Interviews with Jugglers

Andrew

So, let's start with why you became a juggler

John

You

Andrew

Thank you

John

Next question

Andrew

I guess I'm just a talented audience and that's what a great artist needs

John

Yes

Andrew

Or did you mean something else?

John

I meant something else... Why did I become a juggler? Oh, I know why, I know, I know. Because I couldn't do anything else. I was, I was like in high school, 13 years old, I was in the eight grade. I had just sort of failed in soccer. I had already failed a long time ago in baseball. I was OK at ping pong but, it's hard to pick up chicks with ping pong. Actually it is with juggling too, of course I didn't know that at the time. If somebody had told me I would never have started. You know at that time I was doing track but, I wasn't any good at track so I sort of relinquished myself to triple jump. And there's not too many 13 year old triple jumpers in the world so I was pretty good at that. So I was basically looking for things that the least amount of people did because I knew I would be good at it. But then when I got to high school there were more triple jumpers so I was even further down on the scale because I was never good at that. So again I was looking for something that nobody else did - that way I could be the best at it. And then juggling was the last thing, so I'm a juggler.

Andrew

You started out working trying to be a technical juggler I seem to recall.

John

Yes

Andrew

I mean you entered the IJA numbers competition and the US Nationals and so on.

John

Right.

Andrew

You're not anymore.

John

Right.

Andrew

Why did you change from the pursuit of technique to the..

John

'Cause it's hard.

Andrew

And having a stage character isn't?

John

It is. I reached a point where I thought I was not improving anymore or not at the rate that was necessary on a technical level to compete with my peers and I had just slowed down. Again the Six Club competition; the reason I did that because I knew nobody else was going to be in the competition. Or I knew relatively nobody else in it. And, as it was, I was right. it was Ken and I. Ken Falk and me. So I had definite top three. But then, it just came, no it was too hard. At the same time I was in college and I was studying movie musicals, Gene Kelley, Fred Astaire, things like that. And I began to have a wider influence. So that I wasn't just influenced by technique, by technical jugglers, by other jugglers. I was influenced by dancers and you know, whatever, clowns, comedy.

Andrew

Did the coat rack routine come from Fred Astaire?

John

He stole it from it me.

Andrew

Ah.

John

Yes, a direct steal from Fred Astaire. But, remember now, remember if the person is dead, it's carrying on the tradition.

Andrew

And he didn't have the right hairdo for it.

John

He didn't have the right hairdo. And neither did I, you know, the routine didn't fly until I got the right hairdo.

Andrew

Uhm hm, Tell me about that..

John

That's actually true.

Andrew

The character you do that routine in, where did he come from?

John

He came from various places. He came from the hair. I looked at myself after I cut my hair. I looked at myself and there was this dorky guy there. I mean it's, I hope they understand dorkiness, excellent English word. Dorky. It came from the music... the character came about all in this scope of time that I was putting it together (the coat rack routine) and that was really the molding routine of the character. So, the music was a big part of it. The haircut happened at the same time. The costume came together at that time. And it was also, it was the first thing I did. It was the first piece I'd worked on of my own in several years. I'd just returned to the states after being in Switzerland for two years. And I sort of had this broader base, this wider vocabulary from which I could pull. And it was the first, the first manifestation of all of that. And that's why it got so character influenced, that routine. And that character came out of all that time and energy of studying all that physical work. Whether it was commedia dell'arte or dance or whatever it all came together in that routine.

Andrew

Do you think about Tim as being a separate person with his own likes and dislikes and his own character? How much do you personify him?

John

I don't, and that may be a mistake. I mean sometimes when I work with acting friends or on the character. You know, we'll do some acting exercises and part of that is writing up a little bio for Tim. But, really if you compare that to me it will be quite close. I mean if John were to do one and Tim were to do one, they'd be pretty close. I don't pretend to, Tim is a large part of me and I don't try to separate it too much. It's interesting... It's interesting. Tim may also have come out about the same time I was becoming more comfortable with myself as a person. I think Tim's ultimate dorkiness, of which he's unaware, is sort of part of... is sort of... I, John, identify with that. I think the haircut works for John as much as it works for Tim. So that at that point in my life I was becoming more comfortable with who I am, who John is. And you know if I'm a tall skinny geeky looking guy it's time I stopped fighting that, which I'd done nearly most of my life. And Tim obviously doesn't worry about that at all. John still worries about it somewhat and Tim is sort of an escape. But, I've got the haircut 24 hours a day, it's not a wig I put on and the haircut symbolizes that for John as well as for Tim, that if I'm going to be dorky I might as well make myself really dorky. I don't know if that makes any sense to you. But that's part of where that all came from... Tim. Yeah. We'll put it out in French also.

Andrew

In the shows that you did here in San Francisco with Tim he seems to be clearly gay. Do you think of him as gay or is that just environment he found himself in?

John

No, and it's interesting that you say that. I had though at some time that he appeared gay but, most people said no. No, he's not gay.

Andrew

Not even his relationship with the MC?

John

He was a boytoy, yes. He was but, unaware of it, too. We talked about it a little bit. We discussed what was Tim's sexuality and what is Tim's knowledge of his sexuality. And... it's getting pretty deep, huh? And unfortunately now that, let me think about it, we had a good way to think about it before. At this point, let me say Tim was asexual. Neither gay nor straight. His relationship with the character you're referring to, I think, certainly appears gay in San Francisco. Certainly in the context of that show where there were so many gay and cross dressing performers. Somebody is going to assume that my character is gay. The haircut has been described as gay. For me, John, Tim was asexual, prepubescent almost. I don't think he's a kid, but he is prepubescent. Which I think was part of the neat thing was his reaction to those characters, the cross dressers and the gay characters or whatever, was this sort of, was just interesting to see. Yeah.

Andrew

Life with the Pickles, let's go back, way back in time. How many years were you with the Pickle Family Circus?

John

For four and a half years, from '87 to '91.

Andrew

What do you think you learned from the Pickles?

John

Everything. I mean it was the greatest experience of my life, probably. It was... not only did I learn about performing but, I learned about John as well. It was an incredibly supportive environment, a nurturing environment both for me as a person and for me as a performer. People always after a show when people are impressed by what I have done, they will always ask where did you study? And I give the same answer every time. And the answer is that I've always had the incredibly good fortune to work with very talented people, that I haven't really studied. I've studied very little formally. I've taken a couple of classes here and there, a couple of workshops here and there. But I've studied very little formally but, and the Pickles is the perfect example, I've had the incredible good fortune to work with really talented people. No place more than the Pickles. Directors, choreographers, fellow performers, it's impossible not to absorb that talent.

Andrew

Given that and given all the tremendous performers that have come out of the Pickle Family Circus, that show, the circus show never seems to have scaled the heights. Seems it has a tremendous amount of potential over the years that has never been realized. Do you think that's true? And if so, what's stopped the Pickles all these years?

John

Its definitely true, I was just talking to Tandy Beal about this the other night. She is the current Director, Artistic Director and Choreographer and conceptual force with the Pickles right now. It never has gone the way it should. She said as an example, and this is true always, she was at the show when they were at Lincoln Center a couple of years ago and she was sitting in the back. She already knew she was going to be coming to see the show, she paid for a ticket. She just sort of went on a lark to the show. And she sat in the back and the audience just loved the show, as they do all the time. And the show goes over very well almost invariably. And she just sat there crying, wondering what the hell are they doing wrong. Why hasn't it worked? Why hasn't it worked? The answers are, in my mind, they are varied. I don't pretend to know all the answers but, I have my ideas.

I think the marketing is wrong, it's always been wrong since I've been there. Wrong meaning the marketing has taken the wrong angle. That they undercut themselves in the marketing. That's one reason, another reason is that they were for a long time thought of as a hippie, and they were, a hippie circus. They are transitioning out of that now, almost fully transitioned out of that at this point arguably. But their audience is still that hippie audience and their reputation is that. And they haven't overcome that. They have to do that with marketing as well as the show itself. I think the show itself does almost conquer that goal. Currently they have, I'm a guest artist with them right now, and so it's the first time I've performed there for four years. They just opened in Santa Cruz this past weekend, a couple of days ago, and the show went over very very well. Personally though, I think there are some artistic choices that Tandy has made that will keep them back. That's just on a personal level, I think they are, again even with the show itself, the artistic aspect of the show itself. They are undercutting themselves with what I call too much wholesomeness, it's a little bit false. Its a little bit middle, not middle America, it's a little bit you know whatever this symbol is, sticking your finger in your cheek, and aren't we cute? The validity of what they are doing, I mean what they are doing is valid enough they don't need to support it artificially with the style they are performing in now. That's my opinion. And then there's other things, should I go on about this, or have you heard enough about that one?

Andrew

I'm interested personally but, I don't think it will make it into the final article. I don't think it will be interesting to anyone outside California.

John

Although actually, Germany got a really... in Germany there's a really big article on the Pickles in Die Zeit a year or go, so there are actually, and they are on the promo advertisements for one of the main TV stations. So they may actually may be known, but besides that.

Andrew

On to your time in Switzerland, who were you working with there, what were you doing?

John

I was working with Teatro Dimitri, which is a theatre company founded by Dimitri, a famous Swiss clown. And he has a school, a theatre school and a theatre company that are based in the Southern part of Switzerland, in the Italian part. And I was there for two years performing as an actor, as a comedic physical actor. And we performed two pieces that were both very physical in nature. One was a commedia dell'arte piece and I played Brighella. And the other piece was an adaptation of an Irish Fable in which I played, in which we all played, two roles in that. One was a masked character. One was a regular old character. And we toured around Europe, chiefly Germany and Switzerland. But also Italy, we played Romania and the Soviet Union as well. And that was a good experience in juggling.

Andrew

Were you doing any juggling in those shows?

John

Doing very little, in the one show which was called La Regina dei Magnini, I did. We did a circus scene in the context of the show. And in that circus scene, I did juggling and hoop diving and pole climbing. Hoop diving and pole climbing, two disciplines I learned in the Pickles. And the juggling was actually kind of cool, it was not great, it was kind of cool. We did, we were gypsies, were playing three gypsies and myself and my partner, Andi Manz, passed three hammers and one staff, about a five and a half foot staff. And we did some cool really inventive stuff, not brilliant but, it was neat. And then I also did a three ball routine that was kind of cool. It was almost really good but, it was kind of, never really hit really good. The concept was good though and it was, I was fighting with the woman who was playing my wife, not physically but we were having an argument, and we both grabbed our aparati de spaz, I don't know how you want to call it. But she grabbed her saxophone and played out her emotions on the saxophone. I grabbed my three juggling balls and played out my emotions through a juggling routine. And we, she had the music and I had the juggling, and in the end we came together, and it was really kind of neat. And sometimes I think it did work really well, we had it quite together but not always. And in the other show, oh god what was the other show called, oh I don't know. The other show I did hardly had any juggling, it was chiefly acting. And then I did a third show which had no juggling at all. And that was actually one of the really wonderful experiences. It was a show with two other actors and myself, directed by this really far out French director. And it was sort of a farcical history of the world played by this sort of clown characters. I hesitate to say clown because it conjugates.. it makes you think of make up and such. But, it was sort of broad characters I would say. And that was really a good piece, a really neat piece but we didn't get to play it very often. But I learned a lot of acting skills there and the style of it was just wonderful.

Andrew

And after two years of this you came back to the states. Now you did one more in Germany recently.

John

At the Wintergarten, yeah. At the Wintergarten, that was pretty neat, it's an amazing theatre. They've got like over a million marks worth of old artifacts on the walls including some of Rastelli's, they had a trunk from Rastelli, one of his soccer balls. I think some rings. And it was originally, I mean I don't have to go into the history of the Wintergarten, that's for Kaskade, they know it better than I do. It was neat though, it was a neat experience. It was uhm, yeah I don' t know what to say about it.

Andrew

Tell me about the show.

John

The show was, I thought it was a decent show. I heard some people, some of my friends, thought it wasn't very good at all. The general consensus was that it was the best show so far that the Wintergarten had put on so far since it's reopening. And, at that time, two and a half years of being reopened. Although judging from the show I saw that preceded ours, it wouldn't be too hard to top the other shows. So I can imagine why ours would still be the best and still bad. But I thought it was alright. There were some really cool acts. I... there was some, you know acrobatics..

Andrew

I publish that and you're never working there again, John.

John

Well you can sanitize it a little bit. But like I said, I thought it was a good show. In my opinion it was a good show. There were some really great acts. I was puzzled sometimes by the response that certain acts got. Acts I thought weren't as strong got really great response from the audience and visa versa. And that puzzled me to no end till the end. Including my coat rack routine didn't get the response I had hoped it would have. I'm still to this day not exactly sure why. But in general it was quite fun. They are really fun people, fun crew. The audience, there is always an audience, even on a Monday night. And we performed seven days a week. And even on Monday and Tuesday nights there's an audience there, sold out on the weekends. And it's really great, there's nothing like that in the states. There's nothing like that in the states and it's a real pity. When people talk about putting something like that up, there's no way we can do it on the scale that they do it there. And it's just a dream that we could someday have something like that and have it be popular here. I wish we could or I wish they, or somebody there with bucks, would take the know-how and would open up a theatre like that here because it's a wonderful thing, it really is.

Andrew

Yeah, it's just that there isn't much of a market for variety shows in America anymore.

John

There's not a market for it, that doesn't mean that we can't create one. I think there's a false pretense about variety acts. That they are novelty acts. That they are just looked down upon in the states. Letterman had, on Thanksgiving evening, a trapeze act on his show. The first variety act that he's had in a long, long time and the way he introduces it is "here's something for the kids". And a woman comes out in a g-string and the guy comes out and, you know, in pants and no shirt. And they do this incredible, probably the best trapeze act I've ever seen. It's a still act, not flying trapeze, and it's "something for the kids". Well, you know, how you gonna get over that? And in particular, if it's David Letterman whose, you know he and Jay Leno have never, number one, are the guys in the strongest position to promote variety acts. Generally the late night TV, after Ed Sullivan anyway, you had Johnny Carson, that's where acts in the states were gonna be seen. Not in live theatre but on TV, on Carson. And now Leno and Letterman are the two number one guys that have the opportunity to do that but, choose not to, both of them hate variety acts. So there's no venue, there's no showcase for variety and when it is on it's belittled like that. And I'm just a little bit bitter about it.

Andrew

Do you want to talk about your audition about the Cirque or should we still...

John

No we shouldn't mention that at all.

Andrew

I mean by the time this is, even by the time I get this typed up, you'll have the contract signed, sealed and delivered.

John

OK, well we can do that if you want to but, if we don't come to an agreement on the contract then it gets cut. And actually nobody should know at this point, you are one of the very few people that know.

Andrew

I will run the whole thing by you before I publish it anyhow. And I'll need you to correct my spelling.

John

You can just FAX it to me. This is actually kind of a fun story. And this is fun because I haven't been telling anyone about this. But, I originally auditioned for them a year ago. In their tent in Santa Monica and it was quite a fun audition. I'd never enjoyed an audition like that before so, anyhow I don't know how much detail you want me to go into on this. But, somehow I had this sudden bout of confidence when I went into this audition. Something that's never happened to me before. And there were about 12 or 13 of us auditioning, the other 12 people were dancers. And really good dancers from the touring company of Cats and what have you. And then there was me. And it was basically a dance audition, they ran it as a dance audition, and I was in the back the whole time flailing just trying to keep up with all these dancers. Trying to keep from getting kicked in the face and all this kind of thing but, I was having a ball. I don't know why but, I was having a ball and I was just doing things my way. My goofy way, I knew I couldn't do it the way they were doing it. It was too big of a gap between their skill and my skill for me to even attempt to do it like they were doing so I just did it my way... goofy, dorky way. Interpret their moves, the moves that the choreographer was giving us and have fun with it and just smile.

And after about half the audition, they pulled us all together and said, OK we're split you into two groups now. We'll take some of the people over there. And the actors over there will work on acting. And at the beginning of the audition I'd said I was more of an actor than a dancer. And the dancers will stay here. And I was like, oh, great I've gotten through the dance part and I felt OK about that. Cool, now we go to acting, I'm ready. And they said OK, George, Linda and Jenny go over there for acting and the rest of you stay here. And I was like, wait a second, and my hand shot up. And I said wait a second, you want me to go over to the actors, right? They say no, no, no, we want you to stay here with the dancers. So, I had to go for another hour and half of that dancing crap.

And they put us on the fast track which is this long trampoline and I fell flat on my face, you know. But again I was having a fun time. They kept me afterwards, after three hours, they kept me afterwards asking questions and stuff. So that was the beginning of our relationship which continued throughout the year. And we continued to talk and continued to keep in contact throughout the year. They kept saying, OK we'll have an answer, you know, April. And I would call in April and they would say, well yeah, we'll have an answer in June. And this went on, and then finally they said, well we'll know in September. October 1st came and they hadn't called and I said well, forget that. And I started pursuing these other leads for next year '96.

Well, middle of October the casting director calls me and says, we're having a little, we're bringing together for an etage, a workshop, a few of the people we are considering for the principle personage in Montreal. And this is something I had suggested to her before, that we do. If the director was having so much trouble deciding, why doesn't he just bring us all together and look at us together and decide. So now they were gonna do that. Unfortunately, of course, I had a gig. So, I could only make it to the last of three days, but that turns out OK, no problem, that's better than nothing.

So they flew me out there, and it was pretty fun. We did, you know, three hours in the afternoon. They basically put us in, seven of us in, to what was essentially a rehearsal of maybe an opening scene so they had the acrobats there, the house crew, the core group. And they sort of had us do stuff, you know, be goofy, whatever. And it was pretty fun. I didn't feel like I was brilliant. I felt like I did OK. Although, the main thing relative to the other people that were there I thought, myself and one other guy were doing probably what they wanted to see. Where as the other five people were, I thought, not the right style for what they were looking for. Well that night I got back to my hotel room after we'd been out with among other people the Artistic Director who hadn't talked to me all night long. And I thought, oh this is a bad sign. And he talked to me for like one, he asked me like one question. I answered and he says, can I sit over there? He wanted to switch seats with me because he wanted to talk to this other woman. So I thought OK, there's no way I got this if he's talking to me like this. Well that night there's a message from the Casting Director at the hotel for me. And I called him the next morning and he offered me the job.

And so now we are negotiating a contract. And it would be, I must say, a dream come true. Ever since I first saw their show, in 1987 when they first came to the states, it's before they made it big. It was when they made it big, in Los Angeles in 1987 at the Los Angeles Theatre Festival, it was the best show they ever did. They've gone downhill ever since in my opinion. Well it was an incredible show, it was the best show of anything I'd ever seen. And it just blew me away.

And one of the main roles was performed by a man named Marc Proulx. And he defined the role of principle personage for Cirque de Soleil, which they continued to have in every show thereafter. Which is sort of a character that weaves in and out of the show, eccentric dance, comic, not the main clown, or anything like that but, a role really you can't see anywhere else. Nowhere else that I've seen a role like this. A role into which you can put this much energy, into which you can be this wild, this controlled. In which you can have such a relationship to the audience and to the performers. The really, the conduit between the performers and the audience, this character, when it's done well. And they've done it well in some shows and not so well in others. And it's been a dream for me to play something like this ever since I saw Mark in 1987 do this. And I had a chance to work with him in the Pickles. He came and I learned a great deal from him, I worked with him for only three months, four months, but learned an incredible amount from him. And when Cirque offered me the role of one of two principle personage for the new show, you know, I just about freaked. Course I'm trying to get as much money as I can from them. But it is, it's a non juggling role. I won't be juggling, they are going to be doing a little bit of acrobatics, who knows. But I think it is, oh I could go on and on about it.

Andrew

Go ahead.

John

Of course we haven't been in rehearsals yet, and the director hasn't directed me yet. But my dream, which I think will come true and will continue, is that this is a role in which I can really come into my own. Juggling is so hard to perform, it is the hardest discipline to perform. I've done clown, I've done straight acting, I've done acrobatics, and I've done juggling. Juggling is the hardest one to perform. And it's the hardest to, through which to give yourself.

Andrew

Why do you think that is?

John

It takes too much concentration. It's really fucking hard. It's really fucking hard to juggle. For me, I mean you are also talking to the guy who gave up the technique stuff because he was losing and he wasn't, you know. But for me it takes too much concentration. OK I've got, and that's why I've scaled down the technique on my routines. Because I want to perform it, I don't want to go out there and juggle it. There is a definite distinction between performing something and between juggling something. That's what I call it. Performing something is where I am there. It's me and juggling. Juggling something, to juggle something is when there is juggling and there's a guy. There's a guy and it might be John Gilkey and it might be another guy, who cares.

Now with acrobatics I've found and with acting and with this character even more so. Because I'll get to do dance, eccentric dance, which I've never been able to do but, I've had inside me. When I'm hanging out in the middle of the night in my room and got the radio turned up all the way and I'm just freakin' out. I mean I could just go hog wild and I'm gonna get paid to do that now. And I think it's going to be able to..

I wanna be a rock and roll star. Not necessarily a rock and roll star but, a singer but I can't do that. But what appeals to me about that is the unconstrained, the abandoned emotion that goes into rock and roll singing. That goes into rock and roll singing by a good performance group. I mean you see it in good dance. Just totally giving of yourself, all your energy going into the dance, occasionally you see it. I can't put that much energy, all the energy I have for a performance, I can't put into a juggling act without dropping. It takes controlled energy to do a juggling act. And this role, as I'm imaging and hoping it's going to be for Cirque, depending on how the director directs me. I will be able to let loose. And be able to just, pow! I hope that's true, I hope it comes out that way. It could be just really cool. And the other cool things, it's gonna be so cool man. You're gonna get me, you're gonna have to stop me because you're the first person I've really talked to about this. I've only been rehearsing this for weeks in my mind for when I get to tell people.

Not only that but, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get to keep this image. Cirque de Soleil has the, usually they'll put people in all these costumes, cover their faces in masks, or other stuff. And one of the neat things about this is that, I'm pretty sure I'm being hired for my look. So it will be me out there. It'll be me, this haircut and this face. And they don't usually have that. And to be able to perform for 2500 people who are an easy audience granted. Because of all the lights and all the stuff that Cirque has, I mean it's an easy audience and it really makes my job easy.

Its just going to be great. Its gonna be totally great. A dream come true literally. And I just can't wait, I can't wait. It comes back to that sudden bout of confidence I had in the audition. I've never had this much confidence about a job in my life. I mean here it is, it's Cirque de Soleil, it's big exposure, big time, you know. You better know what you are doing. But I know this is something that I can do. And I know I'll do it well, I've never felt that way about any job before. I'm so glad I don' t have to worry about dropping. I think that's what it is, after juggling anything is easy. I mean I go on, I go on commercial auditions and stuff and it's just easy. That doesn't mean I get the jobs but, it's easy because man, juggling is just too hard. So that's some of why I'm so excited about Cirque, and I hope we can come to an agreement. I hope so.

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