David Bridel

Founder & Artistic Director

David is the Founding and Artistic Director of The Clown School, an artist, scholar, author and educator whose expertise ranges from screen to stage, instruction to leadership. He has been teaching clown, mask, movement, and performance for thirty years. Currently, David has several clients working in leading roles on television and in major motion pictures.

David has conducted seminars, workshops, and courses in clown and movement at universities including NYU, UCLA, Cal Arts, and SUNY Purchase, as well as abroad in Iran, Romania, Melbourne, Shanghai, Beijing, Brazil, Turkey, Austria, and the UK, and independently with multiple theatres and organizations in Los Angeles and New York. He has represented The Clown School as a Clown Specialist on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, served as the Commedia dell’Arte and Movement Director for Center Theatre Group’s production of The School of Night by Peter Whelan at the Mark Taper Forum, for which he won an Entertainment Weekly ‘Special Events’ Award, and the adaptor and Movement Specialist for Classic Stage Company’s Dr Faustus in New York. His commedia-inspired choreography for William Friedkin’s production of Ariadne Auf Naxos at Los Angeles Opera was much acclaimed. David’s clown plays and productions include Abraham & Isaac (with Four Clowns and the Latin American Film Institute, Sao Paulo), Sublimity (at the International Drama Festival in Sao Paulo and the United Solo Festival in New York) and Lunatics and Actors (with Four Clowns), Il Sogno d’Arlecchino (UCLA), Twelfth Night and The Legend of the Dead Soldier (Franklin Stage), Our Worser Genius (Purchase), The Dispute (UCLA), and Clown Crazy (Central School of Speech and Drama), and most recently, the award-winning solo show Flayed written by and starring Clown School alum Josiah Blount (Los Angeles, New York). David’s clown and commedia dell’arte plays I Gelosi, Lunatics and Actors and Sublimity are all published by Original Works. (I Gelosi has received multiple productions across the USA, including California, Washington, Alabama, and Texas.) The Los Angeles Times writes: “Bridel is the real thing, one of the most inventive, scholarly and vastly challenging voices on the current theatrical scene.”

David has also worked in mainstream theatre, musical theatre, opera, and classical music in the United States and around the world. Pre-pandemic highlights include performing his own adaptation of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale with Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra; directing Jenny Brandon and Oliver Mayer’s opera 3 Paderewskis in Poland and at The Kennedy Center; and bringing two new musicals to light with collaborators Simon Gray and Raymond Bokhour - The Scream, A Musical Comedy Fantasy (BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, New York, and the Westport Country Playhouse, Connecticut), and The Glorious Death of Comrade What’s-His-Name. He has a long-standing partnership with China’s foremost improvisation studio, Improv First, based in Beijing, for whom he has taught multiple disciplines - most recently, he directed an improvised version of Moliere’s Tartuffe for the organization. Over the course of his career he has directed plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Priestley, Ionesco, Brecht, Feydeau, Pirandello, Dumas, Moliere, Ibsen, Mamet, among many others. In 2023-4 he directed Josiah Blount in the award-winning clown show Flayed.

In 2008, David (along with Orlando Pabotoy) was honored to co-teach a workshop in The Presence of the Clown with David Shiner, one of the great living clowns (Fool Moon, Cirque du Soleil), at the Summer Arts Festival in Fresno. In 2013, David facilitated the visit of Philippe Gaulier to Los Angeles to teach at The Clown School in partnership with Fixt Point of Canada. His book, Clowns: In Conversation, featuring interviews with many of the world’s greatest clowns, published by Routledge UK, is now in its second edition and available through Amazon.com, along with his new book for Routledge, Send In The Clowns: Humanitarian Clowning in Crisis Zones. Coming next for the same publisher: Commedia dell’Arte - Contemporary Practitioners.

David served as a faculty member at USC’s School of Dramatic Arts for 16 years, holding at various times the positions of Associate Dean for Global Initiatives, Head of the MFA in Acting program, and Dean of the School. Among his many residencies in Los Angeles, he has taught and consulted for SONY Pictures, The Meisner Institute, and Kaiser Permanente Theater. He sits on the board of the National Alliance for Acting Teachers and the Advisory Board of Directors Lab West, and was previously a board member for the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company.

David launched The Clown School Company in 2024.

He trained with Philippe Gaulier – one of the world’s foremost clown teachers.

Visit www.coachingwithdavid.org for further information on David’s coaching business and acting studio.

Mike Funt

Associate Director

Mike Funt travels the globe performing and directing as a clown, actor, director, and teacher. Funt has led workshops in clown, mask, improv, and circus arts in China, India, Japan, England, France, Brazil and all over the U.S., with his home base as Associate Artistic Director of The Clown School in Hollywood. Funt is a regular performer in the theatre, in the circus, theme parks, cabarets, comedy clubs, and through the relief efforts of Clowns Without Borders and medical clowning. For years, Funt served as the Artistic Director of the internationally-touring, multi award-winning clown troupe Four Clowns. He also is on the Advisory Board for Dr. Stuart Brown’s National Institute for Play and was trained and certified in Laughter Yoga with Dr. Madan Kataria. Additionally, Funt is a Mentor Leader for PlayMatters!, a committee of the Southern California Advocates for Every Young Child. He formerly taught at the San Francisco Comedy College, Improv Olympic, iO West, The Annoyance Theatre, and served five years as head of the Theatre Department for the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program.

RAQUEL GENDRY

Raquel Gendry es una galardonada actriz y maestra en artes escénicas con 30 años de experiencia profesional. Ha actuado y enseñado en América del Norte y del Sur, así como en Europa occidental. Pero lo que más le apasiona es su trabajo como payasa humanitaria y devolverle la esperanza y la alegría a las vidas de quienes lo perdieron.

Es la fundadora y presidenta de "Narices Rojas", una organización ecuatoriana sin fines de lucro que comenzó en 2006 después de experimentar una enfermedad que amenaza su vida y la profunda desesperación que puede existir en las unidades de cuidados intensivos de los hospitales. Desde entonces ha entrenado a más de 200 payasos humanitarios voluntarios en Ecuador que han sostenido emocionalmente cientos de lugares vulnerables, impactando positivamente a más de 290,000 personas en hospitales locales y campos de refugiados, y continúan haciéndolo ahora ON line con el TELE-Clownsultorio.

Raquel actualmente se desempeña como asistente de investigación en un proyecto de la U.S.C. School of Dramatic Arts en Estados Unidos con el objetivo de medir el impacto de los payasos médicos en pacientes con cáncer infantil.

Raquel Gendry is an award-winning actress and master trainer in performing arts with over 30 years of professional experience in theatre. radio, television and film. She has performed and taught in North and South America as well as western Europe. But what she is most passionate about is her work as a humanitarian clown and bringing back hope and joy to the lives of those who have lost them.

She is the founder and president of Narices Rojas, an Ecuadorian non-profit organization that she started in 2006 after experiencing a life-threatening disease herself, and the depths of despair that can exist in hospital intensive care units. She has since trained over 200 volunteer humanitarian clowns. Together they have positively impacted over 290,000 people in local hospitals and refugee camps, and continue to do so.

Raquel currently serves as a research assistant in a project at the USC School of Dramatic Arts aiming to measure the impact of medical clowns on childhood cancer patients.

DANIELLE LEVSKY

Danielle Levsky (she/her) is a Post-Soviet, Jewish, and queer clown, writer, instructor, and producer who seeks to bring more discovery, wonder, joy, and truth into the world.

She is a certified clown teacher (The Clown School) and has taught classes in San Diego, Chicago, and in the virtual world. Prior to gaining her certification, she trained with teachers from Cirque du Soleil, Theater Unspeakable, the Neo-Futurists, Viola Spolin’s improvisational technique, the Ringling Brothers, and Commedia dell'arte master Antonio Fava.

Currently, you can catch Danielle performing, producing, and teaching clown around Southern California. Past collaborations have taken place at institutions like Diversionary Theatre (San Diego), The Conspirators (Chicago), Silent Theatre Company (Chicago), Prop Thtr (Chicago), and Alliance for Jewish Theatre (worldwide). Danielle also served as the Theater Section Editor for Chicago's Scapi Magazine.

Learn more about her teaching work here: criticturnedclown.squarespace.com/teaching

ERIK ENGMAN

Erik Engman is an author, director, teacher, and clown. He is a certified clown teacher (The Clown School), and has studied with teachers from all over the world such as David Bridel, Zach Steele, Matt Walker, Raquel Gendry, Bonnie He, Shannan Calcutt, and Elf Lyons. He has performed his comedy magic act all over the Southland as his alter ego, Breakfast Harold. 

Erik has been teaching Improvisation for over 20 years, on and off (taking time to raise his three children). He studied in Chicago at The Players Workshop of the Second City with legendary improv teacher Jo Forsberg, and at The Second City Training Center. In Los Angeles, he continued his studies with The Second City Training Center LA, IO West, The Groundlings, and Chris Barnes’ Comedy Dojo. He co-founded the improv troupe Comicidal Tendencies. In LA he taught with Players Workshop West and currently hosts the improv workshop Doctor Who’s Line Is It Anyway? which teaches improvisation fundamentals with a time and space twist. 

Erik has been involved in theater since the age of 5. He has a degree in directing theater from Western Illinois University. He has directed, written, and acted in theater in both Chicago and Los Angeles for over 30 years. In Los Angeles he was a member of the award winning Sacred Fools Theatre Company where he wrote, directed and produced for their late night shows Fast n’ Loose, Serial Killers, and The Box. 

Erik is also a published author, with two of his comedy Sci-fi short stories published in the 2021 and 2022 NaNoWriMo anthologies, Engineering Chaos and Alien Gaze.