I love Cirque Du Soleil. I love the acrobatics and the stunts. The singing and dancing is not really my thing, but I recognize that some people enjoy it. Cirque Du Soleil hires top notch musicians and dancers. But the clowns? Wow, they’re boring, and that’s not just my opinion. Some shows have better clowns that others, but read the customer reviews for “Kooza” or “Dralion” and it’s page after page of “fantastic show, loved the XYZ act but those clowns really weren’t funny and just bothered me”. I’ve met people who found the clowns tolerable, but no one who actually enjoyed them. No one ever found them really funny or entertaining. Most of the clowns (such as the ones in Kooza) don’t appeal to children. The clowns are clearly not why people bought the ticket, and Cirque Du Soleil must know that.
Am I wrong about that? If not, then why does Cirque Du Soleil keep the exact same boring clown acts in every show? They’re so good and entertaining at every thing else, why haven’t they fixed this one area? I recognize they need some act to fill time between the exciting acrobats (partly to set up for the next act and partly to keep the audience from being overwhelmed) but why not hire a professional writer to make the clown act funny to a typical adult, or else replace the clowns with singers or something that gets better reviews?
Do they not focus group test their clowns? Or am I off base about this?
Since this is about entertainment, I think it is better suited for Cafe Society than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I have never seen a “good” clown. Just an observation.
It’s a French thing. Vous ne comprenez pas.
I thought the Skywatcher character from Varekai was great, but it’s definitely a “French thing” where Cirque’s clowns are more like mimes than Barnum-type clowns.
I just showed the Kooza DVD to my Girl Scout troop. They loved the clowns.
If you search youtube for Cirque Du Soleil, you see lots of videos for the “cool” stuff (acrobats, contortunists, trapeeze, etc). The videos of the singing and dancing can be found with out much evidence either. But you have to scroll down really, really far to see the first video of the clown acts. Isn’t that proof that people are far more interested in seeing the non-clown acts?
Surely, Cirque Du Soleil must focus-group test their shows and they must already know this. So why aren’t they changing the shows to eliminate the parts consumers are less interested in?
I thought Cirque originated in Quebec?
Of course, that would only make them more incomprehensible…
[sub]because my french is bad, but my quebecois is far, far worse[/sub]
Becoming a clown is, for most circuses, a sort of retirement job for ex-performers. They might still be in their 40s or whatever, but still too old to do all the fancy acrobatics. With an old-style circus, with animals, games, freak shows, etc. there was a lot of other jobs that could be filled by retirees. Those who were interested in clowning and had an aptitude for it went that way, whereas those who didn’t would work at something else in the circus. You wouldn’t go looking for another job outside of the circus because your children had grown up to be acrobats and were now performing under the big tent and you wanted to stay with your family.
Cirque du Soleil hires most of its performers as ex-athletes. There’s a decently good chance that they didn’t grow up in the circus. When they retire, most likely they will find a job out in the real world. The few who remain to clown are probably not particularly inclined to being a clown, they just couldn’t find outside work.
In old-style circuses, the acts were largely set by the performers themselves. With Cirque du Soleil, the whole show is pre-set by an artsy-fartsy coordinator and the show stays the same for years on end. The clown show is not set based on the result of a professional clown, but rather the result of some consultant clown working with the artsy-fartsy coordinator and then performed by someone who never learned to be a clown nor how to ad-lib. The end result fits the overall “theme” of the show and appears more like art, but lacks the humor and spontaneity that a free clown show would have,
I thought both the “King” clown and the sleazy clown were both quite amusing - very entertaining, if not entirely hilarious. The two dwarfish sidekicks were merely “okay”. In general though I think the clown acts do a good job of providing a bit of an emotional release for the lull between acts, since the acrobatics and other athletic performances are so dramatic and intense.
Actually, to some extent it’s already been hit upon; it IS a French thing. Quebec has a legacy of “clowning” and physical humour that is quite different from Anglophone humour. Even to me, a Canadian who speaks French, that style of clowning is… well, just weird, and not funny at all.
So they’re doubly evil, then?
Quadgop, let me explain a little something about Quebec…
I loved the clowns in Alegria - the only clowns I’ve ever enjoyed. I think your M is V’ing.
I’ve never seen one, either. Occasionally I’ve seen a mediocre clown, but usually clowns seem to be people who just can’t do anything else, and the circus feels that clowns are an essential part of the experience. I guess that the clowns are sort of like intermissions, to give people a small breather from the suspense and thrill of the other acts. I’ve seen Cirque du Soleil on TV, and while I’m amazed at the other performances, when the clowns come on I’ll usually take a potty break.
I don’t think they’re supposed to be funny, really.
Is there a word (a French word, perhaps) that means “clown,” in the sense of a performer like these, without the connotation of goofy humor that “clowning” has in English?
Then you’ve never seen Bill Irwin. Try to find a copy of him on Great Performances doing his show “The Regard of Flight”.
Big difference between Ringling and clowns that are worth watching.
And David Shiner, with whom Bill Irwin performed in “Fool Moon”, was with Cirque de Soleil for many years.
I haven’t seen a Cirque de Soleil show in years, but I remember the clown work being outstanding!
The best clowns are funny, weird, intense, unsettling and completely free. It’s like the ultimate tap into the childlike mind. Forget bozo, this is the real deal (YouTube link):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnltm2WMxYM
Slava has been clowning for a few decades, but he did have a piece in the Allegria show by Cirque. His Snowshow is truly remarkable - I’ve seen it dozens of times and never get sick of it.
Intriguing, certainly. Creepy, yes. But funny? No.
I don’t think you can expect a clown act to be as entertaining as the main acts of the show. That would be like expecting the occasional flat, slow parts of a roller coaster to be as exciting as the loops and vertical drops.
The first time I saw Quidam, I wasn’t expecting clowns at all. Then they appeared on stage and I had this dread of anticipation that I was about to be subject to corny Barnum-style or Bozo type clown acts. I’m so glad my fears were allayed. I enjoyed the act and it provided an agreeable lull in an otherwise fast paced show.
Then I saw Dralion some years later, and was again unexpectedly entertained by those clowns. What was most interesting to me was seeing a “clown act” performed by people that didn’t look like variations of Ronald McDonald - the traditional clown with the big nose, rainbow wig, floppy shoes and bicycle horn. They looked odd, yes. A bit off. And you know what, that struck me as funny in a way that the Bozo type clowns never did.
And I’m not even French.