Toss-Up Comedy The Quips Fly As Fast As The Balls And Knives When Juggler Bret Wengeler Takes The Stage At Silverwood

In August, the heat climbs at Silverwood Theme Park with the change in elevation: from hot feet to hotter waistbands to hottest foreheads.

Sweaty spectators plunge into the cool dark of the Main Street theater, where the air conditioning is cool and juggler Bret Wengeler is definitely cooler.

The banter starts flying when the balls do.

“Is there anything I can get you?,” he offers helpfully to a latecomer.

“Like a watch?”

Flying swords, whizzing balls - is that a camcorder? - black juggling sticks whip overhead, under arms, around the back, under the legs and backward.

“If I called this Irish dancing, I’d be making a lot more money,” he says.

The drumroll comes from the audience, the edge from years of street performing in Seattle, and for nearly 1,000 people a day in North Idaho, Wengeler’s act is more Comedy Club Central than trip to the circus.

Music, lighting, videotape and props make his show as entertaining as his juggling.

“You’re not even paying attention when you’re juggling,” an awed spectator says.

“If I stopped talking, I’d probably really mess it up,” he says.

Since he graduated Eastern Washington University more than a decade ago, Wengeler has juggled in videos, television commercials, theme parks, hotels and cruise ships.

It’s a life that comes with a talent agent but no health insurance or job security. When a cruise line wanted him to sell lottery tickets in addition to performing last year, he quit, leaving a $50,000-a-year position. In bad years, he’s made $12,000.

But in good years, he’s toured from the Caribbean to Japan, performed for 1,000 to 2,000 people a day and hit the video market.

His video “Let’s Start Juggling” has drawn enthusiastic reviews from the Detroit News to the School Library Journal for his portrayal of juggling as fun, inexpensive and cool. It’s just made the Summer Critics Choice catalog.

The art of juggling is old as dirt: pictured on the walls of Egyptian tombs, and a standard feature of traveling shows and vaudeville. Jugglers appeared through the 1970s on variety shows and the skills are widely taught in theater classes.

Wengeler was growing up in a military family in Southern California when he first saw jugglers on TV. As a kindergartner he auditioned to juggle in a class circus - and didn’t get the part.

“I was crushed,” he says. He wound up as the ringmaster but eventually began juggling with a set of tennis balls. Later, when his dad, a Marine, was stationed on Okinawa, the absence of television (reception was limited to the Armed Forces Network), gave him hours to perfect his technique.

He was 14 and just entering high school when his parents, Vicki and Lloyd Wengeler, retired to Cheney. It was the first time he’d ever gone to a school with civilian kids. Wengeler didn’t look like his classmates, sound like them or fit in. Juggling became his way to compensate. Soon, he was spending all his time practicing and when he did go out, he took the balls with him.

“When I was a kid, it was my teddy bear,” he says.

His first professional job was downtown at J.C. Penney’s, where he made $50 for two hours work. He eventually moved into street performing, following the lead of jugglers like Rich Greeno in Riverfront Park. But an all-day juggling effort in Spokane earned just $8. In Seattle, within the first half-hour, he made three times that.

Working the sidewalks around Pike Street Market and Seattle Center, he developed the basis for his current act: a verbal tennis game in which banter is intended to attract people to watch something they didn’t expect to and then get them to pay for it.

Wengeler continued juggling while earning a degree in theater at EWU, figuring it someday would give him an edge in acting jobs.

Instead, juggling became the job, one he’s had exclusively since 1990. In addition to performing at Silverwood and in the video made by Northwest Productions in Spokane, he’s made commercials for Plymouth Voyager, Group Health and Diet Coke.

Over the years, he’s suffered stage fright and taken a hit on personal relationships since he’s never in one place very long. Currently he lives in a RV park across from Silverwood.

But he walks to work, and because of audience interaction, every show is different. After six shows a day, he still stops to talk afterward. Juggling is still a way to connect.

“I’ve seen better,” a boy hisses as Wengeler opens the Mystical Kingdom on Ice Show with three small pink balls.

Seconds later, after the flaming sticks on skates, the boy is hooting: “Wow, wow, wow.”

Bret Wengeler performs at Silverwood Tuesdays through Sundays at the Main Street Theater and Mystical Kingdom on Ice. His video “Let’s Start Juggling” is available at the gift shop at Silverwood or at Hands on Hobbies at the University City Mall or by calling 1-800-637-3553.

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