Send in the Clowness: The Problematic Origins of Female Circus Clowns

Historically, clowns have always been trained “on the job”: one was born or adopted into a circus dynasty or else ran away to join the circus, serving an apprenticeship. Breaking with the long tradition that performers learn on the job, after World War II, national circuses in the Communist bloc created their own academies; they were followed in 1974 by the École nationale de cirque founded in Paris by Annie Fratellini and Pierre Étaix, now the Académie Fratellini, and in 1982 by the Escola Nacional de Circo in Brazil. These examples led to the teaching of circus skills in universities, enabling breaches in the gender barriers between types of circus acts. For example, six years after Ringling Brothers founded a clown college in 1968, Peggy Williams was the first woman to graduate with a contract. At first she felt out of place. In an interview series for the Ringling Museum of Art, she stated that early in her training she had presumed that clowns were gender neutral: “I didn't know there weren't girl clowns. I thought being a clown was being a clown. You could be a man or woman. I had no idea what was heading my way because of gender.” Although she learned under the auspices of great clowns such as Lou Jacobs, she was left to her own devices to craft a clown that reflected her allegedly female nature.