While most people would think of clowns and clowning around as ridiculous or foolish, Singaporean clown Shanice Stanislaus wears the description like a champ.
Clowns can be a performer wearing thick makeup, a colourful wig, that requisite red nose, and big shoes, but in Stanislaus’ practice, they are comic performers who use physical comedy, embrace the “silly and crazy sides” of people and celebrate making mistakes.
“Think of the jesters who worked for kings or the fools in Shakespeare’s stories,” said the 29-year-old professional clown. “These are also clowns who make others laugh by freely using their bodies, and often raise important issues while doing so.”
Since 2017, Stanislaus has been in over 50 local and international shows and even starred in her solo clown production Mail Ordered last year, which addressed child trafficking in Cambodia.
She tells CNA Women about her journey to becoming a confident clown with a love for playfulness.
SHE ALWAYS ENJOYED BEING ON STAGE
Stanislaus was a flamenco dancer before she discovered clown. (Photo: Singapore Flamenco Festival 2014)
Stanislaus said she has always enjoyed being on stage and using physical movement to express herself. From the ages of 18 to 22, she danced with a local flamenco dance company, describing the Spanish dance style as “enjoyable but very intense”.
She had an opportunity to perform differently at Yale-NUS, where she studied arts and humanities. In her third year at the liberal arts college, when she was 22, she went on an exchange programme at The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (NYU Tisch).
“My time at NYU Tisch was life-changing,” she said. “Even though I chose the school because I wanted to learn more about acting and politics surrounding theatre in New York, I ended up discovering clowning,” she said.
CLOWN: THE ART FORM THAT ALLOWED HER TO LET LOOSE
Stanislaus (left) with her first clown teacher, American actor Gregor Paslawsky (centre), who taught her at NYU Tisch (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
Stanislaus spent six months at NYU Tisch, where she took different theatre modules, but “the best module” was the one she didn’t know anything about: Clown acting and performance.
She had taken the course mainly to fulfil her student exchange requirements but it ended up being “incredible and awesome”, she said.
“My teacher, Gregor Paslawsky, made us play games and laugh a lot,” Stanislaus said. “It was so different than what I was used to when it came to classes or performing on stage.”
She learned that clown, as the art is called, is part of comedy, which encompasses the genre of humour. Clown is a playful and physical performance which can be expressed on stage in various forms, such as a skit, a monologue, or even a musical.
In the course, she and her classmates learned to navigate serious issues such as racism and class inequality effectively through humour.
“The kind of acting I was familiar with was the one that required everyone to put a mask on,” she added. “But when I was clowning, I was able to let loose – I could be my usual silly self, put on a red nose, crack all sorts of jokes, and everyone would love it.”
The few months studying clowning “lit a passionate fire” in Stanislaus, and she was determined to bring some of that light back home to Singapore.
“It felt so rare to find that art of playfulness, silliness, and making people laugh with our bodies in Singapore,” she said. “A lot of us in Singapore are way too serious – we should be able to let loose and laugh at ourselves more often.”
TAKING THE LEAP TO PURSUE CLOWNING
Stanislaus spent two years in a marketing job before she quit to focus on her passion for clowning. (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
That, however, was a lot easier said than done.
“After I graduated in 2017, the passion kind of fizzled away, especially when I saw everyone else going into full-time jobs and starting their stable careers,” she said. “I started doubting whether Singapore would even like the idea of clowning, so I started a safe job in marketing.”
She held out for two years. “I was miserable at work and I missed clowning,” she said. “This time, I wanted to really be serious about it, so I knew I had to train more and improve my craft.”
To further train herself in the art, she sat for a two-year diploma course in clown performance at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, a prestigious clown and theatre school in France that teaches students to become professional clowns.
Located an hour away from Paris, the school is led by Philippe Gaulier, a French master clown and a professor of theatre. He and a team of clown teachers deliver the courses, which are based on Gaulier’s pedagogy.
Notable alumni include English actress Emma Thompson and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who called Gaulier “the greatest living teacher of clown and modern theatre”.
“Gaulier believes that anyone who wants to can be a professional clown or work in theatre, so the school welcomes everyone and anyone,” Stanislaus said. Places are given on a first-come, first-served basis. A term at the school, which lasts about 10 weeks, costs about S$4,400.
In 2019, Stanislaus pursued clown performance at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, a renowned French clown and theatre school. (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
From 2019 to 2022 (with a slight pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Stanislaus spent two years with Gaulier and other aspiring clowns.
“At Philippe Gaulier, I learned how to just show up on stage even if I don’t feel confident,” she said.
“I also grew a stronger backbone to handle harsh feedback. While they were encouraging, Philippe Gaulier and my professors had incredibly high standards for theatre actors and clowns.”
After her studies with the French master clown ended, Stanislaus left France feeling more confident and with a renewed determination to teach clowning to Singaporeans through her creative arts company Creatives Inspirit.
PERFORMING AS A CLOWN ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE
Stanislaus in her solo comedy show, Mail Ordered, where she highlighted the issue of child trafficking in Southeast Asia through humour. (Photo: Mail Ordered/Ryan McDonald)
During Stanislaus’ final year at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in 2022, she scored a huge opportunity to work on a solo production for a foreign audience.
A Canadian theatre producer had been looking to work with international talents at the French school and was impressed by Stanislaus’ performances.
“The producer wanted to come up with a clown show while bringing together international artists and local Canadian creatives,” Stanislaus said. “So I pitched a clown show that was influenced by my Southeast Asian background and made it appealing and relevant to Canadian audiences.”
Thus came about Mail Ordered, a comedy that drives home the seriousness of child trafficking in Cambodia and its effects on women in the region.
“I’ve volunteered for organisations that focus on helping women and young girls in Southeast Asia,” she said. “One expedition I went for was in Cambodia, where I learned about the horrible practice of girls being trafficked as young brides – I wanted to bring that to the stage and express its importance using clown and comedy.”
Stanislaus’ character Lila is a young girl who “markets” her qualities to the audience in the hopes of being married to a much older and richer man who can take care of her.
The soldout show ran for six months in 2023 in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton in Canada. It also made an appearance in New York City in the United States.
Mail Ordered also won several awards, including the Jester’s Cap Emerging Artist Award at last year’s Calgary Fringe Festival.
“I still can’t believe all of that happened – it was the first time I really saw the value of being a Singaporean creator,” Stanislaus said.
“The reception to Mail Ordered showed me that people did want to hear and see a woman from Singapore with her crazy ideas and literal clowning,” she added. “There is a space for me out there and I want to expand the space back home, too.”
SHARING HER LOVE FOR CLOWNING IN SINGAPORE
In Singapore, Stanislaus spreads laughter by running clown workshops. (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
Now back in Singapore, she has been focusing on performing and giving workshops at Creatives Inspirit.
A favourite part of her work is running clown workshops, such as Laughter Lab: Clowning for Mental Wellness and Finding Your Funny: Introduction to Clown. The group workshops take place once every other month and last from two to three hours each time.
Based on the belief that “play is resilience and laughter is medicine”, the workshops encourage participants to engage in playful games and improvisation exercises to have fun while performing on stage.
In Finding Your Funny, Stanislaus also teaches participants the basics of physical comedy and how to plan a whole clown skit from scratch.
Stanislaus told CNA Women that despite her initial fears, she has come to realise that some Singaporeans are indeed drawn to clowning.
“It doesn’t always seem like it but some of us really do know how to have fun,” she laughed. “And I’m glad to be able to facilitate that.”
She added: “I also want people to know that just because we’re Singaporeans with a Singaporean background and a Singaporean story, doesn’t mean that people in other parts of the world won’t be interested in our performances and type of comedy.”
CNA Women is a section on CNA Lifestyle that seeks to inform, empower and inspire the modern woman. If you have women-related news, issues and ideas to share with us, email CNAWomen [at] mediacorp.com.sg.
Continue reading...
Clowns can be a performer wearing thick makeup, a colourful wig, that requisite red nose, and big shoes, but in Stanislaus’ practice, they are comic performers who use physical comedy, embrace the “silly and crazy sides” of people and celebrate making mistakes.
“Think of the jesters who worked for kings or the fools in Shakespeare’s stories,” said the 29-year-old professional clown. “These are also clowns who make others laugh by freely using their bodies, and often raise important issues while doing so.”
Since 2017, Stanislaus has been in over 50 local and international shows and even starred in her solo clown production Mail Ordered last year, which addressed child trafficking in Cambodia.
She tells CNA Women about her journey to becoming a confident clown with a love for playfulness.
SHE ALWAYS ENJOYED BEING ON STAGE
Stanislaus was a flamenco dancer before she discovered clown. (Photo: Singapore Flamenco Festival 2014)
Stanislaus said she has always enjoyed being on stage and using physical movement to express herself. From the ages of 18 to 22, she danced with a local flamenco dance company, describing the Spanish dance style as “enjoyable but very intense”.
She had an opportunity to perform differently at Yale-NUS, where she studied arts and humanities. In her third year at the liberal arts college, when she was 22, she went on an exchange programme at The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (NYU Tisch).
“My time at NYU Tisch was life-changing,” she said. “Even though I chose the school because I wanted to learn more about acting and politics surrounding theatre in New York, I ended up discovering clowning,” she said.
CLOWN: THE ART FORM THAT ALLOWED HER TO LET LOOSE
Stanislaus (left) with her first clown teacher, American actor Gregor Paslawsky (centre), who taught her at NYU Tisch (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
Stanislaus spent six months at NYU Tisch, where she took different theatre modules, but “the best module” was the one she didn’t know anything about: Clown acting and performance.
She had taken the course mainly to fulfil her student exchange requirements but it ended up being “incredible and awesome”, she said.
“My teacher, Gregor Paslawsky, made us play games and laugh a lot,” Stanislaus said. “It was so different than what I was used to when it came to classes or performing on stage.”
She learned that clown, as the art is called, is part of comedy, which encompasses the genre of humour. Clown is a playful and physical performance which can be expressed on stage in various forms, such as a skit, a monologue, or even a musical.
In the course, she and her classmates learned to navigate serious issues such as racism and class inequality effectively through humour.
“The kind of acting I was familiar with was the one that required everyone to put a mask on,” she added. “But when I was clowning, I was able to let loose – I could be my usual silly self, put on a red nose, crack all sorts of jokes, and everyone would love it.”
The few months studying clowning “lit a passionate fire” in Stanislaus, and she was determined to bring some of that light back home to Singapore.
“It felt so rare to find that art of playfulness, silliness, and making people laugh with our bodies in Singapore,” she said. “A lot of us in Singapore are way too serious – we should be able to let loose and laugh at ourselves more often.”
TAKING THE LEAP TO PURSUE CLOWNING
Stanislaus spent two years in a marketing job before she quit to focus on her passion for clowning. (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
That, however, was a lot easier said than done.
“After I graduated in 2017, the passion kind of fizzled away, especially when I saw everyone else going into full-time jobs and starting their stable careers,” she said. “I started doubting whether Singapore would even like the idea of clowning, so I started a safe job in marketing.”
She held out for two years. “I was miserable at work and I missed clowning,” she said. “This time, I wanted to really be serious about it, so I knew I had to train more and improve my craft.”
To further train herself in the art, she sat for a two-year diploma course in clown performance at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, a prestigious clown and theatre school in France that teaches students to become professional clowns.
Located an hour away from Paris, the school is led by Philippe Gaulier, a French master clown and a professor of theatre. He and a team of clown teachers deliver the courses, which are based on Gaulier’s pedagogy.
Notable alumni include English actress Emma Thompson and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who called Gaulier “the greatest living teacher of clown and modern theatre”.
“Gaulier believes that anyone who wants to can be a professional clown or work in theatre, so the school welcomes everyone and anyone,” Stanislaus said. Places are given on a first-come, first-served basis. A term at the school, which lasts about 10 weeks, costs about S$4,400.
In 2019, Stanislaus pursued clown performance at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, a renowned French clown and theatre school. (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
From 2019 to 2022 (with a slight pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Stanislaus spent two years with Gaulier and other aspiring clowns.
“At Philippe Gaulier, I learned how to just show up on stage even if I don’t feel confident,” she said.
“I also grew a stronger backbone to handle harsh feedback. While they were encouraging, Philippe Gaulier and my professors had incredibly high standards for theatre actors and clowns.”
After her studies with the French master clown ended, Stanislaus left France feeling more confident and with a renewed determination to teach clowning to Singaporeans through her creative arts company Creatives Inspirit.
Related:
PERFORMING AS A CLOWN ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE
Stanislaus in her solo comedy show, Mail Ordered, where she highlighted the issue of child trafficking in Southeast Asia through humour. (Photo: Mail Ordered/Ryan McDonald)
During Stanislaus’ final year at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in 2022, she scored a huge opportunity to work on a solo production for a foreign audience.
A Canadian theatre producer had been looking to work with international talents at the French school and was impressed by Stanislaus’ performances.
“The producer wanted to come up with a clown show while bringing together international artists and local Canadian creatives,” Stanislaus said. “So I pitched a clown show that was influenced by my Southeast Asian background and made it appealing and relevant to Canadian audiences.”
Thus came about Mail Ordered, a comedy that drives home the seriousness of child trafficking in Cambodia and its effects on women in the region.
“I’ve volunteered for organisations that focus on helping women and young girls in Southeast Asia,” she said. “One expedition I went for was in Cambodia, where I learned about the horrible practice of girls being trafficked as young brides – I wanted to bring that to the stage and express its importance using clown and comedy.”
Stanislaus’ character Lila is a young girl who “markets” her qualities to the audience in the hopes of being married to a much older and richer man who can take care of her.
The soldout show ran for six months in 2023 in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton in Canada. It also made an appearance in New York City in the United States.
Mail Ordered also won several awards, including the Jester’s Cap Emerging Artist Award at last year’s Calgary Fringe Festival.
“I still can’t believe all of that happened – it was the first time I really saw the value of being a Singaporean creator,” Stanislaus said.
“The reception to Mail Ordered showed me that people did want to hear and see a woman from Singapore with her crazy ideas and literal clowning,” she added. “There is a space for me out there and I want to expand the space back home, too.”
SHARING HER LOVE FOR CLOWNING IN SINGAPORE
In Singapore, Stanislaus spreads laughter by running clown workshops. (Photo: Shanice Stanislaus)
Now back in Singapore, she has been focusing on performing and giving workshops at Creatives Inspirit.
A favourite part of her work is running clown workshops, such as Laughter Lab: Clowning for Mental Wellness and Finding Your Funny: Introduction to Clown. The group workshops take place once every other month and last from two to three hours each time.
Based on the belief that “play is resilience and laughter is medicine”, the workshops encourage participants to engage in playful games and improvisation exercises to have fun while performing on stage.
In Finding Your Funny, Stanislaus also teaches participants the basics of physical comedy and how to plan a whole clown skit from scratch.
Stanislaus told CNA Women that despite her initial fears, she has come to realise that some Singaporeans are indeed drawn to clowning.
“It doesn’t always seem like it but some of us really do know how to have fun,” she laughed. “And I’m glad to be able to facilitate that.”
She added: “I also want people to know that just because we’re Singaporeans with a Singaporean background and a Singaporean story, doesn’t mean that people in other parts of the world won’t be interested in our performances and type of comedy.”
Related:
CNA Women is a section on CNA Lifestyle that seeks to inform, empower and inspire the modern woman. If you have women-related news, issues and ideas to share with us, email CNAWomen [at] mediacorp.com.sg.
Continue reading...