SWEETWATER COUNTY — Nobody who goes to Wyoming’s Big Show knows that name Danny Kollaja, but everyone knows his alter ego, Lanky the Clown.

Lanky has been coming to the Sweetwater County Fair for the last 25 years, just a small part of his clowning career that started in 1976.

Lanky said he never set out to become a clown. He got his start in a high school theater production, where an audience member approached him after the play and suggested he consider clowning as a career. That encounter led to an invitation to join a local clown club, and one connection led to another until it became his career.

“It got me, I didn’t choose it, it chose me,” Lanky said.

Clown schools were not widely available when he started and the only formal training programs at the time were tied to circuses, an avenue he chose not to pursue. Lanky said his mother insisted he go to college regardless of his clowning path, telling him he needed an education to fall back on.

“You have to be ed-juma-cated,” he said. “You might have to fall back on it.”

Lanky said the definition of clown has broadened and evolved over the decades since he started. Fewer young people are entering the profession today, though some incorporate elements of clowning into other paths. Those who do stick with clowning tend to stay in it for life.

“Once a clown, always a clown,” Lanky said. “It’s unusual when a clown just quits.”

Because his work takes him from fair to fair, Lanky said he has built a tight-knit community among his fellow traveling workers. He sees the same faces repeatedly throughout the season and can go months without seeing his own family.

“I never feel lonely, but there’s time I feel alone,” Lanky said. “To me there is a difference between lonely and alone.”

He described his work as an opportunity to give people, not just children, a brief escape from whatever they are carrying.

“We have no clue what they’ve been experiencing, joy, sadness, whatever. But once you meet them and we give them that opportunity, no matter how long it is, for them to escape reality.”

Lanky the Clown

To help give people that brief escape from reality, Lanky carries around an assortment of props and bits from seemingly bottomless pockets. From a big, brown, foam letter E, to trick kids into thinking he has a brownie, to a toy bike that makes his miniature bike seem big in comparison, Lanky has a gag for every occasion.

Lanky said many of his props come from paying attention to what fairgoers, especially kids, say around him. He picked up the toy bike earlier in the week after hearing children repeatedly comment on the size of his bike. Other props like the brown E and black I were made for him by a longtime collaborator who has since passed away.

Lanky’s schedule shifts daily depending on fair events and activities and times his appearances to maximize his exposure to guests.

“I don’t have floodlights following me around to light up the stage,” he said. “My stage is wherever I stop.”

If you see Lanky around the fair, stop by and say hello, he might just have a little something for you