Clownin' Around 2

So if you've been reading this blog faithfully you know that Adam got a chance to be a Ringling Bros. clown on Thursday and write about the experience. Unfortunately the article isn't online but Adam was kind enough to retype it for your reading pleasure. Also available online are the pictures.

Clown for a day
IPT reporter spends time learning performance tricks at the circus

By Adam Ross

"You're not a guy any more. You're a clown. You're a magical being
with special powers -- which is to make people laugh."

NAMPA -- Those words, spoken to me only half an hour earlier by clown
Tom Dougherty, seemed distant after a span of two minutes where I
nearly fell on a child tripping over my clown shoes and had a parent
tell me his daughter "doesn't really like clowns."

How long does it take for those powers to kick in? Looking for my
clown superiors proved little help, as all three were commanding their
own audiences, effortlessly holding the gazes of young and old.

With about 15 minutes -- and probably double that number in autographs
-- remaining until the makeup came off, the time was now to strive for
my clowning achievement. Looking for any circus-goer who would give my
act a chance I suddenly realize that I still don't have an act (or a
functioning joke).

The offer didn't sound this challenging: Be a guest clown at the
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Then again, these aren't
the kind of clowns who do birthday parties and blow up a balloon.

In the 'alley'

Before I was set loose in the circus' pre-show at the Idaho Center on
Thursday, I was the subject of a Frankenstein-like project in the
clown "alley" (dressing room). My facial featues would dictate the
clown makeup, and my silly get-up was born out of the wardrobe from
two clowns with over 50 years combined experience in the business.
Dougherty was a constant source of clown philosophy and history,
relating his experience as an instructor at the circus' official clown
college and decades of practice in the art.

A contrast to Dougherty's wild caricature of sophisticate was Mitch
Freddes, a rare breed of clown who does not use speech or mime
elements in his act. Freddes' makeup, costume and body language is
able to convey the qualities of a lovable, bumbling character.
Dougherty estimates there are probably three other clowns in the
United States with an act similar to Freddes'.

Both clowns started with Ringling Bros. int he late 1970s, when each
of the company's two circus lines had 28 clowns. Now the two larger
lines (blue and red) have 12 clowns, and the gold line that visits
Nampa and other smaller markets only has three.

"The American circus clown is starting to die out, " Dougherty said candidly.
Dougherty and Freddes give me a crash course in the art of clowning,
frequently tossing in snapshots from their careers, both of which
included extended stints away from Ringling Bros. While trying to
explain a gag I can do at the pre-show, Dougherty recalls a joke from
1984 that still makes him laugh.

"I had a big eyeball coming out of my back on a little wire, aiming at
me, and I was reading George Orwell's '1984' -- the few people who got
the joke burst out laughing," Dougherty said, referring to the Big
Brother aspect of the classic novel. "It was probably 1 in 10. A
delicious little moment."

But a clown's job is not immune to traumatic moments. At any time,
Dougherty and Freddes might hear "The 12th Street Rag" from the circus
band -- code for trouble that signals the clowns to distract the
audience. The two clowns recalled a time years ago when that song
summoned them to perform while staff tended an aerial artist's fall.
The resulting 10 minutes of entertaining seemed like the longest of
their career.

Under the big top

With my moment in the spotlight fast approaching, Dougherty and
Freddes built up my confidence like a pair of trainers for a nervous
boxer.

"The circus is a poetic expression of spirit," Dougherty told me.
"What drove us to land on the moon is the same spirit that drives the
guy to land the triple somersault. We're expanding the boundaries of
experience, and the audience lives vicariously through us."

I pace through the game plan one more time: I walk out with the
performers and entertain small groups with my Prince Charming gag, a
shoe on a pillow that may find me a queen. aFter a few minutes of
that, I help Dougherty with his seat gag, where we go into the
audience and toil over the problems presented by the flip-up Idaho
Center seats. It soudned promising walking through the routine before
the audience streamed in, but it's also easy to run into the end zone
on an empty football field.

The optimistic thoughts escaped me when confronted with a sea of
circus-goers who expected to be entertained by the clown in front of
them. Suddenly I was at a loss, and my Prince charming gag wasn't
saving me.

Luckily, I soon found that posing for pictures was enough to satisfy
most and served as an easy-enough mask for my clown inexperience. The
seat routine with Dougherty went off better than expected, and once
behind the curtain my seemingly modest efforts earned praise.
With the big show about to start and my makeup about to come off,
Dougherty shared what matters most to him during these 50-city,
two-year tours. Decades of clowning has made him a fixture in family
photo albums around the country, with some fans even having him sign
pictures taken with the clown years earlier.

In a brief revelation, I imagine the family pictures I posed for that
night, and how my inexperience won't show up on film. They'll only see
a clown.
"Clown is all about connection," Dougherty told me before the show.
"It's what we do, we connect to people."