‘Getting a giggle’: How one Tiger became a clown

Just last week, Gelsone was on television for “about four seconds” in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, she said. In the next year alone, Gelsone will travel to New Zealand, Afghanistan, Egypt, Canada, Europe and China. With her husband, she will do in Egypt what they have already begun in Afghanistan: teaching children some tricks of their trade and training adults to do comic public service announcements, which she said are more effective than simple flyers.

“Somewhere in that traveling, I’ll need to find the time to get a new passport. I’ve filled mine up!” she said with a laugh.

Princeton might not seem like the ideal training ground for a career as a clown, but Gelsone said her undergraduate years provided her with inspiration, technical skills and lasting connections with friends that have allowed her to thrive in an unusual profession.

“I was an [Outdoor Action] leader trainer,” Gelsone explained. “I learned a lot, like sleeping on the floor and dealing with mosquitoes. Also rock-climbing. I would stay on campus during the summer, and I’d teach my friends to belay so I would have someone to grab when I wanted to run over there.”

Gelsone said she also gained valuable experience from her time with Princeton theater.

“Princeton doesn’t have a theater department, which is an advantage in the long-run, because there’s an entrepreneurial spirit,” Gelsone explained. “I learned tech. I learned all parts of tech. You learn the entire business. It’s a wide-ranging experience. I knew more than a lot of people with [a Bachelor of Fine Arts]. There’s also a caliber of person at Princeton. People don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. If you don’t get one audition, you go for another one. No other campus has anything like it.”

Because Gelsone was interested in commedia dell’arte, a form of Italian improvisational theater, she formed an all-female production of “Twelfth Night” for her senior thesis that was “very physically slapstick.” Her thesis adviser, English professor Michael Cadden, said in an e-mail that the production was “deliciously ambitious” though ultimately “a bit shambolic,” adding that Gelsone “fell in love with investigating the physical shtick.”

“The first weekend was horrible,” she said of the show. “It’s really hard to do comedy. The second weekend was better. That taught me a lot: that you have to suck before you get better.”

Gelsone was a member of Campus Club for one semester before she joined the 2D co-op, which accommodated her schedule and budget more than an eating club could, she explained. “It was so great!” she said of the experience. “I ate like a king.”

The skills and relationships Gelsone made helped her face the rises and falls of her career, she said, and she is still close with her Princeton friends who supported her when she was “surviving on oatmeal because it was cheaper than ramen,” she noted.

“It’s a long, hard road that most wouldn’t do,” Gelsone added. She faced silent audiences for several years before “eventually getting a giggle.” And even after discovering how best to get laughs, Gelsone said her job is extremely taxing.

“It’s constant travel with no steady paycheck and the pressure of being a freelancer,” Gelsone said, explaining that the volume of work varies through the year. “January, February, March has nothing, and the high season is October through December.”

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The path that led her to professional clowning was unexpected, she added.

“I knew I wanted to mime, but I didn’t know that I would be a mime. I thought maybe I’d get a few people to laugh, not 2,000 people in a different language,” she said. “I never knew I would understand comedy. I had no idea that I’d be traveling. I just knew I wanted to make people laugh.”