Like Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Michael Louis Kennedy’s 55-minute monologue The Balloon Dog Bites reminds us that clowns have feelings too.
Kennedy performs the work himself, cautiously welcoming us into the room as Paulie, a professional clown (a graduate of École Philippe Gaulier, no less) faced with the prospect of performing for a party of nine-year-olds at a swishy Birchgrove address.
Though not exactly in the mood for fun (hobbled as he is by a recent sex-induced injury and still in the grip of an MDMA comedown), Paulie can’t say no to the cash.

Michael Louis Kennedy: The Balloon Dog Bites. Photo © Phil Erbacher
Predictably, things don’t go well. The kids are on to Paulie straight away, peppering him with confidence-puncturing quips (members of the audience get to play the little terrors, which is fun). The adults in the room condescend like mad. Turns out that the birthday girl’s favourite gag is the classic pie-in-the-face.
Would Paulie take one for extra money?
In between descriptions of an unfolding birthday-party disaster, Paulie unpacks the humiliations of a working life in the arts, his training (more like hazing) under the merciless eye of Gaulier, and...
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