Honest Clowns

When Dan Griffiths of Kapoot Clown Theatre tells reporters that his Chicago-based clown duo draws from clowning traditions worldwide — European, Hopi and Zuni among others — there may be reason to react with skepticism.

A few years back, Griffiths was part of a clowning group known as Giehanswurt. The group’s members feigned German accents when calling newspapers, claiming to bring “the great history of German clowning” to the United States. Although clowning figures into Germany’s cultural heritage about as much as playing Balderdash, the reporters ate it up, and the Giehanswurt clowns packed the theaters until the Chicago Reader got wise to the dupe and leaked the information. “It was like being a false French perfume,” Griffiths says, laughing. “Everybody buys you.” In other words, the group turned the audience into the unsuspecting butt of the joke.

Nonetheless, he assures us that this show is honest. He and fellow Kapoot clown Stephen Chipps have extensive training in acting and pantomime. They don’t wear colorful pants and oversized shoes like clowns at birthday parties. “We don’t even have red noses,” Griffiths defensively notes.

They instead wear black-and-white striped outfits modeled after traditional Hopi clowns’ costumes.” Griffiths explains that the Hopi clowns used to wordlessly mimic an individual’s unacceptable behavior to shame the wayward tribesman into changing.

The two clowns in Kapoot Clown Theatre (Flog and Plotz) hatch from a mysterious green box. They battle for power, with Flog generally coming out on top, though Plotz manages to turn the tables just often enough to hold viewers’ interest. The duo mirrors Matt Groening’s Akbar and Jeff characters; they bicker, but they’re destined to be together, for better or for worse.

The Kapoot clowns have been labeled postmodern; they fall into a twentieth-century European tradition of playing with audience reaction. In one skit, Griffiths’ character makes Chipps’ character cry, and when the audience laughs, Griffiths gives them an appalled look of disgust. “The audience gets caught in between. They’re kind of hesitant at that point, it’s like, ‘Well, what are we supposed to do?'” he says.

Griffiths points out that The Chicago Sun Times called the pair geniuses. “That was pretty funny; we were cracking up about that. But then,” he adds immodestly, “we wouldn’t completely discount it either.”