If circus clown Bryan Fulton had to change the image of his Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey colleagues, he'd inject a little testosterone.
"I'd kinda like to be a superhero, all suave out of makeup," says Fulton, a 19-year-old Baltimore native wearing knee socks, shorts, checked blue and red vest and oversized red tie. "Then, I'd go into a phone booth and come out as Super Clown."
Fulton, in Baltimore for performances through Sunday, may have his chance, because the 127-year-old circus is changing the way it approaches clown training.
The Ringling Brothers Clown College, which was established in 1968 in Florida, is closed, and the circus is developing a Clown College Graduate Program. The program is still in the planning stages, but representatives of Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Bros., say it will include more specialized, theatrically oriented Masters of Comedy Workshops. The workshops will be tailored to the interests of performers looking to expand on basic clowning skills, including the approximately 1,500 graduates of Clown College.
The number of college programs and workshops nationwide that teach clowning basics have rendered the original Clown College unnecessary, according to spokesman Rodney Huey.
"There's no need to get those kids right out of high school," Huey says. "It's a different world."
The new workshops will also make clowning more contemporary, since other elements of the circus have become increasingly modern. Acts now involve basketball players unicycling to techno music, professional daredevil in-line skaters and an audience-participation "Macarena."
In the future, clowns may appear in Seinfeldian skits satirizing everyday life and doing contemporary gags centered on computers and the tribulations of today.
Throughout their history, clowns have been relating to contemporary events, according to LaVahn Hoh, a drama professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville who teaches the class "The Circus in America."
In the American one-ring circuses of the late 18th century, talking was common for clowns, says Hoh, who also taught at Clown College. In the late 18th century, a clown named Dan Rice appeared with his pig Lord Byron and mused on politics, and the pig would snort.
Rice, who wore a red and white suit and top hat, was the model for Uncle Sam. But as circuses evolved into three rings in the 19th century, gags had to become broader to work in the larger setting, and the talking clown became extinct. Still, Hoh says, clown acts remain relevant.
