Classic Clown Plus Classic Rock

He was repped by William Morris and he'd booked two pilots. Matt Walker's career was in full swing.

And then he had a dry year and he did the logical thing: He went to clown college and joined the circus.

"I spent a year living on a train, sharing a train car with 14 other clowns," recalled Walker. "You had to hide your cereal if you wanted to eat." The upside: "I got to play big venues like the Louisana Superdome, for audiences of 40,000."

That's a lot bigger than the small houses he plays with the Troubadour Theatre Company, an L.A.-based collective of physical comics and assorted clowns who've carved a unique niche with their adaptations of classic texts to classic rock soundtracks (a sampling: "A Midsummer Saturday Night's Fever Dream," Twelfth Dog Night," "Fleetwood Macbeth," "Romeo Hall & Juliet Oats," and the current holiday show, "It's a Stevie Wonderful Life"). But the Troubies' shtick has been going strong for some time, with no end in sight, and they've managed to book a May-to-December schedule at such berths as Garry Marshall's Falcon Theatre in Burbank, O.C. venues Grove Theatre Center and the Muckenthaler Auditorium, the Ojai Shakespeare Festival, and Santa Monica's Miles Memorial Playhouse. The gig pays enough that his regular troupe -- including such powerhouses as Beth Kennedy, Morgan Rusler, and Michelle Johnson -- regularly turn down other work to do the Troubie thing.

Walker's money gig is directing wraparound segments for TBS Superstation's movies, but he's always been interested in physical theatre, studying privately with masters Bill Irwin and Denis Lacombe, as well as with the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

Eventually any conversation I've had with Walker degenerates into a name game: What classics/classic rock hybrids remain undone? There's "Much a Doobie About Nothing," "Merry Wives of Earth, Windsor, and Fire," "Little Richard III," "Pericles, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Tyre," "Queen Lear," and such holiday possibilities as "Santana Claus Is Coming To Town," "Smokey and the Miracles on 34th Street," and "Rudolf the Red Hot Chili Peppers Reindeer."

The money may not be as posh, but how can a few stray pilot gigs compare to making up such silly titles for a living?