What did your family think of this?     

They've been pretty supportive.  They've never pushed me to do anything other than what I wanted to do.  Especially once they saw I could earn a living, even at 16, then they were real supportive.

When did you decide that you wanted to perform for a living?

I always liked performing, it was just that everything took me twice as long to learn as anybody else I knew. When I was 13 I met Edward (Jackman), and I met Peter Davison right around then, and we would all practice together. And I guess it was when I was 13, that I decided that was what I wanted to do fulltime. It was between that and marine biology, because I was into SCUBA diving. But it seemed like juggling would be more fun. And I always wanted attention, I was always kind of geeky in school - I don't know what I thought, because it only kind of separated me even more. I went to kind of a free-form school, where I got physical education credit for juggling, so actually I never learned sports or anything like that. I used to just juggle for hours a day. I also used to ditch school and I'd meet Edward at the UCLA gym, and we'd practice there all day long. I'd get to school and then I'd just leave.

Did you get in trouble for skipping school?

Well, I don't even remember. I didn't really care at that point because I knew what I wanted and it seemed like school was just holding me back. So, I honestly don't remember. But I was never there, even before that I was always ditching school and hitchhiking. A screenplay that I just finished not too long ago is called "The Sewer Club." I used to get in so much trouble hitchhiking with these two friends of mine when I was supposed to be in school that I started figuring out how we could get around the city through the sewers, without being spotted by the police. I was a pretty wild kid. Who knows what I'd be doing if I didn't learn how to juggle.

Where did you perform in those early years?

I started performing really anywhere I could. I did all sorts of mall openings and working on the streets everywhere and anywhere. Some of the first shows I did were at a Jewish summer camp. I was in the same cabin as Robert Lind, who was one of the Fly By Night Jugglers, and who now works with Sean Haines. He had just learned to juggle at the time, and the two of us made rings and all sorts of stuff in the workshop at the camp and we put on a show for everybody. I met Edward at the L.A. County Art Museum when I was 13 and he was 17, and we started working together there, and we worked on and off until I was about 16. Together we went to New York and did "Kids Are People Too," after we sort of got discovered on the streets in Westwood. We also worked separately. We would fight a lot, so we broke up a lot. It was like a marriage, like an ugly marriage.

What kind of stuff did you guys do in your shows?

All the stuff that all the teams are doing now, only we did it first. No, we did a lot of stuff with takeaways, and we would start with three clubs and work up to eight. At that time we were really starting to get more into comedy. I remember we didn't do a lot with fire, because Edward didn't like getting dirty. I would do the fire, I didn't mind it. I always had charcoal all over me, and my props were all crappy looking anyway. But his were always nice and clean............ He would juggle three balls while I played the banjo. And a lot of passing stuff.

Were there many other jugglers around you then?

There was kind of a core of us in California. There was Peter Davison, Edward, me, Kit Summers, Jon Held, Jon Luker. There were five of us, actually, who were the L.A. Juggling Company for a while, we would do a lot of neat five-person stuff, but there's no money in that. It was me, Jon Luker, Edward, Peter, and Jim Richland. Out of all of us who would get together, Kit was the first one who really made it, like made it off the streets and was doing good stuff, like when he got into Atlantic City........ We would get together and watch films of Ignatov and anything we got our hands on. Kit always had great films, and we'd slow down the motion. I remember we were all working on backcrosses with five clubs, and we would slow the film down frame by frame to see where Ignatov's hands were. And we would just practice with one club, Peter was the first one to start doing that stuff, just practice with one club for hours. Looking back, it was just so horrible. It was a full-time job, the practicing.

You mentioned Ignatov. What other jugglers did you look up to?

Albert Lucas, Dick Franco. Also, right around that time I had met Barrett Felker at the L.A. convention in 1976, and he was deciding whether he wanted to juggle fulltime. Also, Steve Mills was around, and he had done the Globetrotters tour, and Barrett did it after Steve. I remember really looking up to Barrett. And I used to go up to San Francisco and watch Michael Davis on the streets. I would watch pretty much everybody, go to every circus.       

Why did you and Edward stop working together?         

It happened in New York. I remember we were doing a show, and I think I walked away in the middle of the show, I was so mad, I just disappeared, and I didn't see him again for three or four months ....... I remember it had something to do with my wanting to do laundry, or something stupid like that. We were always fighting about little stuff. We used to get into fist-fights over who got to do the laughs and punch lines. We're friends now, but for a long time we didn't get along too well, mostly while we were working together.

What were some of the early highlights of your career?

The first major thing I did was the Ice Capades. We played sports arenas all over the country. I think I was 18 or 19 then. That was my first time to be on the road fulltime. Then I did Sugar Babies for a few years, after Michael Davis left.   That was really great because we played all these real nice vaudeville houses allover the country.