Circus Circus: Dave DeDera

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 Carragher: Varekai

 

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

Written By Jacquie Kubin | Jul 16, 2015

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:

Guy Laliberté, founder and creative guide, Dominic Champagne, writer and director, Andrew Watson, director of creation, Stéphane Roy, set designer., Eiko Ishioka, costume designer, Violaine Corradi, composer and musical director, Michael Montanaro and Bill Shannon, choreographers, Jacque Paquin, acrobatic equipment and rigging designer, Cahal Mccrystal, clown act creator, François Bergeron, sound designer, Nol Van Genuchten, lighting designer, Francis Laporte, image and projection designer, Nathalie Gagné, makeup designer and André Simard, acrobatic performance designer.

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.

L.A. Circus

 

Photo shared by Tiffany Riley.

Bob Zraick, Danise Payne, and Dick Monday performing on the L.A. Circus in the 1990s.

All three are Ringling Clown College graduates and have had long and varied careers in the circus and entertainment worlds.

I would love to see video of the three of them working together if any exists!

Pricilla Mooseburger: Ringling Magic Gag

Tricia Manuel, aka Pricilla Mooseburger, performing her rabbit in the hat gag for Come In on the Blue Unit's 114th Edition in 1985.

Tricia still performs this routine as part of her shows.

24 Hours in the Life of a Clown Trailer

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)

Dime and Connie Wilson

 

Photo by Paul Gutheil. 

Dime and Connie Wilson performing with ringmaster Billy Martin on Vidbel’s Olde Tyme Circus.

W.C. Fields - The Golf Specialist 1930

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. 

Enjoy!

In Memory of Domenico Caroli

Read the story here on CircusFansItaly site.

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.

Our condolences to the whole Caroli family. 

R.I.P. Toby Ballantine

From ICHOF director Greg DeSanto:

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

The Saly Clowns at Circo Moira Orfei in 2005

Look everyone! Jimmy Stewart's Buttons the Clown finally got out of prison for murdering his wife!

Too bad he'll be going back soon for stealing the Rastellis' act.....

Oleg Popov: 1957

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine and it knocked me on my keister.

Here is Popov performing on the television program "Thirty-Six Candles" in 1957.

When are we going to see the return of the comedy chicken sidekick?

Duane Thorpe

Long time Ringling clown Duane "Uncle Soapy" Thorpe photographed at the old Boston Garden, most likely in 1978. Photo credit Steven C. Borack.

 

Bobby Kay 1983

 

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.

Antoschka - Be A Clown

From Circopedia:

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.

Lou Jacobs: Hunting Gag 1982

Lou Jacobs making a special appearance from the Red Unit, performing his hunting gag for the Blue Unit's 112th Edition television special.

The program was hosted by Richard Thomas, who traveled with his family on a circus when he was young.

If anybody has more information on that, I would love to hear it!

Petit Gougou & Eddy Sosman

Petit Gougou and Edy Sosman performing their plate entrée on Zircus Knie in 1988.

Vidbel: Scott O'Donnell and Mike Snider

 

Photo by Paul Gutheil.

Scott "Dusty" O'Donnell and Mike Snider ready for the washerwoman gag on Vidbel's Olde Tyme Circus in the 1990s.

Davis Vassallo: Bounding Rope

Press release from the Festival: 

Guest Star: Davis Vassallo, Italy - Clown

Representing: RINGLING AND BROS. CIRCUS - BARNUM & BAILEY SPECIAL PRIZE "GIULIO MONTICO" 2013 Davis Vassallo has already appeared at Latina as a "Special Guest" during the 12th edition of the "International Circus Festival -- City of Latina", and returns this year in honour of the "Special Anniversary Edition". Davis comes from a long pedigree of Circus performers: his grandfather and father were both clowns and he decided as a child to follow in the family tradition. With his father's help, Davis learnt to play a number of musical instruments, learnt the importance of long hours of rehearsal, and learnt the art of being funny: he became a clown. His long-awaited début was at the age of 15, and since then Davis has never looked back, performing in Belgium and Germany as well as in Italy. Audiences of all ages have appreciated his dynamic and witty performances, watching his antics with great attention and enthusiasm. His love for his art can be evinced from his own words: "to be a clown is to dream, and dreaming is the most wonderful thing in the world!" His appearance at the Festival at Latina is rather special, because it is also his last performance before his official début in America with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, one of the greatest Circuses in the world; a début that has all the signs of a new and brilliant phase in the career of this young Italian clown, who, we can safely say, is destined to be one of the brightest new lights to sparkle on the international Clown scene.

Ringling: Closing of Clown College 1998

An interesting read from 1998 talking about the future of Ringling clowning after it was announced that Clown College would be closing.

Seinfeldian skits, eh?

Clowns, then and now Circus: In the future, these well-trained performers will be more contemporary, just as they used to be.

Tamara IkenbergTHE BALTIMORE SUN

If circus clown Bryan Fulton had to change the image of his Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey colleagues, he'd inject a little testosterone.

"I'd kinda like to be a superhero, all suave out of makeup," says Fulton, a 19-year-old Baltimore native wearing knee socks, shorts, checked blue and red vest and oversized red tie. "Then, I'd go into a phone booth and come out as Super Clown."

Fulton, in Baltimore for performances through Sunday, may have his chance, because the 127-year-old circus is changing the way it approaches clown training.

The Ringling Brothers Clown College, which was established in 1968 in Florida, is closed, and the circus is developing a Clown College Graduate Program. The program is still in the planning stages, but representatives of Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Bros., say it will include more specialized, theatrically oriented Masters of Comedy Workshops. The workshops will be tailored to the interests of performers looking to expand on basic clowning skills, including the approximately 1,500 graduates of Clown College.

The number of college programs and workshops nationwide that teach clowning basics have rendered the original Clown College unnecessary, according to spokesman Rodney Huey.

"There's no need to get those kids right out of high school," Huey says. "It's a different world."

The new workshops will also make clowning more contemporary, since other elements of the circus have become increasingly modern. Acts now involve basketball players unicycling to techno music, professional daredevil in-line skaters and an audience-participation "Macarena."

In the future, clowns may appear in Seinfeldian skits satirizing everyday life and doing contemporary gags centered on computers and the tribulations of today.

Throughout their history, clowns have been relating to contemporary events, according to LaVahn Hoh, a drama professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville who teaches the class "The Circus in America."

In the American one-ring circuses of the late 18th century, talking was common for clowns, says Hoh, who also taught at Clown College. In the late 18th century, a clown named Dan Rice appeared with his pig Lord Byron and mused on politics, and the pig would snort.

Rice, who wore a red and white suit and top hat, was the model for Uncle Sam. But as circuses evolved into three rings in the 19th century, gags had to become broader to work in the larger setting, and the talking clown became extinct. Still, Hoh says, clown acts remain relevant.

"There are a lot of stock bits that clowns do that poke fun at society," Hoh says. He said the pie-throwing routines have always been a vicarious outlet for aggression toward society.

Dominique Jando, associate artistic director at the one-ring Big Apple Circus in New York City, disagrees, saying clowns in the three-ring format can't relate to the audience. He sees Ringling's new clown training as an opportunity to instill the skills that were developed in the more intimate one-ring format.

Jando says the three-ring circus developed because entrepreneur-owned circuses were very popular in America in the late 1800s, and the owners thought that by adding more rings they could attract bigger audiences.

"That's an American accident," Jando says of the three-ring circus. "That killed clowning in this country."

Clowns shouldn't be the broadly humorous, exaggeratedly made-up characters in today's circuses, Jando says. Instead, he thinks they should be witty commentators on the human condition with whom audiences can identify.

Rice and the clowns of his age satirized society, and so did the bald-headed buffoons of ancient Greece who are considered the earliest ancestors of the clown. They were secondary characters who mocked the more serious actors in farces and mime acts. The look evolved in the acts of medieval minstrels and jugglers. In the late Middle Ages, the Italian commedia dell'arte's Harlequin introduced acrobatics into the clown repertoire.

The first professional stage clowns came from the Elizabethan theater. Shakespeare has been credited with coining the word "clown." During this time in Germany, the clown costume we've come to know -- floppy shoes, waistcoats and hats -- developed. But the makeup wasn't grotesque, Jando says. American clowns are the only ones with cartoonish makeup designed for recognition from a distance, Jando says.

The circus clown as we know it today appeared in 1805 in England. The late 19th century saw the birth of the American circus clown.

In the '60s, former Ringling Bros. owner and producer Irvin Feld noticed that the clowns in his circus, most of whom learned their skills through apprenticeships, were getting old. So he created the now-defunct Clown College, an eight-week program that accepted only about 30 of nearly 2,000 applicants annually.

The curriculum of clown college included such basic skills as unicycling, juggling and stilt-walking. Clowns also learned how to apply makeup, develop characters and write bits for the circus. In Clown College, a.k.a. clown boot camp, students worked six ** days a week for nearly 12 hours a day, says John Lynch, a Ringling clown who was trained at Clown College along with Fulton and Alan Rios.

Fulton has a bit of the surfer-clown look about him with his flat shock of orange- and yellow-streaked hair. He's an Auguste clown, meaning he uses a flesh-colored paint base with red and black features.

Rios, 28, has Jackie Gleason mannerisms and wears flannel pajamas and wins the lovable cornball award. He's also an Auguste.

Lynch is the sweetly goofy one in paint-splattered denim with three sprouts of hair and a trout in his back pocket. He's a whiteface clown.

"I'm not the traditional whiteface clown. I have Auguste tendencies," says Lynch, 32, who's been with the circus since 1995.

"Clowns with split personalities, next 'Oprah,' " says Fulton, who's been with the circus since 1997.

Lynch, Rios and Fulton do pseudo stomps and slaps, break into spastic dances and revel in cornball jokes with Three Stooges style.

Aside from learning skills and developing characters, at Clown College they were also instilled with the clown's code of honor.

They must always be in full costume in a professional setting and cannot engage in any un-clownlike behavior.

"We follow unwritten rules. You never see or hear a clown curse; no smoking," says Rios, a New York native. "It's like seeing Mickey Mouse without his head on. That can damage a kid."

However, pop culture representations of clowns, which are another facet of American clown history, can be equally damaging, Hoh says.

"We can take something as harmless as a clown and turn it into an ax murderer," he says. Or a strangler like the clown doll in "Poltergeist." Or a bawdy idiot, as in the movie "Shakes The Clown." Or washed-up sellout Krusty on "The Simpsons." Or the evil Pennywise of Stephen King's "It."

"They're very damaging to what clowns should portray," Hoh says.

If Americans understood the clowning tradition and considered the circus an art form, they might not produce such distorted images in the media, according to Hoh.

But Rios, Lynch and Fulton aren't too threatened by their creepy counterparts.

"It's funny. We can laugh at it," Rios says. "We all have a sense of humor."

And that will never change.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

Where: Baltimore Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St.

When: Through Sunday, with performances tonight and

tomorrow at 7 p.m.; Saturday at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.; Sunday at 1: 30 p.m. and 5: 30 p.m.

Tickets: $10.50 to $35

Call: 410-347-2010

Pub Date: 3/19/98

Aga-Boom: Airplane

Dimitri Bogatirev (Aga) and Iryna Ivanytska (Boom) perform at Moisture Fest in 2017. At the beginning you can see Stephanie Monseau and Keith Nelson of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. 

Aga-Boom