<<Please note these clowns will be sick, twisted, dark humored clowns.>>
Okay I see a couple of problems here, but they are not insurmountable.
1) sick or twisted and especially dark humored clowns in writing are more cliche then happy well balanced ones. What you want is conflict, and happy well balanced clowns who do excatly what clowns do, are not good writing material, so few people write about them. But misanthropic, dark, cynical and/or killer clowns are all over the place because it does seem to create conflict. But unfortunately this idea has been played to death for decades.
2) Circus clowns have a hard time doing dark or cynical humor in the ring. A really good Tramp or hobo can maybe pull some of it off but is is more resignation and self cynicism than anything else. But for the most part it doesn't work. Not only is it against their nature, it will be completely missed by most of the audience to don't have the luxury of seeing or reading it over and over till they get it (like you can do with a book or movie). A circus clown's style works on mass instant feedback from the audience where there is no time for people to work things out.
My suggestion is to separate the people who play the clown from the clown character. It would actually be very interesting to read about. Take a very good clown, as in: funny, loves making people laugh, nothing untoward or scary as a clown, visits sick children and hospitals without a problem... and then make the the actor out of clown dark, cynical and twisted ect. Then have the clown persona bleed into the "normal" persona, instead of the other way around which is pretty cliche.
Also I just want to add that writing about clown humor effectively is hard. It is extremely visual. Saying "The clown chased his hat across the ring" is entirely different then seeing it. A adequate visual rendering would take a page or two.
All that being said there is a lot of drama behind the scenes of any production, and a circus is definitely no exception. So the impulse is good. Good luck and tell us how it goes.
Also some possibly helpful threads:
The Amazing clown resources thread!
Articles on clowning
Choosing a clown name (one of the articles)
edit: I forgot got to say "Howdy and welcome to the forum."
So howdy Johnny and welcome to the forum!