The rooms in the labyrinth beneath the Christ the King retreat center in Buffalo, Minnesota, are sparsely decorated with religious iconography, and the place has a settled, monastic atmosphere of tranquility. Located on a quiet edge of town, on a bluff overlooking Buffalo Lake, Christ the King advertises itself as a “sacred place for meditation and quiet time.” The facility’s posted schedule is booked with retreats for Catholic singles, engaged couples, parish secretaries, and members of Overeaters and Emotions Anonymous.
One afternoon last summer, the small rooms on the lower level of the retreat center looked as if they had been hastily abandoned by schoolchildren who had been having the time of their lives. There were piles of inflated balloons twisted into myriad and occasionally recognizable shapes. Akimbo puppets and stuffed animals were heaped here and there, along with strands of knotted rope, wigs, and scraps of colorful fabric. On an easel in one room there was a large notepad on which was written such strange (and moderately disturbing, considering the context) phrases as “They Smell Fear” and “Don’t Become A Machine.”
The place was eerily silent, and filled with crepuscular light that was swirling with dust motes. Down the hall, the corridor opened into a large room with a vantage of the lake and a sky that was in the process of being overrun by storm clouds. A group of people were gathered around a long, wooden table, hunched quietly over handheld mirrors and intently applying makeup. Most of them were wearing giant shoes that were embellished with bright stars and polka dots.
Outside, the tree-covered lawn was swarming with clowns. Some of the clowns were dancing, arm in arm. Some were juggling. Others were crowding themselves into a tiny car, which is apparently a group behavior that is hardwired in the brains of clowns. One clown staggered around in the grass brandishing a shotgun.
The temperature was almost one hundred degrees, but despite their Technicolor wigs, grease-painted faces, and bright and voluminous clothing, none of the clowns appeared to be sweating. A visitor, who happened upon this scene entirely by chance, watched as two clowns, a man and a woman, took a candy-apple red clown buggy (with a red star license plate and fluttering American flags) for a slow lap around a statue of the Virgin Mary at the far end of the lawn. The statue had its head tilted back and its arms raised imploringly to heaven.
The clowns, eighty of them, from all over the globe, had traveled to this “sacred place for meditation and quiet time” to spend a week at the Mooseburger Camp for Clown Arts Education.
The camp, now in its tenth year, is a big deal in the world of serious clowning. Since the 1997 closing of the legendary Ringling Brothers Clown College in Florida (and, in its later years, the Wisconsin Dells), the Mooseburger Camp has been a national and international draw for clowns, whether they be professionals or the sorts of community amateurs that make up a disproportionate percentage of today’s clown population.
The director of the Mooseburger camp is a petite woman named Tricia Bothun, aka Pricilla Mooseburger. Bothun had something of an archetypal entrée into the world of clowning: Raised in Maple Lake, she ran away from home in 1982 to join the circus. She eventually ended up at the original Ringling Clown College in Venice, Florida, and then spent three years on the road with one of the Barnum and Bailey traveling units. When Bothun left the circus, she returned to Maple Lake and began creating clown costumes—Pricilla Mooseburger Originals—out of a little shop on the main drag. Today, she employs a team of eight seamstresses who help her produce hundreds of customized designs for clients all over the world, as well as stock costumes for the more casual hobbyist. She also travels around the country performing and teaching at workshops and camps, and is active in the Maple Lake Community Theater. It’s obvious, though, that Bothun’s annual camp—and the logistics and networking required to pull it off—occupies a good deal of her time.
Clowns, you might think, have become something of a dodgy proposition in the age of irony, and there’s no doubt that the profession’s public image has taken a few hits over the last couple of decades. Think serial killer John Wayne Gacy; think Shakes the Clown or Poltergeist; think the Insane Clown Posse; or Stephen King’s It. Think every blundering clown you’ve ever encountered in a small-town parade. The Mooseburger campers seemed either too keenly aware of this fact, or blithely oblivious. Either way, a big part of the camp’s mission is to provide clowns with the skills to do battle with lingering negative stereotypes created by hapless greasepaint amateurs and fear-mongering clown haters.
Joe Barney, one of the instructors at the Mooseburger Camp, has been a clown for forty-one years, and has carved out a specialty niche with New York’s Big Apple Clown Care Unit. “Ten years ago there was so much clown bashing going on,” he said. “Clowns were considered passé, and there’s no denying that the numbers were on the decline. Clowning was a dying art. That’s all really changing now, and this is the cream of the crop for clown training in the United States. I think clowns are more in-demand than ever, for a variety of reasons. Kids have been fed a steady diet of canned entertainment for years, and live entertainment is such a novelty for them. A clown that can actually work up a decent routine—maybe incorporate some magic tricks, some comedy gags, and material that both adults and children can enjoy—can get steady work.” Barney pointed out that he, for instance, works probably three hundred events a year, mostly in the New York area.
Although Bothun and her camp staff use classic circus routines as primary teaching tools, they also offer classes in all sorts of specialized skills that wouldn’t have much place in the average circus clown’s performance. “There’s a big difference between what a circus clown does on a daily basis and what’s expected of what we call hometown clowns,” Bothun said. “In the circus, the clown’s job is to get in and get out before the elephants show up. When you’re working in the community, you have to be able to work up close and personal, and often you have to interact directly with a small audience. You really do need a work ethic.”
Every year, Bothun assembles a crew of instructors with a diverse range of professional experience and skills. “We recognize that we’re part of a weird little subculture all our own,” she said. “People come to this from all sorts of backgrounds and with different needs and expectations, so we try to teach everything.” Bothun will generally have people on staff to teach basics like movement, makeup, and magic, and the camp’s schedule includes classes with titles like “Juggling and Ukulele Lab,” “Gospel and Greasepaint,” “Clowning and Puppetry,” “Bubble Magic,” “The Clown Hat as Your Friend,” “Parades and Props,” “Hospital Clowning,” and “Paper Plate Hats.”
There’s also a dealer room on site, where the campers can purchase hats, costumes, props, books, and makeup. They can also be fitted for the incredibly beautiful, plus-twenty sized shoes that are handcrafted by Wayne and Marty Scott, the Manolo Blahniks of clown footwear.
The clowns at Mooseburger Camp spend much of their time in character, and it can be difficult to see them as anything but the characters they play. They have names like Fitzwilly, Popcorn, Skippy Do Little, Toolz, Pastyr Clarence T. Funy Bone, and Little Pat. Some of them are Shriners or community clowns; others are professionals or semi-professionals looking to hone their skills or add something to their repertoire. Still others are strictly amateurs or curious beginners. Among last year’s crop of campers there was a New York cop, a gastroenterologist, a financial analyst, a retired shop teacher, a postman, and the dean of a university in Idaho.
There was also Angela Knight, aka Annie the Clown, a lawyer from Barbados. “There is a real shortage of clowns in Barbados,” Knight said, in explaining her decision to travel to Minnesota to attend the camp. “The island is 166 square miles and has a population of 265,000, but there probably aren’t more than a dozen clowns and maybe one or two magicians. I’m a government attorney, and I’m thirty-five and childless. I got interested in clowning as a way to sort of balance out my job. I’d gone to the Clowns of America convention in the past and heard about this place. I wanted to be funnier and more magical to watch, and this has been a wonderful experience. You get so much individual attention, and the instructors here are part of so much great history and tradition, and they’re passing on time-honored skills. I’m also grateful to be able to buy the sort of props and supplies that are so expensive and hard to come by in Barbados.”
On the last night of camp, the Mooseburger clowns stage a public performance in a nearby community. Last year, as the campers mingled outside the retreat center in full costume, preparing to board buses to the Annandale High School football field, Jose Rivera, a mime and clown from New Jersey who was teaching movement at the Mooseburger Camp, was talking about how rewarding it was to go into nursing homes. “It’s amazing,” he said. “It only takes an instant and so many of these old people remember how to dance and fall right into step with you. They remember that rhythm. It’s pretty wonderful to realize that you’ve just made someone remember part of who they once were.”
After the All Star Clown Show in Annandale, as the campers gathered back at their base in Buffalo for a pizza and dance party, a burly Shriner from Florida by the name of George Dondero was literally bouncing up and down. “I’ll tell you what,” Dondero said. “This place is where you separate the men from the boys. It’s like boot camp, only pure fun. You’ll find out pretty quick if you’re a clown or not, and I just found out that I’m a clown.”
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