Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College

Based on Wikipedia: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College

The Only School Where Failure Meant You Weren't Funny Enough

Imagine applying to college and instead of submitting SAT scores, you had to fill out an extensive psychological profile designed to reveal whether you were inherently amusing. Then imagine that if you got in, tuition was completely free—but you'd spend eight hours a day, six days a week, learning to fall down professionally. And at the end of it all, you'd either get a job offer you were contractually obligated to accept, or you'd walk away with nothing but a custom-fitted rainbow wig and the specialized knowledge of how to make a pie hit someone's face at exactly the right angle.

This was Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. It was real. It operated for nearly thirty years. And it shaped the entire American tradition of circus comedy.

A Crisis of Aging Clowns

The school exists because of a simple problem that Irvin Feld noticed in 1968. Feld owned Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—the self-proclaimed "Greatest Show on Earth"—and his clowns were getting old. Most of them had passed fifty. The pratfalls were getting slower. The somersaults were becoming more cautious. And there was nobody waiting in the wings to replace them.

This might seem like a minor staffing issue, but clowning isn't something you can just hire for. You can't post a job listing that says "wanted: person who can make ten thousand people laugh simultaneously using only body language and a rubber chicken." The skills take years to develop. The comedic timing has to become instinctive. And the physical demands—the tumbling, the stilt-walking, the pratfalls that look effortless but require the conditioning of a gymnast—don't translate from any other profession.

Feld had a bigger problem too. Clowning traditions were dying out. In the old days, clowns learned their craft through apprenticeship, traveling with small circuses and picking up techniques from veteran performers over years of touring. But that pipeline had dried up. Television was killing the small-town circus circuit. Young people weren't running away to join the circus anymore—they were running away to Hollywood instead.

So Feld did something unprecedented. He decided to systematize an art form that had never been systematized before.

Building the Mecca of Professional Foolishness

Feld partnered with Bill Ballantine, a veteran Ringling clown who had spent decades perfecting his craft. Together they designed a curriculum that would compress years of traditional apprenticeship into an intensive ten-to-thirteen week program. The first class convened in 1968 in Venice, Florida.

The concept was audacious. They weren't just training circus performers—they were attempting to codify what makes something funny. They studied Charlie Chaplin films to understand physical comedy timing. They analyzed Buster Keaton's deadpan to learn how stillness creates contrast. They watched The Three Stooges to see how violence becomes hilarious when the consequences are cartoonish. They even studied actual cartoons—Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny—to understand how animated comedy translates to live performance.

The students learned makeup application, but not just any makeup. Ringling clowns perform in enormous arenas where audience members might be sitting hundreds of feet away in upper balconies. A subtle expression would be invisible. So the makeup had to be designed almost like a logo—bold lines and stark colors that could communicate emotion from the cheap seats. Each clown developed their own unique face, and once established, that face became their professional identity, almost like a trademark.

Costume design followed similar principles. Everything had to read at a distance. Oversized shoes weren't just tradition—they made footwork visible from far away. Bright colors and strong patterns helped audiences track the action even in a three-ring circus where multiple things were happening simultaneously.

The Three-Ring Problem

That three-ring setup deserves some explanation, because it shaped everything about how Ringling clowns work.

Most European circuses use a single ring. The audience surrounds it in a relatively intimate setting. Performers can use subtlety. A raised eyebrow can get a laugh. A quiet aside can land.

Ringling Bros. was different. Their circus filled massive arenas with tens of thousands of seats. They ran three rings simultaneously because that was the only way to give everyone something to watch—if you couldn't see Ring One clearly from your seat, you could focus on Ring Three instead. This created a spectacle unlike anything in European tradition, but it demanded a completely different performance style.

American circus clowning became broad and slapstick out of necessity. You couldn't do witty wordplay when half the audience couldn't hear you. You couldn't do subtle facial expressions when half the audience couldn't see your face. Everything had to be big, clear, and physical. A Ringling clown's body became their primary instrument, and every movement had to be readable from the back row of the upper deck.

Clown College taught students to think in these terms. It wasn't enough to be funny—you had to be architecturally funny, designing gags that worked regardless of where the audience member was sitting.

The Most Unusual Application Process in Higher Education

Getting into Clown College was nothing like applying to a normal school. There were no transcripts to submit, no letters of recommendation from teachers. Instead, applicants filled out an extensive written personality profile.

The directors wanted to understand psychology, not credentials. Were you naturally playful? Could you laugh at yourself? Did you have the emotional resilience to fail publicly—repeatedly—while learning? Did you have the specific kind of ego that could handle being ridiculous for a living, but not so much ego that you couldn't take direction?

The circus also held in-person auditions at most stops along its touring route. This served dual purposes. It drummed up interest in the show itself while also casting a wide net for potential students. A teenager who showed up to audition in Tulsa might have natural comic instincts that no resume could capture.

The demographics of each class were striking. Typically thirty to fifty students were admitted each year, with men outnumbering women roughly eight to one. This ratio reflected the broader circus industry at the time, though it would shift somewhat in later years.

Free Education With Strings Attached

Here's where things got interesting. Tuition was completely free.

Students had to cover their own room and board, plus any personal expenses, but the training itself cost nothing. In exchange, graduates received their complete professional kit: a custom "Agent Suit" (the specific clown costume designed for their character), a wig, proper clown shoes, and a full makeup kit. They walked out ready to work.

But there was a catch, one that Ringling added after learning a hard lesson.

In the early years, some graduates declined job offers at the end of the session. Two of the most notable were Penn Jillette in 1973 and Bill Irwin in 1974. Jillette would go on to become half of the famous magic duo Penn and Teller. Irwin would become a Tony Award-winning actor and one of the most celebrated physical comedians of his generation. Both benefited enormously from Clown College training but chose different paths.

After these defections, Ringling added a stipulation. If you were offered a contract at the end of the session, you were obligated to accept it. The school was free, but it was fundamentally a training program for Ringling's own workforce. They weren't running a charity for aspiring mimes.

The Endless Audition

This brings up another unusual aspect of the school: the entire session was essentially one long job interview. Instructors constantly evaluated students, taking notes on who had the specific qualities Ringling needed for its upcoming season.

The pressure was real but also strangely appropriate. Professional clowning means performing under pressure. If you couldn't handle being evaluated while learning, you probably couldn't handle ten thousand people watching you attempt a gag that might not work.

Students worked together constantly, "playing off" each other to develop material. This collaborative aspect was crucial because Clown College served as a think tank for the circus itself. New gags developed at the school would eventually appear in the actual show. Students weren't just learning existing routines—they were inventing new ones.

The curriculum covered everything from juggling to stilt-walking to acrobatics. Pantomime received special attention because of those distance issues in the arena. If you can tell a story without words, using only your body, you can reach any audience regardless of language or seating location.

Graduation Day: Contract or Consolation Prize

When the session ended, some graduates received one-year contracts to tour with "The Greatest Show on Earth." These were the chosen ones, the students who had demonstrated exactly what Ringling needed.

But what about everyone else?

Ringling didn't simply cast aside the non-selected graduates. Many were offered opportunities within the broader Feld Organization, which owned various entertainment properties. Some were added to the circus's "clown alley" (the traditional term for a circus's clown troupe) at later dates when positions opened up. Others found work with smaller circuses that actively recruited from Clown College's graduate pool, knowing that a Ringling-trained clown came with a baseline of professional skill.

Over nearly thirty years, approximately fourteen hundred clowns graduated from the program. That's a remarkable number when you consider how specialized the profession is. Feld had effectively industrialized the production of professional fools.

The Venice Years

For its first twenty-five years, Clown College operated in Venice, Florida. Venice was already home to various Ringling operations—the circus had deep roots in Florida, where the warm climate allowed year-round outdoor practice and where the Ringling family had maintained facilities since the early twentieth century.

There were plans at one point to incorporate Clown College into a larger "Circus World" theme park, envisioned in 1972 as a sort of Disney World for circus arts. The park would have made the school a tourist attraction in itself—visitors could watch future clowns learning their craft. This plan never fully materialized as envisioned, though various Ringling attractions operated in the area over the years.

The Venice location became something of a pilgrimage site for clowning enthusiasts. Irvin Feld had wanted exactly this—he saw the public relations value in establishing a recognized "Mecca of clowning" in the United States. Whether you were a working clown, an aspiring one, or just someone who found the profession fascinating, Venice was the place.

The Feld Dynasty

Irvin Feld didn't live to see his school's full impact. He died in 1984, and his son Kenneth took over Feld Entertainment and the Ringling shows.

Kenneth continued operating the school, but changes were coming. In 1993, Clown College moved from Venice to Baraboo, Wisconsin. This wasn't an arbitrary choice—Baraboo was the original hometown of the Ringling Brothers themselves, where they had founded their circus in 1884. The move connected the school to the deepest roots of the Ringling tradition.

The session length had been gradually shrinking over the years, from the original thirteen weeks down to about ten and a half, and eventually to just eight weeks in the final years. This compression reflected both efficiency improvements in the curriculum and changing economic pressures on the circus industry.

Celebrity Graduates and Honorary Degrees

Two particularly famous names are associated with Clown College, though neither attended as a regular student.

Dick Van Dyke, the legendary actor and physical comedian, became an honorary graduate. In 1988, he hosted a twentieth anniversary television special for the school that aired on CBS. The hour-long program featured alumni performing their favorite routines while Van Dyke played a character called "Burford," a school custodian trying to pick up clowning techniques on the sly. It was a fitting tribute—Van Dyke's own career demonstrated exactly the kind of physical comedy that Clown College taught.

Willard Scott, the longtime Today Show weatherman, also received honorary graduate status. Scott had a unique connection to clowning history: he was the first person to portray Ronald McDonald in a television advertisement. Before the character was redesigned and became a global icon, Scott played the original version in the Washington, D.C. area in the early 1960s. His McDonald's clown looked quite different from the later version—more traditional circus clown than corporate mascot.

Smiles Across America

On August 4, 1992, Ringling organized a national event called "Smiles Across America." Clown College graduates fanned out to cities and towns across the country to perform civic duties—visiting hospitals and parks, doing photo opportunities, meeting with media and the general public.

The event was designed to "raise awareness of various issues and to help make people happier," which sounds vague but captured something real about the clown's social function. Throughout history, clowns and jesters have served as a kind of pressure valve, using humor to acknowledge difficult realities while also providing relief from them. A clown visiting a children's hospital isn't just entertainment—it's a specific kind of emotional medicine.

The End of an Era

In 1997, Kenneth Feld made the decision to close Clown College. The school was just shy of its thirtieth anniversary.

But it wasn't a failure that killed it—it was success.

With nearly fifteen hundred graduates out in the world, many of whom were now teaching others the techniques they had learned, the school had effectively replicated itself. The knowledge was spreading through the profession without needing a centralized institution to propagate it.

Additionally, Ringling had produced a home videotape in 1986 called "Be A Clown," which captured many of the techniques used in the training sessions. This meant the core curriculum existed in a form that could be studied anywhere.

The physical school was no longer necessary. The tradition had been successfully transmitted to a new generation, and that generation was transmitting it to the next.

Afterlife

Even after the Venice facility closed, Clown College continued in modified form. Training programs operated in various locations around Rosemont, Illinois until 2015. The format was different—no longer a single intensive session in a dedicated facility—but the tradition continued.

The circus itself lasted until 2017, when Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey finally folded after 146 years. The reasons were complex: declining attendance, high operating costs, controversy over animal performances, and changing entertainment preferences all played roles.

Then, in 2023, the circus returned—but without any animal acts. The new Ringling Bros. focuses entirely on human performers: acrobats, aerialists, and yes, clowns. Many of those clowns carry on techniques that trace back, directly or indirectly, to what was taught in Venice, Florida starting in 1968.

The Legacy of Systemized Silliness

What Irvin Feld accomplished was genuinely remarkable when you think about it. He took an art form that had been passed down informally for centuries and turned it into something that could be reliably taught. He identified the specific skills that mattered—the makeup design, the physical comedy, the arena-scale performance techniques—and created a curriculum to transmit them.

This is harder than it sounds. Comedy is notoriously difficult to teach. What makes something funny is partly technical (timing, setup, payoff) but also partly ineffable (the mysterious quality that makes one performer hilarious and another merely competent). Clown College couldn't guarantee that graduates would be funny—you can't teach natural comic instinct—but it could ensure they had all the technical tools to express whatever instinct they had.

The school also established American circus clowning as a distinct tradition, different from its European roots. The broad, physical, slapstick style that emerged from the three-ring format became codified and professionalized. For better or worse, when Americans think of clowns, they largely think of the Ringling style.

And perhaps most importantly, Feld proved that you could run a serious educational institution devoted entirely to making people laugh. For nearly thirty years, Clown College was exactly what its name suggested: a real college for clowns, with admissions standards, a rigorous curriculum, and graduates who went on to successful careers. The fact that those careers involved red noses and oversized shoes doesn't make the achievement any less impressive.

Somewhere out there, right now, a professional clown is making a child laugh using techniques that were developed, refined, and taught in a Florida building that existed specifically to answer the question: how do you train someone to be ridiculous on purpose?