I Cried at a Clown Workshop
I cried at a clown workshop is the kind of sentence that should only exist as a joke. I wish that's all it was, a weird anecdote, something humiliating but harmless or a silly twist on the meaning of "Clown Workshop"
Instead, I went to a workshop teaching the art of clowning, broke down in tears and learned some uncomfortable things about myself
I went because a friend encouraged me and it sounded unusual enough to be memorable but still safe enough that I could imagine looking back on it fondly
There was also a social hope attached to it that I probably did not say out loud at the time. I liked the idea that this might lead to some kind of new friend group or at least some temporary feeling of belonging in a different social group
Getting there
The room felt wrong almost immediately
It was connected to other rooms that had also been hired out so people kept moving through or past it. That made the whole thing feel too public and even before anything had actually gone badly I already felt exposed
The people there seemed polite and there was a variety of folks there but some also felt a bit like they fit the cliché of drama people. Not in a nasty way, more that they seemed comfortable in a kind of room that I had no real instinct for. Everyone else seemed to understand the social rules of the room without having to think about them. I didn’t
At one point people reacted enthusiastically when I said I had no drama background and had not done classes before. I was the only one there like that and I think they meant it kindly but it only made me stand out more
The instructor
The instructor mattered to me more than he probably realised
He was from the same cultural background as me which made him feel a bit more familiar from the start. I had seen him the day before doing a clown performance and thought he was cool
He had also done a lot to make me feel safe signing up as someone with no experience. That made me respect him more and it also made the whole thing worse later
A lot of embarrassment is survivable when you do not care who sees it. This did not feel like that
During the workshop
The hardest part is that I was actually trying
One of the exercises involved asking and answering questions while doing this hand-slaps game and not looking at your hands. I thought I was doing okay with at least the talking part but I kept getting feedback that I was doing it wrong and I never really understood why. That was what made it painful in a deeper way. It was not just that I was bad at it, it was that I could not properly work out what I was doing wrong
That feeling kept repeating, the other people seemed to understand how far they could push an exercise, what they could try and how to engage with it without becoming awkward. I felt like I was trying to follow the rules of something everyone else already understood instinctively
Even when I was technically doing better I still felt off. If I kept losing I felt clumsy. If I kept winning I worried the other person would get upset or frustrated and that I was somehow doing it wrong in a different way. It was hard to find any version of participation that didn't feel wrong
The final exercise
The final exercise was to stand in front of the class and make funny noises
That was the task. Go up, try things and make people laugh
I tried everything I could think of. I got advice from the instructor and tried to use it. I was not being ironic about it and I was not holding back to protect myself. I was actually trying to do the thing
I still could not make it work
I could not make people laugh even after seeing them laugh at the previous people's attempts and after a while I started crying
Part of what made that moment so strange was that the people around me were for all practical purposes strangers and yet they treated me with real kindness. They were not mocking me, they were not acting irritated. If anything they seemed concerned. That should have made it easier but it mostly made me feel more exposed
There is something hard about being treated gently by people who barely know you when you already feel like you have become the problem in the room
Why it got to me
I think what upset me most was the feeling of doing all I could and still failing
That is a very specific kind of pain, it leaves you with nowhere to go. If you do not try, you can tell yourself it did not count. If you stay detached, you can preserve some distance from the result. I did not do either of those things. I tried and I still could not do the one thing that seemed to come much more easily to everyone else.
I also felt like I had made the room uncomfortable. At one point after probably the third apology the instructor said something to the effect of “Don’t apologise, it was a privilege to be able to see so much raw emotion.” It was a kind thing to say and I appreciated it but it also made me want to disappear
That was part of what made the whole thing so overwhelming. People who were effectively strangers were being genuinely warm with me and I could feel that their kindness was real but it was also humiliating because I had become someone they needed to handle carefully
The part I still feel worse about is the instructor seeing me like that. Someone I respected, someone I thought was cool and someone who had helped me feel safe enough to sign up in the first place now had to keep running his class around the fact that I was crying in the middle of it. That is still the worst part to remember
Afterwards
At the end of the workshop there were two people I especially wanted to keep spending time with, they seemed cooler and more confident than me and I wanted some kind of connection with them partly because they represented a version of social ease that I do not feel I have
I left the venue with them, we spoke a bit about maybe grabbing a drink but it fell through. I awkwardly suggested it at the wrong moment and came away feeling clingy and embarrassing
It felt like I had not only failed during the workshop itself but had then immediately managed the social aftermath badly too
The trip home
After that I took the bus home trying to hold it together
I was either crying quietly or trying not to cry at all. By the time I got home I still felt awful
The call
Once I was home I posted in the group chat asking if someone could call
Someone did and what mattered was that it was someone I respected but was not especially close to. They did not laugh at me for how silly the whole thing sounded and they didn't treat it like I was being ridiculous for caring so much
Months later they mentioned around mutual friends something along the lines of respecting that I had gone to the clown workshop at all, which also stayed with me
The call mattered because it felt like proof that someone cared. In a way it gave me the same thing that the kindness in the room had given me just with less humiliation attached to it
What stayed with me
The workshop made me think about how I ask for help and also about how I usually respond when other people I don't know very well are having a hard time
I often leave people alone unless they ask directly because I worry that stepping in might embarrass them or make them uncomfortable but when I was the one quietly falling apart what mattered most was that people were kind without making me feel stupid for it
That kindness was still hard to receive. It was comforting but it also made me feel more vulnerable. I wanted that kind of care but I hated needing it
The other thing that stayed with me is that, for all the shame attached to it, I did actually try. I went and put myself in a room I did not understand. I tried to do the exercises properly. I tried to make the final one work. I tried to connect with people afterwards. None of that turned into the experience I wanted, but it was still an attempt
The part that is funny now
With some distance, I can admit that crying at a clown workshop is funny
It has the shape of a story people should laugh at. There is something darkly ridiculous about trying to do something that was meant to be fun and silly only to end up crying because you could not make the funny noises correctly
Maybe I could've avoided most of the pain if I just said "Hey I don't know what kinda funny noises I could even do at this point. Can I finish my turn" but even without that I don't know if I regret trying