The investigation of how Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine used clowning to develop actors with social purposes responds to the current interest in the neglected counterhegemonic training processes of women. It also contributes to current efforts to decolonise and decentre actor training. Using Theatre Workshop’s Oh What a Lovely War (1963) and Théâtre du Soleil’s Les Clowns (1969) as exemplars, this article traces how Littlewood and Mnouchkine trained actors on clowning to theatricalise social struggles and develop their social representations. Through ensemble improvisations that exploited clown devices such as the master-servant, clown logic, object misuse, misfitness, and the flop the actors tackled their biases in two stages: the serious/comedic dissonance alienated the actor to critically explore social gests, and the process of finding the appropriate social representations during group improvisations addressed their biases. Contemporary actor training that wishes to invite students to explore how their body, voice and imagination in performance can resist dominant ideologies and historical stereotypes might proliferate from the use of clowning to create social representations. The tracing of Mnouchkine’s and Littlewood’s clown training processes through the deconstruction of their key works, can inspire and offer insights to pedagogues who wish to decolonise and decentre their pedagogies.

对琼·利特尔伍德和阿丽亚娜·姆努奇金如何利用小丑来培养具有社会目的的演员的调查回应了当前对被忽视的女性反霸权培训过程的兴趣。它还有助于当前去殖民化和分散演员培训的努力。使用 Theatre Workshop 的Oh What a Lovely War (1963) 和 Théâtre du Soleil 的Les Clowns(1969) 作为范例，本文追溯了 Littlewood 和 Mnouchkine 如何训练演员表演小丑，以戏剧化社会斗争并发展他们的社会表征。通过利用主仆、小丑逻辑、对象滥用、不适应和失败等小丑技巧的合奏即兴表演，演员们分两个阶段解决了他们的偏见：严肃/喜剧的不和谐让演员疏远了批判性地探索社会手势，以及在小组即兴表演中寻找合适的社会代表的过程解决了他们的偏见。希望邀请学生探索他们在表演中的身体、声音和想象力如何抵制主流意识形态和历史刻板印象的当代演员培训可能会因使用小丑来创造社会表征而激增。