The Lucky Find

In his book Trickster makes this world Lewis Hyde has a chapter with the title "The Lucky Find". He suggests that finding rather than searching is what we need to do: to let things come to us; a chance encounter can spark our curiosity, and, all at once, give us ideas for making, creating, collaborating...

We often refer to a 'lucky break', a gap, a hole that lets us see something new. Maybe it's a partial view, a different perspective or unexpected angle on a familiar subject or object. Maybe it shows us a portal like the back of the wardrobe into Narnia, or the hole that Alice fell down. The weave of the world is porous and it is through the gaps and openings that we happen upon chance encounters and happy accidents.

I'm thinking particularly about the work and teachings of Philippe Gaulier at this time. He would tell us not to come onto the stage with fixed ideas of what we wanted to do or what we thought would make our audience laugh. When we were too eager to get onto the stage to try something out, he would cleverly make us wait or try to trip us up - finding a way to interrupt our rhythm, our specific intentions. He said we should come without fixed ideas but that of course we would have 'tricks in our pockets', that we could bring out when needed.

Back to 2005 and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army on tour

Set beautifully in a green meadow beside the Regent’s Canal in London

It was one of the first performances of the Radical Recruitment Show. I was already on stage and keen to get going…but the rest of the clowns were still choosing costumes and putting on make-up…I was alone in front of a enthusiastic audience hungry for the rebel clowns. We were surrounded by grass, I plucked a blade and hid behind it. The audience sniggered. I popped out from behind it looking smug…clearly I had disappeared from sight and then magically reappeared.

‍ I started picking and handing out blades of grass, leaves, twigs… soon half the audience was holding a bit of greenery. I instructed them to hide and then to reappear, first from the left, then from the right and then (the advanced move) over the top…Here was the Lucky Find! A way to engage audiences in silly yet somehow meaningful and relevant rebel clown antics.

The tricks might be the results of our training, our craft, and our intuition, but also of chance encounters and happy accidents that we've integrated into our bodies and imaginations....all the things that enable us to recognise, find and explore the openings and gaps in the net of assumptions and expectations that society wishes to draw around us. We use these to escape, to make ourselves and others laugh, gasp with surprise, shed a tear...maybe something is revealed, uncovered. 

As clowns we need to be prepared, agile, flexible, ready to respond…not in a fixed way but according to the situation, to the context and our audience. As in permaculture, we need to listen, watch and wait…

Hyde mentions Carl Kerenyi who writes that “Chance and accident…are an intrinsic part of primeval chaos”. As clowns we are in the perfect place to act upon these chances and accidents. And perhaps to create something new and unexpected from them.

‍ ‍ ‍ and…over the top!

The beginning of CIRCA Camouflage Training

In our Nomadic Rebel Clown Academy Training Robyn and I work from a basis of games and exercises that we've been taught, that we've adapted, that we've read, that we've played. Each Academy course is different and we've reached a point where we prepare in detail the first 2 - 3 days and then we know that things will shift, we'll need more of some things, less of other things....we wait for the openings, the gaps that allow us, even ask us, to do something new, different, unexpected.

Join us in Valencia in April for some new, maybe unexpected ideas, imaginings and actions. 

See below for more details