As an eight-year-old, Clotilde Cloe wrote on her bedroom wall, “Clown all my life.” But her family pushed her into a more traditional career in medicine.
“Being an artist wasn’t an option,” she said.
In 2009, Cloe moved from her native France to Quebec and started taking circus classes for fun. There, she met two clowns who introduced her to Montreal’s clown community.
Her passion for the arts was re-ignited.
“It was with [other clowns] that I felt completely myself,” said Cloe. Soon after, “[I] took my first clown workshop… I realized what I wanted to do for a long time.”
In 2013, she turned the page on her career and became a professional clown and circus artist.
“Clowning is about accepting your flaws,” said Cloe, who is prone to crying. “In real life, [crying often] is something I’ve been working on a lot in my 20s because you can’t work and cry at the same time.” In her performance, though, her tears are diamonds.
In clowning, “you have your qualities and flaws and they are both good.”
Finding the joy
It’s common in Quebec to see clowns performing at public events or towering above the crowd on stilts. For the clowns, the crux of the art comes down to spreading joy.
“I enjoy going to the mall and buying something new. But that’s pleasure, that’s not joy… this feeling goes away,” said Cloe. “But bringing small joys into our day that don’t go away, they can stay in you and feed you.”
Finding joy can sometimes be work.
One of the five main elements at clown and comedy school is teaching students how to find their own joy before their performance so they can better channel it during a show, said Jean Saucier, the new director of the Clown and Comedy School in Montreal. The clown is an emotionally-led character and therefore the actor needs to know how to authentically perform with happiness, he said.
“The joy is in the centre of the work,” said Saucier, who has been a clown for 45 years. “We have to have fun doing what we do. If we have no joy, the audience will feel it.”
In Quebec hospitals, clowns empower patients through comical scenarios that involve patients and their visitors, said Melissa Holland, co-founder and co-artistic director of the Fondation Dr. Clown, a therapeutic clowning company in Montreal that specializes in interactive clown performances in hospitals, retirement homes and other locations.
With child patients, a clown might give them control over a game, perhaps letting them spray the clowns with a water gun.
“The idea is really to empower them and find the game that is going to be a pleasure for them,” said Holland.
Clowns dress up in vintage fashion to visit seniors with dementia, who sometimes happily recognize clothing they wore in their youth, said Holland.
They also help ease a patient’s nerves before surgery, play with autistic children and comfort those in palliative care. Cloe said she often hugs distressed parents of sick children.
“In one afternoon, we could come across 15 different nationalities and each of them has a connection with the clown. The clown is like an everyman figure that exists in all cultures,” said Holland. “It’s just such an amazing feeling to be a representation of something that is good and connects us all.”
This week, Cloe says a patient came up and thanked her and her colleague for the work they’re doing.
“We see people at the hospital everyday suffering. Kids at the hospital, babies at the hospital, parents having tough days. And as a clown we have the ability to bring joy into these people’s lives,” says Cloe.
“That’s something really big.”
Bon vivant
Quebecers come to clowning early, in the primary grades. By high school, students study clown performance as part of the system’s drama curriculum.
Upon graduation, aspiring clowns can study at dozens of clown schools in the province, ranging from large renowned institutions such as the National Circus School, to smaller, independent programs, such as the Clown and Comedy School.
Clowns have existed in Quebec for decades. Many of the earliest performers were instrumental in helping the province forge an international reputation as a hub for the clowning and circus arts.
Saucier joined Cirque du Soleil in 1985, a year after it was formed. He was only 18, but he was practically an old hand by then, as he had started clowning and learning circus arts when he was 11.
“I’m the youngest of the old gang,” says Saucier.
That old gang is the pillar that Quebec’s clown culture is now based on. In the 1980s, the clown scene “felt like family,” says Saucier. Some began learning new methods at European schools and brought those lessons back to Montreal where they started new companies and schools.
In 1981, the National Circus School was founded, a centre that includes programs for acrobatics, juggling and clowning. In 1984, a group of 20 street performers in Quebec founded the Cirque du Soleil, a circus organization that has performed for 378 million people worldwide.
Every clown school has a unique approach to teaching the art. Saucier says he took the director position at the Clown and Comedy school to ensure the teachings of the school’s founder, Francine Côté, whom he first met in the ‘80s, would last.
Holland credits that closeness in the clown community for helping her work with Québécois clowns to establish the Fondation Dr Clown.
In April, the foundation will host the North American Federation of Healthcare Clown Organizations, a conference for artists and clowns from across the US and Canada. Eighty to 100 are expected to attend, and 50 will likely be Quebecers.
“That’s a big indication to me that, in Quebec, there is part of the culture with Cirque du Soleil and the aspect of ‘être un bon vivant,’” said Holland, nodding to the French culture of leaning into the simple pleasures in life.
