Juggler's World: Vol. 42, No. 3

Notes

Thanks to Dave Jones and Mark Markoni

• Australian member Reg Bolton sends along a copy of a new stamp from that country featuring our favorite art. In case you don't understand the patterns that the characters are supporting, Australians commonly call their country "The Land of Oz."

• Reports from performers overseas indicate that Robert Nelson has been seen at the Edinburgh fringe festival and in London and Cardiff, along with Waldo. Markus Markoni missed his first IJA annual festival in six years because he was also performing in Europe. They loved him, though. At the recent Karlsruhe, Switz., festival he was called back on stage for four encores!

• Bryan Nash and Merik Yollis recently toured the midwest with the King Royal Circus. Nash juggled balls, four torches and three and four clubs. Yollis specializes in juggling on the rola-bola, climaxing his act with four clubs while standing three boards high, each level being supported by four drinking glasses. Nash is back with the same troupe touring the northwest U.S. through November.

• Gil Dova is juggling in a new show called "Cabaret" that opened in mid-July at Maxims in Las Vegas.

• Some notes gathered from other publications:

  • The Dunderdales (Pee Wee, Carmen and Billie) passed clubs in John Strong's Children's Variety Show, while announcer Stephen Fisher did his devil stick and diabolo routines.

  • The Strong show is lining up jugglers for shows this fall also. Richard Oresto will be with one troupe beginning Oct. 11, while Carter Brown and Mark Faje will team up with a Strong show opening in Cincinnati on Oct. 24.

  • Todd Victor and Lisette Guy combined juggling, wire walking, mime and clowning in a one ring show in California.

  • Mauricio Droguett with the George Hubler International Shrine Circus in Holland, Mich.

  • Franzen Brothers Circus featured a massed juggling display by Curtis Cainin, Chad Franzen and clown Casey.

  • Middleground Streeter, a one-man band with Circus Jaeger, juggles drum sticks while balancing a horn on his chin. He also does balls, hoops and clubs.

  • The Aarons Duo opened the Allen Brothers Circus in Indiana.

  • The Caesars, Kris Kristos and The Yolandas make up three rings of simultaneous juggling with the Beatty/Cole Brothers Circus.

  • Don Philips and David Conners with the Shrine Circus in Lincoln, Neb.

  • Pat Davison with the Shrine Circus in Des Moines, Iowa.

  • The Osario Brothers and 13-year-old Eros Espana with the Great American Circus in South Carolina.

  • Scott and David Cain at The Circus Kingdom.

  • Miss Jaqueline with Fisher Brothers Circus.

  • The Sikorskys at a special circus show in Holmdel, N.J.

  • Ringmaster Bob Welz and The Torinos and The Williams with Circus Gatti.

  • Weiner Herriot with the Shrine Circus in Cincinnati.

  • Sampion with Plunkett Brothers Circus.

  • California's "Make A Circus" includes juggling as a main theme in its show, and gives free juggling workshops following each show.

  • Lauren Muney runs a medicine show at Scarborough Fair in Texas, an act that includes juggling, fire eating and comedy.

  • Chip Lowell, The Willettys and Michelle Villena and Bracey Bobbitt with Burnes Brothers International Circus in California.

  • Miguel Posso with Circus Valentine.

• Kathy Doutt of Midland, Penn., said the state rejected quite a few of her choices before granting her exclusive rights to "I JUGGLE" personalized plates. "I didn't know there were so many jugglers with personalized plates in my state," she said. But the joy of having other motorists wave their arms up and down from a passing car makes it all worthwhile. How many others out there have personalized juggling plates? Write us at Juggler's World by the end of the year and we'll print a roster of you in the Spring issue. Please include your name, state and what your tag says. Send it to Box 443, Davidson NC 28036.

• Larry Schmid of Riverside, Calif., brought some of his Advocate School juggling class students to the L.A. convention. He says it's good therapy for the students, who are at the private school because of emotional and behavioral problems requiring special education. Since 1984 Schmid has taught six or eight students at a time, meeting with them five days per week. He says, "These are students who are failure-oriented, and juggling takes them past that." At the convention Schmid was showing off a neat trick, balancing an arrangement of a dozen nails on top of another nail on a pole balanced on his chin! He also performs balls, clubs, tightrope and fire eating.

• Albert Lucas said he did a 12-ring flash in his show in Colonial Williamsburg on his birthday May 11, and he was flashing 10 on the floor of the IJA festival in L.A. He is working at a hotel in Atami, Japan, through next June.

• The latest issue of the Land's End clothing catalog featured that company's computer director, Dave Barbian, juggling in a feature photo and story. The story said Barbian has been at it for 16 years and is a regular entertainer at company functions.

• Dr. Norman Estin, a family practitioner and scuba instructor on the Hawaiian island of Maui, took his act underwater shortly after learning to juggle a year ago. He's now aiming to beat the Guinness World Record of 20 minutes with three balls, and has also been working with five. "Five doesn't look too good," he said, "but it's a lot easier for me to do them underwater than on land." He has found that an eight-ounce ball is the ideal weight for underwater work. Estin also incorporates juggling into his medical practice, keeping a set of scarves and bean bags in the waiting room and juggling in the examining room to put young patients at ease.

• The Flaming Idiots appeared in a Public Broadcasting System docudrama this spring hosted by Carl Sagan. It was called "Idiots or Geniuses: The Secret Within." They also juggled at the Scarborough Faire near Waxahachie, Tex.

• A mid-July edition of the Houston Chronicle newspaper carried a photo of a young girl with a prosthetic arm playing with juggling scarves. The session for her and other amputees was sponsored by the Limbs of Love Foundation and Gene Jones of the Mime/Jugglers Network. Jones heard on TV one night of Limbs of Love and their work to give children limbs with working fingers. He volunteered to try to teach them juggling and left for Houston with equipment supplied by Jugglebug. He taught parents to juggle one night, and worked with children and parents the next day. The artificial limbs are too clumsy and slow to allow for real juggling, Jones reported, but he said the experiment got some good publicity for the foundation and helped the children see beyond the mental limits of their affliction.

• Dick Franco worked at Busch Gardens in Florida until the end of November, then had a month scheduled in Osaka, Japan, and a two-month engagement at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. Franco is also working on revising his three-club book, and is working with fellow juggler Alan Howard on a book about Bobby May.

• Jack Swersie was named in August's "Philadelphia" magazine's "Best of Philly" review as best juggler for an act that includes comedy juggling of a machete, a cigar and a can of Spam. Swersie performed in Atlantic City's Trump Regency Hotel in mid-July with Laura Branigan in a presentation that was filmed for television.

• The American Dream, Scott Meltzer and John Park, are playing the "corndog circuit" - county and state fairs throughout the southwest. While admitting the trick is hackneyed, Park says the highlight of the act is still when Meltzer rides a unicycle, eats an apple, then catches the core on a knife blade. Park himself is struggling with a new trick, the kickup of cups and saucers to his head. After a year's practice, he's now building a three-story stack. Meltzer is also serving as entertainment director at San Francisco's Pier 39.

• Ex-Marine Eddie Dominguez dragged a big prop trunk onto the convention floor and began juggling bright orange traffic cones. He said the trunk was only one of six which are each associated with different clown characters he performs. The most juggling-active one, Obonito, is an auguste clown who does hula hoops, balls, clubs and teaches stage combat with rubber swords. Dominguez said juggling and gaming helped him keep his mind off of cancer that afflicted him several years ago. In remission now for three years, he performs full-time in the Los Angeles area, mostly for children.

• Neil Stammer, a.k.a. Andrew Allen, is still based in Berlin, but says he's changing his act and will be juggling to the blues. He was one of the acts on the bill when the new Quartier variety club opened in Berlin recently, and appeared there through the end of October. He then had an engagement in Dusseldorf. Besides performing, Allen spends a lot of time writing and adding new languages to his broad international vocabulary.

• Nina Cheney and Jacob Mills, a husband and wife comedy team from Wisconsin, have been selected for the second straight year by Arts Midwest for inclusion in the Performing Arts Touring Program. Cheny & Mills have performed together since 1981 in a show called "Human Cartoons and Juggling Theatricks" that includes one-line zingers, tricky club passing routines, flaming torches and hat manipulation.

• Joe Buhler stars along with Paul Magid and Howard Patterson of the Flying Karamazov Brothers in a Public Broadcasting System "Newton's Apple" show this fall about juggling. Buhler, a math professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore., said the show is "fun with science and juggling - but it's more juggling than science."

• Tony Duncan and his partner, Jaki Reis, are doing corporate and night club shows of up to an hour in length in New York City. The couple has performed together for a year, following Duncan's tour last year with Sugar Babies. He says the routine includes a lot of verbal and situational comedy, along with audience participation. The show includes plenty of juggling, ping pong ball spitting, a ball routine choreographed to music, and Duncan's sword swallowing.

• Volleybird was one of the sports included in this year's Bud Light Summer Ocean Fest, a sports festival held at ten sites in California. Promoter Scot Morris has devised rules for the traditional Brazilian hand-and-birdie game to suit American audiences. His rules include two players on each side defending a narrow court and separated from their opponents by two four foot nets set several feet apart. He says the new setup permit more volleys and court action.

• Seniors Championship competitor Barry John performed a neat balance of three water glasses on a tray on a pole on his chin. Still balancing the ensemble, he did a floor rolls, rode a unicycle and did back crosses with three clubs. John, originally from Nashville, Tenn., has been performing comedy juggling full-time for four years, mostly on Royal Viking cruise ships. He left the L.A. convention for a cruise job around Europe and the Soviet Union. But he says he'd like to supplement that regular work with some street performing, "because that's the best way to develop new material. You don't get better on ships doing three shows in two weeks!"

• The Jugglers For Peace were telling people at the festival about their trip last August to Cuba, where they were the first non-Communist group invited to perform in the International Cuban Circus Festival. They have been invited to return in 1991, and are also trying to organize a trip to the Soviet Union. Those interested should contact Jeff Streiffer; Box 40832; San Francisco CA 94140. He will also be glad to send you a 30-minute video of the group's 1988 Nicaragua tour for a small rental fee.

• The central Florida entertainment megaplex has seen a lot of juggling recently. At Disney World, John Nations did seven 20-minute shows a day from February through August. His walkarounds amused crowds standing in hot lines, while in the cooler evening he did a full street show, working with from three and six balls and five clubs on a rola-bola. Other Disney jugglers were Max Winfrey and Jonathan Austin. Winfrey did five tennis rackets, three machetes on a pogo stick and juggled the stick along with a bowling ball and car keys. They both devil stick tennis rackets brilliantly, and Winfrey even devil sticks a baseball bat. Another act in the park were The Nanjing Jugglers trio, who do an 18 ring three person line feed among many skills they demonstrate in several acts. At nearby Sea World are Mark Faje and 1987 Juniors winner Curt Bonnem, performing as "Up in the Air" with Carter Brown's Lazer Vaudeville show. Many of the area entertainers have been meeting with Orlando jugglers regularly.

• Joggler Mike Drobny of Matamoras, N.M., age 71, got good press in his hometown recently about his early morning routine. The retired truck driver has been jogging for 20 years, and stumbled onto the idea of joggling in a magazine.

• IN MEMORIAM

  Longtime IJA foreign correspondent and friend Lindsay Leslie of Newport-on-Tay, Scotland, died in June. Leslie was a prolific contributor to the magazine, as well as performing juggler, prop maker and consultant to networks and entertainment agencies. An electrician by trade, his early interest and assistance helped spark the first European juggling conventions, and he hosted the second convention in 1979 in Edinborough, where 25 jugglers gathered. We will miss him.