They’re a regular installment at children’s birthday partiesbut, the fear of clowns, or coulrophobia, is so common that a three-day music festival Bestival on the Isle of Wight had to cancel its clown-themed fancy dress after several requests from clown phobics. Fraser Hooper, however, is a clown with a difference and one you can’t help but be fond of.

“SOME of the best clowns we will never get the chance to see, because they’re in mental institutions,” says Fraser Hooper, when asked if clowns are happy people.
“Clowns - and artists in general - tend to be onlookers to society. There’s a kind of insanity that goes with seeing things from a viewpoint outside the normal.”
We’re not talking about your traditional face-painted, oversized-shoe wearing, balloon blowing birthday clown, although a life performing at children’s parties may drive a fair few to madness.
“I steer clear of that, there are people out there who do that much better than me.”
We’re talking about clowning as a serious, often hard-studied art form, performed in the street, in theatres and at festivals around the world.
“Clowning is a celebration of nothing more than humanity.”
Hooper insists he’s been a clown since he was five, but has been in the clowning industry, “or as my son puts it, ‘mucking about for a living’”, for 20 years. He taught for 12 years at Circus Space in London, the only school in the UK to offer a university degree programme in circus, but moved to Wellington last year when his Kiwi wife became homesick.
That doesn’t mean he’s left the clowning world behind.
“I live in a strange world,” he says. “There’s a small, dysfunctional ‘family’ that tours the world doing this sort of thing, playing galas and street festivals.”
Last month, Hooper was in France for the weekend, where he “got to perform after the lions and tigers”.
“Which is so wrong, but was kind of lovely,” he says.
This week he flies to Japan for another festival of “circus, street performers and general idiots”. Class clowns rejoice – there may be a future in it after all.
While he’s always clowned around, Hooper’s trajectory towards this world officially began when at 15 he saw theatre clown Nola Rae performing.
“She was God,” he says. “I have her posters all over my office.”
Then at 19, Hooper saw a performance by Robert Nelson (aka The Butterfly Man), which sealed the deal.
“They were both huge figures in my life. Nola Rae made me want to clown in the theatre; Robert Nelson made me want to clown in the street.”
Hooper does both.
“I like the control you get in the theatre and I like the lack of control in the street. If I play in the street all summer I’ll be craving the theatre afterwards,” he says.
Hooper uses mimicry (he’s studied mime) and body language in his performances, which are almost entirely silent. He insists clowning isn’t about the gag or any tricks: at its essence it’s all about rhythm.
“If see three really tall men enter a café, then a really short man follows them in – you smile to yourself. There’s been a break in the rhythm. I remember a school play where we were astronauts and had to plant a flag and salute. We planted the flag, went to salute and it fell over. Everyone laughed, because a visual expectation was broken,” he says.
“Some of the best moments in theatre are when the actors forget their lines. It wakes us up as an audience and we start to see them as people. Clowning is a celebration of nothing more than humanity.”
Another aspect of clowning that Hooper enjoys is the power struggle between the performer and the audience.
“The best shows are when the audience gets the better of me rather than me getting the better of them,” he laughs.
“It’s a fine balance - looking like you’re out of control while also maintaining control. You’ve got to let yourself be open to failure. That’s when the magic happens.”
Hooper’s most spectacular failure occurred onboard the ship QE2, performing for “a group with an average age of 87 who were all widows”.
Hooper has a running gag where a volunteer is invited on stage, nervously announces their name to the crowd, and is then asked to take their seat again. The same volunteer is asked up and returned repeatedly, a joke that usually gets the crowd in stitches. Not so this time.
“I asked a poor old guy to get onstage and it took him about five minutes to get there. I said ‘can you sit back down?’ and he just looked at me really confused, so I turned him round and he walked slowly back to his seat. I thought, ‘someone’s gotta have fun here and it may as well be me’, so I asked him up again. They hated me. The only ones who didn’t were those who’d fallen asleep and were still there when the next show rolled around.”
The next day, Hooper shared breakfast with the guests.
“Two old dears leant over and said to me: ‘Did you see the entertainment last night? We thought it was dreadful’,” he says. “This was day three of a ten-day cruise; there was still a week to go.”
Many successful years on, Hooper has begun clowning workshops here in Wellington. Don’t expect to create a clown character; that’s not Hooper’s way.
“I teach people to be themselves and to work with what they’ve got. To bring out what’s funny about you and what you find ridiculous. Everybody is welcome at the workshop; at the very least you’ll be laughing all weekend.”
Clown Workshop with Fraser Hooper, Toi Poneke Arts Centre, Abel Smith Street, November 13-14. Email mail@fraserhooper.com for more information or to register.