Page 24 Summer 1991
By
Dave Jones
It
is safe to say that in the world of variety arts Penn & Teller are
BIG. They sell out large theatres wherever they go, they host
television specials, they star in their own movies. They have risen
slowly and steadily from being street performers to becoming Broadway
stars.
The
duo first met in 1974. At the time Teller (his complete name) was a
high-school Latin teacher in Trenton, N.J., and Penn Jillette (the
tall, talkative one) was a street-performing juggler in Philadelphia.
Penn
had grown up in Greenfield, Mass., and began juggling with his
nextdoor neighbor, best friend, and recent MacArthur grant
recipient Michael Moschen. That was in 1967, when juggling was viewed
much differently than it is today. Penn said, "Juggling was still
a very arcane performing skill. It was something that creeps did. If
you did it at a party it was like sticking a nail up your
But
the prevailing opinion didn't discourage Penn and Moschen, who
continued practicing. They performed together for several years, doing
club passing, but their individual styles developed in markedly
different directions.
Moschen
worked on fluid, dance-inspired movements. Penn developed smooth,
technically strong juggling, but the juggling became a backdrop for
perceptive comedy. There was also "The Attitude," an
essential ingredient in Penn's desired effect - a funny, entertaining
and impressive show. "I always tried to juggle as though I was
too cool to ever have practiced," he said.
He
said, "For the most part, with juggling you have someone being
virtuosic about being virtuosic. They do something that has no
content, but do it really, really well. Take for instance, Eddie Van
Halen playing the guitar. You always have something more to
concentrate on than his fingers moving and the practice he's put in.
You have music, you have art, you have emotion."
The
basic physical moves of juggling, he believes, contain no emotional
impact to keep people interested. There is just the awareness of a
great deal of practice. "You can't perceive, in an artistic
way, the difference between five balls and seven balls," he
said. "You can do the work, you can do the math, but there's
not even a subtlety there. When Eddie Van Halen plays a riff a
little faster, it means something within the emotion. The worst you
can say about a guitar player is that he has some chops, but no
content, no taste. But with juggling, your taste is your
chops."
Penn
cites his old partner, Moschen, as someone who has blended content with
his juggling. Penn said, "When Mike Moschen does stuff,
you have a real-time visual beauty. He creates in motion, in real
time, what a painter or a dancer would."
That's
a high compliment from a man not long on compliments. And there's
more! Penn continued, "If people choose to look back at juggling
in 100 years, the
Penn
said most people can't imagine find
anyone who can really picture the two of us working together," he
said.
But
they did work together. They performed at Great Adventure amusement
park, doing club passing. "We used to dance around the room if we
could hold a nine club pass together, even for aminute. We thought we
were geniuses because we could hold eight comfortably. Of course, one
person can do eight by himself now," he added.
Penn
admits that juggling technique has improved greatly since the days
when he was juggling for a living, but he doesn't like the way the
public's perception of juggling has changed. |