"A clown is always working, always trying to find something new.  A lot of people think that clowns use the same act year after year and that the stunts a clown pulls now are the same ones clowns pulled in Shakespeare's Day.  There is a certain amount of truth in this.  People like to see the old familiar routines.  But every year there have to be new ones along with the old, and the old ones have to have a new twist.  That's what gets the laughs - the unexpected new twist, the element of surprise."  -- Paul Jung

It is true that some routines are centuries old.  There are descriptions from the 1600's of the clown dentist pulling the wrong tooth.  That routine can be seen performed today.  Some magic ideas are also centuries old.  The basic idea of the transforming book was described in a book titled The Discovery of Witchcraft written in 1584.  Today clowns and magicians perform a variation of that routine called the Magic Coloring Book.  Nobody knows for sure when the linking rings routine originated, but it is a classic that has been successfully used in entertaining audiences for centuries.  Another classic routine is the torn and restored newspaper.

I was one of the people who gave Don "Dee Gee" Gonsalves a standing ovation following his performance of the torn and restored newspaper at a clown convention about twenty years ago.  The way he tore and restored the newspaper was not unusual.  I was not surprised by how he restored the paper because I had previously done it that way myself.  What surprised me was the context he gave the routine.  Dee Gee, a tramp clown, entered carrying a newspaper.  Then the stripper song began playing.  He slowly, sensually tore a piece off the newspaper like a stripper teasingly removing the first item of her clothing.  While tearing the rest of the paper he performed a brilliant parody of a Burlesque star doing a strip tease.  Most of the audience was helpless with laughter by the time the song finished.  The final restoration of the paper was anticlimactic, but necessary.  It was the punctuation point of the routine signaling the end and giving us our cue to jump to our feet and cheer.  His surprising twist made it one of the most memorable torn and restored routines I have ever seen.

In 2003 my wife, Carole, and I performed a different twist on the same routine with the identical method of restoring the paper.  Each year the U-W Clown Camp ® honored instructors by depicting them on the logo and posters.  Bonnie Donaldson and I were on the 2002 logo.  During the staff show starting the 2003 program, I did a short juggling routine and then pulled out a poster from the previous year.  I very arrogantly pointed to my picture on the poster.  Carole came onto the stage, grabbed the poster from me, and ripped it up while telling me that I was a "has been" and that old poster was history.  After properly deflating my pompousness she restored the poster transforming it into the 2003 poster depicting Marty Bloes who was being honored that year.  That got a great response.  We received many comments by people who enjoyed seeing Carole putting me in my place.

Another memorable twist on an ancient routine was Barry DeChant's linking ring act at the 1987 World Clown Association Convention in San Diego.  He managed to link the rings, but couldn't unlink them.  Suddenly they linked to part of his costume.  (It was either his belt or suspenders.)  He got out a hack saw to cut the rings apart, and suddenly the saw was linked to the rings as well.  After he got them apart, he tried linking them again, and one of them broke apart instead of penetrating.  I have seen many linking ring routines during the past quarter century, but none of them have stood out in my memory as much as Barry's version.

Another memorable version was seeing the Magic Plumbers do a linking toilet seat routine at the HollywoodMagicCastle in about 1991.

Look at the old routines that you perform.  How can you give them a new twist for the new year?  What new context can you put them into?  How can you change the ending?  What different objects can you use for the routine?  What difficulties can you encounter?  How can you surprise your audience?