If one event has shaped Mawaan Rizwan’s approach to comedy to date, it was receiving advice from a clown, eight years ago on the outskirts of Paris. “I’d been doing quite straight standup until then,” the 30-year-old comic explains, “but I was bored. Then I got myself a place on a course run by this ancient clown teacher, Philippe Gaulier.”
Without industry contacts or time at drama school, Rizwan had long taken every opportunity that might help him carve out a creative career. So he turned up at the prestigious École Philippe Gaulier, unsure what awaited him. “There were 30 students. We were taught how a circus is full of acts with skills and props, but the clown can only turn to their own idiocies and vulnerabilities. And Gaulier would always turn specifically to me and say: ‘Mawaan, you don’t have to pretend to be stupid to make us laugh. You are naturally very, very stupid.’”
