What to expect

Coming along to a Clowning Around Workshop means spending some time exploring your connection to your playfulness and seeing what happens next! 

Clowning can be many different things and these workshops are about relaxing into who you are and playing with what you find there. You will have a go at a kind of improvisation that involves playfully sharing your responses to what's going on around you. This involves things like copying, exaggerating, stillness and eye contact, which can build up to improvised 'scenes'. The clowning you explore here is a practice in playfulness, in a similar way that going to the gym is a practice in fitness, and doesn’t have to be a finished product to share in a formal circus or theatre setting. What emerges can be poignant, engaging, ordinary, and is often extremely funny.

These workshops are for all adults, you do not need a performance background, and will usually be based in Norwich. There will be the chance to wear a red nose and some costume to help to bring out the play but there’s no squirty flowers, big shoes or scripted routines. With a big emphasis on the importance of looking after yourself, there will always be the option to sit out an activity or adapt it to make it comfortable. Group sizes are usually limited to twelve to help enable easy play.

About Iona May-zing

After enjoying clowning for years and years, I began facilitating Clowning Around Workshops in 2023. This started out as 'In and out of (self) love' workshops in partnership with the incredible S.H.I.N.E. yoga and creative wellbeing, and has developed into a variety of different Clowning Around Workshops that I sometimes facilitate on my own and sometimes in collaboration with others.  

Clowning has always been a big part of my life and I am in the process of completing Clowning Facilitator Training with Nose to Nose. I have mainly 'done' clowning in a workshop setting and these experiences have informed my poetry and my performances. My poetry collection, 'Breaking Down Loudly' (Verve Poetry Press), uses clowning to talk about grief, family, and friendship. The collection forms the bases of my one-woman show about my mother's death, which I've performed at The Garage’s ‘Scratch Night’ (in Norwich) and at the Alma Theatre (in Bristol). I've also presented on how clowning can inform Life Writing, at the Creative Bridges conference. In another part of my life, I've been a Religious Studies teacher in Primary and Secondary Schools and my love of play and storytelling definitely informed my teaching style!

Clowning has brought me so much joy over the years and has helped me to get to know myself better. I’m eager to share this feeling with others