A circus clown can do almost anything. He can juggle and ride unicycles. He can also balance things on his nose. He can even do tricks with wild animals     1     lions, tigers and elephants. Clowns seem to be bad at these things and this makes the audience laugh. But in fact, clowns are very     2     at all the tricks and it takes a long time to learn them all.

Make-up and     3    

Clowns use lots of make-up. It looks like a mask. When he looks happy, sad, surprised or scared, the make-up can show it better. Each clown creates his own special face     4     helps to show the clown’s character. No other clowns can make up their faces like him.

Clowns wear funny clothes. Often, the clothes look fine, but they do not fit right. The jacket, hat or shoes are too big or too small, and this makes the audience     5    .

Clowns often hit each other or fall down to make people laugh. This is called “slapstick comedy”(打逗喜剧). Early slapstick comedy used a stick that was actually     6     of two pieces of wood. The clowns hit each other with the slapstick and the two pieces of wood “slapped” against each other. The audience heard a loud noise as if the clowns had hit each other very hard. Of course they didn’t really get hurt!

People who want to be clowns often go to clown schools! At clown school, they learn many tricks and meet many clowns. They choose a name at first, and then decide what character their clown will have and     7     their clown will walk, talk, and dress. Every clown is different,     8    they all have the same purpose: to make their audience laugh.