AUG 24, 2021

HFM Ruby Connection: Game Night with Anne Henningfeld and Michael Jay Garner

Michael started his performing career like many who pursue this type of work: by accident. He received a BA in psychology from Emory University, where he also learned how to juggle, play various musical instruments, and find comfort and joy playing on stage as a four-year cast member of the nation’s oldest college improv troupe. After college, Michael worked in the corporate world, but took many side gigs as a performer. And while preparing an audition piece for The Big Apple Circus, he realized that by assembling this random assortment of skills, he had inadvertently been training to be a clown for ten years — without even realizing it. Since then, Michael’s life has been a swirling vortex of clowning and circus arts — from working as a hospital clown with The Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, to being the Resident Clown at The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp (a children’s medical camp founded by Paul Newman). He has also toured with Britney Spears on her World Circus Tour and has been touring interna- tionally with Cirque du Soleil since 2016, playing the Handyman clown in KOOZA. Michael is also very proud to work with Cirque du Monde, an outreach program of Cirque du Soleil that teaches circus arts to at-risk and underserved youth. And finally, he would like to apologize for the camera being too close to his face in the posted profile photo.