The moment Karen Quest talks about kids, her voice lights up.
“Everything is beautiful when I’m talking to family and kids,” she said. “I’m in the moment. Some of my favorite conversations of all time were with kids, who were sitting up on their parents’ shoulders.”
Those kids need to get up on their parents’ shoulders to talk to Quest, because when she meets them she’s more than 8 feet tall. Quest, the owner of Giddyup Productions and Cowgirl Tricks, has performed at fairs and festivals all over the U.S. for more than 20 years.
On April 28, she will once again don her stilts to entertain fairgoers at the Santa Maria Strawberry Festival.
“I didn’t grow up as a fair person,” Quest said. “I was fairly hesitant about getting into that business in the beginning.”
But the minute she stepped into a fair in character, she was hooked. Quest now calls herself a “fairholic,” whose unofficial slogan is, “I’m in the happiness business.” Her knack for comedy and performing comes after years of education. She got her start training to be a circus clown in one of the best programs in the history of show business, Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Clown College.
For almost three decades, the college trained more than 1,400 professionals in the art of circus clowning before shutting down in 1994. Quest attended in 1983, when she was one of only seven women clown trainees in a class of 43.
“I grew up going to Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey circus,” she said. “I had a bunch of friends who were Ringling clowns, too. It was just such an amazing opportunity. They only accepted about 1 percent of applicants. It was harder to get into than Yale.”
The infamous application for the circus’ official school was so intense, it required applicants to answer questions about everything from their favorite comedian to the last time they cried.
In addition to her training at the clown school, Quest also holds a degree in theater. As with most performers, she still gets a case of the jitters now and then but never lets it faze her.
“I had a director [in theater school] who once said, ‘If you’re not nervous you’re dead,’” she said. “I’m confident in my ability to entertain. But it’s even more than that. It’s about connecting. It’s excitement.”
Festivalgoers will get to see at least three of Quest’s characters, including Very Tall Grandma, Francis the Farmer’s Daughter, and Lucky Starr, a character she describes as an “8-foot-tall rope-spinning wise-cracking cowgirl.”
As Lucky Starr bounds her way through the crowds, she makes jokes, engages with kids and their families, or sometimes uses her rope to lasso members of the crowd.
As for the stilts, Quest said that when people tell her they would be scared to even attempt them, she jokes: “Great, I don’t need the competition.”
She said that stilt walking typically involves two types of stilts: Pole stilts, which are 2-by-2s, and another kind called drywall stilts, used by carpenters and construction workers, which don’t require you to learn to balance.
“Pole stilts require an actual circus skill. I was a circus girl so that’s what I use,” she said. “It took me about a month of practicing before I felt confident to go out on my own. When people ask how I stay up there, I say, ‘I eat a balanced diet.’”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose wants to run away with the circus some day. Contact her at [email protected].
