Clown Song

A wily German circus master saves two Jews from the Nazis by disguising them as clowns.

Clown Song opens in 1984 at a circus performance in a small, German town. Margo, sole survivor of a Jewish circus family killed by the Nazis, spots the SS officer who stalked her during the war. Horst was obsessed with clowns, and Margo tells him his favorite was actually a woman, herself, something unheard of at the time. Flashback in Act One to 1941. To save Margo and her partner, Mel, from the Gestapo, Circus Master Willy Rentz and his wife, Johanna, disguise them as clowns. Clowns, like archangels, have no gender and their faces are painted. As the ‘Italian Clowns,’ the two spend the war hiding in plain sight, darlings of the SS. When a fired roustabout in 1944 denounces Willy for harboring Jews, Horst gives the circus safe passage over the border. Fast forward 40 years to the Epilogue where Horst learns the shocking truth: His beloved Italian Clowns were Jews. Loosely based on the true story of Adolph and Maria Althoff and the Bento clowns.