A portrait of the artist as a young clown

ART WHORE

Samaira and I pre-gamed the clown show at Joystick. This bar on Edgewood is arcade-themed and draws a niche crowd in the twilight hours. A man named Klass hovered by our table, droning about his wiLd weekend: Shaky Knees Music Festival, followed by a rave, a rave, another rave. Two women invited me to their game of Jenga. Samaira joined a 4-person Mario Kart tournament projected on the brick wall. We figured if we time it right, we’ll squeeze in a song when karaoke starts.

Samaira asked what the clown show would be like. I knew half the duo, Miles Calderon. He’d gone to school for this, in France. So I told her: expect art.

For dinner, she had fries and wine. I had fries and beer. I always say I want to give beer a try -- such a summer drink. Samaira reminded me: I get beer every other time. I’m no longer “giving it a try.” I just am a beer drinker.

We didn’t finish the fries. Klass kept pecking at mine. I left the remainder for the Mario Karters. No time for karaoke; we had to get to the theater.

The marquee at Limelight Theater didn’t glow that night. That’s my excuse for leading us right past it, into adjacent lofts. We rode the elevator up and down four levels before realizing we were just in an apartment building with shit security. Samaira took over navigation, and soon we stood in a theater lobby packed with Atlanta Fringe Festival attendees. We checked in for our show: “Mr. Cardboard.”

The black box theater was intimate. The stage was but six feet from our seats. We giggled in our metal chairs. Then, lights off, everyone shut up, show started.

Levi Meltzer emerged first, portraying the precocious Huxley in a blue hoodie with a cup attached to his head and perhaps Nutella smeared thickly around the mouth. Dialogue with an off-stage father revealed this freakish child’s overactive imagination. Huxley summoned to the stage Mr. Cardboard, Miles in a red cap, black mustache, blushed cheeks, and gorgeously wide green overalls. Mr. Cardboard announced himself loudly and proudly, an imaginary friend of the theatrical variety. In a very funny sequence, Mr. Cardboard pulled objects from his overalls & did clumsy tricks to prove himself. I wondered, how did those trinkets stay in his pants? How were the overalls so wide? He sang high-pitched and accented, and Samaira leaned over to whisper, “Is that a Drake song?” I whispered back, “Yep, Passionfruit.”

Miles later told me: “The character is very distant from yourself, and the clown is very close.”

“Clown is all about letting people see you and your spirit amplified. It’s like, who’s the real idiot that exists inside of you. You know, what is the person that people make fun of behind your back? You’re embodying that, in a way. Mr. Cardboard, there’s some distance between me and him, but it’s always Miles doing it.”

Mr. Cardboard whisked Huxley to the whimsical land of cardboard, which operates on dream logic. The performance was wonderfully surreal and terribly funny. The audience was roped in for prop purposes and milked for memories. Miles told me: “Levi and I talked a lot about emotional manipulation of the audience, and we’re almost doing a parody of sincerity, but we’re not doing it in a way that punches down at it. At the school, Carlo [an instructor] talks a lot about leaving the audience room to dream… And so that is often what people are seeing. The jokes are always happening in their mind. And if you explain too much, or you underline it, then it’s just one thing, and it’s not very funny. But if you give a lot of room for ambiguity, and you imagine that the thing you’re asking them to believe in is a very big ask, then it gives more room for them to dream, and have their vision of what’s going on, cause that’s gonna be more impressive.”

A key fact: Mr. Cardboard, being made of cardboard, can’t get wet. He is nonetheless prone to dry weeping, back pressed to the wall and everything, pulling off the red cap to, hilariously, reveal another red cap beneath. Another fact: there is a taped-up cardboard box Huxley Absolutely Cannot Touch. Miles and Levi are both, I believe, familiar with Chekhov and therefore his gun, and therefore those key facts came back with a bang. I won’t spoil more, as this is a show you just have to catch live. (See it on tour!)

There were poignant and beautiful bits too. I left thoroughly delighted. Miles said they sourced inspiration from “a lot of movies in this childhood fantasy genre.” Like “My Neighbor Totoro,” on which he said, “I remember watching that in the research process for this and being like wow nothing happens, like there’s very little plot, it’s very atmospheric, but doesn’t feel unsatisfying. It really just has an emphasis on beauty.” Indeed, the childhood fantasy portal thing comes through. Seeing “Mr. Cardboard” felt like leaving my inner child unattended in Wonderland with a pack of cigarettes.

I met Miles at Candler Park a week later. I had lingering questions, which he patiently answered. How does he get those overalls on? One leg at a time. They’re held up by an extendable broom handle. The objects inside stay in a fanny pack.

I’d forgotten: golf courses eat up much of the park. We walked in meandering loops through adjoining neighborhoods. A man blasting parodic electronica rode by on a bike, with an attached wagon holding his dog and a pirate flag. A landscaper clinging by rope to the tallest tree chainsawed off branches. One fell mere feet from us. The landscaper’s truck had a NY vanity plate that read THE BOSS. Miles told me about clown school. It had been no joke.

He and Levi met at École Philippe Gaulier studying classic melodrama, Shakespeare, Chekhov, alongside clowning. They didn’t pair up til nearly the end.

On getting in, Miles said, “Phillippe the teacher has this philosophy where it’s like no audition, because he’s there to teach you. Why would he expect you to know something if he’s there to teach you? But also it’s pretty rigorous, and not everybody finishes it.”

I wondered what made it rigorous.

“The other teacher there, Carlo, described it as the stage being ‘hot.’ So Phillippe sits there with a drum, and you get on stage, and if you’re boring, he hits the drum, and says ‘goodbye immediately.’ Or he’ll like hit the drum, and he’ll be like [French accent] ‘Alors, do we think this is the best thing we never saw in our whole life, or … horrible? It’s like okay, so your daughter comes back with him, and says “Father, I am going to marry him.” Do you say “I’m going to kill you” or, “oh I’m so happy!” Which one is it?’ He asks all your peers, ‘Okay, do we think he has the biggest balls? How big are his balls? Are they bicycle-sized? Are they as big as a bus? The Eiffel tower?’”

“He’s being playful. He’s not trying to break you down. He’s trying to, like, get an impulse out of you. He wants you to feel that what you did was shit so you don’t do it again.”

There are no mirrors and no video allowed inside. Instead, fellow students are called up to impersonate each others’ performances. Miles called it, “really good sensitive training, really good awareness of how the audience is feeling at all times because if you’re up there and the air is dead and no one’s laughing, the drum is coming soon.”

I learned he started college as a chemistry major, switched to film and philosophy, and nurtured his interest with Improv Athens, a troupe at the University of Georgia that performs far more often than similar college improv groups. Miles said, “I knew I was interested in alternative comedy and physical comedy, and heard that people had a background in Clown, and that specifically they had a background from this school, and so I was like ok, I guess I’ll do that.”

He’d done stand-up too. There, joke-stealing is a bigger thing. You can’t do that so much with Clown. Your performance is filtered through You. You can’t be something you’re not. If someone else does Your Schtick better, well, that’s on you.

This last Saturday, Samaira and I again went to Joystick. At midnight, the bar swarmed with bodies. We peeked into the karaoke room: the audience spilled out of the shadows into the hallway. We wouldn’t get to perform for an hour, probably. I looked longingly at the frosty IPA in the bartender’s fridge. I wouldn’t order it. We left very soon for the bar across the street, Sister Louisa's Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium, AKA Church The Bar. It was fun there. We take our joy, our play, our games seriously.

In the UBER, I told Samaira about an old Tumblr post that explained why some people are scared of clowns. The human brain is good at detecting lies, and when people pretend, we can tell, and we don’t trust them. If someone who’s sad tries too hard to appear happy, the way bad clowns do, it’s grotesque. Sad people should be sad clowns. Happy people should be happy ones. Even in the performance, you have to be yourself. Samaira said I should write an article about that. I thought that was a great idea.

P.S. Levi and Miles are fundraising for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival part of their tour. You can support them here

And check out more of the show here