From his circus roots to fame in France, Bernie Collins ’78 has built a career by bringing the laughs.
Illustration by Oliver Weiss
For a professional clown with more than 40 years of experience, Bernie Collins ’78 is surprisingly subdued. With bright blue eyes and a relaxed demeanor (no red nose or floppy shoes in sight), the real-life Collins is a far cry from the frenetic, bespectacled character he plays as one half of BP Zoom, the clown comedy duo he created with partner Phillipe Martz in the early 1990s. Their act, hailed as “a wonderful piece of contemporary clowning [with] timeless appeal” by Total Theatre Magazine, has earned Collins — who has lived in France since 1989 — a host of international comedy awards. BP Zoom continues to entertain audiences of children and adults at cabarets and festivals throughout France, Latin America, Singapore, China, and Japan. In a recent chat with Collins, Colgate Magazine learned these five facts about his long career in clowning:
1. During his Colgate years, he (almost) ran off and joined the circus.
In between his first and second years at Colgate, Collins took a summer gig with a traveling circus. Along with setting up tents and rigging high wires, Collins negotiated his way into the clown act, where he tried his hand at performing and discovered he had a knack for a clown’s brand of emotive, physical comedy. If it weren’t for an injury he sustained during a tent blowdown, his life, most likely, would have followed a very different path. “I was ready to stay with the circus full-time,” he says. “But after my injury, the people I was working with really encouraged me to go back to Colgate in the fall.”
2. He discovered his passion in Colgate’s London Study Group.
An English major, Collins chose to study vaudeville during his time abroad. As part of his research, he took in a performance of The Moving Picture Mime Show, an avant-garde trio of mimes. “Something clicked,” he remembers. “I walked out of the theater knowing that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” When he learned that the group’s members had just graduated from the Jacques Lecoq Theater School in Paris, he was determined to enroll himself — and he did years later, after earning his degree from Colgate and learning basic French.
3. He’s his own muse.
Over the years, Collins has cultivated a character based on his own personality, leaning heavily on his flaws. “As a clown, you’re theatricalizing your faults,” says Collins. “That’s where the humor is.” He compares his onstage rapport with his BP Zoom partner to that of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, with Collins playing the “rigid, controlling straight man” to his partner’s affable fool. “It’s certainly exaggerated, but that need for order is a real part of my personality.”
4. He’s learned that some gags don’t translate.
According to Collins, clowns have endured because slapstick comedy is universal. But in touring the world with BP Zoom, he has also observed how humor can vary based on a culture’s customs. In Japan, recalls Collins, a scene in which his partner suddenly falls off the stage was met with covered-mouth silence. “Our interpreter explained that culturally, the Japanese will not laugh at a foreigner who has embarrassed himself in public,” he says. “It’s considered deeply impolite.”
Similarly, a joke that involved launching a pretend hot-air balloon by tossing out a sack of potatoes didn’t seem to land with audiences in Brazil. “We realized that, to them, potatoes just weren’t funny,” he says. The duo visited a Brazilian market and asked around in search of a “heavy, comical food” that would help audiences get the joke. The unlikely solution? A large mackerel. They featured the fish in the next Brazilian show and left the audience in stitches.
5. He brings laughter to kids when they need it most.
For more than 30 years, Collins has worked with Le Rire Medecin, a French nonprofit that trains clowns to work in pediatric hospitals, performing and accompanying children during medical procedures to reduce fear and anxiety. “That kind of interaction is simple,” he says, “but it has proved to be so beneficial.”