The Beggars'  Banquet

By Roberto and Larry Forsberg Maui, HI and San Francisco, CA

The 4th (almost annual) Beggar's Banquet was held on the grass right outside Robertson Gymnasium simultaneously with the conventional IJA Friday night convention banquet. It was a rousing success as 85-100 jugglers prepared and shared a sumptuous sunset feast.

This year's Beggar's Banquet became an unofficially official entity for the first time, as its announcement was made with executive approval at the U.S. Nationals championships.

In previous years, it was publicized by word of mouth alone. Ventriloquists included!

The first and original Beggar's Banquet was conceived at the Eugene (31st) Convention in 1978, when a number of impoverished jugglers were excluded from attending the awards ceremony because they couldn't afford the cost.

These outcasts spontaneously created and proclaimed the Beggar's Banquet. It was skipped the next year at Amherst, but merrily resurrected at Fargo, Cleveland and Santa Barbara. No plans have been made for next year's convention in Purchase, NY, as the event is traditionally a haphazard, improvised and organically organized affair.

And as each Beggar's Banquet is as unique and diverse as the convention itself, this year's event was by far the biggest and most spirited to date. Hats were passed at the beginning and $150 was collected. Energies were pooled, the shoppers took the loot to the store and the Beggar's Banquet was in gear.

It spontaneously became a ritual as all hands were joined in a circle and everyone chanted "YUM." There was music, wine, dance and plenty of watermelon. All in all, a good time was had by everyone!

One final note - the Beggar's Banquets are by no means meant to compete with the official IJA banquet. It serves rather as an alternative for jugglers and friends who wish to celebrate together in a less formal and financially restrictive environment. After all, the cost of approximately 12 official banquet dinners fed 85-100 jugglers at the Beggars Banquet!

Keep your ear to the ground for the next Beggar's Banquet. See you in Purchase!

The setting was the grassy square of the cloister at Magdalen College, Oxford University in England. Historic buildings out of" Brideshead Revisited" trimmed with elaborate gargoyles bordered the simple booth-and-trestle stage nestled in one corner of the yard. Surprisingly cool for a summer's evening, many of the audience were drinking wine or ale, waiting for the performance to begin.

The performers, The Medieval Players, travel through Britain presenting programs of little­known Renaissance and Medieval theatre. That night's bill- medieval fare - included two theatre pieces, as well as a performance of the troupe's on-going, ever-growing juggling show.

The opener, "The Friar and The Pardonner," was an unexpected pleasure. The two antagonists, fighting for the audience's attention (and alms!), skillfully explored a broad range of clowning within a scripted structure.

The levels of both individual craft and overall production were impressive, and the show was like living inside a randy Chaucer story. But, it was the "interval show" that proved the high point of the evening! The actors quickly revealed themselves as accomplished jugglers, working through a carefully organized and highly successful routine.

Within the context and characters of the al­ready established medieval setting, the routine began with simple three ball juggling and some comic interchanges between a juggler and a stilt walker. With .the appearance of a second juggler, balls appeared from various physical "nether regions," and right from the start, the jugglers included the audience in the act.

One of the jugglers (whom I dubbed "none­too-clean"), and the other (dubbed "none-too­bright"), presented perfect foils for each oilier, as one tried to teach the other to juggle. Al­though at times their lack of spoken words seem­ed strained and an unnecessarily cumbersome convention, the two worked through a fairly elaborate three ball routine of takeaways and into a six ball passing routine. They then moved on to knives and finally, scythes, which were impressive when juggled and dramatic when passed.

All of the equipment used was earthy and aged - in keeping with the medieval theme ­ and all the more impressive for' the added dimension of the manipulation of real objects, not stage props.

Just at the point when I expected the act to end, the troupe really got going. Fire torches were introduced and a fire-eating routine began. The character types established earlier were maintained and there was a wonderful moment when an unexpectedly long tongue of flame knocked the stilt walker backwards (he being caught at the last moment by actors diving in from "nowhere).

Finally, the torches were juggled, and six torches were passed. By this time, twilight had almost faded into darkness, and the routine was even more effective seen in the dramatic contrasts of natural lighting. Unexpectedly, the troupe got a great deal of comic mileage from the act of putting out the torches in most unexpected anatomical extinguishers. Always rough-and-tumble, with a deceptively sponta­neous air, the troupe had the audience loudly cheering by the end of the routine.

After this, the final piece of the evening, "Gammer Gurton's Needle," though well performed, was a bit of an anti-climax. Clearly, the night belonged to juggling, and for the week­long run of the troupe in Oxford, Magdalen College Cloister was the setting for juggling in the great tradition of medieval popular entertainment.

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