Bad Day to be a Juggler - A Celebration of the Geek or the Odd Ball in All of Us
Bad Day to be a Juggler will not teach you to juggle – but it will shed a light on why someone would want to become a juggler even though as he says “when you Google juggler – it autocorrects to unemployed”.
We are introduced to Aji (pronounced Ahh-Gee). He is friendly, smiley and interacts directly with the audience like a stand-up comic or street performer. He tells us that this isn’t a show about juggling, (although there will be juggling later), it is a show about jugglers and more specifically about him and his journey to become a juggler. It’s a hard thing to come out of the closet and tell your father that you like to play with your balls and you want to do it for a living.
For the first half of the show Aji shares his story – a monologue about his discoveries and obstacles on his road to becoming a Juggler – he does so without a fourth wall to the audience – he engages the audience as he shares a combination of stand-up and personal experiences. He acknowledges when his jokes don’t “hit” and makes humorous notes about them in his “comedy book” – but when his jokes do hit he laughs along with us. “It’s expensive to be a Juggler – you can’t just have one of anything”. At this point he shows us some cool tricks by catching ping-pong balls in his mouth…and confirms to us that the five-second rule doesn’t apply to a ping pong ball dropped on a dirty Fringe stage – right back in the mouth, now that is commitment!
Aji’s story takes us from joining the Circus with “the Fire Fabulon” and running off to San Francisco to apprentice in circus performance at the Clown Conservatory (the only professional circus clown training program in America). He then jumped aboard the Ringling Brothers Circus train to travel to and perform in over 45 American cities. I do wish that there had been more stories about the Clown College & Ringling Brothers – but I think his stories change nightly – so there might be the night you attend. As he learned new tricks he always remembered being told “A Jack of All Trades is a Master of None”…but he also continued to strive to surmount the “Useless Skills Checklist” that he created (& provided to you in your program).
As his story catches up to today – Aji gives the audience the opportunity to select what he will juggle from the objects on stage including hats, cups, yoyo’s, eggs, champagne, and the Deadly Implements of Destruction. (I will say that the Fringe won’t let him juggle fire in the venue – so he has had to resort to sharp knives and a spiked club to maintain the fear that we all require in a juggling act). The audience selects & Aji balances, tosses & juggles the items in Street Performer style – leading us on – building up the feat of danger & then completing it effortlessly as only a seasoned juggler can.
After the juggling he shares the useful and useless skills that have helped him to become who he is today…he does this while completing a Rubik’s cube in under a minute…another very impressive useless skill. Aji’s repertoire of useless skills is ever growing & he shares his quest to be the most useless performer on the planet…it is as if he is obsessed with it. He tells us…”being a Juggler is not the Disease…being a geek is the disease, being a juggler is just my form of the virus”. The show is a celebration of the Geek or the Odd Ball in all of us & it gives you permission to nurture your Inner Geek.
If you like juggling, street performers, family friendly comics or just a cute story about the struggle to be the best/most useless Geek (I mean Juggler) you can be – then you might want to check out this show.