BY ERIC BAGAI

 

The closing cry of the festival was, "There are no spectators!" It could have been the opening theme as well, because we put a lot of effort into getting non­jugglers to attend and participate.

 

We, the Portland Jugglers Association, put up posters all over town, made phone calls, sent info to the local schools, and sent press kits to all the newspapers and radio and TV stations. We even had a media event downtown on Friday afternoon right before the festival began. (You may see it in Alan Plotkins videotape buy it!)

 

Every registrant got a How to Juggle handout, as well as everyone at the public show. To keep track of the 30-plus festival workshops, all 470 participants received a 16-page Festival Guide at registration. At all times there were several people on the gym floor wearing ASK ME T-shirts, and every day there two or three workshops on some aspect of beginning juggling.

 

The saturation strategy worked. We made a lot of converts, and by the end there truly were no spectators.

 

When the festival began around 6 p.m., on Friday, May 7, there were several hundred people waiting to register at the Reed College gym. Greetings were exchanged all round, and I spotted personal friends from Canada, California, Idaho, Washington, Minnesota and Texas.

 

By 11 p.m. everyone was ready for Renegade. Except for me. I had locked my performance tape and props in my car, along with the keys. The good and wonderful Maria Thomas found a security guard with a slim-jim, and then took over when he proved incompetent with it. So I missed the first part of the show.

 

My partner, Jeremy Faludi, didn't show up until just before our set (something about preparing for a GRE physics exam the next day), so I only saw one act before ours. Rudy Galindo, donning the del arte mask of a very old man, became Pops, a marvelously cranky character who insulted everyone from little Anthony Mills to Pete Rosky, our emcee. I later heard that Rudy developed the character by wearing the mask and sitting in a public park, talking to anyone who looked twice at him.

 

Jeremy and I, billed as Los Dos Super Pendejos, did a contact juggling take-off of the dueling flamenco dancers found in Blood Wedding and EI Amor Brujo. I was the disdainful, jealous older guy while Jer was the uppity young stud. We did a lot of machismo posing and ball-rolling one-upmanship, trading off solos every six or eight bars of music.

 

At each switch I'd grow more enraged at his brilliance (he is awfully good), and get a larger ball from my bag. At the end he was still young and pretty, but I was frantically doing a double butterfly, arm and chest rolls, and finger spins with a bowling ball. It was hollow, made of rubber, and very realistic - at least until I threw it up 10 feet and bounced it off my head for the finale!