Happy Sunday to all! I was cleaning out some boxes I had in storage and came across this postcard. It shows the Red Unit's clown alley for the 126th Edition of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. I'm on the lower right corner in the purple hat. I think we posed for the photo in front of one of the floats used for the opening parade. It's a colorful bunch isn't it? The look for the RBBBC clown alley is a bit different today.
Directly above me and to my left are the newest members to the clown alley: Chuck and Eli. Both were members of the first Clown College graduating class co-directed by Rob Mermin and Dick Monday. To the far left of the picture, second from the top is Chad Miller, my roommate from Clown College in 1993 and as we liked to say "First to Freeze in '93", being part of the first class held in Baraboo Wisconsin on the grounds of the Circus World Museum.
It was a good group of clowns, all very talented and seriously underused in the show. Still, we made the most of it. Our come-in that year was very strong I think. We had a clown band and I was the conductor. All kinds of chaos ensued each time we tried to play. There were tap dancers, skaters, a singing dog, a barbershop quartet, a cloud swing routine, a lost audience person (Chad Miller) and a neat hat tossing/catching routine at the end. All in all it was pretty good stuff and very fun to do. I think I did some of my best work that year and I don't really have much footage of it. I've seen it but never had copies made. It was always a case of," Well, so and so has a copy of it and I'll ask them later." The trouble is now I don't recall who that "so and so" was. Major bummer.
No comments:
Post a Comment