inb4 the inevitable jokes, this is a genuine question.
I’m learning to juggle, I’ve got a lot of experience doing different kinds of presentations for children, I thrifted a guide to making balloon animals and will buy supplies to practice if I end up winning an Amazon gift card at work.
The other things I imagine I would need are getting the make up down. I’d love to go to Mooseburger, but financially not in the cards.
How does one start doing festivals? Making money would be nice, but I’d be happy to do things like kids hospitals for free.
(The following is from my, possibly faulty, personal observation. Take it as you will.)
Clowns are at least 80% mime. If you can convey a message - often a funny one - with only exaggerated actions and facial expressions, I’d say you’re well on your way to clowning. They almost never talk and there’s a definite shared white face-paint thing going on.
The main talkers seem to be the ones that do kids’ birthday parties or ones in “senior” positions in a troupe where it would be funny to imitate a bossy person. They might otherwise allow a shout or mock cry of pain, but rarely use words when they do.
The other 20% is brightly coloured, ill-fitting (usually oversized) clothing, a bigger emphasis on slapstick, and props that make noise.
I’ve seen mimes perform cheap magic tricks, so that’s not exclusive to clowns, but I’d say that was more of a clown thing as well.
There’s a whole continuum from mimes to clowns to magicians and back again now that I think about it. Teller of Penn and Teller fits somewhere around the “back again” part. And Harpo Marx was basically a clown without the face-paint.