After a long hard year, the laughs are going to be heard again as the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center reopens today!
Exactly 11 years to the day we opened our doors in the circus city of Baraboo, Wisconsin!
Open Monday thru Saturday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Sunday by appointment only.
Pre-Pandemic Prices! $8.00 for Adults, $5.00 for Children under 12.
New exhibits! The largest collection of clown artifacts in the world! As seen on American Pickers, History Detectives, 50 Museums to See Before You Die, Ripleys Believe it or Not and many others!
Father Jerry Hogan passed away last night after a prolonged illness. Through his long career as a circus priest, he became close friends with many in the circus business, especially the clowns.
Father Jerry, thank you for sharing your light, your love, and your laughter with us all of these years. Rest in peace.
Former Ringling Red Unit clown (and boss clown) Dave DeDera talks about his circus career and working in Las Vegas where he has been performing since the mid 1990s.
Emily began her circus career on the Ringling Red Unit in 2006, and also toured with Fossett's Circus in Ireland before taking over the role Mooky Cornish originated in Cirque Du Soliel's Varekai.
She will soon be resuming rehearsals for Soliel's new Orlando based show, Drawn To Life.
This is an interview Emily did in 2015 to promote Varekai's engagement in Fairfax, VA.
Emily Carragher: A clown guide through ‘Varekai’ by Cirque Du Soleil
WASHINGTON, July 16, 2015 – The story behind Cirque du Soleil’s “Varekai,” coming to the EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Virginia July 22 to July 26, is one of journey and destination.
“It is about self discovery and reaching farther than you can grasp and allowing your self to fail, fall down and get back up again,” Emily Carragher who performs as Clown Feminine says. “My character tries so hard, but she falls – and then gets back up.”
“And that is more important “
30 year-old Carragher, one of the shows two narrators – Clown Feminine and Clown Masculine – has had her own journey. As a child, there were dance classes in both modern and ballet. Then as a teen it was drama classes and high school theater all of which the actor and comedienne credits with helping her to learn to express herself physically.
“Growing up, I liked anything dramatic, the challenge of telling a story through movement,” Carragher says. “ I went to circus camps, and took a circus class during college during which the teacher recommended clown school and I went the summer before I graduated and I got my first job at Ringling Bros.”
Unlike Ringling’s cars filled with clowns, Carragher’s clown, called Mooky after the character’s creator Mooky Cornish, is one of only two clowns that inhabit this wonderful world.
A very short clown act from Varekai feauturing Mooky Cornish and Claudio Corneiro, Cirque du Soleil
Carragher’s sees Mooky as a very empowered feminine character who speaks to the audience, particularly young girls. But she is not your typical show girl with a big red nose.
“She is not traditional show girl shaped, she represents the every woman standing on a stage with the world’s super toned and well chisled people” Carragher says. “She is full figured… and she is different than the other women in the show and I take that as a big responsibility. My smile is the connection I make. It’s the first thing I see, and it is everything.”
She describes her role as being a show within a show.
“The character and I are very similar, each findng the truth in the story playing out on the stage,” Carragher says. “Mooky’s story is the story of a wannabe show girl, someone who dreams bigger than they can hope to reach. But she is also very much an empowered character starting one place and landing someplace else.”
Mooky’s role is to guide us as we watch the whimsical and enchanted creatures that inhabit a captivating forest where the performers seemingly defy gravity and physical constraints.
Varekai, which means “wherever” in Romanian, takes place at the summit of a volcano where a world unique to what we know exists – a world where “something else is possible.”
The story celebrates the nomadic soul via while paying homage to the high-wire acts that take place beneath the more traditional circus tent apex.
Cirque de Soleil brings its trademark strength and physical agility along with incredible imagination to the show’s various acts that include acrobats hurled from Russian swings to fly through the air, contortionists that defy physical constraints, twirling and swinging performers that defy gravity while performing the seemingly impossible, and even a performer who show that even on canes, new heights can be reached.
We watch as a young man named Icarus, borrowed from Greek mythology, lands in the shadows of the forest, meeting the fantasy creatures that take us, as viewers, on to a journey that moves from the absurd to the delightful to the unbelievable.
Icarus, like his namesake, who flew too close to the sun only to plummet into the sea below, has been hurt in his fall. The journey he takes leads him to accept this odd world while overcoming his fear of the different forest denizens he meets.
And, like that Icarus of Greek mythology, our Icarus may learn a bit of humility as he meets The Betrothed, a creature of great beauty. She guides Icarus, and in her giving to the young stranger, discovers her own metamorphosis.
Looking over all that live in the forest of Varekai is The Guide, a wise old man who guides the changes that are necessary for the journey that Icarus is on.
And Mooky is there to guide the audience’s journey of discovery through Varekai.
“One of the more powerful scene is called Nightmare, and it is the most important scene as Icarus meets with the crippled angel. In this scene Icarus sees himself in both the future and present and he is taught what will happen if he does not get up and walk. Move forward,” Carragher says. “Like Icarus Mooky gets knocked down and comes back even stronger. She gets the last laugh.”
Which is important for a clown.
“There is no fourth wall between us and the audience, and when I see young kids in the audience I recognize that I was that kid, and I was in awe, and I hope to do the same for kids,” Carragher says.
Carragher describe Mooky as playful and like many a young child, wants to have a good time. She is very happy, playing against her partner, who is very serious.
“Clown Masculine is much more serious that Mooky,” Carragher says. “And because he is so serious, he create a perfect counter to Mooky’s playfulness.”
Varekai is the creation of a large crew and cast working behind the scenes including:
If attending the show with children, first visit the biography pages of these talented people and discuss how they would contribute to a show like Varekai and then have them watch to see if they can see the work of a make up artist, hear the sounds of a sound designer, or marvel at the unique costumes that help to tell a story while allowing the performers to be able to move.
This past weekend I signed up for the Criterion Channel, and one of the pleasant surprises I found was this short film from 1946 about a day in the life of Aristodemo Frediani, better known as Beby.
Beby was partnered for many years with Antonet.
At the time of the filming he is seen performing with his new partner, Maïss, at the Cirque Medrano in Paris, which was a filming location for Fellini's, I Clowns, and also where Buster Keaton performed in the 1940s.
It isn't ground breaking cinema, but it was a fun look at two real clowns of that era. The Criterion Channel offers a two week free trial, and the film is only 18 minutes long, so......
(Also, the film has English subtitles even though the trailer does not)
One thing I love about clowns and comics that came out of vaudeville and burlesque (and also older European clowns) is how polished yet natural their material is.
The Golf Specialist is a perfect example of an act that has been honed night after night on the road until every laugh is milked from the situation.
Domenico was the son of Enrico, one of my favorite clowns, a member of the fantastic trio, Les Francescos.
Ryan and I were lucky to work with Domenico's son, Enrico, while we were in Amsterdam with the Wereldkerstcircus. We loved hearing stories about his family.
Toby Ballantine got his trunk spotted in that glorious clown alley in the heavens today. Son of CC Dean, Bill Ballantine, Toby attended Clown College and taught stilt-walking. He toured with Ringling, Hoxie, Gatti-Charles, advance for Beatty-Cole and worked hard in later years to preserve his parents artistic legacy. RIP
David Heim, Wayne Sidley, Nic Beery, Colleen Linnehan, Caren Hockenbury, and Stephanie Parks, all members of the Ringling Red Unit Clown Alley, visit with Bobby Kay in California shortly before his death in 1983.
Born December 5, 1954 in South Western Siberia, Russia, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Mozhaeva dreamed as a child of becoming a ballet dancer. Unfortunately, a long childhood illness thwarted her aspirations—since ballet, if one wants to succeed in Russia, is a discipline for which training starts at an early age. Still, she wanted to perform, and when she recovered, friends suggested that she try the circus.
So, Ekaterina went on to train at the Circus’s Studio at Kemerovo, a Siberian city in the region of Novosibirsk. There, she learned a variety of circus disciplines, and partnered with another student, Anatoly Evgenevich Lotishev (b. March 10, 1949), to create an acrobatic clown duet under the name of Anton & Antoshka (spelled "Antoschka" in German). They began performing together in 1973 in Novosibirsk.
They soon became very successful; Ekaterina’s character, Antoschka, which comes out as a whimsical, mischievous, marionette-like tomboy, was immediately very popular with their audiences. Then, Anton & Antoshka appeared with the Leningrad Stage Circus, and in 1976, they were contracted by SoyuzGosTsirk, the central Soviet Circus organization; from then on, they were featured in all the major circuses of the Soviet Union, and on tour with the prestigious Moscow Circus companies. Ekaterina added dogs and cats to her act, with which she worked in a playful, engaging way that fit her character perfectly well.
Then, things began to change with the advent of Perestroika, and the fall of the USSR. It was a different atmosphere altogether, and Anatoly (Anton) decided to leave Ekaterina, and to continue his own clown career with his wife, Tatiana. But with Antoschka, Ekaterina had a strong, likeable character on which to build a new career of her own. In 1989, she went on an extensive tour abroad with the Moscow Circus On Ice, in a show built around Antoschka, and titled A Clown’s Dream.
Antoschka In Germany
The following year, after a tour of Germany, Antoschka decided to leave Russia and to settle there, in the town of Korschenbroich, near Dusseldorf. She began working with German and Austrian circuses, and in 1993, she starred in the ice revue Holiday On Ice, in a reprise of A Clown’s Dream built again around Antoschka’s character. She toured with Holiday On Ice until 1995, visiting The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Poland, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
After two years with Circus Busch-Roland, Antoschka went on to work with some of Northern Europe’s most important circuses, including Krone and Benneweis, and participated in European tours of the Germany-based Moscow State Circus (Moskau Staatszirkus). In 2005 she started performing her solo stage show, Ansichten eines Clowns, in Central America, and subsequently performed it regularly in Germany, while giving clown workshops and teaching clowning.
Meanwhile, Ekaterina/Antoschka had been involved in various global social projects, which culminated in her creating an international clown organization involved in social and peace issues, The World Parliament Of Clowns, in 2006. That same year, she created a new solo program, Antoschka und ihre WUNDERfreunde ("Antoshka and her WONDERful Friends"). Diva & Clown, and Solo für einen Clown would follow.
Dubbed "Die Königin der Clowns" ("The Queen of Clowns") by the German press, Antoschka has been sharing her time between Antoshka’s Clown-Theatre and her solo shows, further circus tours (including, in 2010, a tour of the Moskau Staatszircus, Planet of Smiles, in which she starred), and her work with the World Clown Parliament, the Jersusalem Peace Academy, and the German Water Foundation.
