Circus Is Still Full Of Wonder

The clowns don’t do pratfalls under the big top anymore.

The flying trapeze is hooked to massive steel light trusses which are attached by 40 cables to the ceiling of Spokane’s modern new Arena.

Today’s incarnation of the “Greatest Show on Earth” is enhanced by computerized lighting and something called “satellite sound.”

Don’t be put off.

Despite all the concessions to whiz-bang technology, the pungent, low-tech pachyderms still will clear your nasal passages with one healthy whiff.

In Spokane for a four-day run, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus remains a magical elixir for the drudgery of this old world.

“There is still a romance and mystery with the circus, and it will always be,” agrees David Kiser.

Kiser helped fulfill a boyhood fantasy of mine. I was treated Wednesday to a behind-the-scenes peek at how this elaborate, glitzy production comes together.

I couldn’t have asked for a better guide than this lanky, straw-haired man who often explodes with cartoonish “hee-yuk, hee-yuk” guffaws.

Before taking a management job, Kiser spent 13 years performing as a clown. Funny, a lot of managers I know should be clowns.

Kiser now earns his pay as a conduit in this circus’s vast information highway. Any problem concerning the animals or the humans, he adds, usually flows through him.

“I traded my rubber nose for a radio,” he says, gazing somewhat woefully at the walkie-talkie he carries everywhere like an anchor.

“Quite honestly, I miss the rubber nose terribly.”

The circus always has been a big deal in my life.

My first memory of one is of sitting on my dad’s strong shoulders as we tried to find our seats at a Ringling Bros. matinee. That was sometime during the mid-1950s when performances still were held under a huge canvas tent.

I remember leaving gapemouthed, my head swimming with visions of contortionists, high-wire walkers and prancing zebras.

My family went to circuses whenever it could. I always got to take home a souvenir such as a Chinese yo-yo or a miniature lion tamer’s whip. The cheap trinkets usually fell apart the day after the circus had left town.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Ringling Bros. scrapped its big top for arenas in 1956. The company played our old Coliseum for the first time in 1961 after a six-year hiatus.

Though I still have a soft spot for fire-eaters and acrobats, it’s the sheer magnitude of the circus that boggles my adult mind.

Imagine having to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces. That’s the closest comparison I can make for the monumental job circus hands routinely knock off in just eight or nine hours.

On the Arena floor, riggers and technicians hook up miles of cable and tons of scaffolding.

Outside, props and equipment are removed and readied in a precise, predetermined order. Crate No. 43, for example, contains a Rube Goldberg contraption called the “Chicago Kids Truck.”

It’s said that during World War II, the U.S. Army asked Ringling Bros. to teach troops how to pack it up and move it out. I believe it.

“We’re a traveling city,” explains Kiser. “We’re self-contained, and because of that, we very rapidly develop a sense of family.”

Kiser ran off and joined the circus after high school. Actually, he auditioned for the famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

He made it on the second try.

This afternoon, Clown College auditions will be held at the Arena. There’s a slim chance some young joker with promise will follow in Kiser’s oversized, floppy footsteps.

“I’d love it,” says Julie Rothweiler, 25, a Spokane clown who plans to try out. “To wear the Ringling Bros. emblem is like driving a Mercedes.”

, DataTimes