One of the highlights of Miz Tilly's extensive career was performing in Japan with Waldo & Woodhead and Markus Marconi. "To perform in another country is truly the most sensitive work of all. You are acutely aware of being an ambassador, representing the finest street entertainment that America has to offer."

 

As a juggler, Miz Tilly considers herself to be "just a hard-working professional, performing in the schools, on the streets, for fairs, festivals, picnics, you name it, I have juggled it." Her repertoire of material both silly and serious is extensive. She is able to custom design a show to meet any set of specs.

 

"I think of every show as I would a design job. I know this sounds funny, but I don't become "personally involved" in designing a show. In this way I am able to maintain a critical eye."

 

Her one-woman vaudeville show, 'The American Jubilee," is a flexible and constantly growing body of material that may include performance on many musical instruments as well as intensive juggling. The Appalacian Dulcimer, bones, spoons, washboard, Bodhran and banjo, and her trademark "Drumming Bear and Tin Whistle Routine" are just a few of the surprises in her vaudevillian trunk. She also performs Dr. Seuss stories, including "The Cat In The Hat" which she raps, using different dialects for each character.

 

The juggling begins with singing scarves, then into a monologue with a three ball routine.

 

Her ball routine is performed with the largest size JUGGLEBUG stage balls, two yellow and one red. "I gear the routine to the red ball, keying my audience on that element. In this manner, they are able to follow and thus appreciate the most perplexing of ball tricks."

 

Laura specializes in three ball insanity, "Richard Nixon Tricks" and is able to juggle with her eyes alarmingly crossed at odd angles. Her style is gracefully aggressive with flashes of flakiness and non-stop comic monologue.

 

She performs a three club routine, "Thirty-Seven-Club-Tricks-In-Ten-Seconds," junk juggling (featuring the infamous "Eat the Twinkie" farce) and concludes with a fiery recital of the witches soliloquy from Macbeth via the Wicked Witch of the West. "I created the fire routine in 1984, in a moment of black depression, when I felt swamped with all manner of evil events. The creation of it was cleansing to my soul. It is a wild piece of theater! I don't consider the torch routine a success unless three little children have burst into tears. It scares the hell out of me, too!"

 

Laura is aware of her high profile as a woman in the IJA through her work as Juggler's World art director and this year's convention chairman. She takes her position as a role model very seriously: She commented, "Judy Finelli wrote in a recent issue a letter that expresses perfectly my philosophy of being a woman juggler. Judy wrote:

 

"I saw that all the young boys had their juggling heroes, and felt that young girls also need to know who their heroines are...! am thinking about all the little girls

out there. I want them to know that becoming a juggler can be a joyous and wonderful art/sport/pastime or occupation, that it has rewards and that here is dignity in being a woman juggler. They can derive strength from feeling a connection to women jugglers past and present."

 

"There are many wonderful role models for young lady jugglers - Cindy Marvell, Kezia Tenenbaum, Sarah Felder, Sandy Brown and Mardene Rubio to name a very few. Each woman has her own special style and strength, each has much to offer the student of juggling.

 

"For me, though, my dearest teacher and role model has been Karen Grant­Mafgill, otherwise known as Mad­amemoiselle 00 La La.

 

Karen Grant-Margil was playing Washington Square in New York when I first met her. She was playing the washboard, and warming up to do a show. It was, without a doubt, the turning point of my artistic life. Up to that time I had only had men as my role models. I was not even sure I had the courage to go on, that perhaps women were not supposed to be out on the street, slinging fire and passing a hat. When I met Karen, I was more than inspired, I was elated, swept away, joyous and uplifted! Had it not been for meeting her, I would have never developed fully as a woman juggler. She is, in my humble opinion, the "Queen of Street Jugglers".

 

What does the future hold for this IJA stalwart? Her sights right now are on this summer's convention. "The fartherst I can think into the future right now is July 17th, when the convention begins! "

 

Looking far down the road, she plans to work towards the dream of establishing an "old juggler's home", Hall of Fame & Museum and school, "where I can rock on the porch with my old juggler buddies and watch the kids practice."

 

She realizes it will take years of steady, patient work to see those dreams come true. As she's fond of saying, "It's a tough, dirty job." But if anyone can do it, Laura Green can!