“Labor Relations, Sad Clowns”
This paper aims to explore what happens to our sense of comic performance when we choose to foreground clowning as a form of work. Beginning with a review of autobiographies by clowns such as Emmett Kelley, Oleg Popov, Coco and Grock, the paper will investigate the frictions and continuities that emerge between the demands of humor and the practicalities of employment, management, contracts, and coping with work-related injury and fatigue. Focusing on the labor of clowning supposedly elided by the costume and make-up, the paper will consider the transformation of the entertainment industry in the mid-nineteenth century, and the effects of industrial change on both forms of performance and conceptions of comedy.