Clown Gym’s mission is to build community, spread joy, and support artists as they embrace their humor, beauty, vulnerability, skill, intelligence, passion, and dreams. We do this through affordable high-quality training, teacher mentorship programming, new work development, performances, and community events focusing on clown and physical comedy.
We work to create a welcoming space for folks to train, connect, and perform, in addition to producing programming that aims to diversify the clown community, so that more people get to play and decide the rules of the game.
What is Clown?
Clown celebrates the beautiful mess of being human by playing and sharing with joy, pleasure, and freedom. The clown is curious, alert and open to the world. The training process is about finding out who you are (especially the messy parts), and being generous enough to share that with others. It’s a gift we give the audience so that we can laugh and release together and start to make the world as healthy and beautiful as we dream it to be.
Who We Teach
Clown Gym strives to build a thriving learning environment and community. We serve total novices, seasoned pros, and everyone in between. Tuesday nights are for anyone interested in bringing more joy into their lives, for learning new techniques, for meeting awesome folks, for learning from a variety of teachers, and for practicing their skills. Series and intensives are for folks interested in diving deeper into the work, honing technique, building community, and elevating their craft.
Who We Hire
We hire teachers who have a unique perspective on clown training and come from a wide range of backgrounds and pedagogies. Our teachers aim to disrupt harmful hierarchical structures and patterns, and are compassionate, fun, and love teaching.
Who We Collaborate With
We collaborate with artists who are kind, love being on stage, are excited to mess with the form, and want to say something with it.
Clown Gym Guidelines
As individuals and a community we agree to:
- Play and have fun!
- Make others look good.
- Call people what they wish to be called (names and pronouns).
- Acknowledge the impact of our words and actions.
- Respect physical and emotional boundaries, this includes asking before touching someone.
- Pause or stop if you feel unsafe or are concerned for someone else’s safety.
We will not:
- Tolerate violence, no matter the intention.
- Tolerate hate, no matter the intention.
You are always welcome to offer feedback on your experience at Clown Gym to Julia Proctor, who can be reached at julia@clowngym.com. You can also submit feedback here (it can be anonymous).
If you are not able to strive for and maintain these agreements, you will be asked to leave Clown Gym.
These community guidelines are a living document and are subject to change.
Clown Gym is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Clown Gym must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.