ABSTRACT
Responding to chapters in the edited volume Staging and Re-Cycling: Retrieving, Reflecting and Re-framing the Archive, my essay analyses the performances of two contemporary theatre clowns, firstly, the Russian clown Vladimir Olshansky, and secondly, the US clown, Dr Brown. I argue that Olshansky’s practice has been influenced by the writings of Samuel Beckett, in particular Waiting for Godot (1956), but also Film (1972). I analyse Dr Brown’s 2012 show Befrdfgth for its affinities to Avant-Garde practices, in particular, the anarchic spirit of Dada. Both clowns are analysed in terms of their different use of space and how this influences the clown’s interaction and play to and with the spectator, drawing on Jacques Rancière’s 2009 essay The Emancipated Spectator, but also considering what I term ‘the coerced spectator’. The essay concludes that whilst both clowns may draw on and recycle the above practices, since the clown is in a constant state of becoming, they are also recycling their own practices. My essay is written as a letter to the editors as a playful reply to their own essays.
