Clowning Around: Nicholas Hazell, left, director Zoe Brookes, Kordell Garland, founder Tom von Oehsen, Maxwell Williams, Iona Binnie, Ruth Schultz (with hula hoop), and TJ von Oehsen are all class clowns in this summer program. Photo by Suzette Lucas.
By Diccon Hyatt
The Trenton Circus Squad is back. The summer education project that uses circus arts to create civic engagement and service is set to start its three two-week sessions — July 6 through 17, July 20 through 31, and August 3 through 14 — at the Roebling Wire Works, 675 South Clinton Avenue.
Participating at no cost are students ages 11 through 16 from the Trenton and Princeton area who meet daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to train and perform throughout the community.
“We’ll visit locations around the city, such as summer camps, senior centers and public events. We’ll make our audience smile and laugh. We’ll invite children and families to visit our circus and learn skills with us. You can count on connecting with hundreds of people and brightening their day,” says the squad’s website.
Overseeing the fun is a real clown — or at least a certified one — Tom von Oehsen, a 1981 graduate from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Florida.
Although he grew up in Princeton and attended an Ivy League school, Oehsen’s heart has been in the three rings. Now after retiring this June from his job as head of admissions for the Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart, he is devoting himself full time to the nonprofit group he founded, the Trenton Circus Squad, and he plans to teach juggling, unicycle riding, and stilt-walking to a new generation.
Von Oehsen was raised along with three brothers by an attorney father and homemaker mother and seemed to be living a life of privilege, attending first the Princeton Day School, then the Lawrenceville School. But as his father slowly succumbed to multiple sclerosis, Von Oehsen needed to step up and foot the bill for his own education.
While involved with a school theater production, he suddenly found his dream role when a fellow cast member brought him a newspaper, showed him a Ringling Brother’s announcement for clown college, and said, “I’ve found the perfect school for you.”
“Everyone laughed,” von Oehsen says. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. What other job would combine his athleticism with his love of acting? He filled out an application and was accepted.
Barnum & Bailey Clown College, located in Sarasota, Florida, was more of a training camp than it was a college. The course was an intensive 10-week period of instruction in the Florida heat.
“When I arrived there were 60 of us,” von Oehsen says, who at 18 was the youngest member of the class. “I was amazed at the amount of talent everyone had.”
The college trained clowns in the broad Barnum & Bailey American style of clowning. Students were taught circus skills such as juggling and stilt-walking, as well as how to apply their clown makeup so that it could be seen from great distances. One famous clown college graduate was Penn Jilette, half of the magic duo Penn & Teller.
Von Oehsen arrived at the college with no circus skills to speak of, and all around him people were riding unicycles while juggling, passing clubs, and performing other feats. Von Oehsen was exposed to everything from trapeze work to elephant riding.
The training was intense. Every clown rose at 7 a.m. to apply their makeup and worked until 10 p.m. Each one tried the various arts to learn their niches. “My niche was just slapstick comedy,” Von Oehsen says.
Although many never made it through to graduation — stilt-walkers fell and broke wrists, and trapezists sprained their elbows and had to drop out — Von Oehsen survived to the end. But upon receiving his clown college diploma, he disappointed legendary clown and school founder Irving Feld, who asked von Oehsen where he saw himself in five years and heard the young clown reply “college.”
Von Oehsen replaced clown school with the University of Pennsylvania where he supported himself and paid bills by performing tree surgery on weekends. He was working as a tree surgeon shortly after graduation when he was approached by a friend who worked at the middle school at the Princeton Day School. She knew of his clowning experience and wanted him to do a workshop in circus arts during a week the students took off from academics. “After that week, she came to me and said I really should be a teacher,” von Oehsen says.
He then became the school’s drama teacher and continued to teach his clowning workshop, which was a huge hit with the students. One day he received funding to put on a show for the school and asked for student volunteers. Almost the whole school showed up after school to try out.
The experience made von Oehsen realize that there was a great interest in clowning among schoolchildren. The next summer von Oehsen founded his first nonprofit group, called “Princeton Center Stage,” to provide after-school classes to Princeton Day School and the Waldorf School.
Since then, his program has existed in different forms, later being dubbed the Clown Academy. The Clown Academy was at first a two-week summer camp at the Princeton Academy. Von Oehsen would invite students from Trenton to participate in the clown training and help put on a show in Princeton at the end of the course.
Three years ago the Clown Academy took on new significance when it partnered with the network of Sacred Heart Schools, a group of schools of which Princeton Academy is a member. In the revised program, the students would learn the same skills, but instead of putting on a show for Princeton residents, they would perform at nursing homes, hospitals, and other places where people needed cheering up.
Last summer von Oehsen made another major change: He rented space in downtown Trenton. The kids would put their newly acquired skills to the test at once, touring Trenton putting on shows, and then teaching younger children the things they had just seen. They performed in parks and nursing homes, and held workshops at the Boys and Girls Club.
Von Oehsen says that by the process of having a common goal created a partnership among the students and give him a vision for his life. “After the first experience of this, I decided it was how I wanted to spend my life: empowering these kids, giving them the skills, and then becoming involved with civic engagement” and better the lives of others “by spreading humor and laughter.”
Joining von Oehsen in the venture is Zoe Brookes, who participated in another youth circus group in 2008. She serves as executive director of the squad, with von Oehsen filling the role of program director. Three teachers will join von Oehsen in instructing the kids in circus skills.
Brookes — a strategic management consultant formerly with Deloitte & Touche and now working with nonprofit groups — also runs the Princeton Variety Theater, a community performing troupe. She grew up in Southampton, England, where her father was a professor and her mother was a speech therapist. As a child she loved the theater and the circus.
“I developed a strong interest in community service and circus as a tool for social change,” she says. “The circus has a very particular aspect of being incredibly inclusive because there is a wide range of contributions that can be made. It is noncompetitive but still demands a lot of its participants.”
Brookes, who came to Princeton in 2008, says participating in the circus can help children develop many positive traits such as grit and being able to take managed risks.
Last year she was doing some consulting work for the Trenton-based nonprofit Isles, and had the idea of starting a circus group in Trenton. When she met von Oehsen they decided to join forces.
In addition to funny business in Trenton, the Trenton Circus Squad participants will visit the American Youth Circus Festival, an annual three-day event being held this August in Portland, Maine. The American Youth Circus Organization, of which Brookes was once an executive director, is sponsoring eight of the students, with the Circus Squad raising funds for the rest.
Von Oehsen says the next three years of the program will be a “start-up” phase while the group finds a permanent premises and builds its brand. In the long run the group hopes to fund its activities through paying participants or their sponsors, donations from participants and families, and an annual show. Over time he hopes to train several entire troupes of performers, each of which will perform shows as well as workshops where they will teach skills to younger kids. He expects more than 1,000 students to participate in the first three years, plus 1,200 more children in circus workshops.
Clowning around, says von Oehsen, crosses lines of all sorts.
For more information on the Trenton Circus Squad and its community events, go to trentoncircussquad.org or call (609) 751-2712.
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