ON THE LAUGH TRACK THE CLOWNS OF 'AGA-BOOM' AND 'FLEETWOOD MACBETH' EARN THEIR SHARE OF THE COMEDY PIE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

``I soon found out that being a clown is quite different than doing a radio show or a stage appearance, because in a big circus tent, the clowns must get laughs without funny lines. They must depend on pantomime and productions with all their efforts concentrated on visual 'gags.' And into the creation of these gags goes much work, thought and research.''

- Bing Crosby on being a ``clown for a day,'' from a Ringling Bros. magazine and program

A year ago, Dean Kelly flew from his home in Kansas City, Kan., to Anaheim to attend the first clown auditions for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 30 years. He was the only one of the 15 auditioning to get hired, and is with the circus today.

``I can't see myself doing anything else, really,'' says Kelly, 22. ``They call the first-year clowns First of May clowns, next year I'll be a Johnny Come Lately, then I'll move up to senior clown. Eventually I'll hopefully be a boss clown.''

The circus, alas, has departed, leaving the L.A. area for San Diego and beyond. But never fear. Your child - or inner child, as the case may be - can take comfort in the fact that, three rings or otherwise, L.A. will never have a shortage of clowns. (Please feel free to get that snappy one-liner out of your system now. You know you want to.)

But we're talking about actual clowns. As in red noses, big floppy shoes, makeup, balloons and funny sound effects; they of circuses, birthday parties, grand openings and the occasional theme park.

Philip Karp-Briggs, a former Ringling Bros. clown and a graduate of that institution's now-defunct Clown College, estimates that there are in excess of 100 RBCC alumni in the L.A. area. We are an entertainment mecca, after all, and there's work here for skilled entertainers.

Karp-Briggs should know. With his wife, Heide, another Clown College graduate, Karp-Briggs performs and teaches children through his Jumbo Shrimp Circus. He's also the white clown in the whimsical show ``Aga-Boom'' currently enjoying a hit run at Burbank's Falcon Theatre.

``I love to do it and I can't imagine doing anything else,'' Karp-Briggs says of clowning, ``It's an avocation. I'm driven to do it. I've tried to stop. The response I get from an audience, it's very exciting.''

The Karp-Briggses had developed a friendship with another husband-and-wife team, Dimitri Bogatirev and Iryna Ivanytska, who had worked in Cirque du Soleil's ``O'' in Las Vegas. When Bogatirev and Ivanytska broke off from Cirque du Soleil and relocated to California, they enlisted Karp-Briggs to join their newly created show, ``Aga-Boom.''

Bogatirev has also been teaching regular theatrical clown workshops at Hollywood's Ivar Theatre, where ``Aga-Boom'' had its test run several months ago.

Bogatirev's style of clowning is markedly different from Ringling Bros.', which is a departure from what Karp-Briggs does with Jumbo Shrimp and different again from, say, the antics of the Funky Punks of Matt Walker's Troubadour Theatre Company.

``It takes a great deal of restraint from me up on that stage sometimes,'' admits Karp-Briggs. ``But it's really fun.''

Talk to some of the men and women who make their living in funny clothes and greasepaint and you'll get as many definitions of ``clown'' as you will methods for becoming one. Pointing to the characterizations of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, they use words like innocence and inner child, and refer to the amplification or burlesque of real life. A clown's mission, it is generally noted, is typically to make people laugh, although an occasional filmmaker has played up the horrific aspect of clowns and tapped into a certain amount of clown paranoia among children and adults. (See related story.)

Laughter is all well and good, says Bogatirev, but he hopes ``Aga-Boom'' audiences flex their cerebral muscles as vigorously as their smiles.

``Paradox,'' insists the Soviet-born Bogatirev. ``Airplane in (a) cage is paradox. Fish in (a) cage is paradox. I teach people freedom for fantasy. There are no rules. You create your own world.

``It's not (as) important for me to be funny,'' he continues. ``They're thinking about something and bam! I do something different.''

Clowns may train in all types of circus or theatrical skills. Some are expert jugglers or mimes; others have great agility for stilt-walking, trampolines or pratfalls. No matter the forte, they say, the aim is to figure out the best way to connect with an audience - no easy assignment if you're part of a group of clowns playing to an auditorium that holds 20,000.

Every gag under the sun

In Varekai, the latest Cirque du Soleil performance arriving at Staples Center in September, featured clowns Claudio Carneiro and Mooky Cornish play a pair of would-be performers who ``try out'' for the circus.

``So we do a circus act, and everything we do is bad and cliched,'' says Cornish. ``I think your role as a clown with the circus is to offer relief. The audience is tense from watching people flying around and doing amazing magical things. Then after watching all those Olympians, when they see us, they say, 'Oh my gosh, that's what I'd be like if I were in Cirque du Soleil.' ''

``You're making a direct connection with an audience that, frankly, has come there to see you,'' agrees Troubadour's Walker, a graduate of Ringling Bros.' final year of Clown College in 1997. ``You think circus, you think clowns.''

Walker put on hold a burgeoning career as an actor and TV director to take what he figured would be his last opportunity to get this kind of training. After Clown College, he toured with the circus for a year before returning to Troubadour, where he began incorporating the techniques he learned into Troubie shows. (The company's first show following Walker's return was ``Clown's Labour's Lost.'')

Each year, the company develops a broad send-up that incorporates popular music into the works of Shakespeare. Concluding a summer run this weekend at the Ojai Shakespeare Festival is ``Fleetwood Macbeth,'' a merging of ``Macbeth'' with the music of Fleetwood Mac. No red noses this time, but plenty of extreme makeup. The company members all wear giant rubber human feet and the ubiquitous slide table makes its usual appearance.

``One of the guys has roller blades cut into the rubber feet and he just sort of hovers there,'' Walker says, ``That ended up, I think, being a great piece of clowning.''

Few of the Troubadour company members have anything even approaching the circus experience of Walker or fellow company member Tina Aguirre - another Clown College graduate and ex- Ringling Bros. clown - but that doesn't mean they have a diminished capacity for clowning.

``If you're a large person, you're not going to be able to do front flips and somersaults, but you can probably do a pretty great back fall or knee slide,'' says Walker. ``I've got all shapes, sizes, weights and body types across this thing. You find out what people can do with their physicality and try to help them find their clown.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

AGA-BOOM

Where: Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 4 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Aug. 24.

Tickets: $15 to $25. Call [phone].

FLEETWOOD MACBETH

Where: Libbey Bowl, Signal Street and East Ojai Avenue, Ojai.

When: 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday

Tickets: Free. Call [phone].

Scared silly

The medical term isn't bigfeetophobia or bozophobia. If you suffer from fear of clowns, you have coulrophobia.

According to Macmillan's English Dictionary, the term is based on the Greek word koulon (meaning limb) suggesting stilts and stilt-walking.

``Not all clowns walk on stilts, however, and in fact, discussions of causes of coulrophobia seem to agree that the most fear-inducing aspect of clowns is the heavy makeup which, accompanied by the bulbous nose and outlandishly colored hair, completely conceal the wearer's identity,'' says the dictionary definition.

The condition is a little more easily explained in children, say psychologists and circus performers. But among adults, when you're supposed to know that person under the makeup is only trying to make you laugh? What's the problem there?

``Clowns freak a lot of people out,'' says Matt Walker of the Troubadour Theatre Company. ``The makeup is sometimes pretty grotesque.'' Stephen King didn't exactly enhance the images of clowns when he created the demonic child-killing Pennywise in his novel ``It.'' The clown of Todd McFarlane's `'Spawn'' is another creature of nightmares.

When he's enacting a ``scarry clown,'' as he has done during the annual Knott's Berry Farm's Halloween haunt, North Hills' Tuba Heatherton frequently gets in people's faces, looking to make them jump.

``A lot of clowning is surprise,'' says Heatherton, a graduate of Ringling Bros. Clown College. ``When I'm playing the Knott's Scarry Farmer, I'll be a very old man, stooped over, moving very slowly and playing a banjo. I'll pull out the same rubber chicken I use for clowning, but instead of holding it up, I'll bite into the neck and blood will come out of its mouth.

``A lot of the same muscles you use to delight people and make them laugh are the same muscles you use to terrify them.''

-E.H.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) CLOWNING glory

Dedicated performers love life under the greasepaint

(2 -- color) Dimitri Bogatirev twirls toilet paper in ``Aga-Boom'' at Burbank's Falcon Theatre. The Soviet-born Bogatirev, a veteran of Cirque du Soleil, also teaches clowning at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood.

(3) Although their intention is to make us laugh, what is it about clowns, among them ``Aga-Boom'' performer Iryna Ivanytska (also pictured on the cover), that scares some people?

(4 -- color) Beth Kennedy of the Troubadour Theatre Company touches up for ``Fleetwood Macbeth'' in Santa Monica.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Box:

Scared silly (see text)