When cellist Karen Hall began accompanying two clowns in their performances, she initially struggled to escape the relative stiffness of her classical training, and share the same playful zone.

Then she started taking clown classes herself. “They were life changing,” she says. “‘Clown’ is such a safe space: you get to be wrong!”

Since then, Hall, who hails from Los Angeles, has devised a solo show she’s bringing to Sydney Fringe Festival called Delusions and Grandeur: a cross between a solo cello recital and a clown performance.

Where many clowns who play musical instruments make comedy from their modest prowess, Hall does the same with her accomplishment.

Both her parents are pianists. She played their instrument at age three and read music at four, before taking up cello in third grade. She played her first wedding five years later, and has been gigging ever since, from the Glee TV show to orchestras.

Often she has sought out more off-beat contexts, however, in which she knows the audience is engaged rather than being left wondering.

“I love string quartets and symphonic music a lot,” she says, “but I didn’t love the presentation of it. I guess it’s very disconnected. It’s beautiful to create with others, and it’s beautiful to collaborate.

“But then, when I did my first improv show and I heard the audience laugh – the audience tells you what the show is about. In classical music we tell the audience what the show is about. I just started thinking, ‘Why doesn’t this world of classical music – which I love – care about its audience the same way that this comedy world does?’ Any performer on stage ought to be the guide and the emotional barometer for the room.”

Hall makes her instrument an interactive character (“Cello”), which she even dresses up and has improvised conversations with. She explains that the fact that musicians respond to their instruments with the same brain patterns as people respond to living creatures accounts for “this character in my life that has so much sway over me”.