Clown Conservatory
clownery and comedy institution, San Francisco
The Clown Conservatory is a performing arts school in San Francisco, CA. The school began in 2000 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Curriculum
Jeff Raz founded and served as director of the Clown Conservatory from 2000 to 2010. From 2012 to 2015 Joe Dieffenbacher took over as Director assisted by Dan Griffiths. The training format offered 5-7 week Intensives in Clown, Slapstick, Commedia dell'arte and Bouffon, as well as 2 week long summer workshops. This format was established in order to make training more affordable and more accessible to working artists. The focus was on developing professional level performance material for cabaret, theatrical clowning, street theater and circus. It draws inspiration from traditional circus clowning, European street theater and variety. Currently Sara Moore has taken on the role of Director offering a 24-week training program.
Advanced Program Ensemble
In 2008–9, the Clown Conservatory's Advanced Program Ensemble spent a year developing and performing a circus adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland under the direction of Jeff Raz. The production, titled Wonderland, was developed around the performing skills of an ensemble of nine Conservatory students selected by audition.
The public source identifies “Clown Conservatory” as clownery and comedy institution, San Francisco. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clown, Conservatory and clownery.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5136025. Authority coordinates are 37.766, -122.457. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2010, 2012 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clown Conservatory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.