the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
156 - Ringling Trains, Three Rings, And The Craft Of Comedy with Adam Kuchler
A hat flips, a wig sails, and an arena of sixteen thousand goes from breathless to thunderous—this is where Adam Kugler learned to make comedy work under pressure. We trace his path from the Ringling Brothers train to the Mad Apple stage in Las Vegas, unpacking the paradoxes that shape a clown: technique that opens doors, character that keeps them open, and the relentless practice of reading a room in real time.
Adam grew up wanting to be a clown. Juggling paid the bills long enough for artistry to take root. Clown College didn’t hand him a single method; it handed him a map of contradictions. Mask work, European theater, and classic arena gags collided into lessons about energy, body angles, and the atmospheres you can create without adding a single prop. Years later, those ideas proved essential in Vegas, where five minutes of notes from the director migth become a live moment that same night. Working alongside Paul Debek, (who's coming up in a soon to air episode early next year.) Adam built a shared vocabulary with Paul that let's them improvise with confidence and keep the audience’s attention pointed exactly where it needed to go.
We also open the tent flaps on three-ring logistics and the life that supports them: Russian swings timing their crescendos around a teeterboard’s final throw, clowns covering rigging with tight 15-second “walk-arounds,” and a mile-long-feeling train where a five-by-seven cabin becomes a masterclass in living by design. The pay was modest, the repetitions were many, and the growth was real—most breakthroughs happened in front of people. Easy crowds gave permission to risk. Hard crowds demanded clarity. Both taught the same lesson: chase the flow by staying just beyond your current skill, and refine until even tough rooms lean in.
If you love circus history, clowning, juggling, or the craft of performance at scale, you’ll find rich detail here: how myths start, how access to schools shapes technique, and why a good gag is a complete story—skill, problem, solution—in seconds. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves live shows, and leave a review telling us the moment that made you fall for the circus.
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I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way. When I uh uh working with uh Matt Apple in Las Vegas, one of the people I have the pleasure of sharing the stage with is Adam. Adam Kugler. And uh he has a he's uh he's a kind of a quiet guy. You need to be prodding him a little bit before you get to know uh all the secrets and the incredible stuff that he has done. And uh the first uh time around last year when I was there, we spoke, but not uh not quite as much, because he was sitting in a different uh section of the dressing room than me, but now he's moved up, so we're sitting along the same wall of mirrors, and uh as we're spending hours there uh together, we've uh uh connected more. And uh Adam has worked for Ringing Brothers, and then he has worked for uh Big Apple, and now Mad Apples, he's got two apples in his basket, but the Big Apple in New York, the actual Big Apple New York show, and now they have Mad Apple at the New York, New York Casino. So uh and so so that's what Circuit Soleil then. Those are three giants, like Ringman Brothers, Big Apple, and uh Circle Soleil. Big uh important circuit shows in history. And as it then turns out, Adam also loves circuit history and loves and has an incredible knowledge of circuits. Uh one anecdotes that I was like so I worked um during the summers the last four years or so. I've worked with um this uh family of uh clowns or circus performers from more traditional background, and uh he goes, Oh, it's um because he then new uh it's uh Scandinavian uh clowns. And uh he said, Oh, who who is the clowns? And I said, uh oh, um, I I don't know if you know it. And before me saying that he goes, Is it Bonbon? And it is Bonbon. That's the Navaga who uh is the Bonbon the clown and his uh family, so he has a knowledge detailed and uh rich and uh it's exciting to uh finally uh bring him onto the podcast. And I had uh of course as you always do have the idea that you wanna talk about everything, but uh time uh uh does not permit everything to happen at once. So we're gonna have to put this out and into further conversations. But I'm not cut into uh put it on it entirely, even though it's uh long a little bit longer than uh usual. I didn't feel like it was quite needed to be cut into two stuff. Without further ado, here it's Adam Cooker. Uh but uh yeah, I was just gonna say, just before we start the interview, just uh quickly go into wherever you get this podcast from, click subscribe. I will love you for it. Alright. Now, let's get into today's conversation. So we were talking about juggling and history and uh and uh Karl-Heinz Zieten's uh uh books and you were saying about Russian uh Yeah, well you're talking about how the like history can't be told by one person.
SPEAKER_02:And and the idea like that there's still books on World War II being written, you know, and the and how that how that applies to juggling. But like for instance, well, when I was younger, technique was like something that you learned, mate. If you met like the right person, you could learn about technique. It's not like today where everything is available on YouTube, you know. But just thinking about like the history being told by one person. I remember reading that like basically Russian juggling existed because what was it, the KISS family or their trainer or their father or somebody saw Restelli practice and like paid attention and wrote it down, and that is what became that's where Russian juggling came from is they learned high technique from the high technique person. Wow. And passed it to each other. Well, maybe that's totally wrong. Yeah, that's true. That's like I love that though. I like it. One person wrote it down. One person wrote it down, and I'm like, well, that's what happened. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's not. Yeah. Maybe it's just what someone remembered and then said, and that it's just, yeah, we need more people learning things and telling stories.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but it is also this is how life actually functions, how the world, how reality functions. It's like we want everything, and within science or or whatever, or honestly, like with evolution, they go, oh well, it's um it's the struggle for survival. That explains it all. It's like so the whoever is best adapted lives, and whoever uh is not adapted, they don't survive. And in one way going, yep, that's a simple explanation, yet it has not explained anything because there's a million details in there of what it was that at any time made somebody survive. Yeah. So I think the fact that there is noise or multiple perspectives on everything is just a fundamental aspect of reality. And I think that seeing because talking to Niels Duncker and talking to Jay Gilligan about uh Karl-Heinz Eaton publishing a uh history of juggling, 4,000 years of juggling, it is it is a fraught undertaking to try to capture the history of anything and of juggling in this case. But that does not mean that we should not attempt, and like you say, the the the inaccuracies of somebody watching Restelli, taking notes, and then from that adapting that into a way of of presenting or learning juggling is yeah. It's in the inaccuracy, you also kind of go, well, that is still a truth or whatever. That sounds real good anyway. I believe it.
SPEAKER_02:I believe it too. It's also combined, then they had the the state-sponsored schools. Yeah, they had and so they had people that could learn and that could teach. It wasn't happening like by accident or like take a job setting up bleachers in a tent just so you could maybe talk to a juggler and learn from them. You know, it was access to information.
SPEAKER_00:And it was put into practice. That's also really interesting, too. Like you can have like me, I have lots of ideas about what's going on in showmanship or whatever. Yeah, but if you don't have a quite uh have a school or have somebody who listens to you and actually puts that into place, I mean you do it yourself, you vocalize what it is that you do. Um but unless you have a school, then you can't really like that in the theory never becomes praxis, and then the idea is uh yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, what where would we be if Jay Gilligan hadn't moved to Sweden? Yeah, like that move, what that did, and now those those students and what they have done, and how like I mean, you know, at the in their own way, at their own scale, they've changed the world because he shared his thoughts with people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it's so interesting being involved in that. And here with Wes Pedon and Patrick and uh like with War Ron Mars, with them moving here, and then later on when one of them got injured or whatever, and and uh having Jay come over and uh and juggle as part of it. It's really it's interesting what he what they what they've done over there and what he has then put out by for 20 years being working in the Stockholm Circus School, needing to conceptualize not just like I teach you this trick and then I teach you that trick, but to try to make people take juggling as an art form seriously. So yeah. Yeah. That's his wonderful kind of contribution to it. Oh, this is this is your yeah, anyway. Um so you are a juggler.
SPEAKER_02:That's your but you Well, I wouldn't that's okay.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Well, it it's interesting because when I'm when we properly met working in Mad Apple with Sarah Soleil, you were employed as a juggler and you're juggling cigar boxes, but that's even that's changed in the last little bit.
SPEAKER_02:It's funny, even now I still like I don't know what the like three levels up from Twitch that word still goes to me. Like I wanted to be a clown. I grew up wanting to be a clown, and you know, as a kid in Milwaukee in the whatever, in the 80s, I suppose. God. But I wanted to be a clown, and then so we're like, all right, well, what does that mean? What can I do to help me towards that? And uh Ringling put out a video on how to be a clown, and one of the things they taught was how to juggle, and that was something I could do at home, and that was something, you know, I could spend you know, as much time as I could learning that and working on that. Um and so from the beginning, juggling was right there and was the thing that I could work on by myself in my room and in the in the basement, you know. Um and it was the thing that kept me in work. I started working on cigar boxes, and cigar boxes is the thing that kept me working all these years, and I've been able to work on clowning in front of audiences because I had that anchor. Um, but I always like hated that word juggler and people identifying me as a juggler or even a skills clown. Like, I want to be a clown, I don't want to be a skills clown, I don't want to be a juggler. And then eventually I had done enough work. I big Apple Circus working there was did a lot as far as proving to myself of like I didn't have anything more to prove to myself, and um I ended up in Las Vegas and just wanted to see what I could do in Las Vegas, and this job with Mad Apple came up. Coming to Las Vegas and deciding, like, okay, maybe I can make a go of this. It was like I was gonna trade my skills for money, basically, for the first time, instead of pure pursuit of being a better clown. I was like, how about I see if I can make some money? So I was willing to do to just like whatever job came up. And Mad Apple came up, so I was like, all right, I'm a I'm a juggler. And at one point, they would needed a backup for the Shadows Act in Mad Apple that Paul DeBeck came up with. And I put myself the the artistic director was like, okay, we'll have a Wheel of Death guy learn the Shadows Act. And I was like, What like what about me? And he's like, Well, you're just the juggler. So that, like, all right, I'm just a juggler. So when you met me, I was just the juggler. It's just that's what I right when you came around, that's all I was doing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first the first time. But then when I was uh so the first time that was last year in 2024. Sure. And then there was about a year or so until I was back, and and in that meantime, Walderbeck had gotten more traction with his London calling show. Yeah. And I don't know what went on there, but he was going to license the act to Cirque with having having you do it. So that was that was uh but you were practicing then and you did your first shows whilst I was there doing the shadows. Gosh. So I believe you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's uh that was in yeah, it's been Mad Apple itself has been a cur like a career journey just in my time on this one job. Um the artistic, I was just doing my number and a cue. And the artistic director like needed something more to I think to even justify having me around anymore and threw out some ideas and and we did them sort of effortlessly. He talked about having a greater role in pre-show, going out 20 minutes before the show, and he pitched his ideas to me, and I was like, okay. And he was even surprised that I was just game like that. And he's like, What he didn't even he didn't even know that I had ever done anything before. Um, and he's like, Well, what a lot of jugglers would be sort of freaked out at these ideas. I was like, Well, I've done all of this before. No, this is not new to me. I know that I can do this.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that funny though? Like, you pursue being a clown, which I think of as like the clown is perhaps the epitome of what the showman is, of where a clown is. So you're supposed to make people laugh. That's the easiest or first thing that the general public think about. But a clown really has the license to go into any kind of emotion and get any kinds of reactions. They can have skills, like you say with juggling or whatever, but they can also just be uh interacting with the audience. There's so big scope uh in it. Yeah. And you'd been a clown first, which I see as a really valuable starting point, because it's kind of my starting point. Although I also don't do traditional clowning by any stretch. It's like sure. But uh or you do.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah? Yeah, I don't know. I think that clown is way too big of a word for any of us. Like I think that there are I agree.
SPEAKER_00:There's just within circus, some people are very narrow. It's like if you don't have white face on, then you can do then you or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not. I think I I I think that it's ridiculous to let that word limit what you do because uh clown, like I think clowns were invented like shortly after humans, you know. Like it's just you can't claim Charlie Chaplin as a clown and claim like ancient people as clowns and then try to limit to a specific thing to think.
SPEAKER_00:I agree. I agree too. I believe that it's an archetype or so. It's like in a Jungian kind of sense. This is something that is that goes so deep that it goes into the territory of shamanism, which is also like a proto-religion slash proto-medicine slash uh proto entertainment for like the it's got all these elements kind of baked into it that then has separated out, and and often find that people name things too small, saying this is what a juggler is. But the artistic director of Matt Apple, when he was looking at you, he is reacting to the stereotype, if you will, or a too small idea uh idea of what a juggler is, and and in a sense, he's probably right in 65% of the times or whatever. Sure. Jugglers are often people who have done what you describe of being alone and um finessing uh expertise in throwing and catching in a gym by themselves often. So it they are often incredible uh displays of technique. Yeah. And that is often then not uh easy, it's not easy for them to take the step out and interact with the crowd like you are doing. Yeah. So he's like right in it by the broad of it, but it's funny that you sort of specialized your way in to use your skills for making a living.
SPEAKER_02:He worried about one kind of crazy and ended up, oh, there's a lot of different kinds of crazy. Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_00:That's great. So your role kind of expanded because that I remember that you were doing those rehearsals too. That might then have been last year, like in 2024, somehow that I've been in kind of constant creation.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um yeah, you we had some there's some of the stuff that's like the easiest and the hardest job I ever had. Like you would think Cirque du Soleil on the Las Vegas trip that you know, you would have months of rehearsal to try out a new moment. And no, we would have a five-minute conversation. The boss would say, Hey, I'm I'm looking for he would talk about blocking and artistic vision with Paul Debec and I. And we would walk it like improvise a walkthrough one time, and that was it. And then it was in the show that night in like an hour and a half. Like the amount, just all of our instincts and experience we've we've had to draw on constantly. It's it's pretty wild and fun.
SPEAKER_00:So fun. But also then that wouldn't then there would be tuning. Like if he would probably see it that night, and if he had a and usually I would assume, just because it's like it's also not coincidental. Like before he put you in the position where you were gonna go out there, he had worked with you for some time. Yeah, he had worked with the Beck from the beginning, kind of, or well, he'd been there from the beginning. So he knew his work and had seen him interact and been in creation with him. So when it he goes, does does five minutes of blocking with you, it also has implied a deep trust there as well. A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_02:And also it uh you know, luck, whatever. But also you ended up with Paul and I together, and each of us have really similar, like we knew what we were doing, we knew what we just had the same goals, we had the same, we under we understand the world of Mad Apple really well together. So we didn't have issues of vocabulary and we didn't have issues of like limitations on what our characters can do. Like we he could give me a look and I knew what he was saying. You hear about these things, and we had that going on, that magic. It made things really easy. We're both really capable, yeah. We would know what each other were doing, we weren't stepping on each other's toes, we were taking turns and hitting the ball back and forth, you know.
SPEAKER_00:So fun. Yeah, and it's but it is also like the scope of it is different from when you get go out and jam on most shows that I've been on, like you say. Centre Soleil in a huge 1300 seat the theater on on the strip of Las Vegas. People are paying a serious amount of money every time they come in, so they're expecting a certain thing. So yeah, but that's also like it's an it's a great fuel as well for channeling the best you with the the pressure of that.
SPEAKER_02:Are people gonna hear these airplanes?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. If they do, they can they can just uh edit it out in their mind.
SPEAKER_02:Or I would prefer just I want to throw this out there because I feel like a lot of your audience maybe has somewhat the same like history as we probably do. But that movie Funny Bones, yeah, like Lee Evans and his family live in the park under the roller coaster. And I want to I want people to think of me like that. Yeah. Except it's an under an airport that I happen to live at the moment.
SPEAKER_00:I find that though, like that's the it's like the them living under a roller coaster, and that's the sort of what people want it to be. But the more the real life of what it is to be a performer or whatever, I have this of spending time in motels or hotels or by the airport and spending time in vac in waiting for stuff. Like, because this industry, when you're actually out there working on the road, so much of it is like the absolute vast majority of it is travel and waiting and tech, and then there's it's almost sometimes an afterthought that the show then happens, and they might like, oh, you're gonna do half an hour here, but you've been flying and driving, and you know this, so it's this is planes and people driving by on the road with motorbikes.
SPEAKER_02:On the cruise ships, the guest entertainers would always say, like, almost invariably I get paid to be in airports. The shows I do for free, I get paid to for those times in the airports. Yeah, that's a very interesting point. I get paid to sleep in moldy hotels. I get you know, like that's it's the stuff a lot of people we end up in this world because of the dreams of a child, you know, and then uh you stay in the places you stay, so you can do the thing you love to do.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And let's uh go uh go back because you skipped past some of the some of the gold, like oh yeah. I mean, I uh I would love to go kind of back and look at those dreams of a child. So you mentioned that you wanted to be a clown first, and then you mentioned that Ringling had put out the videotape. So let's talk about both of those things because you ended up not just buying the videotape but joining Ringling, which is incredibly fascinating and romantic to me.
SPEAKER_02:But so what what was the I mean I've seen the dreams like most of the things that I've dreamed I've done. Um so like if there's kids listening, don't dream too big, and you can do it. No, but I did it. So uh that poster that's over there in the corner. Yeah, there's behind those boxes is my uncle. My uncle was in the first class of clown college and was with Ringling for six years.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:So that was not an outside the box dream to have. Like my uncle had done that, and um the these poster, oh my gosh, I'm like surrounded, I'm not totally surrounded by the stuff, but I'm surrounded by it. This circus parade happened in Milwaukee in the 60s and 70s. My uncle was involved with that when he was still in high school before Ring Ring. It went away for a while, it came back in 85 or 86, and my uncle wrote a letter saying he wanted to be involved however he could. Uh he was a Hollywood makeup artist by then. And so they brought him in and he did the makeup for Ernest Borgnine, who was an Oscar-winning actor. And um so he was brought back to Milwaukee for the parade. And my mom it wasn't just a parade, it was a whole week. There's a parade grounds that had a circus. There were like 750 horses in this parade. It was a big deal. And so you could walk around these parade grounds, and it was a whole it was like a small festival or a big festival around this parade. And so the day before the parade, my mom made me up like my uncle and surprised him at the parade grounds. And that day I still have a photo from the photo, I have a picture like from the thing that made me want to be a clown, basically. Uh yeah, I got my uncle was a magical person, and seeing the way people were around him is what made me want to be a clown, really. Uh so yeah, I wanted to that was that made me want to be a clown in the circus. And I had a little bit of a road path because of my uncle. Um Ringley put out that video. What I think it was at Toys R Us, and it was my birthday, and my mom there was a Green Bay Packer sweatshirt, and there's this video tape, and she's like, which one of these do you want to be your birthday present? And I chose the video. It's like these it's crazy, it's interesting the path that I it was kind of laid out for me, and also it had never existed before and won't ever again. Like that tape was in the store at the time for me to get it and start. It was it's really something.
SPEAKER_00:Is you need something to validate it to yourself that that's what you are. And becoming a clown on your own is difficult because the clown is only becomes a clown in the interaction with the audience or in a show or in a so any anything that you would be doing at home in your room would just be playing. But juggling, one of the things that it has is that it's a there's no arguing with it. Because you can argue whether someone is a clown or funny enough or whether they're gonna be it. But if you can juggle five balls, you can juggle five balls. And for as much as you and me, who also identified as a juggler for quite a while, now I'm like when I'm surrounding myself with with the people Joe Fisher or uh or Jay Gilligan now, I am not the juggler, but I can go in front of an audience and they will without a doubt say he's a juggler. Even if I just didn't do any of the other things and I just did some of my older routines, they would go, oh, he's a great, isn't he funny, this juggler? And but but so putting that aside, just looking at the fact that you got that videotape, it sort of is it it gives you some tangible proof to yourself in this yeah, I can do this, yeah, I can learn how to put makeup on. I can yeah, I can learn a skip. Yeah, and then when you when you when you then pursue that as well, uh then then you do actually come into the game uh applying to clown college because how eventually so so you did all the juggling and stuff on your own for how long before you actually there are then there were a number of things that popped up over the years.
SPEAKER_02:Um the Ringling Brothers are uh part of the story from Wisconsin, and so their original winter quarters is in Baraboo, and which is still the Circus World Museum there. And um so when I was like whatever, coming of age, there was this guy, Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill was the clown at Circus World Museum who had been on Ringling, whose mom, I think his mom had babysat my uncle back in the day. So like Mr. Bill grew up following my uncle, and then I introduced myself to him through like a miracle of bravery at the time. And Mr. Bill was like, kind of took me under his wing just like instantly. And so one of the first things I did in front of people was at that museum, he put me in the pre-show there with him, kind of like clowning for the first time.
SPEAKER_00:Great. Without and and then you weren't doing juggling or anything?
SPEAKER_02:You were just Well, that was the thing. I took a duffel bag full of props, and he in, you know, I showed him like my juggling, and he's like, okay, but it's not funny. Yeah, yeah. That that was interesting, that moment of like, okay, great, you've done all this work. Who cares?
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting. I have a parallel story of me doing linking safety pins. At this magic circle meeting with my dad and whatever. And I showed a whole sequence of things one can do with like linking rings, but it was with safety pins. Yeah. And sometime through that routine, one of the one of the older adults went, yeah, so uh what were you thinking? Kind of in a snide way, as far as I remember it, what are you thinking to say w when you do this? And it just sort of both sort of crushed me, but also kind of went, I I have not thought this through. I've been focused on the skills of the butt they're going like, how do you make them care? Like, here's a safety pin, here's another one. Now they're stuck together, and now has they all three together, and now one of them is off again. And and making them care.
SPEAKER_02:So that's like when you said it, it's that same thing where you're a child and you don't think there was the first day of clown college makeup class. The the makeup instructor says makeup is the most important thing about being a clown. It's the first impression that you make on people. It shows people, because it's for a ring link, so you're talking about Madison Square Garden, for example. You're talking about people sitting very far away. How big is Madison Square Garden? Big. Oh, it's more than that. Oh uh I want to say it's 16,000 people for a circus, for our circus, which was three rings, which is hockey, it's the same setup as would be for a hockey game. For basketball, which is a smaller stage, there's more people in there. For a concert, there's even more people in there. But I want to say it was 16,000 people. Mad. Um makeup is the most important thing. He gave a whole speech, and then he says, and makeup is the least important thing. If you don't have character, nobody cares what your makeup looks like. And it's the same thing. Like, you can you need to spend your whole life to get to get good at this, these tricks, these technical tricks. And no one will care until you add these other things to it.
SPEAKER_00:That's so great. I love that. I love dichotomies like that, but also I love like the paradoxes. And I think when you really get into the soul of what we talk about, circus and showmanship, I do think that it's just riddled with these paradoxes. Like when people go, it doesn't matter what you do, it's how you do it. And I'm like, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as it's really good, yeah, it's how you do it. So it's within that, because if you do something and it's actually not good, then it doesn't matter how you do it. If it if that skill or whatever it is, it's like so there's and then that's the truth type that's not true either. Exactly. Because you can do so, and I have like in when I'm writing and the thing that comes up, it's like just so that I am able to put something down on this page, it's whenever I say, don't do this, or this is not good, then there will probably be one or more people who have made a career out of doing exactly that thing that I don't say, but to say not to do. But to be able to say anything, or to be able to make any meaningful kind of statement, you need to cut away most of reality and make that one statement. And then you go, this is true. But just like this uh makeup man then said about it, he goes, This is the most important thing, but it is also worthless unless you have the other things there. So you end up with saying, you end up with a like a list of criteria. Like when you define what play is, it's a list. When you define what life is, it's it's a list of criteria that it should have. But because you can't, like when you write it out in one statement, then it cuts too much away. So you end up with these sort of lists of it should have some of or all of these, the more of these criteria it has, the more likely it is that it is a clown. But goals. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It's just goals. Yeah, good point. I like the the rule, like it can't be this, is a great starting point for something.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's it's like because someone goes, Well, you can't do this. Or I have it with books too. Someone goes, Oh, Gravity's Rainbow, it's that's a famously difficult or so book. And that when I hear that, there's something in me that goes, Oh, I should really read that. And I and I read it, and they're like halfway through, and you're going, like, this is so complex or complicated, or and I'm surprised every time because you kind of think, oh, but you throw yourself in, though, someone goes, you can't just do random things without any kind of order, and then you see a proc comic or whatever, and they're going, that's what they do. Here's one thing, here's something else, and here's something else, not related to any of it. Yes. But yeah, so you go in, how was the how was the process of like because then you're talking to the makeup man? Like, how did you go about coming up with your makeup, clown makeup phase?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I had a terrible time. It was an interesting, it was because I grew up wanting to do it and I grew up studying, yeah. And I got to clown college through some other coincidences, but um I got there and it was a a new director of clown college. Actually, there were two guys that were co-directors. Um but the directive that they had been given by their boss was it has to be different. Good luck. Like, what is that? And so it was really interesting because they didn't know what that answer was, so they threw everything at us. They the instructors that they they brought rather than a but a whole um faculty that could point us in a direction, they brought in a faculty that pointed us in every direction. And makeup was one of the places where they threw us in a bunch of directions. Um but I had studied like 80s ringling clowns. And so I was like pretty good at applying that kind of makeup, and I didn't have any experience with anything else. So I had a hard time. I had a hard time with finding something, and actually the makeup instructor like put it on me. He like, he's like, This is what your face is. Yeah, right. And I was like, okay, and I learned to do that, and like a few weeks later, he's like, We're doing something different. This is what okay. So I actually didn't find that stuff. Yeah, he found it for me, and then over the years, you know, it evolved, and that week it evolved, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um I mean, it's it's a whole mythology around that thing of finding your clown face or whatever, but just like but just like with everything, it's also much more for me. It's these things of it's like you take this decision and then take another decision, and then you go, well, we need to do this now. And acts that I do are often because I was thrown into a situation where you go, Oh, you we need actually 45 minutes. Yeah. And then you have one day to think about it, or you're just going, oh yeah, no problem. And then you go, what am I gonna do? And sometimes that thing becomes a big part of the next step forward.
SPEAKER_02:Well, makeup, I was working with Circus Theme, which is a youth program in Chicago, and he just put a bunch he put clown makeup on the table and told the kids to put it on. And they they like children smearing crap on their face was the best clown makeups I've ever seen. It was the most like with kids, it's honest expressions. Yeah, yeah. The same thing, like, oh god. It's incredible. There is no way to get to it, and the the purity of the worst makeup you've ever seen, being the best makeup you've ever seen. It's all so messed up, man.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But so that's that's the face. And then what kind of work did you guys do then for for character or for finding yourself to be expressing clown in a three-ring circus and then on that arena size?
SPEAKER_02:I kind of almost didn't. That was the thing, is we had two, it was a huge faculty that changed a lot over the course of a few months. But two, like we had a dance instructor that was the same all the way through, and we had two wringling clowns through the whole time. And then I think we had two or maybe three other people that kind of rotated in over the time. But they were like our classic ringling, classic circus clown teachers, but most of the people that we had were not that. They so, in that, in their pursuit of something different, they hardly taught us what had been taught before. So we had just various physical theater practitioners come through. We had some people that worked in one ring circuses and in European circuses and in theaters that came through. Um, folks that came from all different directions. Uh my favorite one that I think about is this lady Carrie Margolis, who's still around. Uh Dodi DeSanta was a person I think of a lot too who taught mask. But Carrie Margolis is fun because those ringling clowns like hated that she was there. She was so, her vocabulary was completely different. And she talked about energy a lot. Um I remember an exercise where it was taking the energy down, down, down, down. And now, after having been around for so long, I really understand like just how much we communicate with our bodies and how much like an angle of your shoulder can change the meaning of something quite a bit. But they thought her method was super fluffy, you know, and and way too intellectual and whatever. Well, it's like 30 years later, she came and taught a workshop with Cirque de Soleil. We were in the Mystère Theater, and like if you wanted to go sign up and go, and it was super fun. Having had a week or two with her when I was 18, and then working with her again for a couple of hours 30 years later, was like, wow, oh my gosh, like this person that I couldn't understand, like I've actually been doing her stuff this whole time. It's really that's great. It's really fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:What was the because I when you were talking now, I was like, oh, and then she taught me when I was 18 and I didn't understand it. And then she came and she spoke now. And did it seem clear now what it was that she was talking about because you'd gone through her vocabulary and the way that she spoke, did it speak to you in a different way?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it spoke in a different way, partly because I've, you know, I've never stopped paying like I've never stopped trying to get better, you know. Um and also so I've had a lot more input over the years. And I think was it Michael Chekhov wrote a book on the technique of acting where he talks about atmospheres and wanting to change the colors of atmospheres in the room. Which like sounds completely insane.
SPEAKER_00:Nala uh in his book uh Cloud Manifesto talks about this too, painting the room red. Maybe that's where it comes from. Anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe. But also we come to these realizations over the years. But like atmospheres, for instance, like at Matt Apple, we're dealing with diff different atmospheres all the time.
SPEAKER_00:You're the first out, and Mim Bologna are every time we're coming down and we're getting an emotional weather report of what is barometer? What is it like today?
SPEAKER_02:And it's it's crazy out there. And sometimes the sometimes the atmosphere in the room is exactly what like our wheelhouse. And and I know that each of us is gonna go out there and and just knock it out of the park for an American saying, like, you're just gonna go out there and do the thing you love, and they are gonna love it and love you for doing it, and it's gonna it's perfect for all of us. And sometimes they're grumpy. Yeah, you know, sometimes sometimes that atmosphere in the room is not conducive, and we we have to pull on our experience to to change to change us or change them so that our atmospheres line up, and so we're going in the same direction towards whatever it is that we're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Or the goal of getting the maximum amount of enjoyment out of the situation for us and them or whatever. There's these ideas of art and entertainment.
SPEAKER_02:And we are we're like in the blender of those things all the time. Yeah, it's it's wild. Um but anyway, it's it's not as simple as like slapping someone and chasing each other and a pants drop, you know, like it's as it's as big as as you want to make it, you know. So that was the thing about Carrie Margolis and these other people is that it just broadened the world and just the idea that this thing that we do is bigger than any of us, and um, and that there's as many ways of approaching the work as there are people that doing it.
SPEAKER_00:Super interesting. And uh because I my uh understanding of what the clown college was, maybe then before this, was more hands-on practical. This is some material that we're gonna do. We're teaching skits, and we're doing we're going out, and you're you're treating it almost like um like theater in a way, in the way that you're going, this is the skit. We have these props, we're gonna come out. This one is used like this. If you can come up with something more, great. If you can make this into a whole bit, then go. But that it started more from uh actual acts or so. This is the act, and these are the props we're gonna use. But you guys were sort of more in what I feel like is what's what you want to call it contemporary clowning or theater clowning, yeah, European clowning, they sometimes call it.
SPEAKER_02:Those directors that were Rob Merman, who was the director of Circus Marcus, which I also went through, which is how I got there actually. The application that I had had the deadline printed on it. This must be submitted by whatever. And it was not the date. I would have never I would well, not never, I would not have ended up at Clown College because I would have submitted too late. Except that I was at Circus Mercus and the co-director of Clown College was there and was like, oh no, you need to do this now. Oh, great. Um the other guy was Dick Monday, and Dick Monday was really the person who brought in the faculty and really designed that program for us. And Dick prep Dick really prepared us for the future. Like the people in our class, like Jonathan Taylor from Daredevil Chicken. So you were in, he was there at the same time as you? Yes. I did a number with him in our graduation, also Vokie Calfayan, who created the gazillionaire for Abset County. Oh wow. We went to clown college together. I was 18 years old with those guys. We like our paths intersected in that time. It's wild. And we've all continued on. And there's there's many others too that are still out there, still doing like the thing or things related to it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Which is still the thing. And for you, it was just the thing you fell into. You go to clown college, and next thing you know, you're a theater teacher at the kids. Like there's so many directions you can go in, and you never straight off the path.
SPEAKER_02:It just went to And and a lot of that has to do with Dick Monday bringing together that group of people who showed us the world. Dick didn't just show us three-ring American arena style clowning. Dick really showed us the world, or a lot of the world anyway. How did he do that? It's just the uh just what is it, the the breadth of experience that of the people that he brought in and the Yeah, to teach and and whatever. Ringling, we knew, of course, most of us wanted the job for Ringling, but we also knew that Ringling wasn't the only place. We knew that there was a whole world that would that would be that was possibilities for us if we chose to go in those directions.
SPEAKER_00:That was a lot of it. And um did he talk about that? Like sort of explicitly kind of go, these are directions and this is uh places where you can go, or was it very much folk was it sort of like general clowning, or was it clown because it sounded like before this throw everything out and start fresh approach that they had when you guys started that they were more aimed towards ringling as well, and that now it was more general clown educational?
SPEAKER_02:He didn't speci I don't he might have talked about it, excuse me, but each of those people brought in their perspective, which was correct. Yeah, yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_00:Which is great as well, meeting ten different uh teachers who all uh speak from their own point of view with great strength and a lived authenticity of why this is to write. 100%.
SPEAKER_02:And when you're in that math class with that mask teacher, you're like you're doing that, and that each of those moments has those rules, and so you can get out of it what you can get out of it, you know? And I think it's just that of just seeing all of these, like, oh, that is true over there, and that's true over there. There is like there are all of these different things, and and it made it easier for each of us, I think, to follow our own paths, I think. Yeah, yeah. And to bring truth to whatever that path was.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. When I'm thinking back to the little bits of um uh of uh training that I've had, official training or so, where there's been teachers or so, there's there's uh there's lessons in there that stick with me for always. Yeah. They're not when you're doing exercises and stuff, and I'm kind of in the process of that because I'm writing this book at the moment. And whenever you try to teach something, you try to explain it so that I can speak about it on the podcast, you that what I end up saying feels in a way always too general. But I think that that's also a feature of teaching or whatever is that you when you're talking to 12 students, or when I'm talking on the podcast to the people who are listening, and it could be anyone, you have to go general. Whilst somehow the generalness of that, in when I'm working with people specifically, when I've been working with Nick DeFat lately on one of his new projects, it we never sit down and go over those kinds of basics, then it becomes this flowing some with creativity or when you're making something put on the spot tonight, you're going out with Paul Debeck and you're doing the opening thing, and then this is then the ideas are being thrown at it and you're using your sort of it's much more sort of specific, but I think that the the teaching almost by its nature need to be more general when you're having an 18-year-old person who needs to find all these things. You speak in generalities, and then you yourself have to put they give you the bones and you have to put the meat and eventually put the skin on this person of yourself and then paint the face of it. The clown. Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:No, I don't know either. I have never I um I I've done very little like teaching or guiding of other people. Um I haven't taken a lot of like workshops or classes, and that's a whole skill set that I don't have a lot of experience with that I think is like, you know, it's awesome, and I don't haven't done it much. Oh, I haven't talked to groups.
SPEAKER_00:Not in a now we do this exercise. Not that kind of stuff. Okay. So we're the same there. Right. No, but you're just writing a book for the world. Well, I'm well it uh uh it's always hard to know. So I'm going by this thing of going, you need to write the book that you want to write or the book that is not out there yet. So uh I'm going by that. Okay. What's needed, or whatever. Like I'm never writing anything for that. And I don't know about who made a lot of money within writing a philosophical book about circus. But I've never in everything that I've written, writing a half-hour long poem about a clown traveling to America from Armenia, that how long that took me and for what that had like it gives you gives you nothing in one way. Yet when I then last year when I came here and I was at McKing's house, and um Charlie Fry came there to uh to a party or whatever, and uh I was talking to him and he went, Oh yeah, so have you um written any more epic poetry? And I was like, Oh, because as it turned out, coincidentally, I had just released my hundredth episode where I put that poem out. It's like a half-hour audiobook style poem. And I thought that he had heard that. And then he said, uh, no, no, I read it uh when you posted it as a serial on my blog and on Facebook back before my daughter was born. So for as much as uh I'm putting stuff out there and nothing comes of it, really people that I respect and love are are finding it, and then I'm defined, and the conversation that I'm having with him now is defined through Charlie Fry talk to me. But not just that he talked to you and said hello, nice to see you at the party, but like that he knows through you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Golly, that's that's like maybe in 18 years, Charlie Fry.
SPEAKER_00:I think he likes epic poetry. If you want to get to his heart, you gotta God, I'd rather never meet him. Oh, our heroes. So great, so great. But so I have never seen a three-ring circus. Can you just like picture with yourself in it? Because you did you could I want to hear about uh also want to hear about the circus trains. I just love that. And it's just a couple of episodes we had uh Anchapoda talk about riding on a train to Macedonia throughout it when behind the wall in the 80s when she was going to um before the war came down and all that. So that's one of the previous episodes. But um but I would love to hear about but but firstly, can you just describe to me what it was like when you guys came into town and set up uh and and what happened in the in the three just an outline? No. Okay. Um gee, well, what part? This is the thing, like you said, you can Yeah, narrow it down. How about with like instead of painting the painting that big, like how does it actually technically work with the three acts going on and some some memories that you have of what happened in the center ring and what on the other rings, and how you guys then as clowns came into it at some point.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, thank you. Um so I was there specifically during a time in the 90s. I was there, I got there at the end of 95, and I left at the end of 99. So, you know, it's a living form, you know, things change over the years, lots of considerations. By the time I was there, there were fewer three-ring displays than there had been. Right? Now, so I would say that it was put together in different ways. So you might have three rings of dog acts, and those dog acts might all be different. One might be kind of on the clown side, one might be like on a really show high-level tricks side, and they would all be going on at the same time without much to do with each other. But then there would also be, now when I was there, we had on this one tour we had in ring one and three Russian swing acts. Can I just use those words without having to describe what that is? Well, yeah. Yes, you can. Okay, thank you. And then a teeterboard act in the middle, right? Oh. Now, those acts, those acts would be going on, but they wouldn't be, it wasn't just chaos. They would be paying attention to each other. So they weren't like wasting, they weren't competing with each other necessarily with tricks. They would be their big tricks would be happening so you could see each of them.
SPEAKER_00:But the audience might have to be chaotic for the audience. Was those acts then put together from scratch by Ringley? They brought them in and then just had somebody tune them so that they fit them together.
SPEAKER_02:It was to hire acts. They've hired acts and the acts would come in. And I think I uh likely there was just coordination between the acts. Yeah. Or maybe there was well, just the nature, you can't just flip people constantly. There were lulls in the action, so there might have been some sort of collaboration between the groups. I was so focused on myself all at the time that I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_00:We're just painting in broad brush strokes here. But that's basically like that that's a great description of what it is. It's like, well, we don't start your next sequence until the ones on the right have finished their main thing. Because then they go into stylings and all acts, like all teeterboard acts is like they're jumping up and down, but then there's the bits in between. What do you do in those bits?
SPEAKER_02:Or else you just have a five-minute in the example of those acts, the the swing acts would finish and then the teeterboard would do their last trick. Yeah. Which is a triple somersault on one still. Which like silence. The having a whole arena full of people go absolutely silent to watch a single feat, and then to go absolutely insane because it was absolutely insane how high that guy would fly and how much he would turn with a stilt attached to him, and then just land on that tiny little point. Yeah, yeah. Um the yeah, hearing a whole building full of people go silent and then go crazy was a neat thing to be around.
SPEAKER_00:It's like it's uh it's gladiatorial in size, like with where everything gets down to one focused moment where and and the power of that, I think it grows with two people talking. If it goes quiet in between, it can be calm. But the more people that's waiting, that there builds up this tension. Yeah. I have sometimes divide that word up. To attention builds, attention builds. It's like, and it just grows until so when that's released, I can only imagine what it's like.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like 16. The sound of an arena laughing doesn't sound like laughs anymore. And the same thing, it's just this noise. Yeah, it's a monster. It was wild. And then there's the clowns in all of that. Right. So we had production numbers where the whole cast is doing spectacle. And um and the clowns would be a part of that. And so we would maybe be like my first year, I was a part of a caterpillar, which was each maybe say ten clowns that were like bent over with like teal sheets, and so we each of us became like a part of the body of a caterpillar. Oh yeah. And then at a certain point, those sheets would flip over and we be all became bumblebees that just like chaotically ran around a ring, you know. There were sometimes it was your job to just be some color to fill out a space on the floor. Sometimes we all worked together to fill an act in the show. Sometimes we all worked separately to cover uh like scene changes, basically. Um yeah, we had technical jobs that we did that we've we covered different things in different ways. Like in a one-ring show, you've got to be able to fill a spot in the ring. Also, you need to be able to have material that happens outside the ring in the audience so that something can you just have to be able to cover.
SPEAKER_00:When they're setting bigger, they're rigging the high wire or they're rigging something that needs to be out in the case.
SPEAKER_02:On the ring boxes or whatever, yeah. Yeah, the the clowns and circuses uh fill roles of distraction and focus. And um yeah, you've you've gotta bring a lot of you've gotta bring a lot to to cover all the needs. Oh yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then either focus or distraction. Yeah. I mean, that's also really interesting, isn't it? That's like it's also such a big production. The fact that you are every time another act comes on, it could be three dog acts. So that probably means there's like at least 30, if not 50, dogs involved, and at least one or two people, uh well, probably two in in each act that goes out there, one or two at least. So there's all this stuff going on, and then the two Russian swings and a teeterboard. So it it it's such a big production, which all kind of needs to be covered. So you guys doing distraction from the fact that there's work actually happening. Yeah. And then sometimes needing to actually feel an act in the ring. Yeah. And did was there ever where there was the clowns were taking over the whole three rings and it was just a big picture?
SPEAKER_02:Um I'm trying when that happened more before I got there. Uh well, so we did these things called walk-arounds, which is to basically just a sight gag. It's it's a gag that lasts whatever, 10 or 15 seconds. And that would be on the track around the rings, and that would be a lot of us at the same time. Um milling about and doing your gag to these people and then moving around. In the 80s and earlier, it would have been milling about. But when I was there, they would put a focused light in one spot. Oh. And so there would be, excuse me, six or eight. Oh, good of you to bring a carbonated beverage. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I'm burping away myself there.
SPEAKER_02:So don't we can't hear it? So there walk arounds, there would be six or eight of these gags happening at the same time. And then those lights would all go out, and a second set of lights would all come up, staggered around the arena floor. Those gags would end at the same time, and then a second set would start. Oh, cool. And then we would all switch places. If you weren't in a spotlight, you were moving to a nice different spot, and then that spotlight would come up on the page. And you had a sequence of sight gags then?
SPEAKER_00:Like you had used.
SPEAKER_02:But usually it was one or two people.
SPEAKER_00:It's an interesting way of doing it. It's almost like it becomes filmic then when you're you're in the dark and people are running around, light comes up, and something funny happens and it's like that's yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's funny. It was the and and you know, you know, we we get there through history now, so that those spots were often filled during the transition coming out of flying trapeze. So you would have one huge net or two huge nets across the down the middle of the arena floor. So the track on each side was I put empty in quotes, because there would be like cables that could like decapitate that was going on coming up or down. Um but when, you know, as lights became more advanced, they could just put these multiple spotlights at the same time. When they would have just put like these thin washes back in the day, and the clowns would literally walk around and stop. You could watch a bunch of clowns walking around, and then one would stop in front of you, and you would watch them do their little gag, and then they would they would leave and somebody else would wander into the space. Yeah. I hope that I hope that I'm not just rambling.
SPEAKER_00:No, you're not rambling. I'm I'm I'm seeing it.
SPEAKER_02:I'll give you the exam. So my walk-around the show was created this. I'm specifically talking about it, it was a sideshow themed show. So everybody came up with sideshow themed walk-arounds. I happened to not be in the walk-arounds actually at that when the show was created. And then later they needed a lot of what I've done in my time has been like fallen into it. They need something, and I and I say, Well, I've got something. So I was able to get a walk around in without the limitation of sideshow. Oh, great. The walk-around that I did was I used juggling, I had a hat, and I did a couple tricks, and then I flipped the hat and missed it, drop. Shoot, try it again, flip the hat, miss it, drop, dang. And then I would rip off my wig and flip the wig in the air and catch the wig. Blackout. That was a walk. That was my walk around at that time. So that's that was 15 seconds. Yeah. Basically, setup build blow off in 15 seconds.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But that's it, that's that's a great example of it. It's like you, it's uh skill, problem, solution. That's like bum, bum, bum, beginning, middle, and end. And to do it that's been my formula. Yeah, oh, but that like I still, when I last time when I did taught the workshop, which is years ago, I just used that beginning, middle, and end. And as a kind of movie, you know, a character walks into the movie, what do they want? Like there's there's so much you can do with just that really simple thing. And doing it in the 15-second thing, that also comes really that's that's like stuff that could come straight out of a workshop. And if you're not overly critical or looking at more, then a sequence of 10 of those makes up an act or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Another one of the my friend Todd Zimmerman, who's still in the gang, Todd had a bed, his was a sideshow example. He had a bed of nails. And, you know, he he lays down on the bed of nails, and then he gets up, and he takes a drink of water, and then water just spouts from all over his body. Right, funny. Blackout. Great. As an example. That was another, that was one of my favorite like ideas and executions. So fun. In a theme.
SPEAKER_00:And such a big production. Oh, having a suit that can squirt water. Oh my lord. That yeah. Because you take the image, and then I'm going like, that is such a great idea, and I'm going, oh man, for a 15-second gag.
SPEAKER_02:That's a great idea. And now, congratulations for two years, you're gonna be fixing hoses inside of a costume. Great idea. Yeah. Great idea. Now every show you have to make sure that you have a squeeze bulb filled with water. Like all of that, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's so much work. Congratulations. But then then let's say that then the show is finished. What happened and how did you guys get onto the train and whatever? Oh, I mean, loadout.
SPEAKER_02:I was never really involved in load in. Which I loved. Loadout was fun. The loadout and now it's still a well, now I'm in one spot, so it's weird, but loadout started as soon as the show started. Like it everything as it was coming off of the floor was getting put into a wagon. So like by the end of intermission, the first half of the show, a lot of it was packed up, and a lot of it was already on its way to the train. We traveled by train. There was flatbeds that had wagons on them, and then there were cars where we lived and slept, and and then there were cars that had animals on them. Um so yeah, those flatbeds, and then so like the beginning of the show would be packed first and unpacked last. It was back in the day the military studied how circuses traveled because a whole train pulls up and you know unloads in hours and sets up a city in hours. Yeah, logistics on a scale that is almost unimaginable. Unimaginable. You have to learn from someone. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so that was the thing. There was choreography. You really, I mean, you had to working there, you had to be paying attention to where you were, because there were it's an arena, so there's trucks driving around backstage. Yeah, well.
SPEAKER_00:Like uh lifting and carrying everything and Yeah. So then the the train, you were you guys by the um so which years was this? Was it that you were there? I was there in like the second half of the nineties. Yeah. Um And then did they travel did you guys travel with trains that were rented by the They were owned by the by the company.
SPEAKER_02:It was the world's largest, I think it was the world's largest privately owned train. They had a train for the red show, train for the blue show. They said it was a mile long, which it wasn't, but it was like it was long. It was long. It wasn't just a couple.
SPEAKER_00:That was an emotional number that we can go with. It was a mile long. Oh great. It's like they used to have that on the posters back in the day. A hundred clowns. Yeah, yeah. There's thirty ten in one. There was three people working, and each did one or two acts. That's just like Exactly. Show this, baby. Yeah, yeah. Um We're selling dreams, not uh like boring reality on how many people there actually was and who were what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02:Say the train is a mile long. Like, I don't know. Measure it. Yeah. Get out your stick and start yeah. I have so my first year on the blue show, we are on our clown car at the time, our rooms were five feet by seven feet. So I could put my arms out straight out to the side, palms up. I could put a it was a the exact size of palm to palm across my arms, was this that. And then it was uh a little bit longer than my body. And did it have a fold-up bend on the side of the fold-down desk? Uh you the middle part of the bed could be lifted up and put into the wall, and it would be that would become a table. Uh, like that. Yeah, yeah. And the ends were the chairs that you could sit on. I never would do that orientation. You could wake up in bed, have breakfast, brush your teeth, get dressed, trying to and also never get out of bed. All of that could be done slash had to be done without getting out of bed, technically.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'm the same. Living in caravans, it's like, oh, you can do this and you can make this into a bench, but it's like I am sitting in the bed and I'm reading in the bed and writing in the bed, and like you just I don't want to spend time in my life to to reorient.
SPEAKER_02:I loved it. It was my dream, and it it became it was difficult to adjust to living into regular world-sized spaces just because of how efficient those small rooms were and how like kind of perfect in their ways they were not an inch wasted. Yeah, yeah. Um where did you go w what kind of uh storage space was in everything was storage space under those under those benches that you would that was storage. Like you sat on a box that was storage, and then above you on the wall was cabinets and just everything, there wasn't a space that was wasted. And did you eat uh was there a microwave? We had a microwave i in the room. What's going on? Oh they might be testing uh who knows? Sorry. There we each had a microwave in our room, if I remember correctly. And then on the clown car we had a kitchen. Oh yeah. That we shared. With like an oven and oven, stove, sink, yeah, cabinets. It was everything. It was a kitchen. Yeah. Um there was also there was the Chinese troop had their own car that had their own kitchen. Oh yeah. And then other than that, they had what was called the pie car, which was like a diner basically. It was a diner car. Yeah. So that and then everybody in their own rooms had whatever cooking in implements. That was probably terrible ideas, but we that's just how we did it. So later when I moved to a bigger room, I had a a burner and a a toaster oven and a microwave.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's all you need. That's all you need. And the pie cart, was that like at prices that was like so that you could eat there all eat there, or was it like restaurant price or so? Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's funny. That's two different. Um they it was all very reasonably priced food. Yeah. Um but for what everybody was getting paid, it was kind of restaurant price. There you go.
SPEAKER_00:That's so funny. Because that was just, yeah, because like it's famously when you're one of 18, was it? That you guys were one of eighteen clowns or whatever, that you are not being paid monster wages. So when you're not being paid much, a three dollar sandwich or whatever is all of a sudden actually. That's three dollars. It's like I need that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um well, I don't know. I feel like that what we were paid was kind of part of the lore. Like if if people are reading books about this stuff, they're seeing numbers. There was a time when people like, I don't know. When I my first year we were paid uh, I think it was$225 a week. Yeah, well. Um the room goes.
SPEAKER_00:But also no, but it also is like like what it when we did the first kamikaze tour in 1998 with the kamikaze freak show, I because of situations and uh as it always is, we were getting 40 pounds a day. 40 British pounds a day to do the show. And we toured and drove and millions. Well, I was subsidizing myself by doing street shows. That's how I could survive or whatever. But anyway, that went up when there were other situations or whatever. Yeah, but uh it's also very different when you're 18, 19, or whatever that you were and you're just starting out because you aren't actually that good then. You're you're all right and you do a good job, but you're not that person who can go uh no, if you want me to go through the racket, you have to pay this price. If you're just after someone to go through the rackets, then of course you can find someone that's cheaper. But when you're 18, 19. You're that someone. You are that someone. You just you and the fact that you you are working with Ringling Brothers is just insane.
SPEAKER_02:I had four with that with that job specifically, I was there for four years doing we were contracted for 13 shows a week, but most of the time we probably did 10, something like that. But you're you had an audience all the time, and we had a show that was supposed to be the same. But there were we found opportunities that we would do school shows as publicity. I did a lot of those where you could try out stuff. But you're for me, most of my growth has happened in front of audiences, trying things out and failing or succeeding and chipping away at it over the time. So that was my school. I didn't need money, I didn't have any debt. I've never had debt in my life until starting on Monday.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because you came here to make uh to make money and now you've just bought a house. It was just so exciting anyway, because that in terms of fulfilling dreams.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it was never that was never a part of the dream, but here we are. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, we didn't it the the experience was invaluable, and I've and I've in my time I have found my path by being a lot of my jobs I haven't known that I was qualified to do them until I did them. I've I've I've always tried to get work like just out of the reach that I knew, so that I've been continually growing as I've gone along.
SPEAKER_00:I think that is pretty much also the definition of the flow state. It's that you have like you know, the the the concept of flow, it's if you're you're right on the edge of what your abilities, what your abilities are, and you're keeping making headways, you're at the front, like it's almost like you're surfing a wave or whatever. So I think that's a that's a wonderful place to do it.
SPEAKER_02:I'm still in it, right? And you've seen it. I've when I started with my current the stuff I'm handling in the show now, on my first day, I was like good enough to do it, but not as good as what you would want to be, or as good as I am now. And now I'm not as good as I'm gonna be in a month. No. I started as good enough and I'm constantly chipping away, looking, trying to hone each bit, trying to find new moments, trying to fill it out.
SPEAKER_00:Having that same amount of time given to you and finding more and more moments that you can replicate ten times a week. Yeah, and in the beginning it was enough. But now that gag is landing better. This moment is getting it, ooh, and and then you just you until those are coming so quick that it's no room for more and whatever.
SPEAKER_02:There's moments that are starting to be real joys, and they're coming from real pain. It's been fun. I'm finding, because part of the thing about Vegas is how easy some nights are and how hard some nights are. And those easy nights, those publics are really communicating to me what's solid and what's not solid. And they're helping me find, they're helping me find the bits that are starting to work with those audiences that are difficult or impossible. That's right. Um boy. Yeah. Those fun audiences let me push things and help me find the lines.
SPEAKER_00:And yeah, it's been it's so nice. I I that's that's my process as well. You go out and then a hard audience, and sometimes I say something, or you just you try to grab them, and then that can be the seed, and sometimes it's the it's the ones that really just love you, and then you you you feel so free that you let yourself go. So both of those I sometimes say stuff to get a reaction, and I can't, but sometimes it's also that flow of going, I can do no wrong, so you feel comfortable, so you go into a slight little territory that you haven't been before because you just find that wrong.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. From where you can't where you can do no wrong, you find out. Oh, you could. Oh, they didn't go. Or those moments when they're gonna hate you anyway. Yeah, yeah. So just do it. Yeah. And and there's that those the frustration and the freedom you you find things in both. So great. God.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, um that's uh taking us up to past the hour, but we haven't even uh touched on everything. So as it always is, as opposed to try to cram everything into one hour, when the situation and opportunity arises again. I'd love to continue because we never went to to you've been in all kinds of Apple shows, and we didn't really talk to the big Apple now that you're in the Mad Apple.
SPEAKER_02:Big Apple, Mad Apple, and everywhere. I've I think maybe you're kind of the same. I feel like I've worked in just about every kind of venue that you could think of. Yeah, yeah. Boats and bullfighting rings and I want to hear about all of that. Festivals and fairs and from the legitimate to the illegitimate, and yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And also we haven't really touched on all of which I get through talking in the dressing room and everything, just on the history and everything too. So there's so much more to be mind as we it comes out in conversation, but this has been so great for me, because I don't haven't really spoken to someone before who has shared as much about being with Ringling, which is this. Oh there is they before Cirque de Soleil, they were the big ones for people. I I I don't think so. Like from the numbers of my thing, when I talk to people who are a little who are more successful, then you can see that I'm doing that. But I am pursuing my own interests through the people I talk to. So it's purpose that, 100%. But I have been thinking that. I've been thinking I should pursue it, and I should try to pull in people that I know that already have followings to but I I always just go with what I am. Art and entertainment. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right. You're in pursuit of a fulfillment that has nothing to do with numbers. And that's what and that and that's what is because it's your thing and what makes you special and why your book is gonna be special, because it's your perspu your perspective and your pursuit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Right so much.
SPEAKER_01:All right, everyone.
SPEAKER_00:One of the really great things about uh having this podcast is that I get to have conversations like this. People that I work with, people that I know, or whatever, but then when we sit them down, and I sort of go, okay, we're gonna do it, then you know maybe we turn on the recorder or whatever, and then the conversations become different. It's like now you it's now you can you can probe into what people have done and you only I get to know people more when I have these uh conversations, and I'm so happy to be able to share it with you guys. These insights of these uh performers. And whenever I have a conversation with someone, it oh, it feels like we're just uh just scratching the surface. And that's uh a wonderful feeling. Whenever I uh, you know, have another conversation with someone, I kinda go, ah that's gotta we gotta we gotta talk more about this. So that's great. I'm happy about that. Alright. If you wanna find out when episodes are coming out or anything like that, you can go and find us at Instagram. The words are coming at Instagram. If you wanna hear any kind of story or have anything to say about me on the podcast or anything, then uh you can find the words at common at gmail.com for so with that said, take care of yourself.