HS Helsinki A Finnish man is afraid of failure and being ridiculed – Pekka von Cräutlein uploads everything to his work

Sattui one summer day, many decades ago, in a way dull that it was raining.

The young boy, now called Pekka, spent a numbing day at a villa in the hinterland of Porvoo.

When he couldn’t be outside, Pekka grabbed a book about hobbies. One of the songs in the book was about magic.

“I immediately sensed that something in magic would attract me. Maybe it was the secret that adults don’t understand or get to know what I’m doing. It attracted me, ”the adult man turned his age Pekka von Cräutleinformerly Kärkkäinen, says now, sixty years later.

From that moment on, von Cräutlein’s long journey began with magic and later with his appearance as a clown.

Now we are in Suvilahti, Helsinki. A colorful tent has risen on the empty field the night before, and von Cräutlein will take to the stage in a few hours.

In the same tent there was a miserable accident a week ago when the row of benches in the circus tent collapsed at the beginning of the show in Hyvinkää. However, the failed weld seam has now been repaired.

A person dressed in variegated red clothes with giant, dotted shoes wears between the caravans. He has yellow glasses on his head.

Standing in front of me is Professor Bluffo, a clown character created by von Cräutlein. The clown and von Cräutlein have many of the same features, as the clown von Cräutlein presents himself, perhaps in a more playful version than usual.

In the manege of the circus, he is just as childish and dumb as amusing, as adulthood forbids to be.

As a child, von Cräutlein would not have thought he would ever be a clown.

When young as a magician, von Cräutlein quickly got gigs.

First, the 11-year-old audience had its own class at the Helsinki Alppila Community School, and at the age of 12, the boy was already performing at Aurora Hospital for children of his own age.

At the age of 16, good luck came. Namely, the Onni clown lived Onni Giden Tervonen, assisted by von Cräutlein. He was allowed to follow the professional’s performances behind the curtain for years:

“Every time I followed the Onni clown number, I had just as much fun. It was an unmistakable sign of a good performance when you never got tired of it. ”

Von Cräutlein began performing as a comic magician, drummer, and announcer in the circus in 1978. A small dream of clowning had already ignited, but how to grow into a good clown was still a secret for von Cräutlein. Who only when not born funny.

A secret was told to von Cräutlein years later by a Swedish colleague. It sounded like this: better, better, better.

“You have to work like stupidly and stubbornly.”

Waned years and decades. Von Cräutlein made his living as a musician and magician.

As a clown, he did not take the stage of the circus for the first time until 2002, in Circus Finland. Professor Bluff’s character had been created ten years earlier.

The beginning was stiff.

Klovn’s important task is to make the audience relax, enjoy and enjoy themselves, even to laugh, but von Cräutlein’s performance did not arouse any emotion at first.

“In the circus, skeptical eyes stared, and I didn’t get a smile from the audience. I was pretty desperate. ”

But von Cräutlein was tenacious.

Milli at a time, the program began to work. He began to achieve the interaction he wanted with the audience. The children began to whine, laughing out loud.

That’s the best feedback on the clown’s work.

Von Cräutlein retired from the state artist five years ago.

However, he still continues as a clown, for:

“Acquiring the skill was behind such a big job that it’s not fun to throw it out of that but out the window.”

Although it is tough: it has been touring the small fields of Finnish small towns with a circus group for half a year now. However, there is something in it, maybe magic.

The thin fabric of the circus tent acts as an insulator between everyday reality and the illusion created by the circus.

“Every spring, when you come somewhere with a muddy and muddy field and sleet on your neck, you wonder if this could become anything,” von Cräutlein says.

“But when you set up a tent, the lights, the music and all the circus numbers, an incredible transformation takes place.”

Earnings also motivate summer work with the circus.

Von Cräutlein and his wife have their own cultural center and circus hostel in Inkoo, which are costly to renovate.

At Von Cräutlein is age 70 years.

One could say that von Cräutlein has finally understood the core of clowning: harnessing one’s personality to what one is doing.

“I’m not an actor taking on the role of a clown. I live it. ”

Clown Professor Bluffona von Cräutlein must be just as stiff and old, distracted, bald-headed and stubborn as he really is.

And where the average Finnish man fears the most failure and ridicule in life, Professor Bluffo is happy to bear that burden.

“I’m like the mannequin of humanity,” he says.

If it fails, you should always try again.