Mump and Smoot have been, to the horror of audiences across the nation albeit it in an entirely expected and hilarious way, adventuring though chaos for the past nearly four decades.

The duo of Michael Kennard and John Turner, who gleefully embody the moniker they earned from press coverage in the 1980s of horror clowns, are back for the first time in seven years as the clown aliens from the planet Ummo in Exit.

That entirely new production is running as part of this year’s One Yellow Rabbit High Performance Rodeo, featuring a more macabre exploration of death than in previous shows.

“We try to treat each show as a form of adventure…. there are these great arches of skulls and crossbones that are through which we must enter to get to the stage, and it’s the only place we have to go,” said Turner.

“We’re not going out of our way to do a satire on skulls and cemeteries—well, maybe we are without knowing it. It’s a spooky playground that’s classic. It’s not just the horror aspect of it, it’s the what’s next and all the imaginings of humanity through the ages. We’ve never stopped, never will stop imagining what, what’s next, and until such point is we’re all there, wherever it is.”

He said the exact plot of the show, like the setting, was meant to remain a mystery for the audience.

“Let me put it this way. Mump and Smoot don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know what’s happened there,” Turner said.

Being back at the rodeo for Exit, said Turner, was no mystery choice given the duo’s long history with One Yellow Rabbit (OYR) and Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP).

“We would have done this no matter what, and we were absolutely delighted to be asked here. We’ve done the festival, I think, at least two other times before, and we’ve been at ATP a number of times as well,” he said.

That relationship with OYR began even before there was such a thing as the High Performance Rodeo, but still, the company’s reputation of putting on subversive and fringe theatre in the late 1980s led to a suggestion by the late Canadian clowning trainer Richard Pochinko to suggest Calgary.

A timelapse of Mump and Smoot at Arts Commons in Calgary on Wednesday, January 29, 2025. ONE YELLOW RABBIT

Dark comedy that goes directly to the heart of fear

That combination of European clowning and Indigenous masking was the hallmark of Pochinko, who trained both Kennard and Turner, along with Karen Hines, who has directed all of the Mump and Smoot shows, including Exit.

What has been created for Exit, like other Mump and Smoot shows, is a production that’s not for children—although Turner said the warnings are more for parents because children seem to enjoy the horror and comedy violence aspects of their clown act.

“The number of stories and the videos I’ve seen from early video, early film days of clowns running around a circus ring with axes in their heads. Apparently, one guy, early on, was drunk or hungover when he came in and forgot to put the block of wood, and he got killed on stage,” he said.

“You look at any cartooning, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, those sort of things… what you realize later is it is actually quite violent. But it doesn’t come from a search for violence from us. It comes from a belief that most of our issues stem from difficulty in dealing with fear.

“I think when we came on the scene, the perception, certainly in Canada and North America, was that maybe clowns are for children and they have to be funny. We disagree with both of those statements.”

Turner said their act is based around the idea of fear on a personal level, and out of the larger sociopolitical realm.

“We sort of feel most social, political issues are sourced at an individual personal level, and then our inability to deal in community beyond and taking our own issues into communities where all the rest of that stuff goes wrong,” he said.

“We wanted to deal at that fundamental level from the beginning, and which is part of the reason for gibberish, which is part of the reason for the fact that we are we generally stay out of the gender realm. We don’t do sex jokes. We don’t do jokes—well, I shouldn’t say that we do jokes, but they’re in gibberish.”

That ethos has enchanted audiences for decades. So much so, that an audience member for Exit’s opening night yelled out ‘no,’ because she didn’t want Mump and Smoot to go away.

As for whether Exit is the final exit, Turner said he doesn’t know—the title of the show implies that it is, but as long as it’s entertaining to perform there’s always a possibility of another return.

“We don’t want to blow it for anybody, but it doesn’t mean [Exit], it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re on the way out. We’ve been doing this for 38 years. I can’t say absolutely that there wasn’t ever a show that we had more fun in than we did last night. So, you know, we love doing this, but there’s a lot of elements in play,” Turner said.

“There’s always going to be clowns as after the apocalypse. If we’re still around, we’ll be playing for beer and beans going from town to town.”

Mump and Smoot in Exit runs at the Martha Cohen Theatre from Jan. 29 through Feb. 1. Tickets are on sale at www.oyr.org/productions/mump-and-smoot-in-exit.

Look behind the scenes as Kennard and Turner become Mump and Smoot