There is a Clown College

It use to be that every person who dreamed of becoming a clown also dreamed of attending the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College. For 30 years Clown College taught the basics -- how to apply your clown makeup, how to take a pie thrown at your big clown nose, and to fall down without hurting yourself.

Clown College was the brainchild of  Irvin Feld. In 1968, the clown profession seemed to be dwindling and -- Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus had only a dozen clowns, most of them getting older by the day.  Irvin Feld wanted to make sure there were clowns well into the future.

So the college directors held auditions at colleges and theatres around the country. Hundreds of would-be clowns showed their stuff .

The competition was intense. Only 30 new clowns were accepted into each year's class.

There, they donned large shoes and baggy pants to learn about makeup, juggling and the fine art of falling down. They took classes in stilt-walking, gymnastics, juggling,  and mime.

The classes were free and the best of the graduates took their large clown shoes  on the road with the Greatest Show on Earth.

But the Clown College became a victim of its own success.  In 1998, there were about over a thousand  trained clowns and there was  little danger of the profession dying out.  So Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus decided to stop offering eight-week introductory classes in funny stuff in Sarasota, Florida.

But what's an aspiring clown going to do today ?

Once choice is today's version of Clown College. It lives on in the educational initiatives of three nationally-touring units of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Here, the next generation of circus clowns learns the skills and traditions: character development, improvisation, makeup,  gag development, prop and costume construction, acrobatics, dance and the physical skills of slaps and falls, stilt-walking, unicycling, juggling and much more.

And another choice is that some of the graduates of previous Clown College classes have taken on the task of teaching the new generation of clowns on Clowns School, all over the world.

Clown Schools

Do you occasionally feel like your life is one big circus? Well here’s your chance to be a clown—a real clown.

Clown classes are offered at community colleges, clown schools and even at theater arts schools.  We have over a hundred clown schools listed on our web site and we have over a hundred teachers that will come to your location to teach a class or workshop.

The courses at the long term clown school programs can be expensive and usually run longer periods (like months or years) and take a lot of effort to complete. But well worth the time and money to the right person. They will teach you, all of the major clown skills. Like how to build a clown character, clown skits, costuming, makeup, and more.

Each of the clown schools is a little different from the others. Some teach the Art of Mime Clowning, some of the other clown schools teach  clown mask theater, and other clown schools teach physical clown theater. So take  some time checking out the many different clown schools.

For more details on the differant types of clown schools,  checkout  the Types of Schools web page.

For shorter classes, checkout the Educational Events menu. It will take you to the  website ClownEvents.com, which has calendars listing the the shorter classes, courses, workshops, conventions, and jams.