{"id":284964,"date":"2026-09-13T06:52:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T06:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/284964\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T06:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T06:52:24","slug":"how-a-clown-on-a-philly-stage-is-helping-audiences-find-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/284964\/","title":{"rendered":"How a clown on a Philly stage is helping audiences find solutions\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Harry Potter has his invisibility cloak. With it, he can move about unseen.<\/p>\n

Fringe performer Julia Masli<\/a> has her clown outfit \u2013 her \u201chandy\u201d hat, a mannequin\u2019s leg where her arm should be. With it, she can be who she\u2019s not \u2013 the open, vulnerable, silly solver of non-solvable problems in her widely praised solo show, \u201cha ha ha ha ha ha ha.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m quite a socially anxious person,\u201d she said Tuesday during a break in tech setup at the Proscenium at the Drake<\/a> theater where she\u2019ll be doing five Philadelphia Fringe Festival<\/a> shows Thursday through Sunday.<\/p>\n

On stage, Masli, or rather Masli as a clown, asks audience members for their problems. The clown then suggests solutions. One time, for example, an audience member mentioned \u201csleep\u201d and ended up on stage, on a chaise lounge, with an eye mask for the rest of the performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe clown is me, but a \u2018me\u2019 who is not doing the social role,\u201d Masli said, explaining how someone so open and impish on stage can be so people-shy off it. \u201cThe clown in me gives me a certain freedom to be quite child-like. It\u2019s still me, but not \u2018the me\u2019 that\u2019s trying to get things right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Julia Masli stars as an open, vulnerable, silly solver of non-solvable problems in her widely praised solo show, \u201cha ha ha ha ha ha ha.\u201d (photo by Andrew Levy)<\/p>\n

Across Europe and the U.S., \u201cha ha,\u201d (for short, from now on, because I\u2019m tired of counting to seven) has been universally praised for its mixture of silliness and solemn-ness and for the way it builds connections at the intersection of laughter and tears.<\/p>\n

And, if that doesn\u2019t work, there\u2019s always duct tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou enter like in a dream,\u201d she said. \u201cThe sound, there\u2019s lovely sound design. The sound envelops you, along with the lighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the show, you are very engaged and you notice other people,\u201d she said. \u201cYou hopefully will leave with new friends. It\u2019s a funny thing to explain an absurd clown show. But people help one another. They get to know each other, and it happens in the show. Or they bond together if they get taped together. Anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, and it\u2019s quite accidentally coincidental, the problems she ends up solving are her own.<\/p>\n

Recently, for example, she was performing \u201cha ha\u201d in her home-country of Estonia with family members in the audience. At that show, an audience member\u2019s problem was that she was missing her brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy little sister was in the audience, and I hadn\u2019t seen her for months and I missed her so much. I said, `Are you here?\u2019 And she said \u2018yes.\u2019 I cried and she cried, and the girl missing her brother, she also cried. And she called her brother. That really helped me connect with my sister.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVulnerability in life is also hard \u2013 especially with family being vulnerable is even harder. At that moment, it was really important to me,\u201d Masli said. On stage, as a clown, she could emotionally express her love for her sister. But in a regular conversation, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have really been able to tell her how much I missed her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Julia Masli stars as an open, vulnerable, silly solver of non-solvable problems in her widely praised solo show, \u201cha ha ha ha ha ha ha.\u201d (photo by Andrew Levy)<\/p>\n

Another time, as she was struggling in her personal life to deal with her grandfather\u2019s dementia, an audience member brought up a similar problem. They ended up laughing over funny things that had happened because of dementia. On stage, Masli recalled walking with her grandfather during a hospital visit. He told her they were going to the opera.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really nice to remember that and also to connect with that stranger who is going through what I\u2019m going through,\u201d Masli said. \u201cSometimes with friends I don\u2019t even go that deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Audience members get involved in solving problems \u2013 which may be, Masli said, one of the most beautiful aspects of the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the problems, I have no idea how to solve,\u201d Masli said. \u201cI can\u2019t even begin. But the audience is being helpful. They want to help me at the moment and that\u2019s what I feel is so special,\u201d particularly, she said, at a time when the world seems so harsh and uncaring.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s uplifting being able to be a part of a community where people are ready to help each other,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s also a really joyous experience,\u201d Masli said. \u201cIt\u2019s an energizing thing to be in a room of people, connecting. The things that come up are real, but there\u2019s so much laughter in it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masli\u2019s gift for community building is what sold the Fringe team on booking \u201cha ha\u201d for this year\u2019s Fringe festival as part of its curated collection of shows, Fringe Arts Presents.<\/a><\/p>\n

Fringe programming director and artistic producer Mikaela Boone fell in love with the show a few years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were so intrigued by how Julia Masli harnesses the truly unpredictable power of live performance to make a completely different show every night with her collaborators (in this case, the audience),\u201d wrote Nell Bang-Jensen, chief executive and producing director of Fringe Arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cJulia\u2019s work is an amazing example of the power of leaning into the \u2018live-ness\u2019 of theater, as well as its role as a site for community gathering. The piece is artistically bold, phenomenally theatrical, and, to me at least, deeply moving. It stretches an audience by asking them to engage in new ways but celebrates and welcomes them at the same time,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

FYI<\/p>\n

\u201cha ha ha ha ha ha ha,\u201d<\/a> \u00a0Julia Masli,<\/a> shows through Sunday, Sept. 13, The Proscenium at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. Harry Potter has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4877,118765,69,30779,71,70],"class_list":["post-284964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-arts","tag-julia-masli","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-fringe-festival","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}