A Clown Walks into the Crowd
Image by Austin Ruffer, courtesy of The Public Theater.
“I’m lonely.”
The words rang out into The Public’s Anspacher Theater with a tremendous weight as the laughing audience immediately fell silent. The unknown theatergoer’s deep and raspy voice indicated the potential for a severe authority in his delivery, but instead, he spoke meekly and with uncertainty, as if the words coming out of his mouth were completely foreign to him. Although an earnest trepidation remained audible in his voice, he continued sharing, leaning into a vulnerability that is rarely seen from masculine-presenting figures in such a public setting.
Julia Masli, a self-described clown from Estonia, has masterfully crafted her performance piece Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha to resituate the theater as a space for communal healing. Adorned with the limbs of a mannequin comically placed over her own and dressed in a makeshift gown of sweeping blue fabric accommodating her additional plastic limbs, Masli leans into levity to disarm the audience, but her humor is punctuated by her perpetually curious demeanor and legitimate yet funny attempts to solve the problems of audience members. Masli randomly selects audience members to present their problems, subverting the rigid structures of theater, surrendering her control as a performer, and prioritizing the audience over any set agenda, plotline, or artistic objective. While Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha is technically a one-woman show demonstrating Masli’s command of entertainment value, artistic ingenuity, and charisma, Masli’s greatest talent falls outside the scope of traditional art forms and is rooted in her ability to foster connection.
Image by Cameron Whitman, courtesy of The Public Theater.
Masli’s performance blurs the delineations of medium and genre between a clown, a theater artist, and a performance artist. A clown is most commonly regarded as a comedic entertainer, while a theater artist is considered an actor. Although both clowns and theater artists could be classified under the performance artist umbrella, typically, the title of performance artist is reserved for those who perform in a fine art context, such as at a gallery, a museum, or in public space. Whether the setting is a birthday party, a Broadway theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or a sliver of sidewalk in Union Square, all performance has the same potential function of turning strangers, whether it be three or three hundred, into a collective body having a shared experience. Masli, as a clown performing at a theater, exemplifies the arbitrary nature of definitions contingent on superficial qualifiers, such as the setting being nothing but a means of creating divisions and preventing the widespread formulation of community around art.
Physical distance often denotes perceived value in artistic settings. Visitors to the Louvre must view the bulletproof glass-encased Mona Lisa from 3 meters away, and while tangible threats have been made to canonical artworks across the world, such distance inherently evokes a lack of trust. Performance artists like Marina Abramović and Yoko Ono challenged the hierarchical structure of the fine art world by introducing performance art pieces that hinged upon not only the participation of the spectator but a complete collapse of physical distance. Ono’s seminal work, Cut Piece, was guided by the touch and direct interference of the audience upon Ono’s clothing and body. While the audience served a crucial role in advancing the performance, Ono remained the subject, with the state of her decimated wardrobe serving as a record of interaction. Rather than inviting the audience to come to her, Masli subverted the role of performer and onlooker, eliminating all physical barriers and any perceived separations by literally entering the crowd. From this position, Masli harnessed the power structure of traditional theater by granting equal perceived importance to every audience member she approached. In turn, Masli empowered and grounded everyone in their shared humanity. By taking genuine interest and providing a platform for audience members to workshop their problems and even offer each other resolution, Masli operated as a conduit, turning a spotlight and a microphone into a mirror, allowing the audience to reflect and recognize themselves in others.
Image by Cameron Whitman, courtesy of The Public Theater.
At its most altruistic function, art can inspire social change, sparking important conversations and expanding perspectives. Yet in reality, there is little incentive to converse or even interact with strangers when consuming art. In Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, however, Masli forces the issue; the entire purpose of the piece is an exercise in collective problem solving. Participants are not just pawns in Masli’s precomposed story but actors with the agency to genuinely impact the outcome of the piece. This trust Masli puts into her audience turns the performance into a literal group effort, effectively creating a microcosm of what’s possible when people invest in the well-being of one another. Throughout the performance, a woman with neck pain was given a neck massage for nearly an hour, a tired man was given a bed, a woman in need of a haircut got bangs, and a lonely man made friends with one clown and about two hundred strangers.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha will be on view at The Public Theater through June 29th, 2025.
