At most schools if you splatted a pie into your teacher’s face, you’d probably get suspended.
But at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, that’s part of the final exam.
“While kids are out learning math and English, we’re learning how to throw pies, spit water, fall off ladders and chairs, get hit by boards and make it look funny,” said Clown College student Jason Schneider, 22, of New Jersey.
Clown College is the official training ground for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Out of thousands who apply, 30 students (ages 18 and older) get to take part in the eight-week session.
Classes this year were held at Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis., and it’s the funkiest college campus around. Stroll around, and you pass a giant merry-go-round, a big-top tent, animal figurines and other circus fixtures. The students aren’t carrying books; they’re riding around on unicycles, grouped together making tweety-bird noises with their mouths or sitting around sewing their multi-colored costumes.
Walk into a warehouse that normally stores the “world’s largest collection of circus wagons,” and you can watch classes. In one area, a young woman named Lisa is walking around on 6-foot-high stilts. Other students are yanking off each other’s pants, bonking each other on the head and falling on their tushies.
So who are these clowns? Basically, they’re people who like the sound of laughing.
“Wanting to be a clown is something you’re born with,” says Benny Schultz, 21, of Zion, Ill., who was voted “most likely to run away and join the circus” in high school.
Brenn Swanson, 20, of Jackson, N.J., says she first was a clown at an amusement park when she was 14. “It was something I always wanted to do,” she said. “There’s no better feeling than making people happy.”
The students learn acrobatics, stilt-walking, juggling, applying make-up, mime and general clowning. At lunch they watch movies of Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, the Little Rascals and old cartoons.
“A clown is a human cartoon,” says Derek Dye, 18, of Indianapolis.
The students also work on routines for their “graduation” performance, their own big-top show.
Typically, 10 of the 30 students go on to work for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. But Derek says the point of Clown College isn’t just to get a Ringling Bros. job. “There are hundreds of circuses; this is just the best,” he says. “The main thing is we’re going to be clowns wherever we go.”
The final exam:
– Build and set off a smoke bomb.
– Throw a pie at the teacher.
– Fall off a ladder.
– Get hit with a board.
– Perform skills like unicycling, stilt-walking and juggling.
– Answer clown trivia questions (get one wrong and the teachers fill their mouths with water and spit on you).
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The Clown College session just ended, but you can check out Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus Tuesday through Nov. 14 at the Rosemont Horizon and Nov. 16-28 at the Chicago Stadium. Call 312-559-1212 for more info.
