The creative fool: from playing to creating | masterclass | Polish incident

About the event

We invite you to five-day clowning masterclasses for professional and emerging performing artists, regardless of their field. If you are involved in circus, performance or acting and want to develop your stage practice, these workshops are for you.

How can we create a character that is truly ours? How can you capture the audience’s attention, build suspense and surprise them? Clown training is not only about learning to make people laugh, but also about using it as a tool to develop stage presence, discover one’s own language and explore new ways of expression.

During the workshop, through improvisation, movement and working with emotions, we will explore the clown as a creator who can laugh at themselves, take risks and draw inspiration from their own world.

We won’t be creating characters from scratch. We will look within ourselves for that part of us that wants to play, experiment and create here and now. We will examine how our stories, weaknesses, insecurities and imperfections can become a source of humour and stage truth.

We will create a space for free experimentation, making mistakes and thinking outside the box. We will dance, sing, exaggerate, dramatise and turn small things into big ones as we seek inspiration to create characters and performances.

‘Creative Fool’ is an invitation to explore, not to act. To develop stage courage, authenticity and creative freedom – regardless of whether the starting point is circus technique, movement, words or a personal story.

About the instructor

Clémence Caillouel – a performer, clown, director and theatre educator who works between Barcelona, Berlin and Normandy on a daily basis. In her work, she combines experimental theatre, performance and dark clowning. Her work is personal and sensitive, but it can also be extreme and grotesque – often humorous, tragic and decidedly unconventional. In 2016, she founded La Volada Production, under which she creates and produces her theatre and clown performances, including ‘Paulina’ (2016), ‘Le Chevreuil et Dalida’ (2021) and ‘The Requiem of Sophie Withman’ (2023). She also appears in projects by other artists and groups, including Tucan Riot (‘No Way Out’), OfW (‘∇– Tour’), CircOliva (‘Vermut Acrobàtic’) and Compañía Laboratorio Teatro (‘Shakespeare y compañía’, ‘Allende’).

The artist is known to Polish audiences from this year’s edition of the Carnaval Sztukmistrzów, during which she presented the performance ‘The Requiem of Sophie Withman’.

Details

When:
by 15 November 2026 | applications
by 20 November 2026 | selection results
8-12 December 2026 | five-day workshops | 10:00-16:00 (with a lunch break)

Where: Workshops of Culture in Lublin, Grodzka 5a, auditorium, 2nd floor
For: professional and emerging performing artists, regardless of their field
Registration: via the online form
Free of charge, places are limited

Accessibility

• Classes are conducted in English.
• The event takes place on the second floor. There is no lift.
• Let us know about your individual accessibility needs using the form when registering.
• Read the basic accessibility information about the Workshops of Culture.
• Find out how to get there – watch the video.

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13 December 2026 | Clémence Caillouel ‘The Requiem of Sophie Withman’ | performance (more information coming soon)