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As a performer, my relationship with the audience was not what I would have expected. In many ways the performers don’t do the show for the audience. The size of the crowds varies widely, from frequent packed houses of over 3,000 to the occasional dismal showing of under 200 (Rock Hill, at 157, was the lowest of the year), and performers can’t rely on them for motivation. As a result, they must rely on something higher—like a love for the circus—or something lower—like the promise of a paycheck. Moreover, the size of the crowd is often less important than its enthusiasm. In Phillipsburg, New Jersey, near the Pe
For me, each particular audience was less important than my overall attempt to develop my clown persona. I learned early how to turn on and turn off my clown on demand—“on” when I stepped inside the tent, “off” when I stepped out. Not particularly limber, I had been developing a character that was upright, almost formal: an inept maître d’ with a relentlessly su
Like everyone else in the Alley, I joined in the rush to find new bits to add to the gags. During the ladder routine in particular I needed something to do. I considered normal things that firemen do that would be fu
Unfortunately, no sooner had this prop come to symbolize all the virtues of the Alley than it came to represent its faults. While the clowns pretty much cooperated during the gags, once out of the ring the boys would usually just return to the Alley, take off their wigs and pants, and sit around in their undershorts telling off-color jokes. I had been trying to counter some of the tedium and improve my relations with the Alley by asking a few of the boys—particularly Marty—to give me some pointers on being a clown. Although at nineteen he was the youngest, Marty was also one of the hardest-working and most talented of the clowns. In his loudmouthed persona of the Village Idiot he was also the most outspoken, the most conceited, and the most resentful about my being considered a clown. He would constantly complain about my makeup, the way I pulled the cart, even my driving. After passing me on the road one night in the truck he drove for the electrician, he sought me out on the lot. “Bruuuuce,” he said in his whimpering Village Idiot drawl that he never seemed to put away. “It’s considered courtesy to blink your lights at somebody when they pass you.” After several incidents like this, I decided to treat him with the respect he craved and asked him to teach me about taking falls, making bangs, and building props. He eagerly obliged. Soon the problems got worse.
First, he started giving me little pieces of niggling advice. “This is the finale,” he would say. “I think you ought to look more spiffy.” Next he tried to change my makeup. “Your face is really boring,” he would say. “I think you should change it.” Finally, one Sunday evening in Exton, Pe
“Bruuuuce,” he said in his ingratiating whine. “Will you do me a faaavor?”
“Sure,” I said, “what is it?”
“Tomorrow, take the palette and brush out of the cart, wash them off, put them in the truck, and never use them again.”
Then he spun around and left.
For a moment I was stu
Marty was caught off guard by my directness. He said he had learned in the circus that you can’t ask people nicely to do things but must treat them like children. Then he apologized. Later that night he complimented me on my bow tie. The next day he asked for my help with his trunk. As with Sean and Kris several weeks before, the less I acted like some silent cartoon (or even a distant writer, for that matter), the more I was accepted into the circus.
In Willingboro, Sean asked me to go to the mall. He was looking for a new pair of high-top sneakers to replace the ones he wore in his act. The twice-daily impact of the ca
In the mall our subject wasn’t feet, but guts. By late May we had entered a several-week stretch of towns where we played only mall parking lots—York and Exton in Pe