As children, people often devise a life plan and work toward a specific goal of becoming whatever they had originally planned. As we grow older and become more experienced with the ways of the world, we find that our plans change; thus, we adapt to the normalcy of society, leaving our dreams behind with our toys.
But one Altus woman refused to give up her dream and has touched the lives of many as a result of her perseverance, as well as her chosen occupation.
Joanne Roberts, better known as “Little Red The Clown” can be seen performing her routine in over a dozen places in the Altus area.
Trained in the particular “Ringling Style” of clowning taught at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Lacrosse, Wisc., Roberts said that she has dreamed of being a clown since she was six years old.
It could be argued that being a performance clown was her destiny, as she comes from a long line of “showpeople.”
“My grandmother was what they called an allocutionist. Years and years ago, that's what they called it. She had this great big book and she would make me and my brother practice poems. We would have to read them out loud without looking at them and she was the one that could make a costume from a piece of material and just pin it on for a play. Then, when it was done, she'd wash it, starch it, and iron it, and was ready for the next play. I had an aunt that was always making hats, that was her business. My dad and mom wrote music and my mom was a marathon dancer.”
Roberts has been a professional clown for over 16 years and insists that although she does like to make people smile, being a clown is very serious work.
“We were taught you can't smoke when you're a clown, you don't take pot, you don't do drugs, and you don't drink. Because we are dealing with kids and we have to be a good example for the kids. We have to be honorable decent people, that means no potty mouth either,” she explained.
Not only were there certain rules to which they had to adhere, Roberts said that after her training to become a professional clown, she graduated with a certificate from clown school. She explained that there are many people in the world who dress up and call themselves a professional clown, when actually, they are not.
“To be a professional clown, you have to be trained. You can't just put your make-up and costume on then go out and say, ‘I'm a professional clown.' It's like going to college, you can't say that you graduated from college when you didn't,” she said.
Back in the late 1970s, Roberts lived in the same area with the notorious “Serial Killer Clown” otherwise known as John Wayne Gacy. Gacy is believed to have killed and sexually assaulted 32 boys between 1976 to his arrest in December 1978. Gacy entertained local kids dressed as a clown.
Roberts son and a neighborhood friend wanted to go work for Gacy, but she did not get a positive vibe from him and would not allow her son to work for him.
Because of Gacy's heinous actions, clowns everywhere got a bad rap and people still fear clowns to this day.
Roberts uses her intuition as a mother to calm any fears a child might have in her presence.
“I tell the kids I am a real person and I went to school to look like this. To the ones that are afraid, I say, ‘I'm just like your mama, I'm a mama clown, only I wear too much make-up,'” she said with a smile.
In addition to dressing up as a clown, Roberts has costumes for other characters, too. In fact, she can transform into a different character for every month of a calendar year.
“When I was a little girl growing up, my mom, my brother and I went to the library every Saturday and I saw all these different characters in the books that I would read. So, I thought, ‘Oh!' when I'm a clown, I'm gonna be those characters.”
“I'm Mrs. Santa, I'm Mother Goose, I'm The Cat in The Hat, I'm Mrs. Bunny; and the Mrs. Bunny that I saw in storybooks had a dress and a tail. [She also had] a little bonnet with flowers on it, so that's what I do,” she said.
Indeed she does.
Roberts performs for various places throughout Southwest Oklahoma, spreading joy and laughter from libraries in Frederick to nursing homes in Vernon.
She said that performing for children does not differ very much from performing for older adults and explained that just because a person is in a nursing home does not mean they deserve to be treated as a child.
“They are still adults and they want adult things. But it's gotta be simple adult things. [The routine is] maybe not as long, I read stories or tell stories to them, but it's on the adult level.”
Like her idol, Red Skelton, Roberts feels that being a clown is her life's calling. She said that if she passes the torch to anybody, she wants to make sure that it is done right, because she wants to do the right thing by the kids.
So, she conducts a clown school of her own during the summer with the help of another local clown named Jiminy.
“It has been an awesome experience teaching the kids to be clowns. This is my third summer [doing this] and my second with having Jiminy help. He does a lot of magic and he's really awesome with the balloons.”
Not only does she teach people how to develop their own inner clown, but she also incorporates many lessons that she learned from her own formal training.
“When I was trained to be a clown, my clown teacher told me, ‘You use your own talents. You don't copy anybody else.' And that's what I do,” she said.
She has already begun taking steps to prepare the future generation of Altus area clowns.
“We decided that it's time for the kids to learn how to give of themselves, so we're trying to train them to go into the nursing homes and perform for [the people there,]”
For more information or to sign up for participation in the clown school, contact Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) at 482-4141.
In the meantime, Roberts plans to keep right on “clowning” until she absolutely cannot do it anymore, and her driving force is her love for children.
“I think this is a gift that God gave me and I love being a clown,” she said.
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