Piazza Navona: Clown Performer

The other night we saw a silent clown performer doing a bit on the south side of the piazza. I am not much one for clowns (especially silent ones) but he was actually pretty funny. It was a fresh thing to see for once instead of the same caricature artists and musical acts which play the same songs that everyone in the world knows. The clown first started things off by grabbing a kid from the audience (probably five or six years old) and made him put his fingers up by his head to represent horns. He then pulled out a red cloth and motioned for the child to charge him, he did this several times in the fashion of a matador, but for the final one he placed the cloth right in front of one of the metal trash cans. The child actually did charge him but the clown stopped him before he struck the other side.

He also thought quickly on his feet because he adapted to the crowd around him and the passers by. At one point a person was walking by with a tiny dog, and next thing you know he's got this novelty sized plastic bone and throws it to the dog. Unfortunately though he also did not notice an elderly woman walking near where the dog was and the bone struck her. This was somewhat funny and horrible all at the same time and got a mixed response respectively. After that though before he got into his next act a couple attractive females were walking past and he immediately ran over to them, fell, and motioned for mouth to mouth. I liked this because he was not sticking to one planned out routine, but would drop what he was doing to do a quick little thing like that to mix it up.

For his finale he grabbed a female from the audience (late teens I'm thinking) and motioned for her to mimic what he was doing. So they go through a couple things, lift a leg, spin around, touch your nose, etc. His final motion though is him lifting up his shirt to get her to flash the everyone. She had on two shirts though and lifted up the first, which was unexpected and funny on her part. He then took out a fake gun and grabbed the kid he did the bull routine with, and put the gun to the kids head insinuating that if she did not flash him he was going to shoot the kid. All together it was a nice, new, and entertaining experience that you do not see too often (at least I haven't) around the piazzas.