Interview: Anne Zander on Bringing JUICEBOX Back

Anne Zander, aka Clown Mother, is a queer, neurodivergent performer who has built a career out of taking the parts of being human that feel dark, isolating, or shameful and turning them into characters that are at once so outrageous and so recognizable that the only thing you can do is laugh.

Her debut solo show, JUICEBOX, which premiered at the Fertile Ground Festival in 2019, is a snapshot in the life of Jessica, a lovelorn teenager in the ‘90s who is shut up in her room with her boombox and her imaginary boyfriend. It’s every painful, awkward, ridiculous part of being a teenager rolled into 50 minutes (read my review of the original production here). 

After Fertile Ground, JUICEBOX went on to become an official selection at Chicago Sketchfest, Dallas Comedy Festival, and HBO's Women in Comedy Festival, before the pandemic cut its momentum short. In the years since, Zander became a mother to twins and poured that experience into her second solo show, MOTHER (review here), which she has toured around North America over the past two years. 

Now, she's bringing JUICEBOX back, where it plays CoHo ClownFest on October 1 and 2. Here’s my chat with Zander about revisiting her first show at a different time in her life, and how she uses clowning to process the essential weirdness of being human in this crazy world.

For those of us who grew up thinking of clowns as either circus entertainers or fuel for nightmares, please explain what you do, which is very different.

Anne Zander: Clowning, as we know it, broadly comes out of the tradition of commedia dell'arte, which were theatrical troupes in 16th-century Italy who moved from town to town performing archetypes in masks. These performers were usually acrobatic and physically fit, and there was no fourth wall. They played directly to the audience.

From that lineage, clowning has split into overlapping branches. There's circus clowning, which is still close to that original commedia dell'arte sense, i.e., traveling with a troupe, performing for large crowds without much one-to-one connection. There are party or entertainer clowns, who usually have specific comedic bits designed to bring joy and cheer people up.

The lineage I perform in is theatrical clowning, which came to popularity in the 20th century and through the tradition of red-nose clowning. For me, clowning does not exist without vulnerability, audience connection and comedic structure. In this style of performance, there is no fourth wall: no barrier between audience and performer. That doesn't mean the audience has to come on stage, just that I can see you and you can see me, and that there is an essential, childlike vulnerability and openness in that exchange. When I teach clown, I don’t teach you to put things on, but rather to peel things away, to get back to your essence: curiosity, playfulness, a soft openness. Once we arrive at this place, then we can build physical precision and comedic timing, playing those beats with complete awareness of the audience. 

Your sweet spot is exploring the deep sources of pain, awkwardness, and discomfort that are part of the human experience. How has that evolved in your work? 

So much of that feels unconscious, natural, innate to my practice and my truth. Some of it is just who I am. I'm a person whose emotions are very close to the surface, and I've had to learn to navigate that throughout my life. I'm interested in the teetering points between beauty and grotesque, pain and cringe and laughter, how dark we can go and still come back to a big cathartic laugh. I'm interested in honesty.

I think clown is such a great container for this because of that innocent openness: the more willing I am to go there, the more permission I give the audience to go there too. For some people that's very uncomfortable, and that's okay. I like to play in the edges of discomfort, to see how long we can linger there and still come back for a big release, a chance to laugh, cry or both. 

I really believe that we're all weird inside, and that weirdness is our gift. The parts of us we are most afraid to show are precisely what the world needs most from us. I think it's actually our duty to let that weirdness out into the world, to let it be seen, felt, and reflected in others. We are so much less alone when we let ourselves be fully seen. 

What made you want to bring JUICEBOX back now?

Part of it is that it feels like unfinished business. I performed several runs in Portland back in 2019, and had a great response. It felt like a turning point. It was my first solo show, and it got into a lot of festivals in 2020. I managed to take it to Chicago in January 2020 before everything shut down. I figured once the pandemic was over I'd just pick it back up. But then a lot of the festivals deferred a year, then deferred again. Some even folded, and then I got pregnant.

Having kids, in truly the most planned way possible, really knocked me off my feet. Instead of picking JUICEBOX back up as I always assumed I would, I realized I had to make a completely different show, MOTHER, to process and express my postpartum experience. I've spent the last three years developing and touring that show. Now, I feel ready to give MOTHER a rest and let Jessica back out to play, and CoHo ClownFest felt like the perfect venue.

I love CoHo ClownFest. It's where I first did MOTHER as a work in progress, in 2023. For years they asked if I'd ever bring JUICEBOX back, and I just thought, why not do it now. I made that decision a bit on a whim, but the more time passes, the more it feels like exactly the right time.

Puberty has a completely different context for me now, having gone through pregnancy and postpartum. Pregnancy in particular put me right back into that 13-year-old headspace, feeling like every part of me was sticking out in every direction and hating the sense that everyone could see exactly what was happening to me. Postpartum was similar: I was scared of being observed in a changed body.

Coming back to JUICEBOX after pregnancy, postpartum, and frankly now barreling into perimenopause, makes the show feel both more apt than ever and different, because I'm different.

I am also more inspired by Jessica than ever. As a character, she is driven by unbridled pleasure-seeking, and I think we could all use more of that. In hindsight, I'm grateful for the pandemic-fueled hiatus the show took. It felt devastating at the time, like all the work I'd put into developing and touring my first show had been flushed down the toilet. I couldn't have foreseen an outcome that now feels this positive.

Can you talk a bit about your arc as a performer from JUICEBOX to MOTHER?

JUICEBOX took about five years to develop, very on and off. It started as a short piece in my graduate program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, basically a boy-band fantasy based on a diary entry. It took years of dipping in and out to create the full-length version. I was learning my process as I made that show.

MOTHER, by contrast, I made in about three months. That was the work-in-progress version, but it was already about 85–90% of what the show eventually became. 

So, JUICEBOX taught me my process, how to devise work, and MOTHER taught me how to perform work. I really understand how to be in that show now, and that's feeding back into relearning JUICEBOX. I feel a lot freer in general, in my body and in myself, and that makes me excited to revisit a show that's ultimately about growing into your truth, your confidence, and who you are.

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