Kate Clugston

Lola L’Orange, Burlesque and Clown

Lola L’Orange. She came to me in a vision, she came with a series of gestures, actions and a super cool costume. But what of the tension between these two art forms? As I began to put her together in rehearsal I have come up against some intriguing questions about the nature of each performance genre; how they both complement and sometimes contradict each other. This, my latest creative venture, is proving to generate a fascinating conversation between me and myself, so I figured it would be good to put my thoughts out there and hopefully have some input from you all.

At the crux of the matter I have been trying to reconcile the interplay between Burlesque and Clown. If burlesque knowingly plays an audience with the intention to entertain and tease in a very adult space, while clown is characterised by childlike whimsy, awe and miraculous accidents, then how do they fit together? Can a performer embody both? If you forget about the Burlesque performers tendency to dip into striptease and the Clowns tendency to attend children’s parties — aspect of each art form which seem to set them wildly at odds with one another– the genesis of both these performance styles stems from vaudeville traditions of parody, playfulness, irony and political commentary.

I have trawled the internet searching for my contemporaries. There are very few. Among them is a woman from the west coast “Bombshell Betty” who fuses the art forms in ridiculous paradoy; clown attempts burlesque, stripping down in an utterly ridiculous manner, getting caught in her clothes. I laughed and laughed it’s totally slapstick, she’s embraced the clown’s accidently prone nature, the fool who fails again and again and finally succeeds, and we love her for it when she whips out some pretty hot tassel twirling. But what of the eternal child the wide eyed wanderer, the being who takes everything so literally and so personally… how would this clown survive burlesque?

Lola will squeeze as many dimensions of clown as possible into a Burlesque show, and does she even strip? This will remain to be seen as I still have questions about the male gaze and the potential ‘empowerment’ of striptease that many performers speak of. Personally I’m not really feeling it and I think I will need to find some seriously subversive angles and motivations to perform this element of burlesque.

I will continue to document the evolution of this character and I welcome your comments.

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