"You can't get too much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good." - Jerry West

Barry Lubin used a metaphor I liked in one of his lectures at the recent World Clown Association Convention in Chicago. He said that when somebody has a sink that needs to be fixed they hire a plumber. They don't care if the plumber does not feel like fixing sinks because of personal problems. His job is to fix the sink and that is all they are interested in. The plumber has to do his job whether he feels like it or not. Being an entertainer is our job. Whether we feel like it or not, our job is to entertain our audience.

When some people discuss Coulrophobia they list not knowing what a clown is truly feeling as a potential cause. People in the media are fascinated by the idea that a clown's happy façade conceals a broken heart. Fictional portrayals like the opera Pagliacci reinforce that stereotype. However, that is unimportant. Just like any other profession, a clown should be able to do their job no matter how they are feeling.

I toured with Circus Kirk in 1976. The show was owned by Charles "Doc" Boas, a college professor. The show employed high school and college students as a way to teach life lessons and to provide an opening to potential entertainment careers. We did everything on the show. In the morning the performers helped move the show from one town to the next and set up the tents and equipment. Everyone lived in dormitories built into semi-truck trailers. Sometimes conflicts erupted due to living and working so closely together. I kept a journal that summer. In one of the entries I wrote, "Doc called a meeting between shows. He said the one thing that keeps us from being true professionals is that we bring our problems with us into the ring. Yesterday one of the acts got into a loud argument as they were leaving the ring, and the entire audience could hear them. Doc said that the audience is there to be entertained. They shouldn't be able to tell if we are having difficulties."

That was a hard lesson to learn. There were several reasons for conflict between members of the clown alley that season. Sometimes we didn't like each other very much. One of our acts which had been getting great response began to fail. One day one of the women in the alley said, "Nobody makes eye contact with me anymore during the act." I realized that I was letting personal feelings interfere with the act. I ignored her because I didn't like her very much at that time. So I began consciously making eye contact with her while we performed. Although our relationship outside of the ring was strained, I acted as if our two characters had a relationship in the ring. I purposely tried to find ways to connect with her during the act instead of ignoring her. Audience response to the act improved again. Eventually the cause of our outside conflict was resolved.

I worked at Raging Waters in San Dimas, CA for eleven years. Each year I actually performed forty hours a week between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It is hard to consistently feel like clowning that long. Looking back I can tell when I let personal problems or conflict at work interfere with my performances. During those periods I just went through the motions of performing my routines. I did not feel any connection to audience members. My performances lacked energy. People laughed at my routines, but something was missing. I learned that I had to make a conscious choice to focus my attention on creating a connection with individuals in the audience. When you are concentrating on that it is hard to think about other things that are bothering you. I found the effort to be exhausting, but when I did establish connections it renewed my energy. I developed a determination to give each particular audience the best performance I could at that moment no matter what it took. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but I give it my best effort.

How can you give a good performance when you don't feel like it? What choices can you make in advance to prepare for it? What things do you need to focus on?