Tag: Christopher Lueck

The New York Downtown Clown Revue, a monthly late night venue for edgy stage clowns, produced and early evening show for children.  So I took My Kid and a Classmate Neighbor Boy to see the fun.

As familiar as My Kid is with the clown genre, she and the boy-she’s-known-since-they-were-in-diapers-but-who-is-not-a-friend-because-he-is-a-boy chose seats for us in the very back row right under the light booth from which there was no chance of getting squirted with water, hit with a pie or being pulled onto the stage.  Other peoples children chose to sit right on stage at the feet of the performers.

Joel Jeske and Christopher Lueck opened the show as a couple of brothers releasing the pent-up energy of patter clowns born to play three shows a day six days a week but they can’t because Vaudeville is dead.

Silly Billy, who was My Kid’s favorite clown last year, failed to impress this time with his kazoo and color changing scarf magic.  But then, My Kid and that-boy-she-was-sitting-next-to are in fourth grade this year, an upper grade in elementary school.  They have experience and standards.  On the way home, My Kid told me that as a 4th grader she knows the difference between real magic and fake magic.

Lulu the clown, aka Juliette Jeske, introduced as a woman who will perform anywhere for money, appeared in a tailored jacket, crinoline skirt and stripped tights.  Her suitcase of props was set up on a stand covered with a handmade quilt demonstrating the Midwestern crafty aspect of  the American children’s party clown style.   She works A LOT, much of it costumed character work at corporate events.  She also writes and produces short films for the internet, hosts variety and burlesque shows and wrote and performed the stage show Princess Sunshine’s Bitter Pill of Truth Funhouse.  Her performance was filled with the kind of visual puns, like a banana phone, that are popular with the preschool and kindergarten demographic.

Rounding out the evening were “Bucky and Gigi”, Chris Allison and his wife Gina, longtime Ringling circus clowns, she’s also a dancer.  They wore bright neat costumes.  We watched him get panned as “Coney Island Chris” on America’s Got Talent.  But, with a red nose on, he is as appealing as a cartoon character like SpongeBob SquarePants.  It was a goal at clown college to become a human cartoon.  Normal was called “pedestrian,” something to be avoided at all costs.

My kids didn’t seem impressed, but they were inspired.  On the way to the subway they sang;  “My Little Pony.  She’s thin and boney.  She went to the circus and farted on purpose.”  

And then on the train, The Neighbor Boy demonstrated a perfect three point prat-fall.  Hanging from the hand rail he: 1) dropped to the seat on his knees, 2) fell forward onto his face, then 3) rolled off the seat onto the floor and jumped up smiling!

Ta Da!!!