I met this clown at a dinner party a few nights ago and now we're best friends, or maybe we're stalkers of each other, or maybe it's a "bromance" as another friend offered up. He's a performer, and very impressively, to me at least, the lead clown in the current touring production of Cirque Du Soleil's Kooza. Over a decade ago I auditioned for the lead clown position of Cirque's show Quidam. I was in over my head and fighting the good fight, but was hilariously to others, and tragically to me, excused in the third round because I had too much scatological humor in my act. "Poop humor is too base and has no place in Cirque," I was told by the Frenchman in charge. So at the dinner party I clicked instantly with this guy, Ron Campbell. Thirty seconds after our initial handshake we were yapping to each other in foreign accents, clowning with the waiter, performing physical improv by the Naan oven (we were at an Indian restaurant), and just carrying on like we'd known each other for decades. We'd just toasted to a new friendship filled with non-stop slapstick adventure when he announced he was leaving with Cirque in five days to Japan for sixteen months. Suddenly, broken-hearted, I threw my glass of chai against the wall and hollered, "Damn it all, I've lost my dear friend to the CIRCUS!!!!"
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