Army veteran now aims for laughs

Elgin native in dream job as Ringling clown

November 03, 2011|By Steve Knopper, Special to the Tribune

After he left the Army as an ammunition specialist, Kyle Barker spent eight years working odd jobs — security guard, T-Mobile technical support, home remodeling. The work was usually tedious, and Barker liked to complain. One day, his bosses at the construction site asked him to break a 20-square-foot concrete slab into tiny rocks and carry the pieces 300 feet to the trash. "I'm not in prison!" Barker joked. "This ain't 1940!"

This experience turned out to be crucial training for Barker's current job. Every night, he and 11 members of his team tackle a classic engineering problem: How many clowns does it take to screw in a light bulb? Long story short, everybody whacks each other a bunch of times with ladders. True to his nature, Barker complains elaborately about the task.

"I took that situation of having to listen to the boss — because you always got to listen to the boss — and keep that smirky sarcasm that I do," says Barker, 29, who is from Elgin. "It's hard (for audiences) to hear that kind of language, so you have to do it in body language. You just have to remember to go back to that moment: 'Man, this guy is a lunatic, but let's do this.' It seems to work."

Barker has been a white-faced, yellow-wigged, red-nosed clown with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey for two years, since he became so fatigued with his odd jobs that he finally auditioned for "Disney Live!" and later wound up joining the circus. "I could do this for the rest of my life, day in and day out," he says. "That's always a good thing anybody wants in their job situation."

As with the other clowns who've made it to the 141-year-old "Greatest Show on Earth," Barker has no official clown name per se, but his colleagues privately refer to him as "Bumpsy Anthony." That's a term of respect, a homage to a classic circus clown from the mid-20th century whom Barker resembles in both looks and personality.

"Clowning really is about spontaneous improvisation: If something goes wrong with a gag, what are you going to do?" says Dustin Portillo, the circus's "boss clown," who helps write most of the troupe's material. "During pre-show, Kyle and two other clowns do a boxing gag with huge, comical slap gloves, so whenever you slap someone in the face, the other one takes the hands and whacks them together to make a loud noise. Someone's glove went flying off, which wasn't supposed to happen, so Kyle went into improv mode. He was doing a bunch of falls in the ring while the person was putting it back on. He was (diverting) the audience's attention (from) what was going on — which was a good thing. It was only a few seconds."

Long before Ringling, or his 2 1/2-year Army duty in which he was an ammunition specialist stationed in South Korea and Columbus, Ga., Barker was a 9-year-old kid obsessed with magic and illusions. When he was 14, he saw a picture of Lou Jacobs, the skinny-faced, tiny-chapeaued, legendary Ringling gag machine, and started drawing clown faces from books. But he got married as a young man, had kids, divorced, and "life always gets involved," as he puts it. So it wasn't until 2009 that Barker decided to graduate beyond balloon-animal parties and truly pursue his passion.

"You can't be made a clown," says Greg DeSanto, a Ringling clown from 1985 to 1995 and executive director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center in Baraboo, Wis. "You can learn skills, you can learn how to juggle, you can learn how to walk stilts or put on clown makeup, but ultimately you're born a clown."

And then, when a clown finally makes it to the biggest top of all, he has to contend with a newfangled syndrome known as "coulrophobia" — fear of clowns. As you can imagine, Barker is a skeptic. "There's a few kids that are a little leery — they'll look at you like, 'What are you?'" he says by phone from Toledo, Ohio, the circus's last stop before traveling to Chicago, where it will stay through November. "They don't know what to think at the time. They're like, 'Huh, this thing talks, and it moves, and it has a nose, and what is this thing?' And it's not until the parent says, 'She's scared of you,' that the child wants to turn and hide away.

"It's a diagnosed phobia, I guess," he continues. "They're supposed to be terrified of the ones they're supposed to be terrified of — your horror film or haunted house that gives 'that clown' to you. We don't even look like those guys. … In every city, it seems to unfold in the same way — 'Hey, come scare her!' No, I don't have time for that. I don't want to be that guy. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to have fun."

Twitter @chitribent

When: Through Nov. 13 (Allstate Arena), Nov. 16-27 (United Center)

