SEND IN THE CLOWN

Having had her ego broken down in clown school, veteran theatre and television actress JO TAN has emerged funnier and more empowered.

- JENNIFER CHEN

In her one-woman show King last year, Jo Tan played eight different characters in a story about a woman adopting a male alter ego to bypass societal expectations to find her voice. Even assuming that few would want to tackle a solo vehicle on a public stage without some acting talent, Jo was a marvel - slipping in and out of a spectrum of personas as if they were clothing to don or discard. One moment, she was Geok Yen, the awkward fiancée of Matthew, a traditional Asian man. A turn of the body, and she was brash, Singlish spouting Stirling da Silva. The fight segment where she busted out her martial arts moves to an electrifying song from The Storm Riders brought the house down.

Playing a caricature to get laughs is part and parcel of acting, but portraying eight different individuals in one show and captivate a live audience from beginning to end? That is phenomenal versatility.

Jo first performed King over Livestream during the pandemic, having written the play for T:>Works' Festival of Women NOW after a personal - and very liberating - experience with performing in her husband's clothes. But it was playing to a theatre audience at T:>Works last year, with the immediacy that the platform affords, that her talent came to the fore. The show is her resume on stage.

She couldn't have done it if she hadn't attended clown school. Jo first signed up in 2012, after realising that her decade-long career as a theatre and television actress had stalled, then again in 2016 to hone her skills.

Clowning may be about fun, but clown school was miserable. At Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, she was constantly insulted by chief clown and teacher, the eponymous Gaulier, who believed in destroying his students' egos to eject them from their comfort zones.

Jo admits that her brand of comedy had been hammy. "It's not just about contorting your face and being ugly," she says. "People just don't find that amusing anymore."