Bouffon is a satyrical, grotesque physical comedy grounded in mockery. As a formalized style of theatre, Bouffon can be traced to the Lecoq school of mask, mime and movement theatre in Paris. In the 1970s the pedagogic director, Jacques Lecoq, started to explore a core performance dynamic involving ‘creatures that mock’. The students were tapping into a crucial human instinct. ‘The one who mocks’, ‘the jester’, ‘the town fool’, ‘the trickster’ can be found in many mythologies, ancient stories and fairy tales. They are always a subversive character willing to turn the world upside down.
I have learnt Bouffon from four different teachers. I was introduced to Bouffon by Liz Skitch (who was taught by Philippe Gaulier) in 2006 for a student theatre company show at QUT, Brisbane. From Liz I learnt that the Bouffons were very, very good at parodying real life humans. She asked us to closely observe someone in our life and come to a rehearsal ready to do a 100% spot on imitation of them. With Liz, it was clear that the parody of our choice had to be exquisitely well observed. We then made characters based on these imitations and staged a show called Antigone: Queen of the Desert.
Philippe Gaulier (who was taught by Jacques Lecoq) produced and refined his own backstory about Bouffon. Philippe’s Bouffons are marginalized outcasts who lived in the swamps. As outcasts they have licence to mock the-powers-that-be, which he called ‘the bastards’. For me, Philippe’s version of Bouffons always evoked a medieval imaginary world. I remember that he mostly directed us towards the theme of ‘religion’ as the target to mock. In Philippe’s version the Bouffons are human, who have suffered at the hands of other humans. In my memory Philippe struggled to facilitate the students towards making Bouffon work about contemporary issues.
John Bolton (who studied with Lecoq and then a little bit with Gaulier) took a similar tack as Gaulier but complimented it with other ‘ways in’. The Bouffons at John’s school were social rejects, with the desire to punch up and mock those with power. To quote John “Their resulting fury and vital intelligence (makes them) magnetic”. I remember John teaching us wild little songs to sing and dance with in a Bouffon spirit. At John’s school here in Melbourne he was using the source text Pericles by Shakespeare. The devising task was that our Bouffons were invited to mock the source text. Naturally, a wild scene about pirates on a ship and a song about syphilis ensued.
I then began studying Bouffon with Giovanni Fusetti in 2017. Giovanni has expanded the work dramatically since first receiving it as a student at Lecoq school in 1992. He observed the work being taught and taught it himself at Lecoq’s school. He started to ask the question: ‘What is the lineage of these creatures? Where in the human body and psyche is the source of this ‘mocking instinct’? How can we facilitate the artist to tap into that source when we teach and direct Bouffons?’ This opened up a course of research that made the field of Bouffon, in my opinion, much richer and very relevant to the time in which we live. It is the approach I teach and I will go on to explain it.
In the perspective of Lecoq, which Fusetti followed further, the Bouffons are from somewhere else. They are non-human, where they are from is not specific - it is simply somewhere else. The Bouffons are foreign to the ways of humans and are enthralled at the way humans are. When teaching, I sometimes refer to them as tourists on planet earth. They are really amazed at ‘how things work here’ on earth. They are obsessed with ‘how humans be humans’. Because they are from somewhere else, they are unbiased, they view our world with a clean slate. Thus their attention is drawn to points of extreme energy or ‘hot spots’ of human existence. For example, a hot spot could be ‘war’. The Bouffons see the humans having a lot of fun playing the ‘game of war’. The Bouffons are fun-seekers and want to play too, they will play any game that they can see humans playing.
The Bouffons, like the quintessential, mercurial tricksters they are - are shapeshifters. So the actor coming to Bouffon must be ready for fast, quick-changing embodied work. Will the Bouffons want to play the game of Prime Minister? They will transform into Anthony Albanese. Then the press journalist. Then the fly buzzing around their faces. Then the microphone. The static. A sound bite from the Minister. Actors in this work get a full-on training in Lecoq’s mimo dynamique work. The Bouffon actor has to be a shapeshifter, willing to become-it-all. Read my blog on mimo dynamiques here.
Giovanni’s Bouffon approach traces the Bouffon dynamic all the way back to Ancient Greece. In Ancient Greece the celebration of Dionysus would always include three tragedies and a satyr play. The satyrical play was wildly funny, obscene and intended to mock the tragic heroes. Very few satyrical plays survived, it is thought that they were cleansed out by conservative colonizing religions. It is clear that the Bouffons relatives are Satyrs. Satyrs are those half-goat, half-human, hairy, horny creatures and their vibe is a Dionysian one. Dionysus was the god of wine, fertility …and theatre! The ecstasy of fertility and the celebration to be as-alive-as-possible underpins the song and dance rituals that appear in the Bouffon work. The songs are known as dithyrambs.
This is where chorus work comes in. The Fusetti way of Bouffon is ensemble training using the technique of ‘flocking’. Flocking is a type of chorus work. A traditional Greek chorus bears witness to the hero’s journey, they provide commentary to amplify the emotional push and pull of the drama. The chorus often represents the citizens of the society in which the hero walks. Similarly, the Bouffon chorus witnesses humans and actively play it all out. However, the Bouffons play until they find the ‘shadow’. Bouffons, as mocking creatures, are interested in finding juxtaposition, contradiction and hypocrisy. For example they are fascinated in playing a Minister of Environment who approves new coal mines. The shadow of this role is that humans need someone to ‘defend the environment’ but humans also need electricity, the billionaires need to keep expanding their coal empires, people need jobs, people get sick from their jobs etc etc. In every theme and issue we find a tonne of ‘shadows’.
Bouffon is unashamedly a theatre style with politics at its heart. But it is not a verbose lecture. The Bouffons show it. This is why the work is often shocking. If the Bouffons make a show about war, well, I am sorry to say, they will be blowing up the babies. It is not because they are cruel creatures. The logic here is simple: If humans do it, the Bouffons play it. They want the audience to feel ‘the ouch’.
Bouffon work is light, heavy and devilishly funny. I have observed some of the most unforgettably funny scenes of play in Bouffon work. The actor must learn another piece of technique here, to be ‘unsinkable’. Unsinkable is to play with extreme embodied stupidity and play with zero doubt. You can’t get anywhere in Bouffon if you doubt your play. Crucially - the actor has to play with others. Bouffon is a real masterclass in ensemble complicity. The actors must say yes to each other. Bouffon trains a fiercely comedic ensemble improviser. The work will not appear if the ensemble is not plugged in to one another.
The Bouffon work is well beyond realism - the Bouffon actor must learn to play BIG! Another way of saying this is that the actor must learn what it is to ‘saturate’. In Bouffon we saturate the theme with itself, we lay it on thick. Through the techniques of repetition, amplification, crescendo we get a very high level exaggeration.
As I have learnt it, as I teach it and as I see it thrive, Bouffon is:
-Mockery
-Wildly playful
-Features big themes of humanity (the artist must look outward)
-Contains a set of Bouffon specific devising, writing and performance techniques/principles
-Involves the art of shapeshifting (no unity of character/multi-character)
-Relies on mimo dynamiques (Lecoq pedagogy)
-Utilizes crescendo of themes (in the style of Commedia dell'arte)
-Real life figures are given a grotesque treatment (amplification, saturation)
-Contains song and dance (dithyrambs)
-Flocking is a key devising tool (ensemble, chorus work)
-The creators must research hard AND play hard (concepts, facts or opinions MUST become action)
-Has a non-linear playing and writing style (emergent improvising)
-Wants the audience to feel an ‘ouch’ (tragedy)
Bouffon is different to Red Nose Clown in many ways but there is one that I think is worth mentioning. The Bouffons don’t care what the audience thinks (the actor might care) but the Bouffon does not. The Bouffon is not affected by the audience. In a sense they are pure exhibitionists. They are happy if the audience laughs, they are happy if the audience cries. Why? Because the show is about the audience. Rather, the Bouffons say ‘Oh you laugh? Did you know you’re laughing at YOURSELF?’. However, Red Nose Clown is much more naive. The clown is affected by the audience. The clown is the stupid one so the audience feels safe, warm and fuzzy. The audience of a Bouffon show should feel rattled, they should feel ethical dilemmas. They should see themselves mirrored. To quote Giovanni, who quotes Lecoq “The audience laughs at the Clown. The Bouffon laughs at the audience.”
Overall, Bouffon training teaches us so much more than just Bouffon. It contains serious fundamentals of performance skills across multiple genres. Bouffon is provocative for a theatre maker, as it is about the world as we know it, thus throws us full force into our role of artist-as-citizen.
Thank you so much for reading this blog post. I appreciate that you are here at the end. All of this is written from my experience of Bouffon, learnt on the floor, caught in notebooks, reflected and chewed over with my trusty collaborators, re-visited in coversations with my teachers, remembered in dreams and in body.