Unicycling is a difficult skill to master. But once you have it, it’s a lot like riding a regular bike (one with two wheels), in that it’s hard to forget how. Forget that you could flat out kill yourself learning. I got a unicycle for my 28th birthday (while I was in nursing school)—I still have it. My brother-in-law restored it for my 64th birthday. And I can still ride it, almost as well as I ever could, which was never really all that great to begin with. In the twenty years I spent in the circus industry, there was only once that I used it in a show . . .
On Circus Vargas, in 1983, midway through the first half of the show, they always did a “no-smoking” announcement. Cliff Vargas, the owner/producer, paid a guy to build a bicycle built for five (no lie!). One guy would run down the track right after the announcement with his head on fire, and five of us would chase him, in yellow rain coats and plastic fireman hats on the five man bike. It was pretty funny, and it took long enough, but the bike was a piece of crap. It was out of the show broken as often as it was in.
One day, when the bike was broken, Scott Parker comes up with an extraordinary idea—so, before the first show, we construct an oversize fire hydrant out of foam-rubber, about a fifteen foot long hose from dryer tubing, and a foam rubber nozzle with a bulb syringe inside that spits out water. Then we chase the on-fire guy, still in yellow rain coats with fireman helmets, only now on unicycles—Scott in front with the nozzle, futilely squirting water at the guy, me in the middle holding onto the hose for dear life, and Greg McElwayne in the rear, carrying the hydrant on a six foot tall giraffe unicycle . . . and suddenly, pretty funny becomes a wave of uproarious laughter that follows us all the way around the tent. We’d have willingly never done it any other way again.
But Cliff had paid a bunch of money for the five-man bike, and he wanted to see it in his show. And it was HIS show . . . Yet, somehow, for the rest of the season, whenever we played on pavement, as opposed to pasture, the five man bike seemed to be in need of repair . . .
From an audience point of view, clowns are supposed to be funny. That means that when the clowns are finished, in a best case scenario, the audience should be rolling on the floor laughing their butts off. And, after the Unicycle Chase, they were. Worst case, they should at the very least be amused. And after the five man bike, they were. Sometimes, if they’re not actively seeking your head on a platter, then you’ve done the best you can do. But from a clown point of view, “rotfltbo” is insanely better than “amused.”
From a producer’s point of view, while clowns are supposed to be funny, lots of times there are other considerations. For instance, how much did he pay for the bike? Or did they take long enough? Not too long, and not too short. Nothing worse than having the clowns finish before the next act is ready and having to call them back to fill the extra time . . .
The show world is full of mediocre unicyclists or jugglers who put clown make-up on and remain mediocre unicyclists or jugglers but are now mediocre clowns as well. There are phenomenal jugglers who aren’t funny at all. They don’t have to be. There are phenomenal jugglers who are phenomenally funny as well, because they have learned, not only to juggle well, but to use their juggling skill in a way that evokes gut-wrenching laughter from a crowd. The Flying Karamazov Brothers come to mind . . .
Scott Parker was a phenomenal unicyclist (at least to me—I don’t know what he would say about his skills). He may still be. He juggled three clubs on it; he even jumped rope on it. He rode forward, backward, and could rock back and forth in one place. But way beyond that, he was flat out FUNNY! I never watched him that I didn’t laugh, and I watched him a lot.
I think of the unicycle as a tool. Your skill set is your tool box. The more tools you have available and can skillfully use, the better prepared you are to do the job. Nineteen of the twenty years I was in the circus, the unicycle stayed in the truck. But the one year when I could use it, it was available.
Bottom line—it helped, but on its own, it wouldn’t ever have earned me a dime.
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