Clowns
People love to laugh and have fun and this is exactly what clowns make their money from:
making others laugh. Over time things change and we have a different perception of what is funny to us and what is not. Society Changes and with it, comedy. Here is how it evolved:
There have always been people who enjoy making others laugh. At what point exactly it turned into a profession we can not tell, but we do know that it was a long time ago and there are many names over many centuries tied to it.
One of the early most known comedians were in Egypt. Ancient Greece and China were also trendsetters though. When comparing the different clowns (clowns is a term that only existed in the 16th century) they all had different methods and types of entertainment. In Egypt, clowns were African Pygmies who entertained the Royals and Egyptian Pharaohs. They entertained by imitating Egyptian Gods, dancing and dressing up in leopard skins. Something, that keeps coming back and is still common today:costumes.
Clown costumes have a tradition. Everyone knows the red nosed clown with a red and white face and big shoes. Back in ancient Greece, the costumes were short tunics and long knitted socks like tights. Of course, like nowadays there were more than one type of clowns and not all of them were dressed up. This is comparable to stand up comedians, who usually also don’t wear costumes. Masks are also considered costumes e.g. the p’rang clowns in malaya.
As Egypt was by far the first known to us to create something like ‘clowns’, already 3000 BC, Ancient Greece and Rome followed 2923 BC, China didn’t have entertainers for the King until 127 BC. In Early times, clowns used pure imagery with costumes and weird movements to make people laugh. Ancient Greece and Rome had already gone a step further combining this with theatre, singing and even making use of a narrative. Mime was already becoming popular in Ancient Greece as well. While mime was popular in Ancient Rome, pantomime was becoming popular in India in the form of a dance. The estimations of when the dance type Bharatanatyam became a tradition vary from 500 BCE to 500CE.
The difference between pantomime and mime are the following:
Both mime and pantomime are techniques for the performer to express emotion or a narrative through body language or facial expression. Expressing emotion is what is common for mime while creating a funny narrative is what happens in a pantomime performance. Pantomime is an art form that is still performed, especially around Christmas and New Years in the UK as family entertainment. France is also known for its tradition of mime’s.
In the past, most clowns were servants of the rich because they could pay for entertainment. Clowns became more and more popular. By the 14th century the entertainers turned to jesters who could provide entertainment on demand. The definition of a jester is:
“a professional joker or ‘fool’ at a medieval court, typically wearing a cap with bells on it and carrying a mock scepter”.
One of the earliest uses of the term ‘clown’ is documented in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
To find out where the typical White Face clown originated from, we must look back at Commedia dell’ arte which originates from Italy and is a form of theatre. Commedia dell’arte popped up in the 16th century and was a narrative theatre performance which always used the same characters in different scenarios. One of the character being the harlequin. In 1778 the well remembered Joseph Grimaldi transformed this art form into a clown figure. Joseph Grimaldi was born in 1778 London, and started performing at a very young age (4). Throughout his career, he was part of many great shows and was often considered a very talented performer and clown. He played several roles with pantomime and also as clowns with a new costume, which is very similar to what typically clowns wear today. He was able to fascinate the audience with pantomime and created a basis of it for further years to come.
Although the white face clown replaced the harlequin figure, it was also influenced by different characters in Commedia dell’arte, e.g. the white powdered face from pedrolini.
From this clown form of pantomime the whiteface clown developed and spread across Europe. In the early circuses the whiteface clown was used as the authority figure in the rings. Even now the whiteface clowns will always be the one in charge in a group of clowns. A very close family member of the pantomime only developed after the whiteface clown, the art of mime. Pantomime and mime both already existed and were traditional performances in various countries in the world. Europe only discovered these arts in the early 1800 and the early 1900.
Slapstick is also a comedy that developed over the years also from Commedia dell’arte. For those of you who don’t know, slapstick is a comedy which uses exaggerated physical pain or activity. The first form of slapstick in Commedia dell’arte was the use of a wooden plank which made a lot of noise when an actor would hit another actor with it on stage, however it didn’t cause real pain for the actor being hit. Basically like a very early special effect. Pantomime is also intertwined with slapstick, a good example would be a quite recent performer, Charlie Chaplin.
Bibliography:
http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/42645/Clown-history/
http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-mime-and-vs-pantomime/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgiLOzFQh14
Maak jouw eigen website met JouwWeb