Florida Stories
Clowning around in Florida
Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007 |
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| An old postcard from the Ringling summer headquarters in Sarasota. |
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“A clown is like an aspirin, only he works twice as fast,” Groucho Marx once said.
If that’s true, folks in Florida must have few headaches.
Florida is home to a clown industry that took root almost 40 years ago when the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus started its Clown College in Venice.
Since that time, the state has become a training ground for hundreds of professional clowns – and a headquarters for artisans who produce custom-made clown shoes, clown makeup, clown props and other circus equipment. Florida also has become a favorite place for – you guessed it – retired circus clowns.
One Central Florida town, Lake Placid, now claims more clowns per capital than anywhere else in the state. It is here that the Ringling art of clowning is alive and well in the classrooms of Toby’s Clown School.
Keith Stokes, also known as Toby the Clown, founded his Lake Placid school in 1993 in the Ringling slapstick tradition. It thrives today, producing about 40 clowns annually. The Ringling Clown College in Venice closed in 1998. Between the two schools, more than 2,200 clowns have gotten their start in Florida over the past four decades.
Clown training schools weren’t needed until 1968, when Ringling realized it had a shortage of clowns. Until that time, new clowns learned their craft through apprenticeships under experienced circus clowns. When Feld Entertainment, owner of Ringling, saw that the old clowns were dying off without passing on their knowledge to a new crop, it opened Clown College in an old airplane hangar in Venice.
That facility, featuring experienced clowns as teachers, operated for 25 years. Selected Clown College graduates toured with the Circus for one year to perfect their clowning skills. Many chose to make Florida their permanent home, and many later retired here.
In 1993, Ringling moved its clown operations to Wisconsin for three years before returning it to Florida, to Sarasota’s Opera House, for another two years and then closing it down.
The impact of the Clown College is still felt in West Central Florida, where a cottage industry for clowning has developed.
It is here that former Ringling clown Wayne Scott and his wife Marty specialize in providing custom-made clown shoes and props for circus performers at their Howey-in-the-Hills workshop. Today their son Allen works with them. (Their workshop is featured on Florida’s folk-art Web site, www.folkvine.org.)
Other former clowns developed other specialty businesses like producing modern clown make-up as an alternative to grease paint, providing circus equipment rigging and welding and making circus wagons.
Ringling’s Palmetto-based operations currently include facilities for customizing trains to transport the circus and for making elephant blankets.
In Lake Placid, Toby’s Clown School is making its own mark. The school is such an attraction that the Lake Placid Chamber of Commerce commemorates clowning in one of the town’s colorful wall murals.
“Good clowns just take parts of themselves and extend those traits,” said Stokes, a Shriner’s clown for more than 30 years. “A good clown doesn’t hide behind makeup. They are really exposing themselves, smiling and sharing in fun.”
Stokes worries about the continuing national shortage of clowns. He said the demand for instruction is high. His school will soon be expanded.
Stokes sees this as his mission. He wants to increase the clown population for the benefit of everyone, he said – echoing the Groucho Marx philosophy.
“It’s that smile on your face that I’m after,” said Stokes. “I’m sure it will extend your life.”
This story is provided by the Florida Humanities Council (www.flahum.org), a nonprofit organization that sponsors public programs exploring Florida’s history and cultural heritage.
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Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007
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