the man with the “funky” sense of humor has become a clown

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A chicken: the animal or the police officer? A submarine: the submersible or the hideout van? So many questions to which Caracas will try to provide answers, or not, during its hour-long show during which burlesque, comical, wacky and inevitably funny situations follow one another because “the job of a clown is to make people laugh . »

As part of “The night of the circus”, Nicolas Beatrixalias Caracas, “a contemporary theater clown who evolves in an absurd and surreal universe” performs on the stage of the Cie Bleu 202 theater, in Alençon (Orne), Friday November 15, 2024 at 7 p.m., with his show Thermostat 7 !

Far from being a joke

If, in fact, he has been a professional clown for almost twenty years, his early youth was not imbued with fantasy or very little, and nothing suggested that he would ever be an entertainer.

“I don’t remember being a clown when I was young, making my classmates laugh,” he confides.

I was rather quite serious and respectful of the settings in which I was.

An apparent rigidity which did not prevent the fifty-year-old from revealing his abilities to make others laugh during comic outbursts, brief but intense: “When I wanted to be in a fun situation, I could push the cursor quite far. It wasn’t constant. At times, when I felt good with my friends. »

Music softens morals

And, paradoxically, it was another art that got him started. “During one evening, a friend who was a musician told us asked to sing. He found that I had a beautiful voice and he took me into a music hall where I performed songs from Boby Lapointe. »

One thing led to another and from one hearing to the next, this was the starting point of a mutation, of a transformation for Nicolas Beatrixwhereas he had “started as an amateur for fun and without any ulterior motive. »

A slap for good

Another audition will bring him into a music hall revue where he will play more “120 shows in two years” : “I was a common thread, a common thread. I intervened to fill the gap between two numbers with a comic game. There was nothing professional about it. I did this instinctively with hits and misses. »

A situation that amply satisfied him and fit with “his job”: the co-management of a family moving business. But a slap will definitely do it switch to professionalization.

During an audition, I met a person who knew what I was doing and who told me: “You make people laugh but your humor is ridiculous. Don’t be proud of this game. »

A violent, direct and brutal slap, received like an uppercut but which had the merit of enlightening him on his potential and his state: hidden and to be developed. The boxing teacher in Alençon to then make the decision to make his passion his full-fledged profession.

The decision taken then the sequence

And, once the switch is made, everything related to artistic life comes into play. THEs training and further education schools (Samovar in Bagnolet and the National Institute of Music Hall Arts in Le Mans), the galleys (three months sleeping in a van), meetings with other artists, exchanges with foreign colleagues, tours and shows in France and internationally (Canada, Belgium, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, etc.) and, of course, contact with audiences because “depending on the place and location where we perform, whether it is circus, theater or street, the looks and attitudes are different. »

Make people laugh again and again

What is not different and what will never change, however, is that the clown “with or without sound red nosewhich is above all a educational toolin the eyes of all those who look at him, the one who must make people laugh.”

And if laughter is unique to man, Nicolas Béatrix, through Caracas, wishes to “trigger quality laughter in the public, circulate it and amplify it. »

Thermostat 7!, Friday November 15 at 7 p.m., at Cie Bleu 202, rue Saint-Exupéry. From 12 years old. Single price: €12. The show will be followed by a public clown class, starting at 8:30 p.m.

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