Clown Gym is NYC’s home for affordable clown training, experimental performances, and joyful community building. Our mission is to support artists as they embrace their humor, beauty, vulnerability, skill, intelligence, and dreams. We do this through affordable high-quality training, teacher mentorship programming, new work development, performances, and community events focusing on clown and physical comedy.
We work to create a welcoming space for folks to train, connect, and perform, in addition to producing programming that aims to diversify the clown community, so that more people get to play and decide the rules of the game.
What is Clown?
Clown celebrates the beautiful mess of being human by playing and sharing with joy, pleasure, and freedom. The clown is curious, alert and open to the world. The training process is about revealing your authentic self and being generous enough to share that with others. It’s a gift we give the audience so that we can laugh and release together and start to make the world as healthy and beautiful as we dream it to be.
Who We Teach
Clown Gym strives to build a thriving learning environment and community. We serve total novices, seasoned pros, and everyone in between. 2-3 hour workshops are for anyone interested in bringing more joy into their lives, for learning new techniques, for meeting awesome folks, and for practicing their skills. Series and intensives are for folks interested in diving deeper into the work, honing technique, building community, and elevating their craft. You must be 18+ to take a class at Clown Gym.
Who We Hire
We hire teachers who have a unique perspective on clown training and come from a wide range of backgrounds and pedagogies. Our teachers aim to disrupt harmful hierarchical structures and patterns, and are compassionate, fun, and love teaching.
Clown Gym Guidelines
As individuals and a community we agree to:
- Play and have fun!
- Make others look good.
- Call people what they wish to be called (names and pronouns).
- Acknowledge the impact of our words and actions.
- Respect physical and emotional boundaries, which includes asking before touching someone.
We will not:
- Tolerate violence, no matter the intention.
- Tolerate hate, no matter the intention.
Julia Proctor, Founding Director
Julia Proctor (she/her) is a theatre maker, educator, and community builder, and a widely respected Theatrical Clown specialist who has taught, devised, performed, directed, produced, coached, and mentored in the field. She is the Founding Director of Clown Gym and a Co-Founding Producer of PhysFestNYC. As the Director of Clown Gym, Julia oversees all strategic vision, programming, and operations, as well as directs and performs with the company.
Her training includes Middlebury College (BA), Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting (MFA), Ecole Philippe Gaulier, The PIT, and a pedagogical apprenticeship with Christopher Bayes, along with wisdom learned from countless other teachers and artists with whom she’s shared a studio.
Julia teaches at NYU Tisch Drama’s New Studio on Broadway (BFA) and Tisch’s Collaborative Arts (BFA) specializing in Games, Clown, Shakespeare, and Devising. She is a clown consultant and coach, most notably as Beanie Feldstein’s personal Clown Coach for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl.
Julia makes funny feminist theatre and strives to build community around creativity and joy.
Clown Gym is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Clown Gym must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.