This picture is of Mom helping my Sister put together a dozen long stemmed red noses as gifts to the staff of Bobby Sherman’s school for music in Africa.

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Photo by Jeff Kraker:

This is the last in a recent series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, that has told the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions in 2016.

Tonight I’m writing this backstage waiting to perform my one-man medicine show at Sample Night Live in downtown St Paul at the Landmark Center. For the past year I’ve been working with my director Josette Antomarchi on fine-tuning the show. Together we have showcased my one-man show at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, Minnesota State Fair, as well as being the featured artist to open, as well as the closeout the season for the 2015 summer performance series at Caponi Art Park.

These recent blog posts have chronicled a long artistic journey that has literally transformed my life. Ten-years ago is when Rosie first came up with the idea for our Emergency Clown Nose®, but my journey began 1981 when I wrote The Land of Clowns. At that time I was touring my one-man clown show to schools across the Midwest. As a young clown I quickly learned that I only had three minutes at the top of the show to either change the audience’s perception 180 degrees from what they thought a clown was, or risk being eaten alive.

I realized that because our country is young we do not have a cultural reference for who the clown is. The clown in ancient cultures worldwide is considered sacred. I wrote The Land of Clowns as my attempt to fill our cultural void with an origin story of the clown for the American imagination. I’m thrilled that with the help of Kevin Kling, I will be premiering the stage adaptation of my myth of the clown on April Fools Day, at Open Eye Theatre.

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I am currently writing a series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, that tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions in 2016.

Art by Kevin Kane:

The Land of Clowns will be the first large scale show produced by EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions. It premiers this spring on April Fools Day at Open Eye Theatre.

I hope to see you there.

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Photo by Terry Gydesen:

I am currently writing a series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, that tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions in 2016.

This summer I was part of an extraordinary show with Kevin Kling called, Full Moon Circus. The project was a fundraiser that brought in $8,000 in receipts to help MN350.org in their fight to combat Global Warming.   I believe that Climate Change is the greatest human folly of our time. It is the one issue in that we must first all agree about, before our divided world can begin to heal and recover its sanity.

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I am currently writing a series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, that tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions in 2016.  Last summer MN350.org put a clown in charge of transporting all the equipment needed for a protest march through downtown St Paul against Global Warming.

I am currently writing a series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, that tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions in 2016.

This photo captures my very first Medicine Show. It was taken in 2011 on the first day of Occupy MN. I was nervously walking around the encampment clutching my Emergency Clown Nose® pitchman’s case looking for a place to set-up my new experimental show, when I ran into Sandy Spieler, the artistic director of the activist theater Heart of the Beast.  Sandy immediately pulled me over to the Teach-In Booth and insisted that I try out the show that minute. After watching my clumsy first attempt, Sandy played the role of impromptu director giving me valuable pointers right there on the spot.   The rest of the that weekend I spent performing and polishing my the show. The twist to my Medicine Show is instead of selling snake oil, my pitch is the Emergency Clown Nose.

At Occupy I started the show by gathering a circle of protesters and handing them each an Emergency Clown Nose. Then my opening line was, “Mark Twain said, Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”  I attempt to arm everybody in the encampment with an Emergency Clown Nose by giving away about 400-noses that weekend.  I told all the participants to keep it sealed and hidden in their pockets. My instructions were to only take it out, break the seal, and put it on if, (and only if), the police were threatening to use violence.

My history of non-violent protest goes back to the Vietnam War era. During that time I was enrolled at St Paul Open School. We were pioneers in the Freedom School movement sparked by 1960s.  On National Walk Out Day to protest the Vietnam War all of us at St Paul Open School “Walked In,” and invited Minnesota 60s peace activist icon Marv Davidov. He spoke to us about his Honeywell Project, that exposed the Honeywell Corporation’s war profiteering from the manufacture of cluster bombs, and guidance systems for nuclear missiles.

In 2008, when the Republican National Convention came to St Paul I dressed up in a giant Dick Chaney body puppet. I was wearing prison stripes, and walking in a chain gang with George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice. I remember noticing the only types of events received news coverage that summer, were all the violent protests, and the non-violent comic protest of our chain gang.

John Lennon said, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. [….] Because once they have you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”

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I am currently writing a series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, that tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions in 2016.

In 2005 I created this first prototype of our Emergency Clown Nose as a surprise gift for Rosie on Christmas Day. I found the bottle at Ax-Man, my favorite surplus supply store in St Paul. The label I created with a roll of red Scotch brand Mystic Tape, an X-Acto Knife, and a sheet of sticky-back paper on a self-service color printer at Kinko’s Print Shop in Uptown, Minneapolis.

In 2007, Rosie and I approached award-winning designer Steve Sikora of Design Guys Inc. to develop the above logo that we now use today. Steve wisely advised us to seek out the counsel of a lawyer to secure the protection of our intellectual property.

On September 30, 2008 we were finally awarded a registered U.S Trademark for our Emergency Clown Nose® with the help of Springboard for the Arts that provided pro bono legal services at Fredrikson and Byron. Today our trademarked clown nose in a medicine jar is sold across the United States.

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Photo by Larry LaBonte:

This current series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions.

When Rosie and I were married 30-years ago we had red noses passed out to all of our guests on a silver platter. This moment marks the beginning of our life together, spreading laughter out into the world.

Happy New Year!

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Photo by Marc Norberg:

This current series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions.

In the early 1980s when I was a young clown I dreamed up a mythic story I called, The Land of Clowns, which told the tale of where clowns came from, why they live in tents, and the reason they’re here to make us laugh. The philosophy of my story was that laughter is the best medicine, which is what I hoped to bottle when we trademarked Rosie’s idea of the Emergency Clown Nose®. Now my story has come full circle because of the recent MN Arts Initiative Grant that I received to stage it with the help of master storyteller Kevin Kling.

The Land of Clowns will be the first major production that I produce under the banner of our new venture, Emergency Red Nose® Productions. The show is scheduled to premier, April Fools Day weekend at Open Eye Theatre this coming 2016.

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Photo by Marc Norberg:

This current series of posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, tells the history of our EMERGENCY CLOWN NOSE®, as well as exploring the hopes and dreams for the future of our new venture, EMERGENCY RED NOSE® Productions.

I give my wife, Rosie Cole, full credit for being the one who dreamed up the original idea. Her flash of brilliance occurred around ten years ago after she had just woken up one morning. She was looking in the mirror while getting dressed when she casually suggested, “We should sell emergency clown noses.”   It felt to me like being struck by a bolt of lightening.

When Rosie moved to Minnesota in 1983 to begin performing with me, I quickly became aware of her uncanny ability of thinking up million-dollar ideas.  She grew-up outside New York City, and upon arriving in Minneapolis she took one look around and declaring, “The first person that opens a decent bagel shop in this town will make a million-dollars.” A short time later Bruegger’s Bagels opened their first bakery in the Twin Cities.

Over the years I’ve witnessed Rosie’s genius for coming-up with ideas that other entrepreneurs would later make a million-dollars doing.  When she first suggested selling emergency clown noses, I immediately said to her, “This is another one of your million-dollar ideas.” I had never been interested in baking bagels, but this idea struck a deep cord in my imagination.

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