Comedy / Theatre & dance
Jango Edwards
1950–2023 · clown, cabaret performer
Detroit-born clown who became a cult star of European alternative comedy, co-organizing Amsterdam's International Festival of Fools and founding a clown school near Barcelona.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Barcelona, Spain
aged 73- Birth name
- Stanley Ted Edwards
- Detroit years
- 1950–1970s
- Field
- Comedy, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Edwards was born in Detroit, where his family owned a successful landscaping business. In the late 1960s he threw himself into radical politics, philosophy and esoteric religion, and after three trips to Europe he gave up his possessions in the United States to study clowning abroad. He began as a busker in London and formed traveling comedy troupes, and from 1975 he was one of the chief organizers and stars of the International Festival of Fools in Amsterdam, a city-wide gathering of alternative comedy and clown acts. His one-man shows mixed classic clowning with countercultural and political jokes and built cult followings in the Netherlands, Germany and France, where he played for years in a small Pigalle theater. He recorded four albums, appeared on Austrian television and in 2009 opened the Nouveau Clown Institute in Granollers, near Barcelona, where he died in 2023.
Highlights
- Grew up in Detroit in a family landscaping business
- Co-organizer of the International Festival of Fools in Amsterdam from 1975
- Cult following in the Netherlands, Germany and France
- Founded the Nouveau Clown Institute near Barcelona in 2009