"Giving Everything a Personality"

There is something terribly funny about getting mad at your hat. To me, this catches most everything fun and magical about a clown, it's the belief that everything around him helps or hinders his progress.

I think of the great Bello in Ringling Brothers circus for the last few years, climbs a sway pole (a 40 plus foot pole with a chair on top and sways from side to side). Things go wrong and they go right but it's the pole that helps him.

I have a friend that gets mad at a scarf. It's funny. I love when clowns turn away from a puppet and it makes fun of the clown and the clown tries to catch it.

The world of a clown makes all objects real, with personalities. The magic is that the audience follows along completely. No question, just yup, that ladder is causing trouble for that clown.

Knowing this magic, we can put it anywhere in the show. If you are doing the mismade flag, have a conversation with the blue silk that keeps falling on the ground, listen to it talk to you, then have an argument with it.

Bringing the little blue scarf to life will bring a huge change to the routine. Instead of just doing a "magic trick" you have the subtle story of the little blue scarf that won't do what you say, then joins in and becomes our greatest cymbal, the American flag. It's pretty powerful, you could end the routine and talk to the little blue part of the flag and give it your own applause.

I'm a juggler, I have handled my juggling items so many millions of times, I tend to dismiss them, I juggle and toss them aside. When I give them a little personality, my juggling clubs are partners in my show, then I can have fun with them have arguments, have them cooperate, then put them away carefully. Changes everything, makes me a very nice clown, when it's all done. Tossing my juggling clubs away afterward makes me less like-able.