TO GRANDMAS' HOUSE WE GO
- Asbury Park Press
- Chris Jordan
- 20 Mar 2008
Big Apple Circus and its "leading lady" are back in funny business.
Just because a guy wears a dress doesn't mean he's funny. Just ask Barry Lubin, otherwise known as Grandma of the Big Apple Circus.
"It's an interesting effect, and there's something intriguing about it, but it's not necessarily funny," said Lubin of dressing in drag. "There's a lot of people who do lots of things that should be funny but they're not."
As a performer who dons dresses for laughs, Lubin is part of a time-honored show business tradition. Some of the more well-known cross-dressing comedians include Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters and, more recently, Martin Lawrence in the "Big Momma's House" movies.
But the man wearing the dress needs to have that special comedic touch. If he doesn't, the dress just becomes dressing for a bad routine.
"You can put somebody in a dress, like a large muscular man who might have a mustache, and that's one way of playing in drag," Lubin said. "What I do is extremely subtle and often people don't know it's a man in a dress — it's just a character that exists."
Lubin's Grandma — stylish in a red housecoat — is an impish, amusing wayfarer with a mischievous streak. She's immediately likable and identifiable, seemingly swallowed up by the world but always striving forward. Her lineage can be traced back to another famous mute, Charlie Chaplin's Tramp.
Lubin's Grandma — who performs her own skits and entertains the audience while the ring is being set up — has become just about the best-known clown in show business and was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 2002.
"It is actually an extension of me," said Lubin of Grandma. "It's something that's 100 percent me. I express it through this interesting character, but I was taught very early on that it's not acting, it's clowning and clowning is an extension of who you are.'
Lubin was raised in Ventnor, just outside of Atlantic City, and it was on the famed seaside resort boardwalk of the 1960s — full of carnies, characters and senior citizens — where Grandma first took shape.
"There were a lot of senior citizens that walked the boardwalk all winter and for three months out of the year it was a somewhat thriving resort, which everybody showed up for. But for nine months it was all about the bingo parlors and the elderly people walking the boardwalk and feeding the pigeons," Lubin said.
"People might look at a senior citizen and feel they had their great time in their life and now they're really laid back, but if you take the time to find out what their story is, there's always something amazing about each one of these folks."
Lubin graduated from Clown College in Venice, Fla., in 1974 and was offered a contract from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He stayed with Ringling Bros. for five years and developed his Grandma character during that time.
While Lubin's vision of Grandma was being formed, American jugglers Paul Binder and Michael Christensen founded the Big Apple Circus after performing for several years with Nouveay Cirque de Paris. The duo wanted to produce an American circus in the traditional, smaller European style as opposed to the sprawling, three-ring extravaganzas most commonly associated with Ringling Bros. The first production of the Big Apple Circus took place in 1977 in New York City.
This year's production — the circus's 30th — is called Celebrate! and features all the fun of circusdom, from aerial acrobatics to delightful dog tricks. The Bridgewater shows, which run through March 23 at Commerce Bank Ballpark, are presented by the Somerset Hills YMCA. No seat is more than 50 feet away from the action, so get ready to see Grandma and her gang up close.
"This is one of the greatest casts we've had," said Lubin, a father of two who lives in Garwood. "People are going to dig it a lot."