10 AUGUST 6-12, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | New Clowns on the Block DENVER IS CLOWNING AROUND LIKE NEVER BEFORE. BY GRACE WIL SON A clown with a cartoonish zit instead of a red nose awakes to a red feather sprouting from their crotch. The feather twitches; it wants things. At fi rst it’s fun, but things devolve. The clown falls in love with Jesus, acciden- tally kills Jesus, becomes Jesus, all to the sound of live violin. So goes the plot of “Featherbrain,” an award-winning clown show by Madly Forsyth. Forsyth — known as “Madly Regular” to her fellow clowns — admits it’s hard to con- vey what she does. The common perception of clowning (or “clown,” in clown-speak) remains stuck in a fog of horror villains and birthday party misadventures, not avant- garde art about liberation, desire and reli- gious trauma. “I can’t tell people I’m a clown; I usually say that I do comedy,” she says. Forsyth is an ex-Mormon who left the church as a teenager, a theme that often fi nds itself in her work. She fi rst tried creating stand- up routines, but it wasn’t the freedom she was looking for. “Stand-up felt like I was put- ting on this beauty mask. … If you bomb or mess up, you’re doing it wrong,” she says. Kii Clark, a silent clown known as Skeleton Kii, started her path to clown while at work. “I literally walked off the graduation stage [of a musical theater program] into a grey cubicle and said, ‘I hate this,’ so I started watching clown vid- eos at my desk,” she recalls. Meanwhile, classically trained clown Buba Ba- sishvili came to clown after feeling limited by mime as a member of the Republic of Georgia’s state pantomime group. “We’ve seen mimes trapped in walls; that is what happened to the theater itself, philosophically,” he says. Forsyth, Clark and Basish- vili’s stories are a variation on a common theme of come- dians and artists looking for a release and fi nding clown. The past fi ve years have seen an explosion of modern clown, clown-prov and avant- clown in the Denver performing arts and comedy scenes, says Soleil Kohl, a clown and physical theater artist. “Maybe they don’t fi t into stand-up,” Kohl says. “They want to perform, but they feel like it’s all too rigid, and now there’s this modern clown move- ment that is all about being honest, being vul- nerable on stage, about heightening things that are uniquely you on stage and making those funny — a much more democratized system of performance as opposed to in an improv theater.” Last year was the fi rst year the Denver Fridge Festival had a clown genre. This year, one in every three acts was clown, 31 in total. A clown’s ability to subvert social norms gives power to the fool to mock the king, a mirror to shine back the absurdity of our everyday lives and freedom for everyone — performers and audience alike — to laugh from the deepest pits of their bellies. The Performers Forsyth’s fi rst clown class was in 2023 with Nick Trotter, a long-time Denver-based clown and head of street theatre troupe Circo De Nada. Trotter started the class with an exercise called “magnets.” During magnets, members of the class stand in a circle and make eye contact with someone across the circle, looking at one an- other without putting on any expression. The exercise fosters a central tenet of clown: there is no fourth wall between you and an audience. “I felt the need to smile,” Forsyth recalls. “To just look at someone without any face, I felt I was being so rude, that they were thinking I’m awful … and I realized that it’s not the case. I don’t have to put on anything to make anyone else comfortable.” One of Forsyth’s frequent collaborators and friends, clown and writer Mathea Tan- ner, also remembers the exercise’s impact on her. “Ever since I walked out of that class, I realized how much we spend our days doing what is expected of us and how often we’re masking,” Tanner says. “The absurdity frees you as the performer. “Once you get on stage, dressed like a cat with an eye-patch over one eye, you realize that, maybe, you should put stuff into per- spective,” she continues. “We’re constantly stressed out about stuff that we made up as a society. 401ks? Borders? None of it’s real! We made it all up; go make up something fun.” A clown’s lack of deference to social cues gives them the ability to invert power, ac- cording to Forsyth. “It’s very necessary for the culture,” she says. “There needs to be someone to point out the absurd things the king is saying.” “It’s resistance,” Basishvili adds. This is not to say that there are not also strong and varied opinions on what is and is not clown. There are clown schools, like L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Nice, France, and Dell’Arte In- ternational School of Physical Theatre in California, that fo- cus on extending the ancient lineage of mask work and commedia dell’arte, the his- torical basis of clown, through multi-year conservatories. There are also modern clowns, like Courtney Pau- roso, who played a sex-robot named Vanessa 5000 and spit into a consenting audi- ence member’s mouth dur- ing a show. Melo Acevedo, a Denver- based clown and professional entertainer who works as a presenter for the charity video game marathon se- ries, Games Done Quick, had his introduction to clown through a workshop by Pau- roso. He also recently fi nished up a three-month intensive at Lecoq, where two students shaved their heads, and sev- eral stopped coming to class. He credits both with further- ing his clown journey. While clowns are often thought of as jug- glers or acrobats, the technical skill is in service of connection, Acevedo says. “Modern clowns are just our current expression of how we con- nect with an audience,” he explains. “What is impressing people is being seen in a world that is both so connected and so isolated.” “We are in a nonchalance epidemic,” says Kohl. “It comes from growing up … in a surveillance state where anything can be online. I need to be cool and neutral, and then no one can make fun of me and nothing can happen to me.” Clown is the opposite of nonchalance. Often relying on exaggerated physical move- ment — think Charlie Chaplin or Lucille Ball — a clown is a larger-than-life presence, and purposefully ridiculous. This earnestness is what drew Alice Gillette to the form. Gillette, a clown who cofounded and produces for Denver-based clown troupe Idiot Theatre, says clown was the name for the connection she al- ways wanted in stand-up, but wasn’t able to achieve through that form. “When I’m my most vulnerable self … something really special happens. I’m holding up a mirror, and we’re able, for a second, to remember to be ourselves, and not be so scared,” she says. Take a scene in “Gulp!” a work in progress performed during “Freaky Weeky,” a week- long clown festival held in Denver in March that is produced by CULTURE continued on page 12 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Skeleton Kii Clark’s clown persona attempts to answer a phone call from her foot. GRACE WILSON FOR WESTWORD Madly Regular Forsyth (left) and Mathea Tanner embody their drunk-and-in-love 1950s housewife clown duo, Betty and Carol. GRACE WILSON FOR WESTWORD
