*Written “by” Linda Johns, Not Clown’s producer, writer, director and star – a character in the play. The full text of Not Clown, by Steve Moore and Carlos Trevino, can be found in Theater’s Winter 2009 issue (Volume 38, Number 3)
INTRODUCING NOT CLOWN
BY LINDA JOHNS*
It's hard to remember that we were a full five years into the Unclowning before the true costs of that effort began to be discussed in the mainstream press. The rallying cry in those days—perhaps unsurprisingly—was the profligate expense of weapons and military personnel. How politely we questioned our government’s policies! Mightn’t deportations, we wondered, actually cost less in the long run than ghettos and internment? It was only years later that we publicly began to consider the Unclowning in terms of trampled civil liberties: not those of the clowns themselves—it was still too soon for that—but the civil liberties of the rest of us, which we sensed were quietly eroding in the name of national security. And finally, as the dusky days of the administration came to a close, did we begin to contemplate the subtle costs to our identity: our identity as people of tolerance, people of kindness, people capable of outrage in the face of injustice.
It was at this point that the press adopted a pose of sudden sanctimony, as if these threats to our self-image had only just come to light, like termites suddenly visible when a wall comes down. But as liberal-minded people, we knew instinctively that we had been sustaining these costs all along. Hadn't we become rather quieter, for example, in our condemnation of foreign despots and demagogues? And hadn't we allowed conservatives to become the louder, betting on their bluster to deflect attention? Yes, we were aware, but we convinced ourselves that we could pay the debt in wooden nickels and that when the smoke cleared so would our national conscience.
That faith came in part from knowing we had shown ourselves capable of moral outrage on the day it all began. A righteous and white-hot outrage not seen in this country for a generation. We weren't apathetic or unpatriotic or amoral; far from it. We'd witnessed a horrific and public act of mass murder never before seen on our soil—an act of evil burned into the minds of millions. Where were you when you heard—or saw? What were you doing when it happened? What were your interrupted plans that beautiful April morning, when a small cadre of renegade clowns singlehandedly christened Flop Friday into our national consciousness? We answer without hesitation.
Sit idly by? No, that single act of terror sparked a retaliating campaign against the perpetrators and their ilk that the world will never forget. Our response defined the course of a generation, newly wary of a longtime cultural scourge. And we were blessed—yes, blessed—with a government relentlessly intent on ridding us of the enemy both inside and outside our borders.
No. Sitting idly came later, when the buzz wore off. Sitting idly by was the hangover when we woke up to the fact that we couldn't demand a halt to the round-ups, the disappearances, and the dewiggings. After all, weren’t we the ones who had demanded that something be done? And honestly speaking, wasn’t the Clown Act precisely the retaliation we were promised? And so five quiet years dragged quietly by, made quieter by the loss of media outlets once considered clown-positive or even clown-neutral. (Who can forget the brutal police raid on the mainstream Sentinel after the publication of an uncaptioned photo of a bloody unicycle?) Five years of underground circus raids and big-top ghettos followed by a mass exodus to the Latvian "laugh camps" and clown cars stacked up and burning in the streets.
It was in this environment that I first came to political consciousness. Jefferson Street, the nation’s first and oldest clown ghetto, was a short walk from our townhouse. After school, I would often wander by the barricades, looking in wonder at the clowns on the other side, living their lives a little oddly, but not so differently than I lived mine. I could easily imagine myself there, amid the constant squawk of the claxon, the afternoon confetti showers, and the earthy stench of straw.
Being a girl given to self-reflection, the question burned: was I one of them? The adventures I describe in this play answered that question for me: not in the least. But even still, weren’t clowns in fact my equals? The question burns in me still, ten years after these events, in these days of self-congratulatory enlightenment. "Of course we’re all equals, Linda; that’s old news. Haven't we done everything possible to make amends?"
Have we? Do our words about equality and tolerance match up with our thoughts, our feelings, our actions? We want to believe that conditions for clowns have improved. We want to clap ourselves on the back and claim that the work of reconciliation is essentially done: They can vote. They have their own elevators. Those wigs are legal. “Nobody's happy about the beatings, but attitudes don't change overnight, Linda …”
In fact, they never change at all without a little effort and introspection.
Let's start by facing the fact that the dismal state of things wasn't then and isn't now about a particular administration and its hateful policies. It's not just about a few bad governmental apples who lied or made bad choices. It's about us as we are now. Yes, we admit that we were witness to terrible abuses—and did nothing. Yes, we admit that we were aware of further abuses that we never saw—and asked no questions. Yes, we admit hearing non-comical screaming in the night—only to roll over, fall asleep, and dream of happy things. It was not easy to acknowledge our failings, our inaction. It was hard work and brave work to acknowledge those things, but that work is done.
And now comes the harder work: the work of truly believing that when we look into the face of our neighbor—white, black, brown, or greased—that there's a real human being looking back at us, with feelings and desires as strange and delicate as our own.
My work on Not Clown made me believe in the power of clowns. I've seen their strength and resilience. The long years of suffering are etched on their faces—even on the faces of the happy-looking ones—but so is hope and a determination to endure, even to excel. Believe me when I say that, with a little help, clowns can accomplish incredible things.
As the shackles were put on my work at every turn, I began to experience what the clowns must have gone through every day. The play was beaten on in review after review, ghettoized as appeasement drama, and in the end my voice as an artist was very nearly abducted from me and exiled into a foreign land. I am not a clown and never can be, but I have touched and been touched by their pain and disappointment. And I have poured that pain into this play for readers and viewers like you.
Self-revelation is the strength of every true artist, and although parts of Not Clown are admittedly a bit embarrassing, I hope this play can serve as a potent lens through which fellow non-clowns can view their personal transitions from bigotry to acceptance.
The creation and production of this play was part of my journey of understanding, and as a result, this version of the script attempts to capture not only the events that inspired the play, but life as I lived it on the last night the play was staged, four years ago. It is a testament to the honesty and integrity that clowns have inspired in me that the published version of the play should take this form.
L.J.