Clown Games, Subversion and Playing Stand-Up Shows

[Music] Welcome to stand-up and clown the podcast. I'm your host Chad Demiani. Thanks for joining me. I got the intro in one take today. That's usually a good indicator. I'm currently trying a new format on the solo pods. Instead of recording one over a couple of days, I'm trying to do a few daily journal entries. I thought it might be fun to be able to talk about more topics, but more importantly, maybe share a little bit more of myself. When I create a solo pod, I try not to get too stuck on an outline. Give myself permission to explore things I'm discovering while talking about these topics. But sometimes, I do find that I fall into a groove. It's a lot like an improvised or semi-improvised show. It begins in a realm where everything is possible. But as you move forward, you start to build this vocabulary. You want to honor the offers that you've already made. To not only be interesting in the moment, but mindful of a greater picture. I've seen clowns and improvisers do entire shows where they remain in a state of flow. They follow the fun, chasing one shiny object after another. There are people who are very good at this. And when it's done right, a show like that can feel totally lawless in the best way. It's more like improvised music. An exercise in discovery that holds the promise of unpredictability right up until the very last moment of the set. But that's not usually how it plays out. Instead of being an exercise in freedom, it becomes this exercise in patience. It's good for the audience if the clowns are failing because they know they're going to move on very soon to something else. But if the audience falls in love with something, there's no guarantee that they'll ever see it again. So instead of the show being this courtship, where the performers and the audience continue to deepen and deepen their connection, it feels more like a series of hookups on spring break. In some soulless beach town, like Panama City, Florida, a show like that, it can be very exhilarating. It can also be very exhausting. It requires you to prioritize excess and self-indulgence. This is not a place where you fall in love unless you want to get your heart broken. Have you been to Panama City beach? Every yeager bomb should come with a tetanus shot. The other kind of show, the kinds of shows I try to do, also known as the better kind. The clowns make offers. Those offers translate into a vocabulary. That vocabulary becomes the foundation of a shared language. And that shared language allows us to tell stories. When I talk about stories, in the world of modern clown, I am not referring to plot. A plot is a sequence of interconnected events. There's usually this emphasis on causality and conflict. A lot of detail work. Justifications for why things are happening. A story in its most basic form. It can just be a simple timeline. In clown work, the cause and effect that moves us forward, that isn't rooted in the specifics of a narrative. It's defined by the games that we play. Clown is theater, but it also shares a lot of similarities with the spirit of sport. There's an element of competition, a desire to win. The performers and the audience embrace the same set of rules, which create a clear metric for failure and success. A great game, it tells a great story. But not because it's heavy in plot. Fans might bring elements of plot in from the outside world. They might watch ESPN or listen to sports podcasts. But if you go into a Buffalo Wild Wings, real talk, one of the best lunch specials in the world of fast casual franchise restaurants. And a game is playing on one of the 427 flat screens. A great game will capture your imagination without any context. You will be moved by the physicality and the emotion. Your understanding on how this game is played and the palpable determination displayed by all the athletes on the field. Other types of entertainment that are based in stories, like books and TV and movies, they exist as structures. The plot serving as architecture. It can be solid and sturdy with walls and doors and windows and all manners of details and decorations on the inside. But a clown story, that should be like a game. Bear bones. It's solid in a different way so that it can support all kinds of unexpected action. Instead of a building, it's more like a jungle gym. A metal skeleton of rules and obstacles. It allows the clowns to navigate all kinds of possibilities. And also, if they become too ambitious, flip backwards and come crashing to the ground. Unlike sports, the structure of a clown game has one more feature that we keep hidden from the audience. Despite the fact that our jungle gym is made of steel and set in a concrete foundation, we secretly know that it's just a construct of imagination. A fiction given weight by our collective agreement. Yes, you can play with the elements of plot. Events can be presented in a non-linear way. You can have an unreliable narrator, manipulate the point of view to create Mr X and surprises. But if you bend it too much, scramble the details and betray the reality you've created. The story falls apart and the audience loses faith. But a clown story, one rooted in games, it can be completely disassembled, rebuilt into anything we want, if it results in the audience having a better experience. You will never see an NBA finals game that suddenly transitions into a full production of the nutcracker. How awesome would that be? People would lose their shit. But like a movie or a play, sports require a greater level of integrity. The rules are what hold it all together, as opposed to clown work, where we only obey the rules as long as they serve us. Which brings me back to my original point. Why I'm doing these daily journals instead of just committing to one topic and recording it over a couple days. I've done a lot of work that I'm really proud of, but also feel like I've been relying on my writer brain. I record these all by myself. No audience or scene partners to inform my direction. So I look for balance and cohesion and connection the same way a writer would as an extension of the plot. I can be non-linear, go back and change things to create opportunities for later revelations, plot devices that require a greater degree of thoughtfulness. And there's nothing wrong with that. But this is a clown podcast. The only modern clown podcast I think. And I'm curious if the work I do here can reflect the work I do on stage in not only what I say, but the path I take to excavate those conclusions. We find different things when we're not so focused on completing a thought. When the play informs the progress, I bet that's why I go on so many tangents because I'm more excited to be searching for answers right alongside of you. Which also means I need to have the freedom to break the thing I'm creating even in the process of building it to exist in a state of flow. You know, the quality of clown work that I was just criticizing like two minutes ago, I guess I'm realizing in this moment that since I cannot react to your opinions about what I'm saying, since you are not here in my kitchen, I'd rather chase a bunch of shiny new things in the hopes that I might stumble across the one thing you need to hear. And I actually think this journal entry does exactly that. It really did help me think about the sporting element of clown in a different way. Now I can just ruminate on those new ideas without feeling like I have to prove some kind of thesis. I can make an exit and let those ideas exist and grow without building any more walls around them. Ugh, this would be such a perfect and elegant place to end this journal entry. But I do have some new classes that are going to be debuting in February. This is a journal entry I'm making on January 3rd, 2026. My first one of the new year. Actually, that's not 100% true. I started one on December 30th, that is my late partner's birthday. I wanted to revisit a few things in regards to clown and grief. Also I'm currently fostering a dog. If you are a longtime listener, then you already know that my two favorite topics, right behind modern clown work are pets and death. I ended up working on it multiple days, including January 1st, which is frowned upon when you're supposed to be doing a daily journal. This deserves its own episode, so expect that in the near future. Today, I was going over notes regarding two new classes that I'm offering in February. One of them is called destabilizer. I've been working on that one for a little over a year, testing new exercises on the road, trying things at the jams I run in Los Angeles. It's already had one test run, during a recent trip to Philadelphia, shout out to the Philly clowns, you all are super weird and very dumb, and I am here for it. I'm struggling a little bit more with the second new offering. It's called accelerator, and it's the first three day intensive that I've offered. I don't know, maybe in a couple years. It's also the first time that I'm focusing on creating solo work. In the spirit of stuff that Natalie Palomides, Courtney Peroso, Christina Catherine Martinez, and myself, do at alt comedy theaters, but also traditional stand-up venues. I would really like to see more clowns venture into riskier spaces. I love that we've built this great base in Los Angeles. People who want to come and support modern clown, audiences that are excited to play along. But with that level of acceptance, the work does lose a little bit of its edge. The LA version of modern clown, it's an amalgam of all these styles. It steals from stand-up and improv, sketch and character work. It explores different uses of music and media, all while honoring the principles that have defined clowns for thousands of years. We see the audience make offers to invite them to play. We embrace stupidity as this lowest common denominator, a kind of humor that transcends race and class and culture, sexual orientation and gender identity. Regardless of the subject matter of a particular show, we create a way for everyone to play. I love that idea, the practice of radical inclusion. What makes us unique is also what makes us the same. Our individual stories are different, but our wants and desires are universal. To have community, to be loved, to be truly witnessed, and feel accepted when the most authentic version of ourselves is on display. But clown work, it also explores the flip side of this. We embrace the resistance that an audience gives us when we propose foolish and seemingly bad ideas. The clown is the uninvited guest. We seize the opportunity to perform even if there isn't a show. At first glance, we seem ill-equipped, underqualified, incapable of understanding the protocols of polite discourse. Even if we do have impressive skills, or make an offer that does seem fun, it's clear that we're still being driven by this unquenchable desperation to be loved. The end goal, its acceptance. We want to win over the audience, to bring everyone together, but in the early stages of a performance, we also want to cultivate their doubts. An audience can't feel brave unless we seem a little dangerous. Just to be clear, these are the qualities that I feel embody modern clown. Work created primarily for adults. We don't really need to be scaring children. Though it would be fun to do a modern clown show for kids, where the set is just a cornfield. Also in general, children have a much higher threshold for silliness. They're just more connected to the spirit of play. So they're generally more accepting, no matter how stupid we seem. With adults, we get this chance to challenge all their social conditioning. Their paralyzing fear of embarrassment. Part of winning over a crowd with our willingness to be vulnerable is also letting them look down on us. Our job isn't to only make them laugh. It's to overcome their judgment. So I wanted to try doing this intensive, where artists could build clown pieces that could win over an unfamiliar audience. The kind of stuff I do at places like the Comedy Store. Or a venue like the chatterbox bar in West Covina, California. One of my absolute favorite shows, run by Steve Hernandez. It's every Sunday, and features traditional stand-up for primarily a working class audience. I don't necessarily think this is something that all clowns want. If you've cultivated a clown following for your show, and want to perform for people who openly celebrate the kind of work you do, I think that's great. We've got a lot of great shows like that in Los Angeles. Shout out to BizBaz, Twin Flames, Stamp Town, a clown variety show that I've been doing for over 10 years that tours all over the world. Oh, a shout out to Matthew Silver and Idiot Sour. That's a really fun, experimental clown show in New York City. That audience is on board for all kinds of weird. Daddy chill. I also don't want to undersell how impressive it is to not only build a following, but also educate them to appreciate your style of comedy, to unapologetically cater to a very specific audience. Dropout TV's Dimension 20, that's their D&D show. They've played the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden. When you see an entire crowd go absolutely ape shit. Because one of the players rolled a 19? That's way more thrilling to me than watching a crowd explode when a circus performer does some death-defying act. The most miraculous element of theater. It's not its ability to create spectacle. It's when we captivate them so completely that we can give meaning to the meaningless. So dumb, it's brilliant. An audience losing their minds over a roll of the dice? That's a fucking magic trick. I feel the same way when I see those videos of crowds going wild when someone manages just a flip over a water bottle. Or the Whitney Houston challenge? Where a person tries to time that final beat drop? In the song, I will always love you. All of these examples. They're 100% quintessential clown work. Silliness, we get the audience to take seriously. I love playing shows where people appreciate what I do. I remember when we played the very first stamp town, post-pandemic, at the then newly opened Elysian Theater. Long before they were running three stages seven nights a week. This was after a year and a half of doing stamp town shows in backyards and the rooftops of parking garages. I came out playing this new chimney sweep character who was really just a peeping Tom. And because I'd done all those shows outdoors, playing over a dozen characters, the audience gave me this 30 second round of applause before I even said a word. What a beautiful moment that was. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it. The point of all this is to say, hometown crowds, they can be awesome. But let's spend some time investigating the other side of the audience spectrum. Spaces we enter as a relative stranger and crowds that see our work as a break from the norm. What is the value of these kinds of shows in terms of making you a better clown? First, more reps. I can't think of one market I've been to where there were more clown shows than stand-up shows. If a clown can crack that code, bring something unusual to traditional spaces, then they can get a lot more reps. The more times you get up, the more variations you can explore. Second, you're going to develop a greater range of sensitivity. When people are willing to play, they are easier to read. But when you have to deal with all manners of reluctance and discomfort, and sometimes even a benign hostility, or not so benign, any reaction that creates a barrier between the performer and the audience, you have to learn how to read even the most subtle changes in temperature. You have to become better at finding the hot spots. The people in the room who want you to succeed and are most likely to engage. Even if their willingness is rooted in their own desperation to avoid discomfort, instead of a genuine affection for your work, you might have no genuine fans in this room, so you have to exploit any opportunity to make a connection, regardless of how insignificant. Often, a stand-up show ends up being this battle of attrition, tiny victories that allow us to win them over slowly. The more sensitive you are, the more you can live in the paradox of both being gentle and being bold. I should do a whole episode on sensitivity. Coming soon, maybe in one of these journal entries, or maybe 2028, I don't know. Third, exposure to talented artists with different methods of winning over an audience. There are those of you out there who do clown work because you never really felt a connection to stand-up. Or improv or sketch. You prefer to be more free-flowing with your ideas. To tell stories with movement and emotions. I'm glad you found this work. But often growth in clown means exploring the areas where we're most likely to fail. We purposely do things that challenge our disposition. If you're naturally low status, it's probably a lot of fun to watch you try high. If you're clumsy, chase elegance. Watching comics who are great writers and have great timing. Veterans who can make written material feel improvised. Or walk an audience member into a bit that they've done a hundred times. You'd be surprised at the kind of inspiration that you can find. Watching work that rests in opposition to your sensibilities. You might even pick up a trick or two. A little bit of counter-energy to make one of your current pieces feel less predictable. I personally really enjoy stand-up. Every year, I gain a greater appreciation for the people who do it well. I don't aspire to do what they do, but I'm still very interested in how they succeed. Which brings me to my fourth and final point. You cannot subvert what you do not understand. It's not enough for a clown to go to a stand-up show and just make fun of stand-up. If the purpose of your act is just to illustrate that stand-up is somehow homogenized or predictable. Well, who exactly is that for? It's not for the audience. They are presumably attending this show because they like stand-up. An act where you try to prove something's bad by being bad yourself. That is a very tough needle to thread. I love movies that are so bad they're good, but that's almost always because they're trying their best and genuinely failing. These are inspired fiascos. But to be bad on purpose. To claim the joke is that nothing's funny, which is what's funny about it. What the hell is even that? I think Tim Heideker came close with an evening with Tim Heideker, his special that was a parody of cancel culture stand-ups. But ultimately, I think he came up short. And this is someone who's been exploring the idea of anti-comedy for over 25 years. To subvert something, you have to do more than make fun of it. Imitation, exaggeration, mockery. All of these tools have their place. But the end result still has to be something joyful. Otherwise, any laughter that you're getting is emanating from a place of cruelty. I hate you! If you went to a Dodgers game, you shouldn't expect to be popular if you spent those three hours making fun of baseball. It's an inherently flawed strategy. The idea that you're going to convince this roomful of people that this thing that brings them pleasure. Well, it kind of sucks. That's why the clown aims for subversion. To subvert, you have to be more than just critical of something. You have to undermine it. You are challenging the power that this thing possesses. And in doing so, you get people to question what they thought was true. It's an attack, in this case a playful one, on a system or institution based on a deep knowledge of how it works. When a clown takes the stage at a stand-up show, when they challenge the conventions of that art form, they have an obligation to be as funny or funnier than the comics who are applying more traditional methods. It shares a lot of similarities with a The jester playing to the king's court. It's not enough to just call the king an idiot. The jester has to expose the king's foolishness and hypocrisy in such a way that the people who surround the royals feel like they have permission to laugh at the king's expense. It has to be funny enough for the king to feel seen as opposed to just scorned. That not only requires skill and understanding, but an absence of malicious intent. The jester's actions can be ruthless, but the king and the court still have to see it as a celebration. I don't think like a stand-up comedian. I want very different things in terms of my relationship with that audience. But I'm still not operating from a place of malice. I don't do stand-up shows because I'm trying to expose the art form as some kind of fraud. But I do want to show people what else is possible. If I want to break the rules and take the audience out of their comfort, then I better have something to offer that's worthy of that stage-time. I can't be different than the low point of the show. To accomplish this, my work has to rise to the level of subversion. The fact that I'm making these elaborate entrances, utilizing music and costumes, getting laughs outside the tried and true methods of setups and punchlines. The culmination of that effort has to result in the audience thinking, "Oh, I didn't realize you could do it that way." I don't need them to abandon stand-up. But I do want them to question even momentarily the kind of fun that they could have at a show like this. This might be a controversial opinion, but I will say that most clowns that I've seen do stand-up shows and fail to break through to making regular appearances is almost always a reflection of their lack of understanding. Not of comedy, a lot of these folks are genuinely unique and hilarious, but of the fundamental elements that define stand-up comedy and how their work speaks directly to defying them. Communication in comedy means meeting the audience exactly where they are at. That means acknowledging the existence of whatever system they believe determines the rules of engagement between them and the performers. That's a lot of fancy talk to say, "Make sure the audience understands that you are breaking the rules for their pleasure." But you not only recognize what's wrong with stand-up, but all the things that are wonderful about it. That's what qualifies you to take this different approach. A desire to make the system better, even if that means temporarily tearing it apart. And that brings us to the end of another solo pod, only two entries once again. One of these days I'm going to just do like a two-minute one, just to prove to myself that it's possible. They say that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is madness, but is there a name for the opposite, which is where you keep trying all new things, but only get the same result? Is that a Groundhog's Day? Do you ever have deja vu, Mrs. Lancaster? I don't think so, but I could check with a kitchen. I cut out early on that last journal entry. I got so caught up talking about subversion. I just forgot my original point. It was almost midnight, I think, when I was recording that. Sometimes I have my best ideas when my brain is almost too tired to function. What I was going to say was that this accelerator class, it's a challenge because I want to share all these ways that I have succeeded over the years. But I'm also not trying to create a dozen new versions of myself. So I'm just really thinking a lot about how I can give people valuable tips while still letting them find their unique voices. Even if the pursuit of that authenticity means they have to break the rules that I'm presenting them in the class. Students often want answers, but I think a good clown teacher is one that challenges them to find new solutions. The ways to play that most make sense for them. I'll let you all know how it goes. Did I mention you can find links to all of these classes in the episode notes? Was this whole podcast just an impo-mercial? Do they still even run impo-merchels? I haven't had cable in about 15 years. I get all my advertisements for boner pills and Turkish hair grafts via Instagram. The algorithm thinks that I hate myself. Don't forget to tell a friend about this podcast, subscribe and review, have the courage to love and be loved. And remember, every moment you spend thinking about someone who made your life worse is time you're not spending thinking about someone who made your life better. Until we speak again, my friends, this is Chad Demiani, Keep On Clowning. Stay in the car!