Today we’d like to introduce you to Lloyd Brant.
Hi Lloyd, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
On my first day of mime school I remember meeting Rosie Cole. She had blue-green eyes, brown hair neatly braided into pigtails, wearing a white and red-trimmed Mexican sack-shaped shirt, long flowered hippie-style skirt, and a pair of well-worn hiking boots. I fell in love at first sight. Rosie and I married and became lifelong performing partners. We are a physically based comedy team known to the public as Theatre of Fools. We’ve made our home together in Minneapolis for over forty-years. However, for many of those years, we’ve primarily made our living on the national Renaissance Festival circuit, which is a traveling community of artists living an alternative lifestyle together on-the-road. Rosie and I raised our family in an Airstream trailer that we pulled with a van filled with our kids, pet chickens, and comedy props.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The challenges of raising our family on-the-road came to a head when our oldest daughter Liza became school age. In the off-season we enrolled her at City of Lakes Waldorf School in Minneapolis. To support the cost of tuition Rosie and I began teaching an afterschool circus program that led to a public performance for the Minneapolis Waldorf community. Our program was so popular that City of Lakes Waldorf School hired us to teach our circus program as part of their regular curriculum. In 2012, we received the prestigious Minnesota Private and Independent Education’s Story Award, for our pioneering circus arts program. Now, circus programs like ours are taught in Waldorf Schools around the globe.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Rosie and my greatest creative period was after we got off the road in 2008, when we produced a series of master clown works at the Jewel Theatre above Twin Cities Magic, when it was in the downtown St Paul Cultural Arts District. In the spring we would present our popular Wacky Chicken Show; during the winter Holidays we presented, A Life of Serious Nonsense; and in the fall I created a dark solo clown show called, A Spirit of Halloween. This series of new clown works were made possible thanks to multiple grant awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and St Paul’s Cultural STAR Fund. In 2010, I was commissioned by the Southern Theater to write The Vaudevillian in collaboration with master storyteller Kevin Kling in celebration of their 100th anniversary. I collaborated again with Kevin Kling on my story, Land of Clowns in 2016. Theatre of Fools premiered, Land of Clowns, in Minneapolis that year at Open Eye Theatre on April Fool’s Day. The most recent grant I was awarded by the Minnesota State Arts Board was, to capture on video, my newest one-man show called, Fools Medicine, about the healing power of laughter.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Rosie is not originally from Minnesota. She grew up in northern New Jersey just outside New York City, where her father wrote for the New York Times. I might have never met Rosie except for when she read about a small mime school in Spring Green, Wisconsin, called The Valley Studio that the New York Times, said was, “the center of mime training in the country.” In the late 70s, when I first met Rosie in rural Wisconsin, I enjoyed watching her face when she learned that pigs weren’t as small, cute, and sweet smelling as she had imagined from reading Charlotte’s Web.
In the early 80s, when Rosie arrived in Minneapolis to begin working with me, she took one look around my hometown, and said, “The first person to open a bagel shop in this city will make a million dollars.” In a few years Bruegger’s Bagels moved to Minnesota and made millions.
Since arriving in Minneapolis, Rosie had many million dollar ideas. Her best idea came to her one morning as she was musing in the mirror while brushing her hair. In a dreamy voice, she said, “We should bottle emergency clown noses and sell them.”
I looked at her, and replied smiling, “That’s one of your million dollar ideas.” I had never been interested in baking bagels but the idea of bottling clown noses inside medicine jars seemed like the perfect mission for the two of us. I sought out a lawyer and we secured the U.S. Trademark for the Emergency Clown Nose®. We have not made a million dollars yet, but we’ve made millions laugh.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theatreoffools.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057314925488#
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClmmwknd-9GlqtZ3xPpwYSA
- Other: https://emergencyclownnose.com/
