WORKING CLASS CLOWN by Tommy Misa to Play Arts House

Samoan-Australian artist Tommy Misa will bring Working Class Clown to Arts House. It's a funny, tender solo work about grief, family and the people who hold us up.

Misa set out to make a work that looked at the state of public housing, loss and the joy amongst it. Then his father, Mefiposeta Misa, died.

Working Class Clown became something else: a live way through grief and a question about who helps us carry it. The loss left Misa angry, confused and isolated, unsure how to make work at all.

“What pulled me back was joy. Not joy as an escape from grief, but joy as its most radical companion,” said Misa.

“My father understood this better than anyone I have ever known. He had this profound ability to find the best laughter even amongst the pain, to walk into a room and make everyone in it feel held,” said Misa.

In Working Class Clown, Pepe Toa navigates grief, gentrification and belonging in a city that keeps concreting over those who bloom in the cracks. Misa's physical, playful clowning sits alongside movement, poetry and song, drawing on Samoan clowning and weaving.

At the heart of the work is a set piece Misa made by hand, inspired by traditional Samoan architecture, acting as a physical and metaphoric structure or roadmap through the work. For Misa, the making of this work taught him one thing above all: nothing worth building is ever built alone.

First commissioned for the 24th Biennale of Sydney and presented at Performance Space's Liveworks in 2025, Working Class Clown now comes to Melbourne, where Misa has made his home. The season is directed by Bernadette Fam and produced by Green Door Theatre Company.