When he picks up the other two balls from the briefcase with the other hand, their superior weight leans him impossibly to the other side. The character then discovers that the only way to stay balanced is to juggle all three.

 

The music changes to a rock beat at this point and Tim climbs out of the suitcase to show off a tightly choreographed three ball routine highlighted with tricks best described as "silly." "One of the more effective things I did was just rolling a ball on the ground and walking along beside it," he said. "Those are the kind of things I like because they're unexpected, appealing to the general public and totally in character."

 

After the three ball routine, he performed a four club routine he put together just for the competition to try to get some technical points. "In the end it may have been a mistake," he admitted. "I got my two drops there and it wasn't as strong for the character. I was trying to do more difficult 'juggling' while maintaining the character. But that's hard with a larger number of objects because you have to look up at the props and break the eye contact with the audience that's so prevalent in the rest of the routine. I tried to work on that by putting in several stops so I could show my face, and some weird multiplex stuff that lowers the pattern. It's something I want to continue to work on."

 

The crowning jewel in the act was his finale, juggling balls as he passed a hat rack back and forth from hand to hand at the same time. The uniqueness of the manipulation and loveability of the character brought the crowd to its feet in a loud standing ovation at its conclusion.

 

In most of his variety show performances, Gilkey said he does the hat rack routine before the ball routine "because it's the routine that defines my character."

He explained, "Putting the juggling aside, there's a progression of the character. He first discovers in the hat rack routine that he can juggle and dance and loves music. Then the character emerges more strongly as a seasoned performer in the three ball routine, so it follows the coat rack logically in most performances."

 

However, Barry Bakalor convinced him that the unique manipulations of the hat rack would be a stronger ending for an audience that had seen just about every other kind of juggling routine.

 

The hat rack routine began with "Tim" discovering a simple, round-based coat rack. Like a child seeing it for the first time he wasn't sure about it. He examined it from different angles and finally became curious enough to reach out tentatively to touch it. At that moment the music began with a startling yelp, interpreted by Tim as coming from the coat rack. After recovering from the shock, Tim finds the music taking over his body and begins to move. He loses control and before long the confused character is doing a wild mambo and begins dancing with the hat rack. His bewilderment gradually changes to pleasure, until he surprises himself again by finding two balls in his pocket!

 

He finds he can juggle two balls and pass the hat rack back and forth between hands as the third object. The audience likewise enjoys the clever manipulation, but Tim isn't through with his discoveries yet!

 

In a precursor to the routines finale, he has worn a black stocking cap on his head the whole time. Suddenly he takes off the hat to find a third ball beneath it, revealing his ridiculous haircut at the same time.

 

Whereas the juggling audience was entertained with the manipulation of two balls and a coat rack, they were intrigued with the absolute novelty of three and a coat rack. Gilkey explained that the manipulation depends on switching back and forth from a two objects in each hand "columns" pattern and a four object cascade pattern in which one is thrown high to the other side. "The high ball is effectively the coat rack," he said. "I go into columns for a beat and push the coat rack to the other side, then throw one high from that side to the first side."

 

At the very end, the clown stopped the juggle, stepped back and threw his hat onto an arm of the coat rack. Gilkey said the entire success of the routine depended on making that throw. "It was absolutely nerve racking for me," he said. "It was the last thing I did, and was therefore the most important thing I did. When it came time and I had done so well to that point I just thought 'O God, please let me hit this!' I have a drop line just in case, but it's not a very good one. Believe me, it would have been tragic if ! had missed it!"

 

But it was a night of triumph rather than tragedy; and the audience roared its approval as the curtain closed on its new favorite clown. "There's nothing better than hearing a crowd of peers show appreciation of you," said Gilkey. He voiced that sentiment the next evening at Club Renegade when he won the People's Choice Award and the Founders Award for the festival act that most clearly represented the best tradition of Vaudeville.

 

Gilkey was born in Palo Alto, Calif., and studied drama at the University of California in Santa Cruz for a while before quitting college. He studied at the Dell' Arte School in Blue Lake, Calif, and later trained in San Francisco with Lu Yi, director of the Nanking Acrobatic Troupe. He performed as a featured juggler, acrobat and clown from 1987-1991 with the Pickle Family Circus, where he started to learn the commedia del'arte skills that helped him form his stage character. For the next two years he performed physical comedy in Switzerland with Compagnia Teatro Dimitri. At the same time, he was appearing with Theatre Companies, a performance art troupe that presented a wildly farcical "History of the World" in 75 minutes. As a member of those groups, he had the opportunity to travel throughout western and eastern Europe.

 

But he found no location that he loved as much as San Francisco, so he returned to the USA in 1994 to begin creating a career outside of a performing group. Since then he has performed with Make A Circus, and played the Wintergarten Variete in Berlin last winter.

 

From before the festival through mid­October, he and friend Drew Lechworth were presenting a three-night-a-week dinner theatre show at the Icon Restaurant in San Francisco. Gilkey plays a busboy while Lechworth plays an eccentric maitre d', and they entertain the audience during presentation and consumption of dinner.

 

Though Gilkey doesn't do the plate work you might expect a busboy to do, he does his hat rack routine and a unique balancing routine. He lifts a plexiglass single post table to balance on his chin, and it is covered with a tablecloth on which rest a number of objects such as a teapot, cut and saucer, flowers and wedding cake decoration. He hooks a cane into the tablecloth, and yanks it out from under the objects without toppling any of them.

 

He's coming up with new ideas for routines all the time, and sometimes spends all day practicing and rehearsing. That time doesn't include much juggling, but the routines he develops often include his previously-developed juggling skills. He draws inspiration from music, from watching ice skating competitions, from dancing and from watching Buster Keaton films. "I've tried to cut myself off from juggling so I know I'm getting an original slant on things," he explained. "But I'm coming out of my hole a little now, and the IJA fest was the beginning of that. I enjoy being with other jugglers, but thought I needed to look for inspiration in other places to develop new angles."

 

Among those routines he has developed to this point include a number where he wears a small dart board on top of his head and throws darts up in the air to land on the board. At one point he throws a dart up and it misses the dart board and lands in his (padded) shoulder. He's also working on a routine in which a snaky PVC pipe is anchored on his head with help of suspenders. He twirls two hoops around the PVC pipe while spinning a ball on one finger, and he's working on putting another PVC pipe in his pants and spinning two more hoops around that. "Then, there's s the surprise ending with another object getting added!" he revealed.

 

He also does a handstand routine that ends as he lowers it into a head stand and smashes a tomato, and he is working on a clown routine based on Chinese pole climbing of a 20­foot pole.

 

He also wants four spare hat racks. The original one was only $15 and works perfectly, but he has spent hours in fruitless search looking for another one just like it. So he's now trying to construct some by welding together a frying pan base to a metal pole. He insists that the extras are just spares and not part of a future act... yet. "I'm not bored yet with the one I have, but I could see adding more on down the line!" he said.

 

Where's it all heading? Gilkey still wishes he knew for sure. He believes his character work plays well in a wide range of venues, from comedy clubs to Vegas hotel-casinos to variety shows. He has thought about doing a loose interpretation circus variety show variation of "A Christmas Carol," and hopes to audition more for commercials. At at the far end of the spectrum, he dreams the dream com­mon to almost all New Vaudevillians - a full­length one person show on Broadway.

 

That road is a long, long one, but Gilkey is satisfied that his success at the IJA festival helped get him going.