When you want wacky and crazy comedy, you check out funny guy, Chris “Bucky” Allison.  He is a hilarious clown who will be featured at our World Clown Association (WCA) Convention in Reno, next March. Chris just finished up a successful run with Circus Sarasota’s “Summer Circus Spectacular 2014″.   This funny guy is currently working at Disney’s Boardwalk as Bucky’s alter ego, “Coney Island Chris”.  In the upcoming months, Chris will appear several times with Philharmonic Orchestras around the U.S. and Canada with the touring company, “Cirque Musica.”

Clowning is what Chris has done most of his life for the simplest of pleasures, “I am in it to make people laugh and have a good time.” This clown life is the result of a childhood dream. “While in 5^th grade my elementary school teacher took us on a field trip to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and that’s when I had my light bulb moment!  I knew at that very moment, I wanted to be a clown in the circus.”  In Junior High, Chris took part in the “Sawdust Clown Alley 66” in Bridgeport, Connecticut. “That was truly the beginning of a great clowning education for a youngster such as me; I spent every waking minute practicing my clowning, unicycling, and juggling skills.”

As a teenager, this enthusiastic clown and his buddies started a troupe called, “The Masters of Madness”.  Meanwhile, on the other side of this sleepy little town of Naugatuck, CT,  Ron “Toto “ Johnson, and his buddy, started “The Colossal Clowns”.  Together, Chris and Toto often joined to perform their hijinx at the local library and senior center.

“This is my 30^th year of clowning around and I love it!”  Chris graduated from the RBBB Clown College in 1984, and then traveled with the Greatest Show on Earth for 11 years, where he met Gina, “GiGi.” For almost 25 years these two clowns have been partners in front of audiences and behind the scenes as husband and wife.  Together, the Allison’s are parents to 15 year old Hunter, and 1 year old Zeus (a very hairy Havanese). Chris loves the circus, and the big top is still his favorite place to be. The last three years on Ringling he was the “Boss Clown.”  Imagine trying to keep 25 clowns in line?!  He loved the creative aspects of finding “the funny” in front of huge circus audiences. “My favorite venue is the circus ring. Touring the globe with Ringling was certainly a lifetime highlight for me. It was my dream as a youngster, and I am still living the dream.”

Other highlights for Chris include touring Europe and performing several times in China for the International Clown Festival, and Chinese New Year events. He feels very lucky that he and Gina have been able to combine their work and family life so easily.  Their son has joined them in many of their far away performance venues and says he is a well seasoned traveler who is now bitten by the gypsy lifestyle and is always asking “when are we going away?”  In a couple of years, when Hunter is out of high school, the Allison’s hope to get back to life on the road and perform in more exotic locations around the world.

“This past year Circus Sarasota was a real battery charger for me. It was just as the promo stated “Summer Circus Spectacular…and spectacular it was.”  Chris performed two theatrical shows a day for family audiences in the Historic Asolo Repertory Theater.  The theatre was always packed and the audiences were there for some great circus entertainment. He enjoyed working with the amazing Dolly Jacobs (daughter of world famous clown, Lou Jacobs), The Smirnov’s, Vladimir Kim, and Christian Stoinev (Christian was the hand balancer act with the dog “Scooby” who was on this year’s “America’s Got Talent”).

When Chris and Gina first left Ringling it was a real roller coaster ride as clowning in the circus is very different from other venues. They learned how to adapt their clowning style to fit a wide variety of audiences.  Chris and Gina were soon working all types of events from the backyard to the ballroom.  Some of their most rewarding clowning opportunities have come with; Big Apple Circus’ Clown Care Unit, performing at camps, libraries, malls, cruise ships, corporate events, etc.

Chris feels his clowning style has been shaped by his love affair with the golden age of film comedy and all the greats who came from that era.  “I go back to the old school stuff. I love Chaplin and Keaton, Lloyd and the Three Stooges.  My characters have been influenced by these greats, but most especially Jerry Lewis.”

When creating comedy he likes to work around a prop and find a funny situation to build on. For example, there is a magic prop that Chris has been aware of for several years, and he has been inspired to create a comedy magic routine with the prop. “When we are finished creating this piece, hopefully it will be entertaining, and have our own brand of unique comedy.”

“We create in so many different ways.  A few years ago we performed our version of the classic ‘Ring, Ring’ routine.  I used to think that was an over done routine, yet for younger audiences we found they had not seen it before. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what the routine is, it matters what you bring to it. How you add your character, your comedy style, and ‘bits o business’, is what makes it work. That age old line of ‘what’s old is new again’ is so true.”

Chris will be a featured performer at this upcoming WCA Convention and those in attendance will be thrilled to see what he presents in his big show with GiGi. He will also lecture on a topic he feels very strongly about; “Keeping It Real”. This title of the class sums it up, and he will give many techniques and information on this subject that is so important in acting, magic shows, and of course clowning.

”With clowning, I feel you can’t fool your audience. You have to keep it real for you and your character on stage and also with the way you work in the material you are presenting. If you are performing and your audience doesn’t believe what’s happening on stage, well the audience cannot relate, and it hurts the overall flow along with the comedy. For me it is very difficult to watch a performance when it is not real and not coming from the heart.”

Clowning should be fun, with a bit of fantasy, yet it should come from a place of reality. How does the clown relate to the world, or the situation he finds around him?  The audience relates better to the realism of the situation and then finds humor in the way the clown deals with it.

His main advice for clowns is, “Make your clown character an extension of your own self.”  For example, Chris says, “In one routine GiGi passes behind me and I’m not supposed to see her.  I slowly turn to the left, while she is walking to the right.  I have to move in a way that shows I am totally unaware that she is there. Now if one time I turn a bit faster, and I do see her, well the audience knows this. I cannot move on as if I did not see her. I need to adjust and keep it real. OK, I saw her and now what do I do, and where do I go with that and still create the laugh?  We are actors, we know the routine has to be this certain way, but the audience now knows that I saw her, so I must move ahead from that point and not fake it, that I still did not see her.”  Chris uses improvisation to keep the routine moving forward without derailing the set routine. It is a fascinating challenge and Chris will share many other ideas on how to build realism into our clowning presentations.

Live entertainment has interruptions and Chris does not let that affect his performance. “If a cell phone rings in the middle of the show – my character is very aware of it.”  His style is to be aware of all that happens and to perform “in the moment”.  Whether it is a baby crying, a door closing, something dropping, he tries to react to the situation at hand and comedy flows from that unplanned scenario.

“To be a clown you have to have that funny bone built in. Don’t worry, almost all clowns have that funny bone.  It just needs that fine tuning sometimes.  You have to be OK with the audience laughing at you and what you are doing. It should really be about folks laughing at you and with you. If someone has that funny bone, I can be helpful, and guide them in the process of humor in the world of clowning.  It doesn’t happen overnight. It didn’t for me. I am still a student of the art of clowning. There is always something to learn.”

His dream came true. He joined the circus, and he continues to clown full time to this day. “We perform at a lot of libraries and schools and we love performing family shows for children of all ages. We enjoy it because we get a lot of parents who come up after our performance and say that they were laughing as hard as the kids were.  We have material for each age group and that’s always rewarding to hear from parents when they think they were just going for the kids.”

Working with Gina, aka “GiGi” is one of his greatest joys. Chris works solo a lot, and yet he confesses, “I do prefer working with Gina; I feel our characters work well together. I am the goofball and GiGi really gets the laughs as she attempts to keep me in line. We work well together because we are in tune to one another’s characters.”

“This clowning and performing is a journey, a wonderful journey.”