Mump and Smoot are a Canadian clown duo created by Michael Kennard and John Turner, and directed by Karen Hines.

[2] Kennard and Turner met in Toronto in 1986 in Second City workshops, where they discovered a mutual talent for improvising with gibberish dialogue.

They combine influences from sources including Monty Python, the Three Stooges, I Love Lucy, Alfred Jarry, Samuel Beckett, and Antonin Artaud to elicit in their audience the peculiar mix of sympathy, empathy, schadenfreude, and horror that stem from watching flawed individuals alternately fail and succeed at their petty but all too human schemes.

To obtain this effect, Kennard and Turner use an improvisational technique rooted in an art called Canadian clown, developed by Richard Pochinko in the 1980s.

Mump (the Joey), played by Kennard, is the natural leader; authoritative, pompous, bullying, scheming and manipulative, alternately erupting in towering violent rages and completely collapsing from terror.

[10] The plays occur in a world of surrealistic set design, with simple props combined with haunting and evocative music (by Greg Morrison) and sound effects providing an overall impression of a vast and uncaring universe inhabited by powers beyond the scale of mere Ummonians.

The characters draw the audience in by directly interacting with them in a responsive manner,[4] which may underline their haplessness at the whims of social pressure.