Silliness Is Serious Stuff at Clown College : Would-Be Clowns Apply From All Walks of Life, but Only 35 of About 4,000 Applicants Are Chosen

They work for peanuts, jump through hoops for customers, take abuse from fellow employees and laugh about it. On the road 11 months a year, they’re lulled to sleep by a train’s metallic click and sway. Ah, the life of a circus clown.

It’s no picnic.

Yet dreamers, free spirits and lost souls still aspire to the Big Shoes, red rubber noses, baggy pants and a spot under the big top.

Who are all these would-be clowns, anyway?

Several turned up at the Long Beach Arena recently to audition for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown College, a tuition-free, 10-week training program in Florida. Another audition will be held Thursday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The Long Beach candidates were all male, from age 17--the official minimum--to 33. What did they have in common, besides circus fever? Not much.

There was Syd Schultz, 27, a stocky cruise line security director with a military haircut and muscles that tested the limits of his blue shirt. Schultz described himself as “the neighborhood clown.” Who would argue?

Teens Mike Lacerte and Kyle Cunningham, both 17 and seniors at Buena Park High School, were repeat auditioners.

Joseph Bustard, 33, whose worn-out jeans and lined face attested to hard times, had worked “as a cook, house painter, gardener. I always wanted to run away and join the carnival.”

Ken Clark, 27, built like a Mack truck, is a stunt man at Knott’s Berry Farm where he had recently begun some clown work and “fell in love with it.”

It was between shows; technicians were setting up for the next performance, two hours away. Concessionaires were readying their wares. The air was redolent of popcorn and elephant.

The applicants quietly gathered in the arena among a maze of cables, wires and ladders. Trapeze bars and hoops were tethered overhead. Clowns in full makeup had the men fill out forms, then snapped their pictures. A lady clown--Pinocchio-nosed, blue-wigged Jill Jeffrey--readied the video camera.

First there were warm-up stretches--and a near-audible groaning of hamstrings. Then came mood exercises. The group was asked to look happy, sad, angry and shy. Make it big, they were told; the last row has to see it. The ice was broken; most of the candidates grimaced and grinned hugely, watched intently by the pros.

Three of the real clowns then demonstrated “The Mannequin Gag,” a typical routine involving a stiff-limbed dummy (Jeffrey) and two bickering decorators (Ted Ferlo and Dave Dedera). Then the applicants had to show their stuff.

They were taught a slapstick bit about two sillies who meet in the park. Pairing off, they practiced double-takes, gestures and chases. Then they performed for the pros, pair by pair. All were game; a few had it down pat.

The session wrapped up with taped interviews. The video and the surprisingly tough and personal application forms will be sent to Clown College director Steve Smith. Out of an estimated 4,000 applicants, only 35 will be chosen for the class of ’92. How does Smith separate real clowns from clown wanna-bes?

“The determining factor is not just talent,” Smith said, “but also the group dynamic. I’m going to take 35 people and lock them in a pressure cooker and turn up the heat each week; I want to make sure that no one is going to go ballistic on me.”

Silliness is serious business.

Smith described the program as “boot camp . . . not summer camp. Our day starts at 8 a.m. and goes to 10 p.m., six days a week. We teach everything from acrobatics to gymnastics, juggling, unicycle riding, how you slip on a banana peel without breaking your neck, how to throw a pie.

“We study the films of Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy. . . . We have lectures on the history of the circus, the history of clowning; we touch on crowd psychology, child psychology: how to sensitize a clown who is garish and big to approach a 3-year-old--you must tone it way down so you don’t scare the kids to death.”

Students are not guaranteed a job with the circus. Only “about a third of each year’s class” ends up being hired. “This is like undergraduate school,” Smith said. “The circus is the graduate program that teaches you other things--like how to adapt to living on trains and what it’s like living with lions and tigers and bears, oh, my.

“And there are lots of ‘oh, my.’ ”

Bill Irwin, class of ‘74, is perhaps the most illustrious Clown College alumnus. He was the first performer to be awarded a $176,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius award.” His acclaimed theater piece, “The Regard of Flight,” currently is running at the La Jolla Playhouse. The avant-garde clown extraordinaire is ranked by critics with great clowns of the past--Chaplin and Keaton.

The Clown College gave Irwin “exactly the physical information that I wanted,” he said. “Falling down, illusions with costumes, structures of routine. We went home very tired and sore at the end of each day, but it was an exciting time. Even around the motel where we were put up, after hours you still wanted to practice--there would be people in the parking lot working.”

After the applicants left--reluctantly--Jay Stewart, 26, a Pierrot-style clown in whiteface, talked about the group, as technicians shouted back and forth across the arena and heavy mats crashed down on the floor with a sound like gunfire. The audience for that evening’s show was just beginning to trickle in, carrying souvenirs, cotton candy and soft drinks.

“I thought there were a few who definitely were deserving of wearing the Big Shoes,” Stewart said. “We don’t like to put just anybody in these”--he held up one enormous, pancake-like foot--”you gotta earn it.”