Seminar “Clown: Play and Self-Knowledge”

The seminar offers training in clown techniques based on the concepts of self-knowledge and play.

Self-knowledge is explored through understanding our own vulnerability, accepting it, empowering it, and inhabiting it with joy. Clara Cenoz emphasizes that a clown’s main job is to eliminate his ego, since it «impedes our growth, our feelings, our evolution. The clown student has to identify the ego, recognize it and realize that you are not your ego” (quoted by Davison, 2016, 128). 

Play is addressed transversally in the seminar, as it proposes a playful learning space to unleash the creative power we all possess when we feel free, happy, and confident in not judging or being judged. Velásquez says that “searching for one’s own clown consists of improvising, doing, expressing and reacting creatively to imaginary and real stimuli in the present time in which the game is happening” (Velásquez, 2019, 13).

Extensive video and bibliographic material will be shared with seminar attendees to enhance their training.

Cultural Manager, researcher, curator, performing and visual artist. He trained in clown with teachers from Spain, England, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. He learned about body theater through courses in: mime, physical comedy, commedia dell’arte, improvisation, and clowning. Additionally, he has training in contemporary dance, Afro-Ecuadorian fusion, and contact improvisation. He is the director of the Cultural Development NGO Quijotadas Ecuador Corporation. His plays, directed and written by him, have been presented at festivals in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Chile.