Question: What Professional School Gives Credit for Throwing Pies?

vox

I wear plaid pants. And I finally got the obligatory Dartmouth wing tips. But mine are red and blue and about two feet long-classic issue for a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus clown.

With one brother a doctor and the other, Mark '8l, a lawyer, I knew the value of professional training. So when senior fall rolled . around and my classmates Mm headed for corporate recruiting, I auditioned for Ringling's Clown College-the most rigorous clown training on earth.

It was the most exciting interview I've ever had. Where else are you allowed to slap and punch your fellow applicants? But the written application was no joke. The questions cut to the emotional quick: "Describe how you handled an adverse situation. When was the last time you cried?" I must have done well Ringling made me one of 50 accepted out of 3,000 applicants. After graduation and a goodbye cake in the face from my friends at the Hopkins Center, I was off to Venice, Florida, for ten and a half weeks of graduate work in laughter.

I joined 49 other students, who ranged from 17-year-olds to a 36-year old married Alaskan. Six days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., with time out for meals in the pie car, we worked our way through the curriculum: juggling, stilt-walking, unicycling, slaps and falls, acrobatics, makeup, character development, improvisation, gag development, mime, hat tricks, rope tricks, pyrotechnics, bounce rope, trampoline, pie-throwing, magic, sound effects, sewing, and circus lore.

Mime class was my favorite. The message was to believe what you are doing. Director of Clown College Steve Smith, a man of infectious energy, “taught us how to reduce even the simplest of actions, such as drinking a glass of water, to the essential elements of the act and then bring them into clearly focused exaggeration. Steve's own performance is proof of the technique: though not physically big in reality, on stage he is a giant.

We were developing our clown personalities, including costumes. In makeup class we tried the three types of clown faces: Auguste-with a flesh base and exaggerated features; Whiteface-like Pierrot, a classical visage with a white base; and Character_Emmett Kelly's type, a comic variation on the human face. Soon I was putting on more makeup than my girlfriend Lauren, and I even began passing along tips to her (olive oil is great for removing cosmetics).

The clown accomplishments began to pile up: learning how to get slammed in the head with a 16-foot board, being the catcher for clowns who backflipped onto my shoulders, holding a three-man pyramid. Then they hit us with pie-throwing. We used special drill bits to whip a concoction of shaving mug soap and cold water into a throwable goo. After a demonstration of throwing technique, we paired off and went at it. I wish I had known about this when I was a kid.

There were the inevitable down moments as exhaustion set in. We were left bruised and aching. One young student had a breakdown.

Our graduation ceremony involved some serious clowning. This was Clown College's twentieth anniversary, so the show was filmed for CBS Television. I played the mother in Ringling's first aerial clown gag a family rides in a cable car that "explodes" while suspended 30 feet above the ground. It was tough. Hanging by the legs hurt, and I hate heights. But it was worth it: the audience—filled with Clown College alums-laughed.

Afterward, we tried not to think too much about which 17 of us would be selected by Ringling president and producer Kenneth Feld for contracts with the circus. We had already succeeded. We had tested ourselves, pushed back our own limits, faced our separate fears, and come out clowning.

Steve Lough received a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey contract and has been traveling the country with the circus's Blue Unit.