Slava Polunin: The World's Greatest Clown

Since its premiere in 1993, Slava Polunin’s Snowshow has traveled to more than 50 cities around the world. Polunin says that, after the first performance is over in a new city, all the local stagehands and technicians who, before the show, laughed at Polunin’s strange props, come on stage and start rummaging through the clown’s piles of strings, rags and worthless what-nots. Amazed, the stagehands ask, “How can this be? How can this string have become a synchrophasotron? How did this rag turn into a bird? How did a bottle turn into a snow machine?” And they ask, “Why did you do nothing but pace the stage? Why does the audience look at you with absolute enchantment?” Polunin answers simply, “But why do we have to do anything? What we do is communicate. We create an atmosphere. With the help of nuances, happy accidents, strings and rags, we try to create the miracle of the theater.”

Slava Polunin is a happy man. He always finds something interesting and unusual in life. His vocation is to connect theater with real life, to walk the thin border between art and reality, to “explode” life with crazy fantasies and thus infuse it with creativity. It has made him, according to The London Times, “the best clown in the world.” Polunin has won many prestigious international theater awards, including Spain’s “Golden Nose” and Edinburgh’s “Golden Angel.” In 2000 he was awarded Russia’s “Triumph” prize.

Polunin’s fascination with clowning began at an early age. When he was nine, he first saw Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid and was absolutely enchanted. Unfortunately, his mother did not allow him to watch the movie to the end, as it was past his bedtime. She switched off the TV and Slava cried himself to sleep. In a couple of months, however, Slava was imitating Chaplin with his huge shoes and walking stick.

Born on June 12, 1950, and raised in the town of Novosil, Oryol Region, Polunin studied in St. Petersburg at the Engineering-Economic Institute, but he soon dropped out, over his mother’s protests. He started training in the circus arts and performing in music halls by night. Soon enough, his mother saw him perform on stage and was won over – she agreed that he was not cut out to be an engineer.

In 1968, Polunin started his own pantomime studio in St. Petersburg, which a decade later was transformed into the theater Litsedey (“Dissemblers”). It become so enormously popular that, according to Polunin, he rarely had to pay for a taxi ride in the northern capital.

In 1981, Polunin invented the character Asisyai, who first appeared in a New Year’s television program, “The Light Blue Flame.” Polunin derived Asisyai from a long study of Russian folklore, and said it is a character very much like Ivanushka-durachok (Ivan the fool), only more sincere. Asisyai is as thoughtful and gentle as the Hedgehog in the Mist (from Yuri Norshtein’s famous cartoon) and as tender as Eduard

Uspensky’s big-eared Cheburashka.

Polunin has done much in his career to advance international ties between clowns. In 1985, he brought foreign clowns and mimes to Moscow for the World Gathering of Youth and Students. And, in 1989, he gathered together several hundred clowns for a “Peace Caravan” that drove from Moscow to Paris. In 1993, he organized the first Festival of Female Clowns, calling it Baby-Dury (“Foolish Women”). He also created festivals for traditional street theater, pantomime and clowning all around the world. In the 1990s, wanting to reinvigorate his own clown training, he spent two years touring with Cirque du Soleil, which experience can be credited with much of the mood and feel of his wildly-popular Snowshow.

Polunin has lived in Great Britain since 1994, but recently moved to France. He spends a lot of time touring and is presently performing in the U.S. “When customs officials check the lists of the things I’m bringing with me, they always laugh,” Polunin said. “It’s written down on the customs form: ‘moon, wind, rainbow, stars.’ I only have magical things in my show. You can’t explain what it is made of. I have real snow, real wind, real stars.”

Polunin is always interested in different countries’ clowning traditions, as a result of which, he wants to write a book about Australian animals. He said that, despite searching long and hard, he could not find any clowns in Australia. And then, he suddenly saw them in the countryside: the koala bear, echidna and kangaroo. He found their behavior and physiognomies absolutely delightful and fantastic, and concluded that Australia has simply decided to express its clownishness through its fauna.

Polunin and his team (which also consists of his two sons and his wife, Lena) try to make every Snowshow special. Before going on a tour, Polunin will phone 30-50 friends whom he knows play well in this performances, and ask whether they can perform.

Slava’s Snowshow, which is on an indefinite eight-show-per-week run at the Union Square Theater in New York, defies explanation. It simply has to be seen and experienced. Polunin, who comes out on stage in a baggy yellow suit and fluffy red slippers, dashes between two giant telephones, mumbling some gobbledygook into them. He carries a thick rope, suggesting he has a pet, then puts the noose around his neck, suggesting a suicide; he dances with his own coat and so on. There are copious amounts of snow... amazing, mystical sets... huge, dirigible-sized balloons...

In short, the show is magical. North American Producer Ross Mollison broke a tiny bit of the magic when he explained: “The snow comes in boxes from California, actually. I do think the clowns believe it is from Siberia. It’s specially created, lightweight, fireproof paper and it is cut into rectangular flakes, so when it falls in the theater it spins down slowly, like real snow.”

Polunin says that the tradition of Russian clowns is quite important to him. He names Leonid Yengibarov, Arkady Raikin, Rolan Bykov and Yuri Nikulin as his teachers. Yet Polunin had to leave Russia a decade ago, because, he said, he could no longer work in an atmosphere where 90 percent of his time was wasted signing countless documents, talking with drunken light men and other “rubbish.” When he is not working – and that is rare when you are doing eight performances a week in New York – Polunin retreats to his large home, where all his performances are born. The house manifests Polunin’s dream of reality merging with art. The first room you enter is a real Wonderland, full of mirrors. There is also the “Moon Room” – for contemplation and self-reflection. The “Nostalgia Room” is devoted to memories – there are lots of pictures of Polunin, his wife and their sons in the costumes and interiors of different eras and places. Everything is decorated with lace made by his wife Lena. The “Play Room,” has a massive door, along with a smaller one for kids, with a tiny key. And there are lots of secret places in the room where kids can hide from the adult world.

“Being a clown is like being a spoiled child,” Polunin says. “You can get away with anything.” And it seems to be true. Clowns from Slava’s Snowshow walk on people’s heads, take money from people’s pockets, grab people, pull them away or sit in their laps, or put a strange girl in the Mayor’s lap. As an Edinburgh doctor reportedly told Polunin: “I give only one prescription to my patients these days – a visit to Polunin’s Show.”