BY ELIZABETH BOARDMAN

 

When I arrived at Keith Johnson's Providence, Rhode Island, home for our interview, Mary, his wife and business manager, met me at the door with a cordless phone tucked under her chin. "Keith will be home from his show in a minute," she mouthed, then continued giving the librarian on the phone statistics on Keith and the performance of Hats Off To Reading she'd just booked. Nearby, son Harry, born in August '94, amuses himself happily with a wooden spoon.

 

It's been a busy month, Mary tells me once off the phone. Sixty-eight shows in March alone, two or three a day, with a total of two days off. And the phones are ringing non-stop. So much so that a second line was being installed that afternoon. Keith arrives a few minutes later. You couldn't miss his homecoming. Harry greets his Dad with a squeal of delight.

 

It's obvious that Keith is where he wants to be. He has a successful business, a family and a home. After years of hard work, it's just as he planned it.

 

He started juggling at 12, teaching himself cascades, columns and wall planes from Carlo's The Juggling Book. In high school, he landed a job jestering for a local medieval dinner theatre, where bottomless tankards of grog made for a convivial crowd. Between juggling scarves and spinning plates he learned that entertainment could be fun, unpredictable and profitable.

 

"It beat stocking shelves," Keith said, "though it was sometimes difficult to concentrate on chin-balancing a plate while having my bum pinched by women who'd had one too many bottomless tankards!"

 

Knowing that he wanted to use these skills as the basis of his career, Keith spent the early 1980s polishing his skills, studying with industry leaders and performing. Of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Baileys Clown College (he is a 1983 graduate) he said, "I was greeted with all of the toys I ever wanted to play with, and some of the country's best entertainers were my instructors." That years faculty included Tom Murphy and Randy Judkins.

 

Although Johnson credits Clown College with introducing him to a variety of new skills, he knew he didn't want to be a Barnum & Bailey clown. The idea of performing in huge rings far from his audience didn't thrill him. He prefers more intimate settings, where he can entertain people on a more personal level.

 

After Clown College, a summer spent with Tony Montanaro at the Celebration

Barn helped Keith develop a performance style that was uniquely his own. Everything fell into place at Roger Williams College (now Roger Williams University), where Keith studied traditional theatre and modern dance, creating a self-styled major in movement theatre. Dance faculty members Kelly Wicke Davis and Gary Shore kept Keith busy, dancing, choreographing, and developing performance art pieces. Keith credits this rigorous program with helping him learn the mechanics of putting an act on stage. "I became very aware of space and movement. It also helped me develop my sense of timing, structure, and order," he said.

 

During these years of training, Keith watched many performers choose tortured lives. Their art seemed to spring from the constant disorder of unhappy relationships. Or, if they had their personal lives together, they lived out of a suitcase. Keith knew he didn't want a life like that. He wanted a wife, a home, a family. Role models were few and far between. Randy Judkins was one. "I'd seen him perform before I started studying with him," Keith explains. "He was genuine on stage, and was a skilled performer. He also seemed to have a happy and well-balanced life, with a wife, a house and everything!"

 

Keith realized he could have a real life and still do what he loved. His goal became to work full time as a performer and still be home for dinner every night.

 

In 1986, he founded Artful Enterprises in Providence, Rhode Island, and started selling juggling and magic shows. Spending hours on the phone making cold calls to nursing homes, he'd book a couple shows for each week. He also did five or six birthday parties a weekend, something many other performers sneered at. He's unrepentant. "Parties paid the bills and allowed me to spend the rest of the week researching new markets and learning to grow a business," he explained.