Reggie Montgomery

Reginald Alexander Montgomery (Sep 15, 1947 – Jan 13, 2002) was an American clown, actor and director. He was best known as the first African-American clown to perform in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, though he spent only a year of his career doing so.

Early life Montgomery was born in 1947 in Tallahassee, Florida, and had two siblings. His parents wanted him to become an English teacher. In high school, he studied acting and played touch football. He went to Florida A&M University and studied drama, graduating in 1968.

As a child, Montgomery had a speech impediment, which required surgery. In part to help with his speech impediment, when he was 6 years old he was enrolled in a theater program at Florida A&M University, run by Sheppard Randolph Edmunds, founder of the first Black theater educational program at Dillard University in 1936, and sometimes known as "the dean of Black academic theater". Montgomery stayed in the program for 8 years.

After later attending as an adult and graduating from Florida A&M University in 1968, Montgomery studied at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, the first year of the school's existence. The dean of the school, Mel Miller, saw Montgomery in a local stage production, and invited Montgomery to apply. Of 1,000 applicants, Montgomery was one of 30 accepted.

He studied under Otto Griebling and Emmett Kelley, During the six weeks of clown college he also worked as a substitute English teacher. He did not want to appear in white face, and with the agreement of the circus managers he applied a more scaled down clown make up. saying that

We've got people from more than 18 foreign countries. But nobody allows himself to get uptight about Communism or international boundaries or race. Everybody just helps everybody else. And like things really jell. where he worked with Paul Baker at the Dallas Theater Center. While in Dallas, he portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. He later moved to Los Angeles, CA to further pursue acting. production of Mule Bone (1991), Kia Corthron's Digging Eleven, I Ain't Yo Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Colored Museum, and ...Love, Langston at Hartford Stage, where he also served for 2 years as an associate artistic director. Montgomery previously appeared in some of George C. Wolfe's original productions of Back Alley Tales, including the aforementioned Spunk, in which he played a pimp,

In 2000, Montgomery directed Suzzanne Douglas in Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ. He previously worked with Douglas in an Actors Studio production of The Obeah Man, a musical adaptation of Molière's The Doctor in Spite of Himself.

Montgomery also taught acting at the Alvin Ailey School of Dance and at the American Musical and Dramatic Arts Academy in New York. Media file of Reggie Montgomery performing in The Colored Museum. This is one of Montgomery's most notable works, awarding him an Audelco.

Directing

Filmography

Video games