The new Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, coming to the XL Center in Hartford May 3-5, is about massive artful distraction. They try to explain it, but they don’t need to.

For 146 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has traveled around the country by train, wowing audiences with spectacular entertainment and exotic animals.

"When I was growing up, my mother was a clown for Ringling Bros. When I was 3 or 4 years old, I looked up and saw her in her full clown makeup up on stage singing and I though, Whoa, that's what I ...

The new Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus won’t send in the clowns. The clowns are out. When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey came out of retirement this year, seven years after it ...

On July 6, 1944, a blaze broke out at a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show in Hartford, Connecticut. At least 167 ...

Moline's Don Hepner made an influential, close friend in 1968. And almost 50 years later, he's told the story (with Moline historian Curt Roseman) of that friend, Reggie Montgomery, the ...

Though it’s been decades since Salguero, now 58, shared the floor with his fellow clowns as part of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the veteran performer is still proud to say he was ...

The clown shoes Peter Bufano wore during his tenure as a clown with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. (Jesse Costa/WBUR) Bufano’s shoes have thousands of performances on them.

Boss clown Sandor Eke helps his 2-year-old son. Michael Eke step off the Ringling Bros. circus red unit's traveling train parked in a rail yard as they head to the arena for a show, Thursday, May ...

The song, “The Entertainer”, is the music Ringling Brothers used to play when the show was in trouble, and needed to call out to the clowns for some impromptu comedy. Sam Drummond would know ...

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus returns to Atlanta after an eight-year hiatus for 13 shows at two venues over two weekends. ... fully made-up clown performers,” Vaught said.

It's easier to get into Harvard Medical School than the Ringling Bros. Circus -- but that didn't stop these aspiring clowns from pulling out all the stops at Friday's auditions ...