MW: Tell me about your gymnastic training.

MF: I've performed in teeterboard acts and trampoline routines through the years, and I'm still active in acrobatics. I'm working now with some guys toward performing a teeterboard act next summer. We're getting together tomorrow to work with a spotting rig so we can do multiple spins and twists.

 

It's just sort of a hobby, but it's a lot of fun. It's like flying when you get shot off a teeter

board, it launches you up there about 20-25 feet. It has taken years of practice to arrive at the point where I have a coherent sense of air space, to know where I am in the air. Turning one flip is one thing, but when you start doing more it takes a lot of practice.

 

MW: Do you feel like your juggling and gymnastics feed each other?

MF: Not really. There's not much comparison between gymnastics and juggling. You

can't combine the two at all in performance, and I treat them pretty separately. Juggling is better complemented by dance, and the hand­eye coordination it develops doesn't really improve my gymnastics the way it might a sport like baseball or basketball.

 

I enjoy the creativity of juggling and the sense of meditation within it. In trampoline, though, the zen is very rapid. You can practice tricks for hours, but with the trampoline and teeterboard things happen less frequently and quicker. You get a big endorphine, adrenaline rush from the teeterboard and trampoline that you don't experience once you've juggled anything for a while - even knives or torches.

 

MW: How was it that you and Curt parted paths ?

MF: I choreographed a club routine that was actually somewhat similar to what Curt and I competed with in 1988 in Denver at the IJA festival. It was done with comedy and music, and it ended with eight clubs in the black light. We also added a three ball routine, so, instead of just having Carter's hoop juggling act we had club passing and balls.

 

I was also pretty much prop master for the act, and built the magic illusions, the big dragon "Alfonso," some of the things we had for spirits and the black light routines. Alfonso came about one day when Carter said, "I'd like a dragon." So I started working on it. The first conception was pretty pitiful, but you learn from your mistakes and I rebuilt it three or four times until it looked pretty good and held together on stage.

 

MW: When you parted ways with Carter did you immediately cool out for a while? How did you get from that point to the Jim Rose Circus Side Show?

MF: I worked Lazer Vaudeville for about three years, then came back to Chicago. I was just taking a break and somebody mentioned that Jim Rose's show was coming to town. It sounded interesting so I called up Jim and talked to him about how I might fit into the show.

 

MW: You just took it upon yourself to call Jim Rose because you thought you might fit in?! That's pretty direct marketing!  

MF:  Thanks.  That's how I do all my stuff.

 

MW: I would've never thought to call the guy. What was that like? Were you nervous, because he'd been getting a lot of notice and national press?

MF: No. I didn't really know about the show so I wasn't intimidated. I just thought of him as any other performer or entertainer, a peer. I called him up and said I was a juggler who throws knives, eats fire, etc., and he left me some tickets to the show at the door.

I saw the show and felt like I could fit in, so I gave him some promo material before he left town, and we kept in touch sporadically for about five months. Then he called up one day and asked if I could do chain saws. I showed him a tape of me juggling a chain saw and doing the Bobby May cigarette trick - throwing the cigarette behind your back and catching it in your mouth, then throwing a lit match behind your back and catching it in your mouth also to light the cigarette.

 

That was all he needed to see! He said later that was the trick that stunned him, that sealed the deal.

 

MW: That sounds like an incredible trick. How do you go about learning it?

MF: I had done cigarette tricks for a long time, like throwing it behind my back to catch it in my mouth, and putting a lit cigarette on my foot and kicking it up. But learning to catch the lit match was the hard part! It really made me respect Bobby May because it's an amazing trick. Bobby used to close out his act with it.

 

It was hard to learn and I did bum myself a few times. But after a while I got to where I could recognize the match rotation enough to get out of the way or blow it away from my face if it wasn't coming in right. There are little things you can do to make it easier, like spinning the match a little to help it turn. I tried a bunch of different brands, but ended up using regular blue tip wooden kitchen matches. I only know of two other people beside me who do it now - Barnaby in the Southwest and a performer with Cirque Archaos.