Lawrence.com

The Jester Rejects are twin brothers Kent and Kevin Mercer. They have traveled around the world, with the circus and on their own, to juggle and perform as clowns. They're from Independence, Mo.

What was the circus like?

Kent: The first circus we did was in Taiwan. We were there for about six months. That was definitely a learning experience. Not just learning the circus trade, but learning communication with different cultures, different people. I remember the first town, we were in Taipei and we were going to move to the second town. This was when we had a communication problem with the local Chinese. We told them that we were going to need an eight-ton crane to pick up the trailers and put them on the semis to move them to the next town. They were like, "OK, OK, no problem." Each day we were getting closer to moving time. There was no crane.

Kevin: You've got to rent it, so you've got to get at least a good week to week and a half notice to make sure you have it.

Kent: They were like, "OK, no problem, no problem." So finally, on the moving day, they said that they didn't get the crane but they'd have it tomorrow. The next day they go down there and they didn't have an eight-ton crane there. No, they had a six-ton and a two-ton.

Kevin: No joke. That really happened. And they did not understand why that wouldn't work.

Kent: They were like, "Um, this isn't going to work. We need an eight-ton crane." They were like, "Well, six and two makes eight. Why is this a problem?"

How do you like traveling around all the time?

Kent: It has its ups and downs.

Kevin: It's a gypsy life.

Kent: You get to experience new people, new cultures. That's a good thing. But the bad thing could be, well, you're always away from home.

Kevin: Never home. It's exciting, but at the same time, it's sometimes lonely. That's just the price you pay.

You guys were in the Ringling Brothers Clown College?

Kevin: We never did the Ringling school. We learned with a man named Frosty Little, who is the main guy that made the Ringling school what it was. So we learned from the same source but didn't go to the actual school.

Kent: When we wanted to go, we found out he'd retired, but he was the one we wanted to learn from.

Kevin: If he wasn't at the school we knew it wasn't going to be quite the same. We followed him instead.

Where did you find him?

Kent: Burley, Idaho.

Kevin: We called him up and said we'd be interested in learning anything he had to teach, and he's like "What do you want to know?" One thing led to another. He did it in three days but he also had a school in Virginia for a week and he invited us over to that as well. In the three days he crammed us full of a lot of information real quick.

Kent: He'd been teaching at the clown college for over 20 years. He really knew how to break it down and teach it to you. He told us how to build anything and everything, down to the bolt size. Never once looked at any notes. It was all in his head. Inch, diameter, he had it all. It was amazing.

Kevin: He gave us a good breakdown so we weren't lost. There's a difference between the clowns that you see in front of a Wal-Mart handing out balloons and a circus clown. The guys that work on Ringling, there's a lot more skill, there's a lot more education involved, and a lot of people don't realize that.

Give me some examples.

Kevin: You've got to at least be somewhat proficient at juggling, unicycling and stilt walking to work at a circus. You've got to be able to cover one or all of those, because people expect that and it adds variety to what you're doing. You also learn how to perform a clown gag, but not only perform it, what it's going to take prop-wise to pull it off, how to build what you need to make it work, and then he'll break it down how to perform it just right so everybody's got the same move.

Kent: And how to perform it in the circus ring. You've got to be a lot more exaggerated with your movements. The audience, the closest are 30 feet away. If you do small, minute movements, nobody's gonna see you.

Kevin: And they're all around you, so, unlike a stage, where you're looking straight at an audience, they see your back, your front, your sides. You've got them all 360 around you, so you have to learn to work to perform to everybody in the round.

How does street performing compare to other venues?

Kevin: It's more raw.

Kent: A lot of times, at the River Market for example, they're not there to come see a juggling act. They're there to buy fruits and vegetables. So you can get various attitudes. : You learn after a while to read the vibe off people, to figure out, these people are going to enjoy it, these people are not. When you're doing a street show, what makes it more raw about that is you're doing a show to an audience that's either going to like it, hate it, or be indifferent to it. Some of them are not going to hesitate to tell you what they think of it.

Kevin: And the audience is much closer to you. There's no real boundary. They can come right up to you, and some of them will, basically, challenge you to be who you say you are. "If you say you're a juggler, then impress me." The families are much more, "Oh wow, look at the costumes." Wear the jester costume, you've sold 'em right then. But then there are others, it's mostly teenagers and younger adults, they're a little more edgy. The grandparents, well, you never can do any wrong with them.

What experiences stick out?

Kevin: One time in Taiwan we had a problem with the lights.

Kent: In a circus, you run everything off a generator.

Kevin: I'd say it's about seven feet by seven feet. A box. You hear that motor going and it's run on gasoline like a car. You've got to keep it full. If it's empty, the generator shuts down, you lose your power. If the generator does shut down, because it's such a big motor, it takes a good 30 minutes to get it all fired back up again where you've got enough power to run all the lights. So it's always best to keep on top of the gas. Keep the gasoline going in it so it doesn't run out, especially during a show. Well, our ringmaster was saying, "The gas is getting a little low," because they have a little glass indicator. "You guys better fill that up." They were like, "We'll handle it, we'll handle it."

Sure enough, right before the last act-bam. The lights go out. The emergency lights come on. Naturally, they send in the clowns because the trapeze guys can't work and they were the last act. Of course, the people don't know that they're only missing one act. They don't know that they've seen well over three quarters of the show. They just know all of a sudden the show's stopping, and they've paid money to see a show.

We're trying to entertain them by kicking a big beach ball into the crowd and having them throw it back. That's working for a while until they finally start figuring out that the Taiwanese people outside are telling them, "You have to take a rain check. Show's over. You gotta go. We're not gonna get the power back up." Well, then things start getting a little hostile, so they had to run us out of the ring and said, "You guys better get in the back by the dressing room," which was cordoned off by a fence.

Kent: The reason it was getting hostile was because some of the audience was wanting their money back because they thought the show had been cut short on them.

Kevin: They were starting to get angry and irate. Naturally, it's dark back there where we're in our dressing room. One of the Mexican flyers says, "We'd better go get the women." So we take the women out of their dressing room, bring them all into our dressing room, and we're all standing there with two-by-fours in our hands, wondering if there's gonna be a riot. Because you can hear them at the fence. They're banging at the fence and they're speaking in Taiwanese. We weren't sure what they were saying, but it sure didn't look friendly. Fortunately, it worked out in the end and everything got all smoothed over.

Kent: They gave them their money back and everybody was happy.

Kevin: But there were some tense moments there.

What are the most difficult parts of the job?

Kent: Out at the Busker Festival, one of the challenges is going to be-and a lot of people don't think about this when you're juggling or balancing something-the sunlight.

Kevin: The sun getting in your eyes. It makes it really hard.

Kent: It's just the same with a baseball player or a football player. Trying to catch something and the sun gets in your eyes. It happens with juggling clubs. Sometimes the sun gets in your eyes and you just can't see.

Kevin: Or it makes you want to sneeze. And anytime you close your eyes and sneeze or anything like that, it's over. It's done.

Somehow I'd think you guys would be immune to that.

Kent: You figure out how to work around it. Wind is another issue.

Kevin: Wind can really affect what you're throwing. You do learn more how to compensate for the wind, but the sun, if it's right in your eyes, you're like, "Oh man, I can't even open my eye."

Kent: And there's that right time of day where it just doesn't matter what you do.

Kevin: It's directly in your eye, you can't open it. Your eyes are watering. Some guys have complained the same on stage. Stage lights. A lot of jugglers have to look up and you're looking right up into the lights. All of a sudden, you can't see the peaks of what you're throwing.

Have you had that moment where everything drops?

Kent: I've had the moment where I've thrown them up in the air and gone, "This isn't going to work."

Kevin: But here's the thing. If you blow it off, everybody else will naturally blow it off.

Kent: That's when it's fortunate you do a comedy act. You can always make a moment out of it.

Kevin: What's funnier about that is the reverse. When you throw 'em all up and you know you have 'em, you've got it. You're like, "Oh, I'm going to catch this." And that's when you lose your concentration and you drop 'em all. And you knew they were all right there. That's the one that bothers you more. You're like, "Man, I had that."

What do you do to play it off when you make a drop?

Kevin: It depends on what you were doing when you dropped it. A lot of times, an audience will be forgiving if they know you're doing something complicated. And they do know. They'll encourage you. "Try it again. We want to see you do it." Now, if it's something stupid, you get all kinds of, "Oh, you gotta pay for that?" It happens.

Kent: You make a moment of it, basically.

Kevin: The best jugglers in the world drop. We're only human. There's no way anyone can ever be 10 for 10. There's always going to be that one time you're going to miss.

Kent: Just like the athletes.

Kevin: You can't always make it. And that's the thing you take comfort in a little bit. The world record holders, the best guys, drop. They do. They drop 'em too.

...

It works both hemispheres of the brain. A juggler once told us that probably we'll never go senile. All jugglers will never go senile because they do work both hemispheres of the brain.

What do you mean?

Kevin: Because juggling is ambidextrous. It takes an equal amount of strength from the left and the right side. Even though jugglers aren't ambidextrous people by nature, they become that in spite of themselves. They have to in order to do what they're doing. Your recessive side, be it your right or your left, becomes stronger, and you become far more coordinated with it, in spite of yourself. Juggling is constantly using both sides of the body, especially hands. Throwing is using both arms equally at both times. Both are working equally hard, so it requires both hemispheres of the brain to work that. It takes a while to make that connection, but once you have made that connection inside, then you start to juggle.