Goetheanum | A Place for Lightness

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A Place for Lightness

Laughter is an experience of the spirit, and since September 2021 there has been a working group for clowns at the Section for Speaking and Musical Arts. Who should know better about humour than those whose vocation it is to make people laugh. Gilda Bartel asked about their work and thoughts.

What happens when laughing, that is, in your workshops?

Catherine Bryden, alias Carrottini "Laughter is an instant holiday," said Milton Berle. And Angela Hopkins asks in the film ‹Annika›: "When was the last time you laughed? Really heartily laughed?" So when?

During a clown theatre workshop we laugh a lot. Sometimes we laugh so much that everything hurts, and we gasp for air during uncontrollable fits of laughter. We giggle, chuckle, grin and smile – a knowing or also curious or awkward smile. The most moving is when someone bursts out laughing and we can see that the person has no idea why laughter has taken over their being. Then we laugh even more. Humour is a gift. During the first warm-up exercises of a workshop, I as the moderator consciously and actively divert participants from being funny or making others laugh. The word "clown" puts people under pressure to be silly or foolish. It involves images of slapstick tricks and big shoes. But that is not the theatre clown. Our clowns can sometimes be foolish, but that is not intentional. Laughter in a workshop cannot be planned or arranged, but we can create space for it, providing the tone and mood for warm-hearted and loving laughter. Since there is no place for sarcasm in our clown world, it is not our intention to cultivate cold or intellectual laughter. When we expect laughter or try to be funny, we invite an uncomfortable silence into the room.

The beauty of the relationship between humour and laughter is their intangibility and unpredictability. When people laugh, I experience movement, expansiveness and lightness. When I laugh or watch people laughing, I feel deep levels of relief and connection. The columnist Fred Dennehy explores this further in his column "Laughing and Weeping." Rudolf Steiner saw – as did Socrates in the case of comedy and tragedy – an intimate relationship between laughing and weeping. Laughter usually manifests as a series of staccato exhalations, followed by a long inhalation. Weeping is the opposite – a series of broken inhalations, followed by a long sigh. These processes express what Steiner observed as the astral body – the bearer of emotions such as joy and pain, grief, terror and wonder. In the experience of laughter, the astral body – to use Steiner’s term – withdraws from the physical and expands. It expresses an "inner liberation" of the spirit. In the case of weeping, the opposite happens. It "presses" on the physical and contracts in a gesture of "inner strengthening." Steiner’s depiction points us to a perhaps surprising insight: that laughter is an experience of the spirit. When I observe the transformations in people who have laughed, I have no doubt about it.

This text is an excerpt from an article published in the weekly journal ‹Das Goetheanum›. You can read the full article on the weekly journal’s website.