Dear Hiring Manager,

I’m responding to your advert for performers. I perform. Life is a performance. Death, too. 

Originally, I wanted to be a ventriloquist. I loved the theatricality, the idea of having my hand inside someone, working their mouths, turning their head this way and that. You can be playful. It’s hands on. And I didn’t mind the mess.

But I hated all the talking. When the dummy stopped making its own noise, I lost interest. 

How do I still entertain, still feed that artistic need, without losing my integrity as a performer? How can I combine the hands-on partnership of ventriloquism with, say, the commanding theatricality of a mime? 

A clown, dear hiring manager. I am a clown and a showman of the highest order. 

There is intimacy between myself and my audience that no other clown can replicate. I feel my audience. My audience feels me. We connect. I laugh, they cry, it’s art. 

I am art. 

You’ll never hire another clown like me.

Yours in Buffoonery,

AC

*by Hope Madden. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

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