Today we’d like to introduce you to Erik Pratt.
Hi Erik, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Throughout high school I never questioned what I would be doing as an adult. I would be working as an engineer in the space program at NASA or some private company. I was a very good physics and math student and I found space fascinating. This was in the 80s and early 90s, when the space program was booming. The space shuttle was still regularly going to orbit and there was talk of what the shuttle would be replaced by. Terraformation of the moon and Mars (impractical as that might be) were subjects actually speculated on. Ideas were big and government money was flowing. So, I sorted through a lot of engineering schools in my college admissions quest: Rensselaer Polytechnic, Rose-Hulman, etc. I ended up enrolling at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Florida campus and it was there that I fell out of love with aerospace engineering.
It wasn’t just that the money fell out of the space program, though it certainly did. Companies were laying off engineers in North America and projects were losing funding. It wasn’t a great time to be an entry level aerospace engineer. However, the real reason I split with engineering was that I found the interests I always considered secondary–hobbies–were what I really loved doing. I was still fascinated by space, by machines, by cosmology–but I found that it wasthese things I enjoyed as hobbies. It was juggling, performing on the boardwalk, and the theatre club that occupied most of my thoughts.
So after 3+ years at Embry-Riddle, and having met a handful of like-minded “artsy” engineers and pilots who helped me see what I was actually good at, I finally worked up the courage to quit. I dropped out of engineering school, went back home to Kansas City and enrolled in the theatre program at UMKC. It’s been a performer’s life–with all the ups and downs–ever since.
I am now in my 3rd decade of entertaining fine humans of all ages. As the owner of Drops Unlimited Entertainment, I have had the great privilege of juggling, clowning, ballooning, and teaching all across the United States. To my even greater delight, I have recently returned to live theatre, acting at The Coterie, Phoenix Theatre, and Firefly Dinner Theatre. And, with my lovely and talented wife Jamie, have started “Hypothesis: a Theatre Lab” to help everyday Kansas Citians create the theatre they want to see on stage.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I used to tell a joke in my juggling show about how “after earning 108 credit hours in aerospace engineering, I dropped out of school to become a clown…making my mother proud”. While my parents were amazingly supportive of this questionable decision, the line was more than just a joke. While nothing is certain in life or career, choosing to make a go in the performing arts is likely less stable than almost anything else you could imagine. I had traded in what many consider a normal, everyday, desk-type job for a much less stable life.
I spent many years working as a bartender while trying to earn full-time money as an actor. The service industry is amazing and terrible at the same time. I loved it; it was very similar to a show in how you entertained guests and every night was a slightly different story you had to wind your way through. The money could be good, or very bad. When added to the good or very bad money you made in theatre, it was often hard to pay the bills or plan very far into the future.
The years after UMKC were filled with shows I loved, shows I hated, and periods of time when I thought I would never get cast in another show. After some years of doing the odd show at The Missouri Repertory Theatre or Theatre for Young America, some touring shows, and some very good (but not “legit” union) murder mysteries, I got to the point where I figured I would not really work in theatre again. I stopped getting cast and my agent stopped calling with auditions.
I had a decision to make. Work full time in the restaurant industry and make it a career–an industry I liked and knew… but didn’t love. Or, maybe try to make a go of circus arts. I had learned to juggle and had spent a few years performing shows at Renaissance Festivals and doing a few school and library shows. It was something that I enjoyed but had never fully committed to because I wanted to be a stage actor. But now I had realized that for whatever reason, the stage was not calling my name very frequently. So, Drops Unlimited Entertainment became my main focus.
Running your own entertainment company comes with a lot of learning on the fly: taxes, marketing, dry spells, crazy clients, logistics, etc. When you’re small and starting out, all of that is on you. Heck, even now, being slightly more successful and established, most of that is still on me.
I think the challenge never goes away. In today’s political climate, making a living as a performer is becoming a fool’s errand. I’ve spent years successfully feeding myself and my family but it’s easy to see that slipping away as the government pulls funding, censors material, and purposely creates obstacles to destroy artists. This goes on at the same time that corporations squeeze artists, exploit their talents, and create environments that stifle the creative process in music, theatre, film, and fine arts. But, as long as there are people, artists will fight to enlighten, entertain, and educate. Unlike, my younger self, I’ve realized there can be no backup plan–win or lose.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My first love is live theatre. While I’ve stepped away from theatre at times, I’ve never left it completely behind. The artistic endeavor I’m most proud of is “Hypothesis: a Theatre Lab”. Hypothesis is a non-profit theatre company my wife and I started this year. Hypothesis seeks to revitalize live theatre by engaging not only theatre makers in what gets presented and worked on, but asking potential audiences to be involved in every step of theatre making. We want to ask our community what kinds of stories are relevant to them and what they want to see. We then create those shows and ask the community to help shape it through the entire process–writing to production.
We produced our first full production this year, “EXIT 16”. It’s a lovely show about what it means to exist with each other. After 9 public performances and 9 audience talkbacks, the script is in its final form, ready for publication and hopefully productions by other companies.
We have a couple other scripts in early stages of our theatre lab that hopefully will see the stage in 2026.
In my own work, I think I inhabit a space that has just a few other residents. My skill set and performance experience combines in a fairly unusual way. I have a classical acting education from UMKC, studied clown theatre with several people including Kapoot Clown Theatre and Beth Byrd, spent years honing an interactive juggling show as a busker and festival entertainer, and spent many years performing murder mysteries that combined scripted show with improvisational comedy.
I believe this strange amalgam allows me to bring an unusual sense of what a show can be to my live theatre projects. I see even traditional theatre pieces as immersive experiences in which everything is show and there is no “off time” for performers. And, I definitely think I bring a sense of theatre and story to my variety arts performances that many shows of that type do not.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I have been curious and have enjoyed learning for the sake of learning as far back as I can remember. I loved school because it was a place that put no bounds on curiosity. This spilled over into who I hung around with and who my friends were. There weren’t any groups of people I felt uncomfortable around and so I hung with everyone.
I was a pretty good athlete and played basketball, football, and baseball at school and with the kids in the neighborhood. I also was interested in learning to play tennis and racquetball, joined the swim team, and played volleyball with the church youth group. I could hang around the jocks and mostly be accepted.
I loved to play games: table top games, card games, role playing games. I played cards with my parents, played D&D with friends from school, and joined the chess club. I loved the challenge of strategy games the most but any type of game was a puzzle I wanted to solve. I could hang with the nerds & geeks and mostly be accepted.
I was a very good math and science student. I had my own math group of 1 through most of elementary school. I bought books about cosmology and number theory at Barnes & Noble for leisure reading. By my senior year, I was taking college calc II & physics classes in a special joint program with UMKC. I was a 7 year member of IMPACT, the gifted program in the Independence School District. I could hang with the brainiacs and mostly be accepted.
I played passable saxophone in concert band, even briefly holding 1st chair. I took a theatre class my sophomore year and then performed in the school plays my senior year of high school. I participated in debate & forensics, medaling at a few tournaments. I became obsessed with Monty Python and improv comedy, performing at talent shows with my friends. I could hang with the artists and the misfits and mostly be accepted.
My home life was, all things considered, pretty good. My parents divorced when I was 5 but I had a good relationship with both of them (even if my father was more distant and less often seen). Maybe that contributed to my tendency for introversion or maybe that’s who I would always have been. Whatever the case, my curiosity in just about any topic allowed me to interact with almost anyone I encountered. I was genuinely interested in whatever they were interested in, what they knew, and how they felt about it. But, for all of the many groups I was welcome in, there were few if any that I was an inner circle member of. I was good–sometimes very good–at a lot of things but maybe not A-list great at any of them. Maybe the desire to know another thing always outweighed the desire to entrench myself with a single group of kids. Maybe its the culture of kids (like Medieval villagers) to not quite trust anyone who treats too much with outsiders. I’m not sure, but for all the people I knew and interacted with, I bet only 2 would have named me amongst their best friends. There’s something sad and missing about that but the introvert in me wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Pricing:
- Balloon Artist $125/hr
- Juggling Show $350+
- Stilt Walking Characters $225/hr
- Murder Mystery Shows $600+
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dropsunlimited.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blipey_the_clown/
- Other: https://hypothesiskc.com
