloved secret among friends, told with a smirk to newbies and knowing looks between the beaten and the bruised.

You start the trek home around one o'clock in the morning with Amy who lives a bit further on from you. You really like Amy because she gives the vibe of a decider and a doer (the first time you properly chatted with her was on a trip to Paris where the two of you may have been judging the Google Maps abilities and indecisiveness of others…). On this comfortable walk through the sleepy town you’ll be light and playful about some pretty dark stuff. It will be one of many examples of how the community of clowns is so open. Everyone you meet here has been trained to be charming listeners with a quick sense of humour. 

You are dozy as you crawl on all fours across the mezzanine into bed with Daniel as Mike and Tessa are getting ready below you. For now the world is only 70 clowns in a town you don’t speak the language of. Tomorrow will bring another opportunity to be yourself and fail spectacularly. Some day soon you’ll have to return to Aotearoa, who are suffering their Winter right now, but for this very moment you fall asleep chuckling to yourself about how many clowns you’ve packed into such a little abode.
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The courtyard of cafe du depart not quite during the middle of the night. After classes students frequent here for drinks with each other and pictures with the owners.

​What I Think and How I Feel
I think what the clowning module was trying to get out of people was nothing that wasn’t already there. The tutors (Carlo, Dain, Susanna and Michiko when I was there) are constantly saying you have to find your way. They encourage students to think about going beyond the school and learning everything from anyone in order to become closer to what is your way. In class whenever students would get on stage and perform disingenuously, where they might put on an act or a mask and try to do what they think the audience wants to see, they would get the drum pretty quickly. The tutors have a keen eye for people not being honest. You pick it up as you sit alongside them, watching performances day after day. 

The idea here is that genuine, honest joy is magnetic and infectious. We don’t want to see people stressing or whincing when something doesn’t get a laugh because that shows a tension in the performer that brings the mood down. It makes the scene feel heavy when it should be light and fun. A flop will always come, it is inevitable. You can either fear it or you can make it your best friend. It will always happen anyways so you should choose to love it or else you’ll be fighting against it forever. A flop is not that something has gone wrong, it’s a chance to move on and try something new. 

Many people have a hard time stripping back the layers of performance they’ve been taught to put on when they get on a stage. These layers need to be gotten rid of in order to show how beautiful a person is and how they experience joy. There are plenty of reasons why a person might not feel safe or comfortable to be honest in front of others: for survival reasons or because a training institute told them to hide themselves behind characters or movements. 

People quit the course and there are refunds offered. It’s disappointing when people leave and spread the word about being traumatised at clown school. Yes, the tutors make fun of you when you do badly but underneath all the bullying is love. They want you to be only yourself and for you to know that you, plain and simple, are enough. To be nothing but yourself without any doubt or anxiety is how you’ll spread joy. To be a fool, unashamedly. 

Unfortunately, I think the layers of performance pretense that can grow on a person can end up so ingrained that people confuse these layers for who they are underneath them. I think this is why people can confuse the school's vicious attempts to unearth the honest, pure, joyful version of themselves as an attack. 

The specific nature of every individual's joy means there are no surefire ways of finding any person's clown. Instead, we can be put in situations where someone's joy might come out. Most classes would involve a simple exercise of two people doing something like entering, being funny, saving the show, flopping, the drum gets beaten, comments are made, the two clowns return to their seat and two more take their place. It is the comments that get made where people are called ugly and heavy and not funny and angry. But it is also in these comments where people are called beautiful and generous and optimistic and alive.

I think I have a good sense of play. I’m not so good at changing everything in a moment in order to save the show. I do think that I am a lot more confident in myself having gone through the course. I don’t think I learnt heaps of new things, and there weren’t many giant new discoveries, just many, many assurances. Things I felt like were fun that I enjoyed doing on stage back home, like falling over, proved to work in the course as well. I was lucky because I had many good days. 

Some were not so lucky. You quickly learn about all your classmates and come to cherish them as your community, considering most of the township doesn’t really want anything to do with you. The only people who speak English there are the clowns and since no one is from here you all only have each other for support and debriefs. This means you become intimately informed about who in the class is struggling, which changes from day to day, and it can become difficult to watch some of your friends flop. 

I think about what I learnt there less as a performance practice and more of a philosophy for a happy lifestyle. Since doing Le Jeu I noticed the similarities between what made me a good clown on stage and what made me a good friend, a good teacher, and a good life partner. An emphasis on being honest, understanding what others are seeing, and finding jokes/fun/joy within everything. In an honest way, not as a distraction or as a coping mechanism. A top priority is listening and having a sensitivity to what’s in the room with you. These concepts are not ones I make exclusive to my stage time, they follow me everywhere I go. To not bring a sense of play to your personal life would be to choose boredom over friendly bedlam. 

To this end I believe that dedicating time to learning and growing these things makes one not only a better performer but also happier in general. However, this is only my experience and you can probably tell I feel quite strongly about it. In the end you must find whatever works for you. Slava, another aging clown (this one is Russian) who lives in France, has a garden you can visit. Sometimes you can see him walking around. Sometimes, like the time my friends visited the garden, he’ll see you and stop by and ask if you have any questions. He was asked if you have to be funny to be a clown and he said that for Philippe: yes, but for him: no. His Snow Show is known for its child-like sense of wonder, awe and amusement. 

He also said that he only ever hires happy people over professionals, regardless of if they’ve ever performed or trained or not. Apparently it’s easier to train a happy person to do anything than it is to teach a professional how to be happy. 

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t so content would I work harder to be more successful as a clown or as a teacher. I remember being unhappy/unfulfilled and exhausting myself through multiple opportunities that all seemed so sparkly at the time. Doing everything just in case anything “worked” (as if there was only one way a thing can work). I remember having a fire underneath me that pushed/scared me to be constantly productive in order to justify my life. But then it’s easy to forget that the goal of getting fame and riches is often happiness and they often don’t get you there… just read any celebrity memoir! 

To be truly present, and to enjoy the moment you’re in, and to look out at others there with you. To listen and discover a joke, and to feel that electric second right after it’s come but just before you say it. To know that I can be sensitive to that unnamed thing that exists between each person. 

That’s what I learnt at clown school.

Carlo, the centre of our universe.

​The Budget (all in NZD)
The budget can be thought about in two sections: What I Need To Get There and How Much I Need When I’m There.

What I Need To Get There = $6,998.28
Flights: My flights return from Paris to Wellington with stopovers in Auckland and Singapore came to $2751.47 + $314.50 for insurance. 

I’m glad I went with insurance because I live in Wellington and the weather can mean it’s common for flights to get pushed or canceled and comprehensive cover meant I could get up to $10,000 towards new flights, hotel stays and whatever.

I think I’m at the point in my life where if a flight has stopovers I’m going to start planning one or two day stops in those stopovers so that I’m not consistently travelling for 48 - 72 hours like I was on the way back (I had to catch a train from London to Paris before the flights, and then Singapore Airlines overbooked the flight to Auckland and sent me to Sydney for a bit).

Accommodation: My AirBnB cost $1455.20 for the month and a bit we stayed and was split between Dan and I. It was comedically small and I did have to share a bed but to be honest I am an extrovert and it never made me uncomfortable or grouchy or unnecessarily tired. It was the cheapest place in the town (and we found out why) but this is the low end for a month of accomodation.

You don’t have to use AirBnB! The school has personal relationships with landlords and home owners in the town who are willing to rent out rooms to clowns. I know the wonderful Anita has a home where she has something like 5 or so clowns living in her 3-story home. I would highly recommend OVER ANYTHING that you invest in that which makes you sleep comfortably. I knew I couldn’t take the pillow home when I bought it but I spent a fair amount of a decent pillow because if you’re somewhere for a month and you’re sleeping badly it’ll ruin your life/the trip.

The Course: My course (4 weeks of clown) came to $2477.11. You pay a 10% deposit to secure your spot after you sign up and then have to pay the rest before you set foot in the school for the first day. That’s straight up all you need to do to go to the school. There’s no audition or interview or anything. 

How Much I Need When I’m There = $3,750.54
Trains: The RER C line goes from Paris to Etampes and a month's train/metro/bus pass set me back $171.79. Even though we were only using these on the weekends and some weekdays I think you are paying for the peace of mind. Having to wait for your friends to buy tickets at the stations while you’re trying to catch trains is painful. Being able to just swipe and go and not worry about it will make going places easier to think about in a place you are already unfamiliar with. 

Dailies: I gave myself a budget of $100 per day of travelling and I ended up spending $3578.95 all up on stuff that doesn’t fit into the above categories for 38 days of travelling (including flight days).  Some days are going to be lighter, there were groups of 4-5 days where I didn’t spend $100 across all of them, but there were other days when I had to book a Eurostar because my Flixbus was delayed for four hours and I would miss a flight otherwise.

ALTOGETHER this trip cost me $10,749.02 which is interestingly close to the $8k I spent the first time even though I was there half the time. I spoke in my other article about purchasing flights that were far more expensive than they needed to be (you can save a lot if you book your own flights and are prepared to read a lot). 

I was very fortunate to receive a CNZ Grant to cover some of the costs which came to $2,535 which at the time of my application covered my course costs. The number is a little different because the value of currencies changed between me applying and me paying. 

My savings plan was created from the context of my work/payment scheme as well as my salary as a second school teacher at step 5 of the pay scheme (if that means anything to you). Basically I get around $1800 a fortnight. Rent and utilities for 2 weeks is $510, I set aside $160 a fortnight for food that I top up if I don’t spend it all, $30 set aside for Road User Charges (I have an electric vehicle), and then $550 into savings for this trip and $250 put into stocks as part of a separate savings plan, which would leave $300 for spending per fortnight. 

To save $550 per fortnight it would take 20 fortnights (40 weeks, about 10 months) to save the $10,750 I spent on this trip. If you gave yourself a year to save then you could have a goal of $900 a month ($225 a week) which would come to a little more than $10,750. If you gave yourself two years you could save $100 a week and end up with $10,400 which you could also get by comfortably on. 

If you don’t have regular pay cycles then you should save in a way that works with your pay cycles, not against them. I have a very regular one so it’s easy for me to think in fortnights rather than in gigs. If you have non-regular pay, like gigs, then you should try to plan out which milestones to cover based on how much money is coming in from which gig. In the What I Need To Get There section, each of those items was paid for at different times and can be made into larger chunks that gigs could cover.

The End
I don’t think I’ll return to Ecole Philippe Gaulier again. Maybe, if anything, to do Le Jeu again because it’s such great training. I don’t think I want to do any of the other modules because I feel as if clowning was right for me. I don’t think I want to go and do more clowning because I feel like it’s time to go and find Sean’s way. 

From here I plan to debut a show that I will take to Comedy Fests and Fringes, ending in Edinburgh next year, and move my life to London by the end of 2026. I’ve never lived anywhere other than New Zealand (Covid stole my OE) and it’s time to do something that scares me. To be perfectly honest, this was part of my plan. My Mother made us write out 5-year plans while we were in lockdown in the family home and it was there that I thought of my life in three phases: Phase 1 was to work as a teacher while I trained my clown, Phase 2 was to tour and travel and cut some teeth internationally when I felt I was at a good level, and Phase 3… I kinda want to start a clown school in New Zealand? But only when I’m old and wizened and have found my way a bit more. It sounds like a bit much, I know, but I think it’s a shame performers don’t make pilgrimages here since it is a little bit of a small town paradise of a country.

If you have any questions, or if you want any help with budgeting, send me an email:
[email protected]

Enjoy,
Sean!
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