Bouffons

Bouffon (plural bouffons) is a term in Western theatre for a clown or fool figure noted for physicality, grotesque humor, and social satire. The word derives from French, ultimately from Italian buffone and Latin buffonem, meaning a joker or mocker.

In historical theatre, bouffons appear in medieval and Renaissance performance and in the Italian commedia dell'arte as buffoni or zanni-adjacent characters. In France, the concept shaped satirical and popular forms, and later 17th- and 18th-century playwrights used bouffon-like figures to puncture pretensions and courtly decorum.

Typical bouffon traits include exaggerated physicality, a loud, rustic voice, and improvisational exchanges with the audience. They often rely on coarse humor and cunning mischief to mirror power structures, mock social norms, and provoke reflective laughter by turning ugliness or folly into critique.

In modern theatre scholarship, bouffon is also used to describe a clowning approach that foregrounds vulnerability, fear, and subversion as tools for social observation. The bouffon, in this sense, acts not merely to entertain but to unsettle audiences and reveal hidden value judgments.