Photography by Victoria Gomez
Aside from the box of red noses, bag of un-blown-up balloons and untied shoes kicked to the floor that look to be a size 25, Ely Sellers is standing in an empty room. In two hours, those rubber noses will be fastened to human noses, those balloons will be blown up, and the shoes will be laced, tied and prancing around during whatever game Sellers has his students playing.
In two hours, this empty room at Soar Creative Studios becomes the Flop School of Clown, where Sellers and his teaching partner, Patricia Dos Santos, educate students in the history, practice and philosophy of the clown. The education starts early today though, because his first student, a curious writer from the Oak Cliff Advocate, is already here, and class is now in session.
“You say to a clown, go from A to B,” Sellers explains. “The clown says, ‘Okay,’ and goes over to C.”
To Sellers, this is the essence of the clown. Subvert expectations at all times, and get the audience to pay attention to each step in your journey to doing so. It’s something of a lifetime project for the 44-year-old, who’s owned the “clown” label for quite some time.
“I was a class clown, willing to do anything to get a laugh,” he recalls. “I was avoiding getting bullied. It’s better for them to think I’m funny than weird, right?”
In high school, Sellers turned to music, playing guitar and drums in various local bands. He would invite thespians to act out scenes in front of the stage as he played, and eventually bringing on clowns to perform alongside him. The interest was immediate, in 2017, he acted on it.
He signed up for Circus Freaks, a now-closed clown school that used the same space as the Flop School of Clown.
“My first day in there, they put me through the shit, and I loved it,” Sellers says. “I kept going back and they used to ask me, ‘Are you a crazy person? You just walked in here off the street?’ I didn’t realize at the time, but they were complimenting me. I realized I was a clown my whole life.”
In those first few classes, Sellers was singled out to perform solo comedy in front of a crowd of more experienced regulars. It took a learning curve, but his teeth-cutting paid off with more and more laughs each day.
Circus Freaks didn’t make it out of the pandemic, leaving a clown school-sized hole in Dallas. That’s where Dos Santos came in.
She’s a veteran clown of 20 years, first learning the trade while in university in Brazil, her native country. When she’s not a clown, she tends to be accompanied by her 17-year-old son, Kim, who helps translate for her. But when she is, everything is fluid. Facial expressions, props and a healthy physicality communicate everything Dos Santos needs to get across with ease.
“The world is different,” she says. “You need to live in a box. You need to pay bills. You have to have a system. The clown has another.”
With clowning being such a niche, I asked when they felt comfortable enough in their skills to start teaching beginners.
“When? Or what I felt?” Dos Santos asked for clarification.
“Both,” I said.
Sellers let out a chuckle. I didn’t understand why, but then I realized.
Dos Santos’ question gave me two options, an A or a B. I said both. I said C. Was the clown indoctrination working?
To Sellers and Dos Santos, clowning is a form of artistic expression. How must it feel to think of something as so beautiful, yet it’s one of many people’s biggest fears?
“When you say clown, they think ‘HONK HONK,’” Sellers says with a flourish of his arms and sounds that couldn’t be made into onomatopoeia. “Those are kind of aggressive, they get really close really fast. Society thinks typically. There’s certain areas where people aren’t awake to possibilities of different kinds of clown.”
But what are the possibilities of different kinds of clown?
Flop specializes in theatrical clown, a more traditional, European style of clowning that bears similarities to the court jesters of olde. The theatrical clown is expression and character oriented, with many students coming to study for upcoming auditions in standard acting roles.
Similar to theatrical, red nose clowning evokes a similar dramatic turn of the clown. The nose is often referred to as a mask, the world’s smallest mask, or the neutral mask, all of which enable the clown to separate themselves from the character.
Influential French acting teacher Jacques Lecoq is famously quoted on this technique, saying “The neutral mask is a way of understanding performance, not a way of performing.”
Theatrical and red nose clowning are older forms of the medium. Contemporary clowning is probably most people’s image of a clown. This form can involve entirely different methods, with a focus on up-close audience interaction, ripe for nightmares.
“I want the students to realize what kind of clown they are,” Sellers says. “I can’t give them any answers, but I can help them.”
Sellers helps guide the budding clowns on their journey with a set of interactive games played during classes.
“I got ‘Sneaky Freeze,’ ‘Mirrors,’ ‘Bug Funeral,’ ‘Go For A Ride,’ ‘Meet In The Park,’ ‘Pose/Repose,’ ‘Where Are You At? There You Are,’ ‘Sing and Look,’ that’s where you could sing or do poetry and you have to look at everyone. If you’re not looking at them, then they slowly raise a ping pong ball and if the ping pong ball gets above their head, then they throw it at you. ‘Expressions,’ we do different expressions. ‘Bus Stop,’ is fun. It gives everyone a chance to rotate in different characters. They’re all on a bus stop and when I’ll be the bus driver, and I’m like, ‘honk honk’ and then I take one or two of them with me and drop a couple off. It’s a lot of fun. ‘Invisible String,’ ‘Woosh,’ that’s the woosh ball, you know woosh then zap. It’s a weird one. ‘Jump Rope,’ ‘Circle Jump,’ ‘Opposites,’ it’s just weird stuff.”
For a myriad of games, Sellers and Dos Santos take turns leading the students, creating the ultimate teaching yin and yang.
“I’m a stranger, I’m not American,” Dos Santos says. “But I’m very comfortable with him.”
“She’s the funniest one. We were all on stage, and supposed to be doing something, and Patricia gets distracted by someone in the crowd and goes over to the table,“ Sellers recounts. “I’m just like, ‘This is the best part of the show,’ I just want to see it happen.”
When they’re not teaching, the two still make plenty of time to perform. Dos Santos just wrapped up a brief theater tour in South Korea, while Sellers played at an all-clown comedy night at the Stomping Ground Comedy Theater.
Enough talking about old performances, their latest is just about to start. There’s a group of about 10 waiting just outside the door for the scheduled Wednesday night class to begin. The two put on their noses, blow up the balloons and lace their shoes, before greeting their pupils for the evening.
The teachers ask the 10 to sit around in a circle and start getting to know each other before launching into games. Just a few minutes into this, an eleventh arrives and takes her seat in the circle. Sellers decides she should kick things off, and asks her the question that he always starts his lessons with.
“What is the meaning of a clown?” Sellers asks.
She looks puzzled.
“Is this the diva dance class?” she asks.
“No, this is clown school.” Sellers responds.
“Well I can do that too. I’m a nurse, I do that every day.” she says.
The room erupts with laughter. Maybe she’s been a clown her whole life.
