Category Archives: Clowns

Circus and Politics

Clown History, Clowns, Life, Uncategorized, , ,

Happy First of May!

The First of May is, in circus tradition, considered the first day of the year wagons will be able to make it along the trails without gettting stuck in the mud. The beginning of earning season! People who wanted to be part of the circus found this the best entry point. As in any job, the new hires are the greenest. The least experienced. The “dumbest” when it comes to the ways of the circus, which has many specific customs, methods, dangers, vernacular phrases, and other idiosyncrasies. The new hires are known as “First of Mays,” and as human nature can often be, when they inevitably mess up (or get pranked upon), they provide entertainment for the more experienced cast/crew.

In March of 2019, our nation was in the throes of a very distasteful political climate. As a former circus performer, I found myself feeling trauma to my psyche every time “Circus” and “Washington DC” were put into the same sentence. I poured my anguish into a meme, which resonated with my extended circus family all over the world and got shared thousands of times on social media. I guess it touched a nerve.

So as a shameless, but lazy self promoter, I share it here for the web, where social media doesn’t go so search engines can make me famous again. Have at it, Googlebots!

Photo of Lou Jacobs, beloved, iconic Ringling Bros. circus clown for over 60 years.

Text for accessibility:
People keep referring to happenings in Washington DC as a circus.
For the record, I worked for Ringling Bros.for a significant part of my career.
Everything was run tightly and efficiently with no room for bullshit.
(well, there was every other type of shit, but only in the literal sense)
Furthermore, a circus is made up of people from all over the world: male, female, straight, gay … We worked hard, were tough as nails, and we looked after each other.
Artists, athletes, lighting/sound techs,vendors, riggers, prop handlers, train crew, and shit shovelers all worked together for a common goal.
If this country were run like a circus, our problems would disappear overnight.

012 My Renaissance History

Clown History, Clown Theory, Clowns, Podcast, Stories, , , , , , , ,

A little navel-gazing about how I got started in the Renaissance Festivals as an awkward teenager with almost no performing experience.

These exploits include finding funny things to say, funny things to do, what things are not funny, and my shoulder-brushing with three people who went on to become celebrities.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

010 Comedy in Prison

Clowns, Podcast, Stories, , , , , , , , , ,

So last week, I went to perform my comedy/juggling act a local juvenile detention center. At first, I thought it would be immigrant teens separated from their parents at the border. The revolving door quality of the facility makes it difficult to predict who will be in at any given time. All that could be counted on is the age: 14-17 year olds. Not my typical demographic, but I jumped in with both feet anyway, to “give back” to some who may not normally be exposed to the type of entertainment that I do. Hat tip to Alain Nu, the Man Who Knows, for connecting me to  the fledgling program.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

009 Teaching the Circus

Clown Theory, Clowns, Podcast, Stories, , , , , , , , ,

I spent the last couple weeks teaching at a summer youth circus camp. Some insights into learning theory, comedy theory, childlike thinking, and a touch of scatology.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

008 Blues Brothers, Belushi and Clowns

Clown History, Clown Theory, Clowns, Podcast, , , , , , ,

We explore the “Clown’s Eye view” of classic comedy movie, “The Blues Brothers,” (1980) and look at some of the ways that this modern era movie touches on timeless clown archetypes and situations going back hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Clowns and taxes

Art, Clown Theory, Clowns, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

While doing taxes, (of course at the last minute) I always end up meandering over things I’ve done over the last year. This one was kind of cool. At the height of that idiotic media-invented “clown hysteria” last October, the good folks at Good Morning Washington reached out to the experts of Washington DC’s Clown Cabaret to get a more educated perspective. Check it out. I’m the blond. The one wearing pants. 🙂

http://wjla.com/features/good-morning-washington/clown-cabaret-joins-gmw

As GMW mentions, you may find more information about Clown Cabaret at our website.
www.clowncabaret.com

re: The Current Clown Hysteria: NBC called me…

Clown Theory, Clowns, , , , , , , ,

Theatrical producer, creator and Clown Cabaret producer, and retired RBBB Circus clown Rich Potter was called by an NBC reporter about the current "clown hysteria."
Theatrical producer, creator, co-founder of Washington DC’s Clown Cabaret, and retired RBBB Circus clown Rich Potter was called by an NBC reporter about the current “clown hysteria.”

(I’ll get back to posting about my visual art soon. Been a busy month.)

An NBC reporter, referred by a friend in the business called asked me one question: Is this current strange wave of clown hysteria directly hurting your bottom line?”

I responded that for me, the answer is “no, as I don’t advertise myself as a clown, but I am one. This problem, however has a much bigger scope than my income this month vs. last month, but rather a growing trend in this country, which has been hurting the image of our art form, in the USA, for decades.”

I would have also mentioned there are different types of clowns. Not like the “Auguste, Whiteface and Character,” which any reporter on clowns should know of before calling me. By “different types of clowns,” I mean very different types of performers who call themselves clowns. Just as one can Paint by Numbers or illustrate the Creation of the Universe on a chapel ceiling, Clown is a complex profession for such a simple, Germanic word.

I might have touched on the sadness I feel for our society as a whole; a piece of childhood is lost as children have less access to this memory touchstone to symbolize their youthful wonder and joy. This is a sense of play we grow out of as we mature and spend our whole lives wishing we could recapture. Clowns, really good clowns, can bring that to you.

I would have mentioned how in the 30 years I’ve practiced, studied, wrote and produced three very different theatrical clown shows*, I have changed styles a few times and my definition of “clown” has changed, adjusted and expanded far beyond my Dunning-Kruger inspired first-year definition. I would have mentioned there have been clowns on Broadway, in movies, on TV, and you loved them, and YOU NEVER KNEW THEY WERE CLOWNS!!!”

So yeah; that is what I wanted to say. But before I could get started on information that I think would add necessary nuance to an obviously sensationalized story, he said, “So, you’re sure you haven’t lost any business… [person who referred me to you] said they’d lost a lot of business.”

I said, “No, not currently but I –”
“Thank you, goodbye.”

I have to learn to be more a politician and get in my talking points before I answer their question.

* (OK, I co-wrote and co-produced two of the three with my very talented partners. But I like to think my input was *ahem* useful.)

36/365 FML: Jazz and Disaster

365 project, Art, Clowns, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Day 36/365. FML. Not a commentary; just busy relaunching a show in Brooklyn NY a couple of weeks from now and don't have the time and brainspace to do a pretty pretty picture. So back to my ink-first quickie-simple style which fills so many sketchbooks.
Day 36/365. FML. Not a commentary; just busy relaunching a show in Brooklyn NY a couple of weeks from now…

Day 36/365. FML. Not a commentary; just busy relaunching a show in Brooklyn NY a couple of weeks from now and don’t have the time and brainspace to do a pretty pretty picture. So back to my ink-first quickie-simple style which fills so many sketchbooks.

In doing so, I find the pleasure of the simplicity of communicating an idea with as few lines as possible. I find that penciling first makes the playground the paper, but with ink first, most of the work takes place in my head, as erasing is not an option.

On the one hand, I can make a bolder statement with a more complex idea by drawing it out first, then laying the indelible ink (and colors) on afterwards; on the other hand, the more simple image that was thought out first has the more iconic feel.

I guess it’s similar to music: you can painstakingly write out your notes and create some amazing stuff, or you can internalize your scales, open yourself up to improvisation, and play Jazz. it makes sense in words, but I’m not sure a viewer will immediately look at this image and think, “Jazz.” (Interestingly, R. Crumb, known for not using pencil, is also a great Jazz aficionado.)

Or maybe it’s more like juggling fire torches: you practice with them unlit. You can do much more crazy things when they’re not lit, to experiment and find your parameters. That way, when you light them, you can do less crazy things, but operating in a lower threshold of difficulty to please an audience while not causing a disaster. Ink first can be one stroke away from disaster.

Playing God

Clowns, , , , , , , ,

Rich Potter, as the Creator of the Universe, has a last-minute deadline frenzy, in "God: The One Man Show" at Greenbelt Arts Center, Feb 19-28, 2016 www.GodTheOneManShow.comIt’s actually kind of weird to think of myself as a playwright. I never did much theatre in school, aiming rather to do variety performance: juggling, comedy, magic, clown… I always thought of my performances as “shows.”

So now I have written a new show (God: The One-Man Show), and co-written two shows (“Delusions of Grandeur” and “The Heist” with Matthew Pauli and Karen Beriss) over the last 4 years. People keep referring to these shows as “plays.” I guess yes, since they have all have at least some semblance of a story arc, characters and drama mixed in with the comedy, but it’s weird to me to call them plays.

But if they are, then I guess I’m a playwright. I’m up there with William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and that self-absorbed weirdo performing in the local church basement shouting about gender issues and hydrogenated fats. 

It’s still strange to hear the word applied to my work. I just wanted to write funny shows about things that were on my mind. Now I’m a playwright. Go figure. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. I didn’t know. I guess I wasn’t as omniscient as I thought.

Thank you Stephen King

Clowns, Stories, , , ,


20130610-024117.jpgIt is very strange to me to say this, but thank you Stephen King.


I mean this sincerely although you have hurt me personally and professionally, and countless other people with your writing.


It is strange for me, a clown be to be thanking you, Stephen King, a man who is singlehandedly responsible for more cases of coulrophobia than any other single human who ever lived. The majority of people I speak to about “fear of clowns,” which has numbered in the dozens, possibly hundreds in my 30-year career, trace their fear back to your book and movie “It.”


You probably didn’t realize that would be the effect of your work; you probably didn’t mean to give a complex to children too young to be watching your movie on cable TV about a homicidal interdimensional being that takes on the guise of a whiteface clown. But you did. You probably didn’t mean to shift (mostly American) attitudes against an ancient profession (older than writing, mind you), but you did.


Still, I thank you.


You see, I am working on a novel. My first novel. What I am thanking you for is a quote of yours on writing, which I just saw the other day:


“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”


Well said; succinct. Like a man who has practiced the craft, as well as the Art of good writing. You have inspired me to “get up and work.” I’ve been slacky about getting it written: “I’m not in the mood,” or “I don’t know how to proceed.” You have inspired me to push through my self-doubt and write every day. So thank you.


By the way, my first novel is about a medieval clown. That’s irrelevant, but I thought it might be interesting to you. . I’m sure it will be garbage. I realize that when learning to write, the first million words are just practice.


The book will probably be 50-80,000 words when all is done. So, doing the math, it will be around my 12th novel ––the one where I really am able to use the English language with the precision of a surgical laser and readers are dying to read my every word –– that I will write a story in your honor, for which this is the synopsis:


Working title: “That”


Early 1960s. The story opens with a sort of nerdy child stopping on the curb in front of his suburban house after school to read a book. From the bushes, he hears a voice: “Child — child — would you like some free books?”


Enter the imposing figure of the bespectacled Featherweight the Dancing Horror/Fantasy Writer. Featherweight really only appears to be human; “That” is actually an interdimensional creature that feasts on the flesh of outcast children. After a series of bloodbaths, the children of the town beat him back to Dimension X by hurling at him a barrage of split infinitives and broken metaphors.


(Flash Forward)


Featherweight returns in the late 1990s, having gained his strength back over the ensuing 30 or so years. Like a bad simile, he always turns up –– largely rejuvenated by the inexplicable fame of The New Kids on the Block. Unfortunately for him, but fortunate for Mankind, he is immediately squashed once he reads the level to which writing has sinked in the then nascent World Wide Web. Forevermore thereafter, the world is safe from homicidal interdimensional horror/fantasy writers.


The end.


Mr. King? I look forward to being seen as a professional in your eyes.