A tribute to Howard Buten

Buffo

Dirty times for clowns!

Just a few days after the death of Gilles Defacque, Howard Buten disappeared at the start of 2024. The man who usually did nothing like everyone else disappeared on January 3, the day statisticians define as the record for the highest number of deaths in a year. As it happens, it was Gilles who, as director of the Prato, had welcomed Buffo’s last performance in January 2011. “Weird, weird… how strange!

 

If the clown redesigns the world according to his own imagination, 2025 in France, his adopted country or, worse, in the USA, where he grew up, “ya du boulot! Maybe he didn’t want to know, but perhaps he could have found just the right words, gestures, music or even the most or the most unexpected gag to make it all more acceptable.

 

Howard Buten was the first ‘accompanied’ artist when I created Émile Sabord at the beginning of 2000, and this artistic partnership with his character Buffo – which began in 1987 with the ThĂ©Ăątre du Galion – continued until he left the stage in 2011. It was a happy time when this artist gave an average of sixty to eighty performances per season.

 

As luminous as Howard could be on stage, he was sometimes mute on tour, carefully guarding his thoughts, which would be inaccessible to us anyway. He always retained that part of his mystery that thirty-five years of companionship have rarely been able to pierce except when he let slip sibylline snatches of phrases such as: “I know children well, I was one children, “I used to be one” or ”I don’t get any pleasure out of being on stage, but once the show’s once the show is over, I’m very happy to have done it.”

 

Today he leaves us for good, “the clown is dying” sang Giani Esposito. The
clown is dead, but, I confess without false modesty, I’m proud and happy for Émile Sabord to have mingled our adventure with his. So “Salut l’artiste”.
Pierre-Yves Maby
Émile Sabord founder

Shows