Sad Clown - A Monologue Sidewalk Leo Millett, Year 9 I don’t do much talking these days, so my jaw has gone quite rusty. Mr Marx does the talking for me because he’s still got a bit to say - some social commentary as it were. I used to be a fully functioning happy Bozo with the big laughing mouth and the pointy hat - all that traditional stuff. I was booked for vaudeville shows and was in Worth’s Circus until an elephant stood on my foot. After that it was kids’ birthday parties mostly, but the bottom fell out of that line of work when a couple of movies came out making the clown a scary monster, like the shark in Jaws. Kids started to scream at the very sight of me. And about that time I got to feel that there was no room left for anything but… a sad clown. Yes, that’s what I am. Even so, there is just too much competition out there. All the guys in government - even the President - are so much better at it than me - everywhere you look, another one to wipe you out or make you weep. So I made a puppet and called him Mr Marx - people think after the Marx Brothers, probably the greatest clowns who ever lived, but actually he’s named after Karl Marx, the saddest clown who ever lived. He keeps up the dialogue while I just stumble around in circles, falling over my flattened foot, trying to fight my way out of invisible boxes and untie myself from an imaginary tangle of red tape. He does his best to cheer me up or explain why I have got myself into such a sorry place. ‘It’s Bureaucracy man,’ he says - it’s the banana skin of our modern age.’ Yeah! Absolutely nothing to laugh “It’s Bureaucracy at any more, but the strange thing is that while I come out here every day to give people the message, somehow they find that man,’ he says - it’s FUNNY. the banana skin of Oh, hang on, he’s trying to say something to you now. ‘We would our modern age.” not be offended if you placed a small contribution to our act in the violin case on the ground. The violin got destroyed by frightened children years back, but we keep the case out of sentimentality.’ Leo Millett