Cascading Through Life with the Rock n' Roll Circus

Interview between Mark Faje and Michael Weiser.

 

We're going to be talking about Mark's experiences as a juggler, his time spent with Lazer Vaudeville and the Jim Rose Circus Side Show as well as his future plans.

 

MW: Why don't you give us some back­ground about yourself.

MF: Let's see... I learned when I was l2 living at home in Elmhurst, Ill. I didn't do much with it for a while, then I really got going when I was 15 or 16. That was caused in part because I met other kids in gymnastics class who could also juggle, and we'd try to outdo each other. One of them was Curt Bonnem, who later became my partner. The group eventually dwindled down to Curt and l. We were a team in high school our sophomore through senior years.

 

I really became obsessed with it about that time. I even took my props to school and worked out twice a day there. Since I was on the gymnastics team I didn't have to take phys ed, so I'd juggle in the orchestra room that period and again during the lunch period.

 

MW: I can understand when you talk about your obsession. As a local juggler around here I ran into a lot of people who like juggling, but I never met anybody who was as obsessed with it as you were!

MF: I was obsessed with it. I thought a lot of jugglers got obsessed with it for a small period of time, but I was obsessed with it for a long time... for years. I eventually dropped out of college at College of DuPage (the same one Belushi went to), because of my juggling. Not to say that's a bad thing. That's what I wanted to do and that's what I'm still doing. But I was certainly obsessed!

 

MW: So let's talk about your first performing.

MF: The first performing I ever did was at the Windy City Circus back in '85-'86. It wasn't a traveling circus, but a school where kids would enroll to learn some basic circus skills. I could juggle and do a little trampoline, so I taught that. Then I learned some high wire, unicycle, rolling globe, and flying trapeze.

 

At age 16 I started doing Rens Faire with Curt as the "Course I Can Brothers." We did a variety of things, including some good technical stuff like the cigarette knockout routine with seven clubs and a kickup around a person with seven.

 

We also did a magic trick, Houdini's metamorphosis, and a comedy runaround routine that at one time had us juggling frogs, an apple and a bunch of puns! We showed people the frogs were real at first, then we distracted them and switched one before we juggled them, so it ended up with me eating the fake frog after Curt said something about "Don't get a frog in your throat." I doubt the frogs liked it very much, and it was hard enough for us to find new frogs every morning. that routine didn't last too long, but we ended up working together for about 3-1/2 years.

 

Curt and I attended the IJA festival in Akron in 1987 and entered the Juniors. He won and I came in third. The next year in Denver we were the big hopefuls for Teams and blew it big time! It was a juggler's nightmare. Everything went wrong. It was all the floor's fault. That was my joke of the night! We didn't get a chance to practice at the gym, unfortunately; so we had no idea about the floor and we were opening with a bouncing routine that just died right there. It's so hard to keep going when your opening act just dies.

 

It still comes up in conversation more than I'd like, but I can laugh about it now. The best part about it was that Albert Lucas was nice to us afterward. He came up and consoled us and gave us some professional advice.