color on my face we marched to the bathroom for the final powdering. When I looked at myself in the mirror I was amazed by what I saw. My plain white face had been transformed. Now my cheeks were cradled in snappy black curves. My eyes were lifted with beaming brows. My mouth was as plump as a lobster claw. All together the simple strokes were like lines from a limerick that leapt happily off a blank white page. My immediate reaction was to tilt my head, lift my eyebrows, and stretch my lips into a smile.
“Oh my God,” I said. “I look like a clown.”
Elmo smiled. “But you’re not a clown. You’re just a person in makeup. I’m afraid there’s a big difference. Only a child can decide who is a clown. The key is persona. A persona is what distinguishes a person in makeup from a clown.”
Thus chastened, I closed my eyes and held my breath as Elmo blasted my new face with his powder sock. Even before I could work on my persona, the first step to being a clown, I realized, would be getting used to this onslaught of powder. The second step would be getting used to the onset of mud.
As the end of the gag approaches, the clowns gather themselves together and move one last time to save the lady, who at this point is standing on top of the house wailing and flailing her arms and screaming for the firemen to save her baby. “Don’t worry!” Arpeggio calls. “We’re trained professionals.” “I hope you have insurance,” Rob adds. The audience cannot hear these lines, they are just for our own amusement. “Hurry up,” Henry says, “I have to fart.”
“ Firemen, firemen, save my baaaaby …,” Jimmy cries over the microphone.
Our first task is to save the baby. Christopher, who is playing the old lady, holds the blond baby doll above his head and tosses her in one giant arching motion toward the top of the tent. As the audience gasps, the baby comes somersaulting toward the firemen’s net, where the clowns bounce it with a grunt and send it back into the air. Sometimes Henry would catch the baby at this point, at other times it would land on the ground. When this tragedy happened I would run to the side of the baby and give it one last chance at life with a desperate rendition of clown CPR.
All eyes turn back toward the lady. She powders her cheeks, looks down at her house, and bends over in preparation for a final dive to safety. When she is just about to make her leap for life, a bright red fireball of nearly nuclear dimensions comes blasting up from inside the house and nearly consumes her exaggerated rear end. The audience shrieks in delight. Now greatly alarmed, the lady bends over one more time as another burst of flames, this time even brighter, fills the ring with terror and the clowns with fright. The audience cheers again.
“It’s the danger,” Elmo explained. “Look at some of those old Charlie Chaplin movies. He’s walking on a high wire with a monkey on his shoulders that has its hands over his eyes and there’s a banana peel thrown on the wire. People love to watch others challenge death. The fire emphasizes that.”
In truth, the fire itself was hardly dangerous. It came from a substance called lycopodium, a dried Mexican fern processed in New Jersey that American midwives used to put on umbilical cords to dry them after birth. In the container lycopodium is not flammable, but when it is blown into the air and comes into contact with a flame (in our case a lighter) it makes a dramatic fireball that looks real but doesn’t burn. Magicians discovered it, Elmo said, and it was used in The Wizard of Oz. In our gag it received the biggest laugh.
“People don’t expect it,” Elmo said. “Also, it hits the lady on the behind. The tushy is very funny, especially for little kids. Where do they get punished? Where do they get spanked? A behind is a sacred thing for a kid. It’s never shown to others. It’s never touched. Therefore we want to make fun of it.”
After two bursts of
“Oh my God,” I said. “I look like a clown.”
Elmo smiled. “But you’re not a clown. You’re just a person in makeup. I’m afraid there’s a big difference. Only a child can decide who is a clown. The key is persona. A persona is what distinguishes a person in makeup from a clown.”
Thus chastened, I closed my eyes and held my breath as Elmo blasted my new face with his powder sock. Even before I could work on my persona, the first step to being a clown, I realized, would be getting used to this onslaught of powder. The second step would be getting used to the onset of mud.
As the end of the gag approaches, the clowns gather themselves together and move one last time to save the lady, who at this point is standing on top of the house wailing and flailing her arms and screaming for the firemen to save her baby. “Don’t worry!” Arpeggio calls. “We’re trained professionals.” “I hope you have insurance,” Rob adds. The audience cannot hear these lines, they are just for our own amusement. “Hurry up,” Henry says, “I have to fart.”
“ Firemen, firemen, save my baaaaby …,” Jimmy cries over the microphone.
Our first task is to save the baby. Christopher, who is playing the old lady, holds the blond baby doll above his head and tosses her in one giant arching motion toward the top of the tent. As the audience gasps, the baby comes somersaulting toward the firemen’s net, where the clowns bounce it with a grunt and send it back into the air. Sometimes Henry would catch the baby at this point, at other times it would land on the ground. When this tragedy happened I would run to the side of the baby and give it one last chance at life with a desperate rendition of clown CPR.
All eyes turn back toward the lady. She powders her cheeks, looks down at her house, and bends over in preparation for a final dive to safety. When she is just about to make her leap for life, a bright red fireball of nearly nuclear dimensions comes blasting up from inside the house and nearly consumes her exaggerated rear end. The audience shrieks in delight. Now greatly alarmed, the lady bends over one more time as another burst of flames, this time even brighter, fills the ring with terror and the clowns with fright. The audience cheers again.
“It’s the danger,” Elmo explained. “Look at some of those old Charlie Chaplin movies. He’s walking on a high wire with a monkey on his shoulders that has its hands over his eyes and there’s a banana peel thrown on the wire. People love to watch others challenge death. The fire emphasizes that.”
In truth, the fire itself was hardly dangerous. It came from a substance called lycopodium, a dried Mexican fern processed in New Jersey that American midwives used to put on umbilical cords to dry them after birth. In the container lycopodium is not flammable, but when it is blown into the air and comes into contact with a flame (in our case a lighter) it makes a dramatic fireball that looks real but doesn’t burn. Magicians discovered it, Elmo said, and it was used in The Wizard of Oz. In our gag it received the biggest laugh.
“People don’t expect it,” Elmo said. “Also, it hits the lady on the behind. The tushy is very funny, especially for little kids. Where do they get punished? Where do they get spanked? A behind is a sacred thing for a kid. It’s never shown to others. It’s never touched. Therefore we want to make fun of it.”
After two bursts of
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