Preview: Coulrophobia, Wardrobe Theatre

This week (Oct 9-13), Bristol’s brilliant puppeteers Pickled Image reprise their acclaimed comedy Coulrophobia.

Dik and Adam are clowns! They couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag, let alone a surreal cardboard world. Why are they there and what are they supposed to be doing? They know something sinister is afoot (wearing really big shoes…) and they need to get out before it’s too late. Join them on a ridiculous, anarchic, often hysterical and sometimes terrifying quest for freedom.

A high-speed rollercoaster of clowning and puppetry, Coulrophobia features slapstick, mime – and a *lot* of cardboard. The show has been a sell-out hit at puppet festivals in Portugal, Holland, Norway, Czech Republic as well as visiting Germany, Spain, Poland and Canada.

“Enough subversive humour to please the most cynical of theatre goers. Top class clowning,” said our five-star review.

Here are performers Dik Downey and Adam Blake to tell us more.

Tell us about the genesis of Coulrophobia. Who or what inspired the show – a lifelong fascination with clowns?
Adam: ‘Twas Dik who came up with the concept… I remember being on tour with Shop of Little Horrors with him and him asking me to be involved followed by pub chats about what can be in the show. I have a notepad somewhere with the words “MAGICAL LIFT< CAN GO ANYWHERE!!” written in it.
Dik: I had decided to revisit the world of traditional circus style clowns as that’s where I started. I was in a clown company in Barcelona in the mid ’80s, performing on the Ramblas and in cabarets, but eventually stopped performing in make up and becoming more naturalistic in appearance as clowns.

Does the show tap into some of our darker associations with clowns?
Adam: Theatrical clowning is about playing (not just the traditional aesthetic of nose and big shoes etc): you can play with anything, and in this show we play with the thing in society that says clowns are scary. We talked a lot early on about this dark, scary, evil side – but we’re too nice for all that, and we have just made a very stupid show.
The embodiment of the scary clown is present in Coulrophobia however in the role of Pocco, the all-seeing ringmaster of the show….. He’s a right so-and-so.
Dik: Obviously with a title like Coulrophobia (which means fear of clowns), we were going to address people’s attitudes to clowns. We wanted to make a full on, over-the-top show that would challenge people’s opinions of clowns and look at the rise of the ‘scary clown’ phenomenon that was happening and being fuelled by the press. Initially it was going to be quite extreme and violent, but like Adam says, we’re too nice.

How much do we learn about the personalities of these two clowns? Do we see the humans behind the clown facades, or do we see them simply in clown mode?
Adam: There’s a very wonky clown logic to the show and we play with lots and lots of levels. So yes, we dip into different personalities depending on the scene (love-struck, petulant teenager, skilled master, waiter); we dip into our real selves Dik and Adam; we also dip into pretending to be the actors playing the clowns in the dressing room which is also onstage.
Dik: The two clowns, Dik and Adam, are pretty recognisable as ourselves – just exaggerated to the nth degree. All our emotions are pushed further for comedic value, be it anger, confusion, joy or despair. The audience response we’ve been getting for the past four years is how the show works on so many levels, even though we didn’t intend them to be there. It seems people are investing in their own human emotional journey with this show.

Tell us why you chose this particular physical setting (two clowns trying to escape from a cardboard world).
Adam: I actually have no idea why everything is made of cardboard…. oh yes: it came from wanting to make the set small for easy travelling around the world but now it only just fits in five huge flight cases and may not fit in the Wardrobe Theatre. Ha!
But I love the props in the show, beautifully made by Emma Powell and Dik himself. It’s nice, I think, that there is just no explanation as to why it’s cardboard: people put their own take on that and give their own reasons. It adds to the slapstick element and gives more levels to play with. Making a cardboard guitar play with a sound cue, or being hit on the head by a cardboard prop but falling on the floor writhing in agony.
Dik: We originally intended to arrive at a theatre with costumes, one puppet and a glue gun – and build everything from cardboard boxes they’d provided for us. When we came to create the initial set, we realised how over-ambitious this was as everything took so long to make and the props were so good, we needed to take everything with us. There’s an aesthetic to everything being made of the same material that really suits this show. We had a fantastic costume designer in Holland, Linda Anneveld, who made strange, industrial clown costumes that really place us in this weird, claustrophobic environment.

It tells the audience that we are playing, which helps them feel less threatened when we get the guns out. We actually went on a long gun training course and discovered that the admin and faff we’d have to go through to transport a real gun that fired blanks seemed like too much work and that we could use a banana or make one out of cardboard instead.

How does the show resemble / differ from other Pickled Image offerings?
Adam: It’s a definite plunge into a mainly clown show, while still adhering to Pickled Image’s amazing style and aesthetic. The shoes themselves are a piece of art. One of the things this show offers is the fusion of the theatrical form of clowning with puppetry. Dik is such a master at puppetry that he can take the piss out of it really really well.
Dik: What’s great about Pickled Image is that we can’t be pigeonholed into any one particular style of show. We try to create shows with a strong visual image, attention to detail, humour and just enough edge to stop it being overly ‘nice’, so in that regard Coulrophobia resembles a typical Pickled Image show.
However, with Coulrophobia, it was a bit like ‘now the gloves are coming off!’ and I’ve made the show that’s been dying to come out for years. No boundaries!
We are very fortunate as Pickled Image have shows for any type of audience, either children and families, adults, on the street, in cabarets and in theatres. At the moment we are currently touring Yana and the Yeti, which is a non-language family show about being a stranger in a strange land; Christmas Tales with Granddad, which is in the Wardrobe Theatre for three weeks; Santa’s Little Trolls will be in Worthing, and walkabout reindeer characters will be performing on the streets of Weston super Mare!

Coulrophobia is at the Wardrobe Theatre from Oct 9-13. For more info and to book tickets, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/coulrophobia

Read more: Review: Coulrophobia, Tobacco Factory Theatres