CFA News

After training at the Ringling clown college, he mounted vibrant street performances and theater shows, performing with his wife in a two-clown act called the Acrobuffos.

Seth Bloom, a blue-haired clown who inspired awe and wonder through his street performances, theater shows and socially conscious circus programs, including classes and touring productions he developed for refugees and war victims in Afghanistan, died Aug. 2 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 49.

Mr. Bloom died by suicide, said his wife and performance partner, Christina Gelsone.

Although he started out as a juggler, developing an interest in circus arts as a teenager in the Washington suburbs, Mr. Bloom evolved to become a master of wordless comedy. The format helped him transcend language and cultural barriers while performing in more than two-dozen countries with Gelsone, a purple-haired clown from Texas who shared his interest in challenging genres and advancing the social circus movement, in which juggling, acrobatics, clowning and fire-breathing are used to educate as well as entertain.

Together, the duo called themselves the Acrobuffos, after the title of their first production. They headlined at the Big Apple Circus; put on interactive street shows like “Waterbombs,” a gladiator-like spectacle in which two strangers from the audience were enlisted to lob water balloons at each other; and became known for an exuberant and unexpectedly poignant stage performance, “Air Play,” that placed the artists in gravity-bound counterpoint with soaring umbrellas, helium-filled balloons, windblown silks and flying packing peanuts.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/08/16/seth-bloom-dead/