On the Street

by Brad Weston 

 

I've got my passport and some money saved up and no shows yet scheduled for 1998. So, what should I do? I'm moving to Europe to street perform for a year! 

A lot of my friends and family say I'm crazy for going. They think that since I've just had the best year of my life as a performer I should stay here and build on my local success. But I hear the muses calling and I must go. 

 

I began street performing at the age of 13. There was a public zoo within walking distance of my house in Chicago. My first day out I made $15 and it seemed like a fortune! But winters in Chicago can be rough so I couldn't make a living at it year-round. 

 

I studied theatre at the Dell'Arte School and circus at Ringling Brothers. Then I found myself homeless in 1993, so I moved to New Orleans and really started thinking about working on the street for a living. I went to Europe a year later with only $100 in my pockets and no ticket back. My prop bag was stolen, and within a week my money was gone. But by doing contact juggling at outdoor cafe's I managed to make a living and enough extra money for a plane ticket home. 

 

So now I have confidence that when I return this time I will at the very least survive. The lesson I learned before was to have several back-up plans in place. 

 

I plan to fly to Amsterdam (I got a one-way ticket for only $240). From there I'll take a train to Germany to buy a van, because taxes are cheapest there. Then I'm heading straight to southern Spain where it's warm! I'll live in the van and work on the show, and by spring I hope to have a reasonably solid family juggling show for the street.

 

As for my back-up plans, I also have props for a fire show. And if that doesn't work I'll be doing statuary Charlie Chaplin, and if all else fails I'm bringing 40 bags of animal balloons with me. I believe in building as many safety nets as possible! 

 

In the next issue I'll let you know what has become of me, and how the show has developed. I expect to change and grow a lot during this venture, since a year on the road is worth ten normal years. I encourage all of you jugglers to take a whack at the street. It's not that tough, and at the very least it's a great way to pay for your trip. Until next time, happy travels!

 

Jugglers in the Bible?

by Victor Nash 

Baphael Harris' intriguing article, "Juggling in Ancient Hebrew Sources," in the Winter 1995-96 Juggler's World notes that "Jugglers and juggling are mentioned five times in the Talmud." That made me wonder if juggling is found in the Bible as well. 

 

In checking several concordances, however, I didn't find any juggling references. But with a little imagination, my granddaughter and I introduced jugglers into the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) and created from it a scenario for a fund-raising juggling show at our church! 

 

For the past three years, our Christ Church of Arlington, Va., has sponsored a series of weekly summer programs, known as "W.O.W.'s (Wildly Outrageous Wednesdays") for children ages 2 to 11. This past summer our director of ministries, Lonnie Evans, asked me to juggle and provide some juggling instruction at a W.O.W. session related to the theme of the Parable of the Talents. 

 

I agreed, and enlisted the help of Amy Ernest, my teenage granddaughter who is an excellent scarf juggler and was my teaching assistant at another "W.O.W." program (as described in my essay in the Winter 1994-95 

 

Our first task was to determine how to connect juggling to the Parable of the Talents. The story tells of an obviously well-to-do master of a household who goes on an extended trip, apparently to a distant land. Before leaving, he entrusts some of his money in varying amounts to his three servants, presumably for investment purposes. The money ("talents" of silver) is split among the servants - five talents to one servant, two talents to the second, and one talent to the third. 

 

When the master returns, the first servant proudly hands him his five original talents, along with five additional talents earned. In like manner, the second servant's two talents have also doubled. The master is well pleased, commending them both as "good and faithful servants" and offering them greater opportunities. The third servant, on the other hand, shamefacedly returns the one talent, confessing that he had buried it in the ground for safekeeping. The master angrily denounces and discharges the third servant, ordering him to give his one talent to the first servant. 

 

The master of the house didn't specify how his servants were to invest the money. But in those days you couldn't go down to your friendly neighborhood broker to buy stock, right? So it occurred to Amy and me that the two good servants might have been jugglers! They could have learned the skill from watching street jugglers passing through town with caravans from Egypt, where juggling had been practiced from the time of the pharaohs. 

 

We omitted the third servant from the show because, being lazy and irresponsible, he would have been a flop as a juggler! But we figured the two good servants might well have recognized the financial possibilities of using their juggling skills to present a show for the town folk. 

 

The day of the show arrived. To introduce the juggling performance, Lonnie, Amy and I did a brief skit in which Lonnie, as master of the house, presented his two reliable servants - Amy and me - with seven talents, and charged us to invest them wisely while he was away on his trip. 

 

We bid him farewell, we then ad-libbed some dialog leading to our decision to stage the show and sell tickets. At that point, the 24 children in the audience were issued "W.O.W. money shekels" with which to buy admission tickets and refreshments. Then it was "on with the show!" 

 

I made some comments about juggling, demonstrated some of my props and closed with the old reliable apple-eating trick. Now and then I dropped something, either accidentally or on purpose, to demonstrate that dropping is nothing to be ashamed of. 

 

Next, Amy went through her specialty routine with scarves - a flawless effort, moving with the style and grace of a ballerina, kneeling and rising, and closing with a four-scarf pattern. 

 

Next came 25 minutes worth of the wonderfully entertaining "Juggling" videotape by Strider Productions. They especially liked Dick Franco juggling ping pong balls! 

Following the video we gave 30 minutes of juggling instruction to W.O.W. participants. The 1994 class had learned with scarves, but since I had spent many Saturdays as a pre- teenager at home practicing with socks after watching the juggling acts on stage at the Fox and Earl Theaters in downtown Washington, D.C., we thought we'd experiment with socks this time. 

 

We demonstrated the basic moves and our enthusiastic pupils followed suit, step by step, until most of them did the pattern correctly - though not always smoothly. We gave three socks a try, but decided it would be better to let the kids practice at home with two before attempting three. 

 

Amy and I are looking forward hopefully to future "W.O.W." sessions which might include juggling instruction and progressively challenging routines. We would enjoy hearing from IJA members who may have had similar juggling experiences in connection with church- sponsored activities. 

 

I bet you never expected to find jugglers in a Bible story, did you? But, on the other hand, why not? Pm sure all will agree there is no art form more honorable, respectable and self-giving than juggling. If you don't believe it, just read the "Juggler of Notre Dame!"