LAURA GREEN WAS A successful art director working for a prestigious insurance company in Baltimore, Maryland. She had everything a corporate designer could ask for- impressive salary, posh office and a large staff.

 

But she also had a constant migraine headache. To regain her sanity, Green turned to juggling, and in the past 13 years she has steadily worked her was across the streets and stages of the United States, Canada, The Republic of China and Japan. She's also art director for Juggler's World and the IJA's 1989 convention chairman.

 

Her success as "Miz Tilly" has been won with practice, patience, failure, and the steady support of many excellent teachers and role models. Her first teacher was Reggie "Mr. Slim" Bacon, who taught her the fundamentals of juggling and street performing. Bacon's three ball technique and presentation are still the foundation of her vaudevillian style. He often visited Baltimore, and was the mentor of "The Free Lance Fools," Laura's first band of jugglers there. The Fools entertained on the East Coast for three years, and Miz Tilly began the slow learning that is street performance.

 

In the summer of 1980, she attended Clown Camp in Canton, Maine, studying under Bob Berkey, Fred Garver and Bounce the Clown. There she met several jugglers who influenced her, including Toni Shifalo, Rodger French, Mark Keppel and Robert Peck. This was to be Laura's only "formal" training. The school of hard knocks on the open streets became her chief classroom.

 

Following Clown Camp, she teamed up with Joe Fleischman and for three years performed as "The Crabtown Jugglers." They convinced the management of Baltimore's Harbor Place to open up that tourist mecca for street performing, and laid the groundwork for this showcase of American juggling comedy and street theater.

 

Vancouver captured Miz Tilly in January of 1983, and for one year she performed as "The Conductor" of "The Extraordinary Clown Band," a radical gang of 25 fools which specialized in music and political clowning.

 

It was on a long solo in the boonies of the Okanagen Valley in British Columbia that Laura was faced with creating a solo vaudeville show. Hired as the "town clown" in the small city of Kelowna, B.C., she had to perform for the same audience night after night, in the town square on Lake Okanagen. Being forced to create new material every 24 hours led her to develop a natural improv comedy style that she now fondly describes as "close-up street theater."

 

"I don't play a character, I merely allow my simple, stupid self to take over. For me, it works beautifully."

 

In 1984 Laura and her husband, Martin, moved again to Los Angeles, where he was hired to design mass transit systems and she was hired to entertain tourists during the Olympics. Once again, it was a lengthy, daily gig clowning for a regular crowd of tourists, street people, drug addicts and Hell's Angels. "The Hell's Angels were great! Nice boys, really. They liked my drumming bear best! "

 

There was a memorable Venice Beach show where an audience member

kept insisting that Jesus was right down the beach. "Ah! Street theater! Nothing compares for kicks!"

 

The IJA's 1984 convention in Las Vegas brought Susan Kirby into Laura's life. Together they returned to Los Angeles to play the Olympic Stadium and Venice Beach. Green said, "Susan Kirby is a tremendous inspiration to me. She is an elegant, exceptional juggler of great technical skill. Having her as a partner is a humbling experience!"

 

Laura returned to Baltimore after the Olympic adventures, but certainly didn't settle down. She lived in the Republic of China for several months, performing extensively across the country, and teaching English. She performed street in all of  the major plazas and street markets in Taipei. The experience was exhilarating! "The startling thing for me was the realization of how many, many people there were packed all around to watch my shows. My husband snapped a photo that shows this solid sea of Chinese people, and then way high in the air are these red stage balls. The people crowded so closely that once I planted my feet I couldn't move!"