NARRATOR—You should be looking at a man with bare legs and a mop of yellow yarn hair.
BARRY LUBIN—My name is Barry Lubin, and I play the role of Grandma the clown. In real life and in my clown character, I tend to like to buck authority, so you might find me interrupting the ringmaster, for instance, wandering into the ring at seemingly inappropriate moments, and things of that nature, and also doing things that you wouldn’t expect from a senior citizen, like lip-syncing or doing some hip-hop dancing. Grandma does not actually speak, but I bark, and I’ve cried, and I’ve screamed. But no actual speaking into a microphone. I’ve tried it and the audience gets disturbed by it.
NARRATOR—This small figure with hairy legs may not look like any clown you’ve seen before. He has a hollow opening at the end of his nose that Calder attached different props to. In the nose is one end of a hose, the other end comes out the clown’s heel. Calder blew into the hose. And made it look like the clown was inflating a balloon, playing a toy tuba or smoking a cigarette (ewww! Yuck!).
BARRY LUBIN—I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I really love this round, hollow nose; there are just so many amazing possibilities. I wish I had one, because I could squirt water out of there. On the other hand, I could get the audience to hold a garden hose and squirt right in there, so that’s kind of cool. I love the idea of the balloon being blown up through there.
