1. Pick Your Tricks

Make a list of every trick the players know, and arrange them from least complex (or easiest looking) to most complex. In general, most of the simpler tricks should be centered around a single juggler, and the more difficult ones should involve

both jugglers equally. A sample list of tricks might look like this:

1. Throwing one baIl up and down

2. Juggling 3 baIls (and associated individual tricks)

3. Juggling 4 balls

4. Juggling 3 clubs

5. Juggling 3 rings

6. Stealing balls *

7. Passing balls

8. Passing rings

9. Passing clubs

10. Passing rings, balls, and clubs (This is the Grande Finale)

* (Notice that as the act progresses, the emphasis becomes more focused on team tricks. In dramatic terms, as the characters become more familiar to the audience, their conflicting interaction with each other becomes more intense.)

Choose only tricks that the jugglers have mastered. Save the ones they're working on for a later skit.

2. Create a Conflict

Disharmony is at the very heart of good theatre. In order to keep your jugglers' physical presences compelling, they must portray some aspect of man's eternal struggle. The conflict may be established most simply between a single pair of jugglers, and it may be subtle or broad. I encourage selecting broad conflicts for the first couple of skits. Don't worry about plot. The fastest way to fabricate plot is to give the characters distinct and opposite personalities and character traits. It's an archaic gimmick, but one that has proven successful since the dawn of comedy.

Perhaps one character is simple and slow, while the other plays an intellectual straight man. Or a juggler who is bent with age and "sick of juggling" may be paired up with a spritely young apprentice who wants to juggle until his hands fall off.

Variations in size or sex may also be used to great advantage, and outstanding physical features like baldness, beards, long hair, big bellies, and silly walks are without compare for generating character tension. Animals can also serve as great role models for funny characters. A juggler who walks like a mean gorilla and beats his chest with his clubs is sure to be at odds with a playful dog character who keeps catching the clubs in his mouth.

The single rule of order is that a polar balance must be established between the jugglers. One of the characters must clearly represent the underdog, the funny man, and he will be the "hero" with whom the audience can immediately connect.

The other player is the "no more laughing, no more fun" anti-hero. He or she must be constantly aggravated with the chosen favorite. It helps to give the anti­hero a few rather nasty traits, like a quick temper, an arrogant self image, or a tendency towards violence (expressed through constant threats).

Give the public a hero, and they will laugh at his bad jokes, cheer his bad acting, and accept even his bad juggling with nothing but smiles.

3. Start Before You Begin

Get the jump on your audience. Establish the relationship and temperament of the characters before they ever hit the stage. Bring them through the seats handing out plastic roses, or have them make an accidental early entrance before the "real" show begins. This gives the characters an instant believability, and prepares the audience for the type of humor and frivolity to come.

4. Bore the Crowd

First, have the anti-hero choose his worst trick from the list prepared previously. Then make it even worse. Throw a scare into the crowd. Once they see how bad the initial juggling is, anything else will be an improvement.

I suggest keeping the players mute if possible, and making their intentions clear through actions instead of words. When they have mastered this physicalized communication, they may add verbal banter, but this should be kept to a minimum, and unless they are excellent punsters, all one­liners. ,and comebacks should be pre­rehearsed.

In addition, keep in mind that the best way to ruin a joke is to expect a response.

Jokes, insinuations, and puns are a lot of fun, but they are offshoots of the main action taking place, and their place is incidental ("off the cuff") or not at all. Never stop and tell a joke. With proper rehearsal, actions and reactions will speak louder than any verbal wit.

5. Declare War

This battle can be fought with balls, clubs, torches, rubber chickens, or anything else light enough to juggle. Based on the friction between the players, the conflict must now be expressed using juggling skill as a weapon. For instance, if the hero is a likeable dumb-dumb and the anti­hero is a vain prima donna, the hero may childishly imitate the anti-hero's tricks, but of course do them easily and better. Thus begins a war of one-upsmanship.

The competition is now delineated, and can only be resolved through tests of juggling and bravado measured against the individual characters.

Occasionally it helps to think in terms of old Warner Brothers cartoons. For every Wiley Coyote there is a more sympathetic Road Runner, and even Bugs Bunny wouldn't be nearly as funny if Yosemite Sam wasn't such a good anti­hero. Bind the act together with a spine of character interplay. Every trick performed must be linked to the clash of personalities, since it is their identities that give the show its forward momentum.

7. The Grande Finale

All of this has to be leading somewhere. With luck, the players have matured in the eyes of the audience from bumbling clowns to sophisticated maestros, and their final trick is awaited with optimistic good will.

This is where things get serious, where the jugglers can really strut their stuff. The players must now use their attentive, positive audience to fuel the energy of the finale. The last juggling trick, however elementary, will serve as a powerful non­verbal punch line for the entire act.

Above all, keep the spirit of fun alive in every performance, or (as they say in theatre) at least make it look like fun.

(Matthew Power is a freelance theatrical director and part-time medieval armorer living in Fort Lauderdale,. Fla.)

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