Evans City native cherished time performing
From circus clown to lawyer, Peggy King has lived an eventful life.
The Evans City native spent years with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the 1970s and '80s, overcame personal hardships in the '90s and became a mediator in family court in the 2000s, using skills from her clowning days to excel at mediation.
But before all that, King was just a kid from Evans City with an interest in theater. She had never even seen the circus as a child.
“(My family) would have had to go to Pittsburgh, which was the big, big city,” said King, 61, who now lives in Las Vegas. “We only went there (during Christmas time).”
King's initial interest in the arts revolved around theater. She acted in a few plays while attending Seneca Valley High School, including “ playing the role of a pixie named Tink in “The Ghost of the Chinese Elm.”
After graduating high school in 1973, she attended Allegheny College in Meadville, initially majoring in English. However, her major soon changed to theater after she participated in a few plays.
“The English Department, you were having to do all this analysis for the writing, which was OK, but I was much more of a creative writer,” King said.
Her participation in theater changed into a desire to be a clown.
“I was attracted to the role of the clown as somebody who historically could do and say things that were not able to be said otherwise,” she said. “And there's clowns all through history. Native American rituals have clowns. There's clowns everywhere. (The) circus is not well-liked now, nor are clowns, but at least back then clowns were kind of cool.”
After she graduated from Allegheny College in 1977, she went to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Fla.
King underwent a rigorous, three months of training. She put together an audition piece for Ringling Bros. and qualified for its circus.
King's act included a parody of a trapeze act, as well as slapstick humor based on good-natured clumsiness.
“The first time I ever performed people yelled, 'Bravo!' and I was shocked, because people don't do that when (clowns) perform because they think you don't have any skills,” King said.
King cherished her experience with Ringling Bros. for the friendships she made.
She was one of few female clowns at the time, and became friends with Bernice Collins, the first African-American female clown in Ringling Bros. history.
King treasured the opportunity to meet and become friends with her fellow circus performers from all different backgrounds, including Bulgarians, Hungarians, Czechoslovakians and people from South America.Ringling Bros. traveled across the country by train, and the performers lived in little rooms in the train cars.“Everybody lived together and worked together, and it was a lot of people who didn't speak the same language from different cultures working together for one artistic goal,” King said. “It was very communal that way. The friends I made are still friends.”King also enjoyed seeing all parts of the country, even if she had to endure cockroaches.“They were the old Pullman cars and there was the sink, and I think sometimes the bugs would crawl up through the pipes,” she said. “It wasn't luxurious, but it was so enchanting to fall asleep with the train moving, and you would fall asleep with America going by your window. It was beautiful.”King preferred performing in small towns, because those audiences seemed to most appreciate the circus. However, there was nothing like the thrill of performing in Pittsburgh.“When I finally played Pittsburgh, it was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm playing Pittsburgh!'” she said. “I had played in New York, and Los Angeles and all that, and when I played Pittsburgh, it was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's the big city,' because I grew up with that myth that Pittsburgh was the biggest city in the world.”King ended her run on the road with the circus in 1985, opting instead to work at Ringling Bros.' Circus Fantasy in Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.Following that, King moved to Japan to be part of a circus act called Carnival Plaza.“It was interesting because at the time, Japan was doing so well financially and the money was so incredible what we were paid,” she said. “I just thought it was always going to be better from there.”Instead, her worst times weren't far ahead.She began an aerial act in Japan, and brought it home with her to Reno, Nev., in 1990. She injured herself during the act, bruising a lung and breaking her pelvis.Not long after in 1991, she went to a doctor, who found she had breast cancer.She also had insurance issues.“I provided (my insurer) with any medical information they had asked for to prove it wasn't pre-existing, and they still said it was,” she said.Now, she had to fight breast cancer, undergoing treatments that weren't paid for by her insurance.“I didn't think I was going to live,” she said. “I just didn't have any fight left.”That's when her circus family stepped up to help.Her fellow Ringling Bros. clowns set up a trust fund from money earned from bake sales.Amateur clown groups helped pay her medical bills. An oncologist offered free treatments. Fellow members of her church in Santa Barbara, Calif., brought her healthy food and accompanied her to doctor's appointments.“It was very humbling to need to be on the receiving end of things, but it was really very touching,” she said.She finished her treatments in 1991 and was pronounced cancer-free. She was able to return to her love, being a clown, at Circus Circus, where she performed until 2000.That's when she enrolled at William S. Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas while working part-time in wardrobe at Cirque du Soleil.King graduated in 2004, and became a family court mediator.“I think one of the things is I work with people, and for the most part I like people,” she said.“The bar is pretty high for me not to like you. You have to be pretty crappy, and I can usually put people at ease and be pleasant.”Ringling Bros. announced in January that it will fold it's big top in May after more than 100 years of dazzling audiences.“I'm sorry that Ringling is closing,” King said. “Maybe that style, it's time to move on. There's a whole lot of discussion of should animals be performing? I don't know. I never saw animal abuse ever on the circus, and I was around animals all the time.”King said one current problem with circuses is there isn't a production that can profitably cater to small towns.After all these years, King, is still cancer-free. She reflects warmly on her time as a clown.“I got hugs every day, and kids telling me they loved me, and it was really, really, very rewarding,” she said. “I loved my time on the circus, and I loved my time clowning.”
