I know, without mentioning here a few phrases that we women still hear from the clown men, in the middle of 2018, about our way of acting. Here are them: - “If you continue to talk like this about yourself, you will end up exhausting your repertoire.” Karla’s comment: As if a woman’s repertory could run out. - “You girls are very aggressive!” Karla’s comment: Usually this talk comes when the clown woman scene has been talking about some kind of violence that the woman suffers, be it physical, verbal or just patriarchal. - “You just know how to talk about you?” Karla’s comment: Yes, the point is that we know how to talk about ourselves and we have no problem talking about ourselves. - “The number of clown woman is increasing a lot and women are being very ferocious in their numbers and they lose the subtlety of humor.” Karla’s comment: Well, I invite you who are reading this article now, to draw by the memory and remember the gags, reruns, comic effects or numbers of tradition of the clownery where men act. Let’s remember. How are women treated in these contexts? Stolen kisses, butts being called of inspirations, putting the woman always on lower planes, whether for comparison or in the place of stupidity and being invasive over our bodies. Children do not, these always preserved, because children clowns, at this moment, have to have the “subtlety in the mood”. The ferocious in this case is in whom? In the dramaturgy of women talking about themselves, in their various situations within a patriarchal system or in a circus dramaturgical tradition, in which the woman is inserted as a consumer of a laugh against herself ? And the last sentence, this time coming from one clown woman to another: - “You’re too fat and messy to be a clown woman!” Karla’s comment: Because of this misleading thought, we need to have a
dramaturgy of our own, because we still go through this aesthetic type of acceptance by society, and we also go through many other violence, which makes us want to talk about them on the scene. Since we are not a character, we are ourselves suspended, in a preserved nucleus, then we will talk about ourselves and our contexts. No? I believe that men also have their contexts to be told but prefer not to touch them. OK! It’s all right. Women and Men are different: moods, concepts, choices, goals... What is laughable to one is different from what is laughable to another. As a teacher, director, playwright, lecturer on this subject, I always have the public in my mind. I think it is fundamental and cathartic for the female audience to attend a show and identify themselves with what they are seeing, without being just a consumer of laughter that leads to a place of emotional vulnerability. One of the beauties of women’s dramaturgy for me is to free the “public woman” from her framed dogma and from her restricted daily life and lead her to new possibilities, choices and thoughts, with the opportunity to rethink her life. In my shows as a director and coauthor, I intensify the personality of the clown woman I am directing, so that what comes out of it as a text or action is used by any audience that watches it, whether male or female. But the fact that it is a text spoken and written by a woman, the identification by the female audience is direct, making the laughter immediate. What will not necessarily happen with the laughter of the male audience, the immediacy gives space for about 5 to 10 minutes later. I direct fat, old, black, white, young women... and we always have something to say. Everything that comes into our minds must be respected1.
I invite you to read the article: “Palhaçaria Feminina: Trajetória de investigação e construção dramatúrgica de espetáculos dirigidos por Karla Concá” (Female Clowning: Trajectory of investigation and dramaturgical construction of shows directed by Karla Concá). This article was written by Ana Borges and I and it talks about the process of female dramaturgy from four shows directed by me. It was published at the International Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women’s Worlds Congress (Electronic Records), Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil, 2017, ISSN 2179-510X) Access: <http://www.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.br/resources/ anais/1503793078_[_7688911.pdf>. Ana Borges is the clown Maroquinha, she is from Minas Gerais, currently living in Rio de Janeiro with the show “Contrata-se!” (We are hiring!) directed by me in co-authoring with her. She is also responsible for the theoretical part of the first module of the workshop that I minister and has been adopting my methodology of work inside the workshops. 1
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