Geoff Sobelle on Clown Show at EIF: 'a portrait of America as a falling apart circus'
As he prepares for the European premiere of Clown Show at the Edinburgh International Festival, New York theatre-maker Geoff Sobelle tells Joyce McMillan why clowning may offer the best way of portraying the contemporary American psyche
In his online biography, the New York-based theatre-maker Geoff Sobelle describes himself as a “dedicated absurdist”, who “began as a magician, continued as an actor, and arrived as a clown.” Born in Los Angeles in the 1970s, he was raised on the intense physical comedy of old black-and-white films, started experimenting with magic and illusion as a schoolboy, and went on to study theatre at university in California.
It was when he went to Paris in the mid-1990s, though, to study at the Le Coq School – world-renowned as a training-ground for clowns and mime artists – that he felt he had found the theatre language and creative partners he needed; and over the years, Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe audiences have come to know his brand of intensely visual and physical theatre – hilarious, disturbing and beautiful – from early Fringe shows All Wear Bowlers (2005) and Flesh And Blood & Fish And Fowl (2010), to Edinburgh International Festival productions Home and Food, in 2018 and 2022.
Recently, though, Sobelle has been disturbed to find that the idea of the “clown show”, so central to his theatre, has become an intensely political one in the United States, subtly changing its meaning in the process. “People say it all the time now,” says Sobelle, “that our politics has become ‘a clown show’, by which they mean something chaotic, ridiculous, embarrassing, grotesque; and of course it’s always been common in political satire to portray politicians as ‘clowns’.
“Yet as an artist who actually makes clown shows – or shows that often involve those elements – I feel that that political use of the word shows a deep misunderstanding of what really happens in a clown show, which is something very meticulously crafted, and rehearsed down to the last detail.
“There’s an interesting tension there; and although at the time I was working on a different idea entirely, in the months before the 2024 presidential election I started to feel that I needed to investigate this idea – not particularly for the benefit of audiences, at first, but really for my own sanity.”
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The result is Sobelle’s Clown Show, commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival, and set to make its European debut at the newly-reopened King’s Theatre on 27 August, after a short July run in New York. The show is described as a “contemporary portrait of America as a falling-apart circus”, where the acrobats and jugglers have long since left, leaving the clowns in charge. “This is not satire,” says Sobelle. “There’s no clown that plays Trump or any other politician. It’s more a snapshot of the American psyche as a kind of fever-dream.” And if Sobelle is fascinated by these complex clown-figures – full of skill and virtuosity, he says, but at the service of what? – he is equally haunted by the idea of the circus itself, and its unique place in American history.
“We took the European model,” says Sobelle, “and then in the 19th century PT Barnum developed it into an American form that was maybe the first real expression of American identity, a kind of juggernaut of entertainment, shaped by the capitalist economic machine. Even the stripes on the circus tent remind me of the American flag. And now, it’s become as if Americans know nothing else except how to put on a show. You can give the performance – but it might cost you your soul.”
Sobelle insists, though, that he and his eight fellow-performers – plus a four-strong creative team working on props, set, costumes, sound, and lighting – are not interested in providing answers or conclusions on where the United States goes from here. “I lived in Berlin for a while,” says Sobelle, “and I noticed that when a German speaks, they have to know what they want to say before they start, so that they can arrange the sentence with the verb at the end.
“With Americans, though, it’s the opposite – we speak in order to find out what we want to say. And that’s what we’re doing in this show. It’s about giving the audience a space to dream, and to let the show nourish their imaginations.”
And in that sense, Sobelle is delighted to be back at the EIF, in this year when director Nicola Benedetti – supported by a substantial increase in funding from Creative Scotland – has created a programme, under the title All Rise, that offers some strong critical reflection on the story of the United States, as it celebrates its 250th anniversary.
“First of all, I am so grateful to the Edinburgh International Festival for commissioning Clown Show, and making this work possible,” says Sobelle. “There’s huge pressure on philanthropic funding in America at the moment, as trusts step up to fill the gaps in areas like health and science created by government cuts; and my work has never been the easiest to fund.
“And then there’s the Fringe, where I just learned so much, at Aurora Nova, watching companies like Derevo and Theater Fabrik. I didn’t use terms like “total theatre” and “devised work” before I came to the Fringe, and it was here that I learned that they described the kind of work I was doing.
“And yes, I think that despite all the changes, the Fringe still has the power to be that space. It brings together so many young people who want to make theatre, and who thumb the nose at commercialism; and although there are places all over the world where people come together in sweaty little cellars to see shows that might change their lives, for me, Edinburgh is still the absolute pinnacle of that.”
So is Sobelle’s latest show – troubled and troubling as ever – going to be a tough watch for festival audiences? “Well it’s very funny” says Sobelle. “It’s a tight 90-minute piece, and it’s also a very musical show, with some wonderful musicians in the cast.
“It also looks fantastic; ever since I started out as a young magician, I’ve been making things, and working with people who make things, and I still love that idea of handmade, home-made spectacle, often created using old technologies that once really fired people’s imaginations.
“The threat of fascism is not all that funny, of course. But I’m an American, so I’m condemned to be optimistic. In theatre, there’s the fact that people do come together, as human beings in the same room, to look at these things; to reflect on how it feels to live in a world where everything is being gobbled up, packaged and sold. And in itself, that coming together should give us hope, shouldn’t it? Yes, even in these times, I think it should.”
Clown Show is at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, 27-30 August
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