Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood

With Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood, Geert Belpaeme questions the figure of the clown. Contemporary clowning is often reduced to a game with petrified shapes and figures with a matching psychology. A typical example is the tragedy of the crying clown, as a melancholic celebration of failing people. However, clowning, like theater, is a performative practice with the potential to question existing relationships.

In Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood, Geert Belpaeme wants to return to the core of clowning. It will be a choreographic deconstruction of the figure of the clown with the intention of once again exploring this rich potential. He uses clowning to explore new definitions of what it means to be human: how can we take a less aggressive position among other organisms, living systems, ecosystems and objects?

But how do you investigate that in the theater, a place that is precisely defined by the human gaze? How can you perform non-human relationships with a human body? Geert Belpaeme believes that the clown practice, with its inherent openness towards spaces, objects, relationships… offers an opening in this regard.