The traditional clowns.

The last few years there has been a lack of the old fashion traditional clowns. The few left are in the older department, except for a few examples, and the new clowns climbing up the ladder don’t have the old fashion quality. But what is quality? Is quality if adults think the clowns are funny? Or is it if kids laugh their hearts out? Because it is absolutely common that clown humour fits for kids and absolutely not for adults and reverse.

Bruno - the wihte face from the Chickys are the old fashion clown.

One of the answers is, if you look historic on clowns, they were absolutely for adults only and circus was mainly for the older generation. This fact is changed for the last 30 years and at the same time new clowns adapts their acts to the younger generation. Children love slap stick humour and only partly interested in a deeper history and because of that the depth in a clown entree is partly disappeared. To day it is fast slap stick humour with a lot of violence and furthermore some parts of the entrée are stolen from other acts. But the children amuse themselves, when I ask kids about the clowns they just seen beating each other up with enormous boxing gloves they claims that the clowns are very funny. When you ask them about why they are fighting they are absolutely not sure. Yes I agree violence can in some circumstances be funny but violence shouldn’t be funny only for the cause of the violence.

The Rivels family

Lots of clowns are in these days from Russia and other old east block countries, some of them are very funny and perform really original acts but it is another tradition than we are used to in Europe. Most of them are reprise clowns and nothing wrong with that but they can’t replace the entrée clowns 100%. Normally they are doing small jokes and not telling a longer story with a morale build in like their old colleges in Europe.

It would be wrong to say that there isn’t any funny European clown left but it is rare to meet the real old guys. The Rastellis from Italy are still going strong but Alfredo is 79 years old and must go on pension very soon. It is unknown about his to sons will continue if dad stops ?. Francesco Caroli the great white clown stopped his career last year in Circus Roncalli. People in the business say, that Francesco was the last real white faced clown but we still got Bruno from the world famous the Chicky’s. But thir days are counted too because Eugene the second half of the troupe reach 75 years in May.

Alfredo from the world famous clowns "Rastellis" belongs to the old fashion kind of clown.

There is a lack of great Clown personalities in the circus business at the moment but a few stars sparks sometimes. At the moment there is the 46 years old Fumagalli doing his job with a great success. He is educated and developed together with the founder of circus Roncalli in Germany Mr. Bernhard Paul. Fumagalli is a real star and he is very funny but he has nothing to do with the old fashion clown tradition.

Fumagalli belongs to the new generation

Some people in the business say that the traditional clown is dying. The Bronett brothers from the Swedish circus Scott claims that kids cry’s and their parents are running screaming away if they presents real clowns and maybe there is something about it and that’s is the reason for the few clowns. Maybe they aren’t funny anymore because when I look at old clips from clown performances it is very difficult to get kids interested. There are web pages with anti clown pictures and stories. It is possible to play games on the net where the goal is to beat up the clowns. It was absolute easy for me to find pictures of scary clowns on the Internet and sometimes. I found a lot of anti clown pages on the net, offering T-shirts and other merchandise with anti clown text printed on the front.

So maybe the traditional clowns are going to disappear in the future, because many people just don’t like them anymore- they are old fashion and something for Granddad. Maybe we should let the clown tradition die in peace and look into the modern future.

FRONT