Send in the clowns! Montreal festival celebrates the zany, bizarre and hilarious

The Montreal Clown Festival brings an annual array of zany, edgy and bizarre to the city where clowning is becoming more and more popular.

Open a car door, and a clown may exit. Open a theatre door in Montreal this week, and a clown may already be there.

The Montreal Clown Festival is running this week with shows, workshops, discussions and other events hosted across the city.

“We have a lot of circus festivals. We have a lot of theatre festivals. We have a lot of festivals, period. Why make room for the clowns? I think it’s really worth it,” said artistic director Vanessa Rigeaux. “When people come, whether you’re an artist in the festival, an audience member, or even our photographers have told me that, ‘This is like the best time I’ve had.’ So you come, you leave feeling good, which is really important.”

The gamut of events ranges from the fun to the twisted to the darkly hilarious.

“There’s a lot of different kinds of clowning that maybe isn’t that, like, really, you know, garish kind of like Ronald McDonald look, or whatever. There’s all kinds. Some have red roses. Some don’t,” said Rigeaux.

Teacher Jean Saucier will be part of the week and runs the Zani Clown School. He started clowning when he was 12 years old and began teaching five years ago.

“We all have a clown in ourselves. Everybody has a clown,” he said. “The thing is to reveal it to the public, and I really focus also to connect with the audience, because [as a] clown, there’s no fourth wall like in theatre, and we need the audience to know if we’re touching or funny.”

He runs two programs through his school, including a seven-month intensive program, where his students study over four days a week. Students research characters, learn techniques both solo and with partners, how to play off stage and other aspects of the craft.

Andraya Starnino is a student and was drawn to the art form through her past in the theatre.

“I think the clown finds you,” she said. “There’s all sorts of people, people that are just naturally goofy... Anyone can really just come and try it, because it’s just laughing and joy is a part of life, too, just as much as all the other horrible stuff.”

The festival, for Starnino and others who appreciate the bizarre and hilarious, gives Montrealers a place to celebrate a unique form of entertainment.

“I think it’s a really specific kind of art form,” said Starnino. “It’s very different from theatre because you connect with the audience. The audience is as much a part of the experience as the performer. It’s because clown is really connecting. There’s no fourth wall.”

“That’s something that is really fun about about clowns,” adds Rigeaux. “They’re allowed to break the rules, and we need to see that sometimes, what are the consequences, or what are they pushing? Or should we question the rules that we’ve been given?”

If the multiple show sell-outs at this year’s festival are any indication, Montrealers love their clowns.

Tickets for the Zani Clown and Comedy School graduation spectacle are also on sale now.

“In clown, you are who you are, and if you’re like crazy, but you can show it. If you’re intense, you can be intense. You know, all those colours can can be revealed. And so, in a way, it’s liberating to be a clown.”