Play with what appears
Clowning
Clowning begins with something simple: you play with what is already happening. You don’t need a character or a funny idea. What you are doing – what you notice, repeat, transform or reveal – is enough.
You don’t need “to be a clown” to clown. You need the ability to see your own actions clearly and follow them honestly. The clearer the action, the more freedom you have to play with it.
Clowning is awareness, play and the nerve to follow what appears – physically, without disguise.
A way of acting that begins before character
Clowning trains a performer to stay connected to the moment – not through ideas, but through action. It reveals the relationship between attention and behaviour: how a simple movement becomes material the instant you notice it.
For improvisers, this is essential. Clowning develops timing, rhythm, and the knack of turning the smallest event into material. For actors, it strengthens presence and makes choices clearer and more embodied.
Clowning is not separate from acting.
It is a way of acting that begins before character and before story.
How Impro Supreme approaches this
In this work, clowning is not a style or persona but a discipline of perception. You train yourself to stay with what you’re doing as it reads – to your partner and your audience – and play with it honestly.
This approach shares the same foundations as improvisation and physical acting: the willingness to act, clearly and without hiding. In clowning more than anywhere, I owe my understanding to Ira Seidenstein – a genuine clown master, and the teacher who shaped how I see this work.
Articles and writings
- The path to freedom in clowning
On how creating simple clown acts became the key to artistic freedom, and how years of training at Ira Seidenstein’s Quantum Clown Residency revealed the deeper foundations of clowning. - Meeting my mentor
How meeting Ira Seidenstein became the turning point in my artistic life. Through his work I learned to show up and finally show my creative self. - A true clown master
Why I consider Ira Seidenstein a true clown master – not for control or mystique, but for the clarity, craft and freedom he passes on to his students.
