Clowning’s Not Dead: A Chat with Alice Gillette

If you’re like I was, you may hear the word “clown” and think red nose, big shoes, squirting flower. Personally, I didn’t even know clowns were still around; in my mind, I had relegated the term to an obsolete profession of yesteryear. So, when I was handed the opportunity to speak with Alice Gillette, a Denver-based clown, about her upcoming projects, I leapt at the chance because how often do you get to say you talked to a clown?

But in an unexpected and welcome turn, what I learned from my conversation with Gillette (and those closest to her), not just about her new shows Meat Show in Space and Just the Tip, but also about how clowning changed her take on life, will likely stick with me for the rest of mine.

Pictured: Gillette portraying her character ‘Meat Show’

When asked about how she came up with the character of Meat Show, Gillette told me that he started from a Mr. Duff (of The Simpsons) costume she found at the local Goodwill bins when shopping for a character for Kickstand Comedy’s They Came From the Bins in 2019. While the original costume “smelled like dead things and onions,” her roommate happened to have the exact same costume in better condition. Gillette took this as a sign, and from five dollars, four days, a Bernie Sanders wig, and a dream, Meat Show was born. 

The original concept behind Meat Show was a bumbling buffoon who takes every second with the mic as if he’s about to get in the ring at Wrestlemania—chanting well-meaning yet poorly-phrased absurdities such as “WOMEN AREN’T FUNNY” (a response to women having it hard, so we shouldn’t laugh at them) with the crowd and oozing toxic masculinity. Gillette says she crafted Meat Show as a means of dealing with both leaving an abusive relationship and the grotesquely male-dominated comedy scene. He emulates the concept of the “high-value male” that’s been tossed around online for the past several years and how truly idiotic and patriarchal it is. Meat Show was a star in Portland, Gillette’s last home—He even had his own “manifesto” that Gillette would print in the copier at work, called “The Virtue Signaller,” that was passed out at shows.

Then the pandemic hit in spring of 2020, and Meat Show floated into the abyss, along with many other characters, comics and creatives across the globe. It wasn’t until 2022, after a COVID-spurred crisis of self, that he made his way back to Gillette. “I’d completely forgotten Meat Show’s name at that point,” she says. “For a about a year and a half … I didn’t think I’d do comedy anymore. I knew I had a memory of a wrestler character I played back in the day, but his name escaped me.” She was going through her old sketchbooks, and found one of his manifestos — it pushed her to get back in the comedy saddle, give Meat Show his own half-hour set, and Gillette’s affinity for clowning was back in full swing. 

“(He) is a lying, cheating scoundrel that thinks he’s on the cusp of something groundbreaking. He believes in himself (and his lies). It’s wild to feel so confident about being a failure, but that feels very clown to me.”

I asked Gillette about Meat Show’s latest, Meat Show in Space, debuting at the Denver Fringe Festival in early June after three years in development. In this epic tale playing on Aesop’s Fables, Meat Show’s helmet cracks while he’s bumbling around in the atmosphere. He begs the stars (the audience) to let him return to his beloved earth-lady Babe as a manly-man hero, and not to die in the vast emptiness of space. The show is described on ticketing sites as being rooted in the concept of Appalachian fatalism, and I immediately wanted to know more.

Gillette grew up in a quasi-Appalachian rural town in Maryland, close to her current life partner and musical genius behind her upcoming shows Bryan Richard Martin. “I always joke that ‘we had a Target’ whenever people who aren’t familiar with the area try to think of my upbringing in Appalachia as this crumbling, hopeless experience with destitution,” she says, “(because) it wasn’t, at all.” She asked Martin for some assistance describing the atmosphere of where they grew up, to which he said that it’s “the kind of place that’s just a bit too far away from the opportunities, resources, and programs of major market cities, but close enough to know what I’m missing.” 

Meat Show in Space draws heavily on Gillette’s experience growing up in Appalachia, and is soundtracked by Martin, who naturally pours his own experience into the ambience of the show. Gillette describes having some remnants of shame when it comes to how she handled growing up in such a far-flung place among her peers—how she would lie about what she had to her classmates, saying she was actually rich, that Chris Farley was her uncle, that her grandfather built museums in D.C. She describes this as “(b)lurring the lines between reality, absurdity, and stupidity” and “making my rural reality into a dream world, even though no one believed it.” 

So when it came time to flesh out a full program for her beloved Meat Show, she took this shame into account, and emphasized that to him, his feelings are facts. He embodies some of the parts of herself and her upbringing that she’s most ambivalent about, and does so proudly. The show goes into the theme of knowing there’s more for you, but being afraid to try, in the event that you fail—taking big swings, as Gillette put it, is something that, growing up in a rural area, is oftentimes discouraged. “You can pull those bootstraps up to your butt cheeks, but if there isn’t even a road for you to walk on, where can you go? Should I even try? What’s at the end of that road? Big leaps of faith. Big risks—Those are things I don’t see a lot back home, but I do take a lot of big swings throughout Meat Show in Space.”

I also wanted to chat with Gillette about her upcoming conglomerate variety clown show featuring three other LGBTQ+ clowns, Just the Tip, debuting at the end of May as something of a practice pad for Meat Show in Space. Gillette’s costars also have shows in the upcoming Denver Fringe Festival, and she asked one, Madly Rosett, for her input on the show being a group effort. Rosett, when asked about the deeply queer (meaning both “gay” and “strange” here) shenanigan that is this hilarious and hard-hitting show, says, “The clowns in Just the Tip reflect a wide range of gender identities: female, male, nonbinary, and everything in-between or beyond (…) The show is an embodiment of what it feels like to move through this absurd world in a body that doesn’t fit neatly into the patriarchy’s box.

“While my show appears to center on a pubescent boy, it’s inspired by my own story. I grew up feeling at home in my female assigned at birth body. The show is not focused on gender dysphoria, but rather the shame and confusion around sex that I experienced growing up Mormon. I wanted to explore how the emotional messiness of puberty (and the shame religion puts on you around being a sexual being) is something people of all identities can probably relate to.

“To me, the character is intentionally ambiguous, a kind of blank canvas. People project different gender identities and sexual experiences onto them, which I welcome. Most audiences assume the character is a boy because they have a feather in place of genitalia, and the feather is often read as phallic. But to me, the feather represents desire. Its meaning is fluid. That openness is what allows the piece to feel deeply personal while remaining widely relatable.”

“I feel so powerful when I’m punching up at men (lovingly for the most part) on stage. It’s all from a place of love and curiosity.”

Finally, I wanted to delve into the art of clowning, something I had previously considered to be a dying art before this interview, and ended up finding myself looking into courses in clown. Gillette hosted her own bimonthly clown show, Idiot Theatre, from 2022 to 2024, and currently is the teacher of a clown workshop called Uncanny Valley. When talking about her experience with both the now-defunct Idiot Theatre and her own clowning workshop, Gillette said what may be one of my favorite things anyone has ever said: “We can be brave and silly at the same time.” 

She utilizes her clowning and comedy as a space not only to provide levity in this dark time for the U.S., but also to fight back against oppression—and she teaches her students the same mindset. “I know I’ve used my wit as a way to fight back against would-be oppressors all throughout my life. It’s part of queer culture.” She cites the queer art of reading as the roots of this phenomenon, and as a woman performing in what is, essentially, drag, she understands that her show is immediately political from an external point of view.

 “It’s OK to be silly and profound at the same time. It feels so silly to exist in a body sometimes.”

Gillette wants to focus on the creation of performance with her students, so that they may use their wits, queer or otherwise, to both protect as well as open up the gates of laughter in and around themselves. She says, “I’ll ask a student, ‘how does this feel right now?’ (and) if they say, ‘scary,’ I might ask them to try doing it again, scarier.” She describes herself as an “idea doula” when it comes to her workshop—She provides the care and outside perspective needed for her students to come into their own within their art. As she says, “Good, or ‘genius’ ideas aren’t blessings of divine inspiration. Ideas can be nurtured.”

To speak with Alice Gillette was a true honor and a pleasure. Not only is she a local creative, a group who are often overlooked within society as a whole, but she’s funny (duh), remarkably intelligent, and a force to be reckoned with both inside and outside of the alt-comedy scene and the world of clown. I, for one, will be seated for both Meat Show in Space as well as Just the Tip, and I highly encourage all readers and peers of mine to do the same. I think even if we can’t all attend clown workshops, it’s important to remember Gillette’s perspective on being brave and silly all at once because there’s a little clown in us all. As Gillette lovingly put it, “There’s always room for another in the clown car.”

Go see Alice Gillette perform in ‘Just the Tip’ May 21 at the Skylark Lounge, and see her groundbreaking Meat Show in Space June 5, 7, and 8 at the Denver Fringe Festival. You can access her website here for further info about this powerhouse comedienne. 

Photo Credit: Dan Hartman