Eleven months of the year, Robert Quance lives a 9-to-5 life working behind the camera as a news assignment editor for WICS NewsChannel 20 in Springfield. Every October, though, Quance takes all his unused sick and personal time, dons grease paint, puts on a bulbous red nose and runs away to join the circus.
Quance, 32, a former theater kid who grew up mostly in Pawnee, isn’t offended when you call him a clown. While he does wear some other hats, literally and figuratively, with Horror Circus, Inc., his usual role is as a character clown. Sometimes, he’s a scary clown, but most of the time he’s a funny, happy clown who loves nothing more than seeing a young kid laugh his or her head off from his antics.
“The world needs more whimsy,” Quance says, “and so I’m gonna give you whimsy. I would like to be your whimsy catalyst.”
Before anyone thinks of quitting their day job to do what he does, Quance has a warning:
“It’s very hard,” he said. “People might think clowning is easy, but, no, you need a lot of training to do it well, to learn how to handle a crowd, and then you’ve got to do all the grunt work that’s part of being in a traveling circus. A lot of driving heavy equipment, putting up and tearing down the stage, a lot of 12-hour days. But I absolutely love it.”
Getting such a gig isn’t easy, either. Circus owners are pickier than you might think about who they hire, and Quance says he makes double his usual monthly wage with WICS for his services. Soon, Quance will hop a flight to Florida and join the Vampire Circus, owned by Horror Circus, Inc., and produced by Cirque Productions. He’ll travel all over the country by bus, with the tour concluding Nov. 1 in St. Charles, Missouri, then be back at work Nov. 2 at WICS.
“Robbie is a wonderfully weird, interesting man,” WICS news anchor Dawn Sterling says.
Quance’s boss, WICS general manager Heather Nodine, said everyone at the station enjoys hearing stories from his latest road trip.
“We love to see people pursue their passions outside of work,” Nodine said. “We do our best to accommodate schedules so people are free to do some of those things they love. We make it work, and he comes back refreshed and energized.”
Quance has been telling station colleagues his stories since July of 2021, when he was hired as an assistant at WICS, about a year after he “took a leap of faith” and went to Wildwood, New Jersey, to work along the boardwalk carnival atmosphere that is Morey’s Pier.
“I worked at a mall in 2020, but when everything closed for three months (from COVID-19), I got word that the people at Morey’s Pier had a new program to get theater people to fill in for their normal people – exchange students from abroad – that couldn’t travel to the U.S. That’s how I got my foot in the door in the industry,” Quance said. “Pretty soon, I was doing other shows in places like SeaWorld San Diego and then all over Canada along with the U.S.”
At times, Quance has had to drive a U-Haul himself as part of circus tours, including one perilous time through the steep, snowy hills of western Canada. He is likely to join a sleeper bus with a professional driver for the next tour, however, with food and other sundry expenses covered by Horror Circus, Inc.
Quance said he overcame his normal shyness, and some depression, in his early 20s by giving local stand-up comedy a try. When he got his first laugh, Quance said it was “like I found God’s love.”
He found he had the gift of gab, and all the shyness went away. Quance has performed locally as a magician, Santa Claus, a balloon-twister, carnival barker, bubble-blower and regular with the Capital City Improv troupe. He is the chairman of Zwei Dumm, an area clown group association.
Asked if he’d like to run away and join a circus full time, Quance admits that he does, but the bigger dream would be to own his own traveling circus company.
“It’s something I think is right in my soul. I love working at WICS, don’t get me wrong. It’s cool working at a TV station,” Quance said. “But, you know, circus life, entertaining people – that is my true passion.”
Says Nodine, “While you might not think there is a lot of crossover between his entertainment background and what you do in news, it is actually a good fit. Part of his job as an entertainer is to win people over and keep them engaged. That translates well to speaking with the public, setting up interviews and answering viewer questions. His improv background has come in very handy as well. He’s even held newsroom training sessions on how improv skills help when doing interviews.”
As he finished a cup of Starbucks lemonade with a reporter recently, Quance already seemed to be daydreaming of his next adventure.
“It’s probably not the life for everybody,” he said. “But it’s the life for me.”
Adrian Dater, a longtime former sportswriter in Denver and author of seven books, moved to Springfield in 2023 to get his first taste of life in the Midwest.
This article appears in October 1-7, 2026.
