Yann Frisch a clowning magician, extraordinaire
With two pots of iron, he can make you cry – just as much as a banana can be fatal, or as a pig can grunt the Marseillaise from the pocket of his coat… Part Buster Keaton, part Norman Bates, he has no name and no real age. Yann Frisch’s clown is and remains a mystery. He created this character ten years ago, and he continues to captivate audiences. It must be said that this disheveled clown, with a surprised and somewhat sad look, makes us roar with laughter, a yellow laugh, a black laugh, and often just a laugh. Under the nose – not red, but brown – there is Yann Frisch, trained at the circus school of Lido de Toulouse, he is also a magician, the world champion of close-up magic in 2012. Since then, he has founded his own company, created other shows, but “Le Syndrome de Cassandre” remains his signature piece.
Yellow laugh, black laugh, just a laugh
When Yann Frisch takes the stage, disguised as his clown character, the audience laughs right away. Immediately, this gray clown imitates the laughter he hears, a simple gag, incredibly effective, “it is for me a way to enter the show and take the temperature. This moment can last 20 seconds or 2 minutes, all it takes is a slightly surprising laughter from a member of the audience to restart the machine.”
If his clown embodies a certain darkness, Yann Frisch wanted to keep the laughter present throughout the show, even though he conceived “Le Syndrome de Cassandre” as a form of tragedy, “the tragedy of this clown is that he is doomed not to be credible since he is a clown. This tragedy only exists because laughter is omnipresent, otherwise it would shift into something that interests me much less.”
Cassandre, the one who is not believed
In mythology, Cassandre is the one who is not believed and never will be; this Cassandre is Yann Frisch’s character, no matter what he does, no matter what he attempts, he is not believed: “At the origin of this project, there were open stages where I tried improvisation. One day, I arrived with the entire clown outfit and told people they had to leave because there was a fire backstage. Of course, people laughed, and in the end, someone came to me and said to what extent clowns are not believed; that struck me. I thought to myself: it’s true, if there was a real problem, I would have taken off my nose. If the clown remains the clown, he doesn’t even have access to doubt, and for me, that is where the tragedy begins.”
Between the four walls of the stage space, this dark clown seeks a bit of consideration, “he is trapped in fiction; my postulate is to say that a clown really exists, but can only be in the space that is his own, and to which he is the only one to believe, he seeks credit in the eyes of others that he is doomed not to find.”
For more information and news: – “Le Syndrome de Cassandre” by Yann Frisch is showing at the Théâtre du Rond-Point from May 5 to 17, 2026. – The show will tour again in 2027: – Gap on January 14 & 15, 2027 – Lons-le-Saunier on January 19 & 20, 2027 – Grenoble from January 27 to 29, 2027
Yann Frisch’s next creation, “Poussières,” will premiere in October 2026 at Espace des Arts in Chalon-sur-Saône and will be followed by a tour, including a performance at Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris in May 2027.
Audio excerpts: – Performer Angelica Liddell in “Affaire Culturelles” in 2021 on France Culture, about catharsis – Closing song: “Manger ma banane” by Philippe Katerine
