The Flying Karamazov Brothers

Juggle Magazine

March/April, 1999

A Flying Leap Into The Future
Click on pictures for a larger version
Juggling's Best-Known Ambassadors Merge Transition and Transition
By STEPHANIE SCHOROW Seattle Times theater critic

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last two decades, you've heard about the Flying Karamazov Brothers. JUGGLE decided to catch up with the sublime siblings while on tour, and found them approaching some exciting crossroads.

Currently touring Sharps, Flats & Accidentals, the FKBs are preparing their first new show in three years. Two long-time members have left the troupe, one original has been pulled out of retirement, a new Brother has just joined on, and auditions are being held for a second new sibling.

Named after the characters of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the current lineup includes founding members Dmitri (Paul Magid), Ivan (Howard Jay Patterson), Fyodor (Tim Furst), and new comrade-on-the-block, Alexi (Mark Ettinger). Smerdyakov (Sam Williams) departed in December of 1998, and Rakitin (Michael Preston) left the troupe this April.

The Karamazovs had their genesis back in 1973, when Paul and Howard discovered each other living across the hall in the dorms of the University of California at Santa Cruz. They hooked up with Randy Nelson (who had acted with Paul in high school), and the three hitchhiked to Spokane to perform at the World's Fair in 1974. During this trip, Howard was reading the classic Russian novel. He noticed how the book's characters fit their own personalities, and the FKBs were born. (Randy performed under the moniker Alyosha, and first attempted to retire after having his pocket picked in Seattle.) After they wandered together and separately over North America, they eventually graduated from college, moved to San Francisco in 1976 and began to perform regularly as a trio.

Their friend, Tim, an excellent juggler in his own right, was their sound and light technician and a business partner in the Karamazov venture from the start. One night at the Magic Cellar, a San Francisco night club, the three decided on short notice to add Tim into the mix to demonstrate a four-person pattern. He set the lights on autopilot, did the pattern, and then went back to the soundboard. He was silent during that trick, and has preferred to remain so as the group performed in larger venues. As the commute from the sound booth to the stage became unfeasible, the Brothers hired a new technician and Fyodor became a bona fide, full-time performing Karamazov.

At the end of 1980, with the imminent appearance of his first daughter, Randy again retired and recommended Sam, an experienced vaudevillian, as a replacement. Randy was enticed back into service again in 1983 as the fivesome produced the terrifically popular Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors in Chicago. (The Broadway version, Live from Lincoln Center, was twice broadcast by PBS, but will not be shown again.) "It was amazing to do," Howard said,"The Chicago show was tremendous fun, and the New York cast was incomparable. All the musicians and most of the actors were old friends of ours, and it was great working with Robert Woodruff (the director)." As vaudevillians, they were all used to being involved in both creating and editing performances, but Robert did all the edits. He'd ask the cast for ideas, and they would all jump up with dozens of them, but it was up to him to make the final choice. Howard explained that if you could get Woodruff to laugh uncontrollably, the bit would make it into the show for at least a little while. "I considered it my job to make him laugh. We ruined him. His ideas are just too bizarre now. They love him in Israel, where they live life on the edge. Now he uses lots of blood and gore, and it's too intense. It's stuff that Americans are just too soft for. It's a different sense of reality."

Carla Burns, who played the kitchen wench, left a particularly strong mark on Howard. "She's about four foot eight inches tall, and just as wide, with an amazingly powerful voice. While we were creating the scene where she's reunited with Antipholus, she's punching me. I've got martial arts training, and I can take a punch, but that woman was just wiping the floor with me. The first time we tried it that way, Robert kept saying,'Do it again, but this time hit him harder!'and laughing maniacally."

Paul also had an impact during that show. Howard remembers: "There's a scene where he slides on a rope from the grid above the stage to the floor behind us. Usually we would hear 'whizzzz, bump' as he came in, but this time he missed his handhold. He hung on as long as he could, ripping up his hands, and then let go. We heard a sickening whump. When we turned around, he was staggering to his feet with his eyes rolled up into his head. All you could see were the whites. He asked,'Am I all right?'and I saved his life by saying 'Yes.' He finished the scene, and the paramedics came to strap him down and take him away." He tore some leg muscles and still bears the scars on his hands, but otherwise survived unscathed. "The man is completely indestructible."

They traveled as a quintet for five more years, until 1988 when Randy retired again. The remaining four performed until mid- 1992, when Tim decided it was time to pack it in after 17 years on the road also, the troupe was doing more theatrical work, and he wasn't as interested in plays as he was in vaudeville. He was replaced by Michael, an actor with circus experience, who went to UC Santa Cruz and used to date Paul's wife.

In addition to Comedy of Errors, the Karamazovs have enjoyed four other successful runs on Broadway: Juggling and Cheap Theatrics, for two runs in different venues; The Flying Karamazov Brothers do the Impossible, and their current show, Sharps Flats and Accidentals. Besides the vaudeville shows, they have created and performed in their own adaptations of classic theatre: The Three Moscowteers (adapted from Dumas' Les trois Musketeers), The Soldiers Tale (adapted from Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat), and, of course, their namesake volume, The Brothers Karamazov.

"We always said that we'd be on Broadway by April Fools Day of 1984. It turned out that we made it on May Day of 1983," said Howard. "Having everyone say 'you did it! You made it!' was just great, and my father stopped calling me a bum after that."

And his mother? "She said 'I forgive you everything' when I played Mozart's Bassoon Concerto with the National Symphony." Howard performs this piece on the baritone horn, which, he says,"is the instrument Mozart would have written it for if he hadn't made the mistake of dying several decades before its invention."

In general, according to Tim, the travel and the wide variety of people that they've met are the best parts of being a Karamazov. "You find yourself in rather unlikely situations," he said. "I believe we are the only group that has opened for both Frank Sinatra and the Grateful Dead." They taught Bill Kreutzman, a drummer for the Dead, how to juggle. "He learned incredibly fast, as most drummers do." Musicians, tennis players, and mimes all learn quickly, he said. "The mimes are easy... if they don't already know, you just show them the motions and they find themselves juggling." Howard adds, "Movie stars are amazingly fast learners, too. Danny DeVito and James Woods both became quite competent in minutes."

The group also had the opportunity to meet other variety arts performers while on tour internationally, like Lee Hayes in Holland and Haggis McLeod in England. Most of the performers they have met were quite friendly. Tim said that Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers were especially fun to work with, as was the cast of the movie The Jewel of the Nile (they co-starred alongside Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, and Avner Eisenberg, who played the charmingly childlike holy man who turned out to be the jewel.

Jewel was also where Howard earned three of the 23 stitches he has gathered during his performance career. Most have been cut fingers, but during the filming of Jewel, he was hit in the eyebrow with a metal sword. He was doing a fight scene with two knives against three Spanish fencers who were substituted on short notice for the original Italian stuntmen he had practiced the scene with earlier. "If it had hit me in the eye, it would have killed me. The doctor sewed me up right there on the set, out in the Moroccan desert. He didn't even wash his hands first. Michael Douglas' stuntman later told me that he wouldn't have done it, that it was too dangerous. I didn't know a stuntman could say 'no' to doing a stunt."

The general consensus was that they were underused in Jewel, according to Howard. The original script had them doing more comedy, but Kathleen didn't like it because her character was too much of a wimp. After two rewrites, they wound up with a lot less screentime and funny bits. "Ah, well," sighs Howard. "If they ever need radical Sufi jugglers again, they'll call us."

The Karamazovs have also shared the stage with The Who, Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, The Blues Brothers, and Bobcat Goldthwait, plus Peter Schickele (P.O.Q. Bach) at Carnegie Hall. They have performed with numerous symphony orchestras around the country, including the National Symphony, the Boston Pops, and the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

These symphonic shows are something that they look forward to, Howard said, "They're lots of fun. The symphony does the first act, and we join them for the second. We rehearse beforehand what we'll be playing with them, but not the juggling and the jokes, which they see for the first time when we perform." He especially enjoys the gasps of wonder from the orchestra when they do the "Two Part Invention in D Minor" by J.S. Bach on the marimba (he and Paul play the duet while each cascades three mallets).

t was surprising to Howard that the symphonies have a hard time learning the instrumental part of "Rhythm One." (In this act, the troupe lines up and juggles three clubs each to beat out a 5/4 rhythm while wearing "whackos" - gloves with metal studs which make the catches quite audible. One club also has big jingle bells attached.) The group's longtime musical collaborator, Doug Wieselman, wrote the instrumental version, but the catchy jazz rhythm has turned out to be the most troublesome for the ensembles to learn.

Doug has been part of the group for years. At one time, he and several other musicians from Comedy of Errors traveled with the Karamazovs as the Kamikaze Ground Crew. "They would open the show and then leave to make tea," Howard said. "They don't let us play with them anymore." Doug is currently touring with the Lounge Lizards in Europe.

On the small screen, the Karamazovs have appeared on an episode of Seinfeld as the Flying Sandos Brothers. Generally, however, they appear as themselves, as they did on Ellen and the PBS standards Bill Nye, the Science Guy and Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. They hit The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1997, and their PBS special, The Flying Karamazov Brothers: Stars of New Vaudeville, won a local Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Programming. They also were nominated tor an Olivier award for their run of Juggle & Hyde in London's West End.

Recalls Howard, "The first time we played London, I thought we were dying. lt was so quiet out there. Then, afterwards, a woman came up to me and said 'That was wonderful! I've never laughed so hard in my life!' It turns out that they loved us, but they just didn't know how to deal with us... they'd never seen anything like that in their theatres. Now there's been a general relaxation of the West End scene, with shows like Stomp and Tap Dogs, and we get a much better reaction."

They have managed to fit in numerous appearances on all three major networks' morning programs, Comedy Tonight, and in the Disney Channel special, The New Vaudevillians, not to mention several international programs. They also appear regularly at the Oregon Country Fair, an annual music and craft fair that has attracted thousands to the Willamette valley for over 25 years.

The touring schedule can be a challenge. They did a 25-city tour in Holland through February (26 shows in 30 days), and then two weeks at the Chameleon Variete in Berlin in March. This was a departure for the Chameleon, which normally features artists performing five- or ten-minute variety acts the FKBs did their whole two-hour show. The whole group usually decides together on their touring schedule, although Tim came on board after the decisions for that last tour had been made.

Touring Europe brought additional challenges to the normal stresses of being on the road. Howard, who has just confirmed that he's allergic to tobacco, says that Europeans smoke everywhere, all the time: "The non-smoking section is called the United States." And there's no such thing as fast food. People in Europe eat out to enjoy a long and lingering dining experience, and the restaurant folks just didn't understand the concept of a quick meal, although he emphasized that "the food was great when you finally got it."

In Europe, the Brothers translated some of their show into the local languages, Dutch and German. Howard studied German in college, which helped. "Michael's wife is from Austria, and she helped us translate my introduction to the show and the "Gamble" introduction that Paul does," said Howard. "We wrote it in very self important, ornate English that she translated into grand High German, and one lady asked if this show was going to be too hard, like a lecture or something."

There was a deadly serious side this tour to a few of the Karamazovs. Both Paul and Howard are Jewish (Paul's line,"By my troth as a Christian," in Comedy of Errors is accompanied by coyly revealed boxer shorts decorated with the Star of David), and they both had issues about returning to the land where so many of their family members were killed. "Paul and I lost hundreds of relatives in that war," Howard said. "So many people seem willing to forget about it, but not us. We've spent a lot of time trying to figure it out.

"In the Netherlands, they remember," Howard said."The Germans didn't like the idea of the Dutch whizzing around quickly, so they took all their bicycles. Even today, a traditional greeting by a Dutch person meeting a German is 'Give me back my bicycle.' In Holland, we could make all the German and Nazi jokes we wanted. A German woman asked us after the show in Rotterdam,'What on Earth do you say in Germany?'and we didn't have an answer yet.

"My feelings were not unmixed:' Howard went on."I studied German in college. The nation has an unmatched history of culture and stability all the highlights of western culture are German, all the great composers: Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert all German.

"We've been there before," he continued. "Years ago, we were in Essen with the Grateful Dead and The Who. We were all nervous about it everyone would make a bunch of Nazi jokes and then shush each other. But this time, it felt different."

The breakdown of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of the nation, and the surging economy of the area were all positive signs of progress, Howard said. "Over 40% of the building cranes in Europe are in East Berlin right now. It was an incredible sight. All the Nazi relics are gone except the bullet holes. They're turning it into a new city. I think everyone has learned their lesson now. They're trying to understand the Nazi mistake. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late."

The German shows wound up being very successful. "The audiences called us back for six or eight curtain calls at a time:' Howard said."The people we worked with in Germany were just wonderful. They were the ones the Nazis would have shot.

"The Germans are one of the strongest, most theatre-obsessed people in the world," he went on, "It's great to see the German nation becoming the superheroes of Europe like they're destined to be. They'll do it economically, they'll run the place hopefully nicely this timeÑ and when they do, we should be the ones entertaining them!" The Karamazovs plan on a return to Europe soon, including a possible six-week run in London's West End next fall.

Strangely, Singapore audiences are the most responsive international crowd they have found. Howard said "Expatriates come up to us and tell us that the natives can't possibly understand all the jokes." His theory is that everyone has to speak some English. He feels they can't all speak the dozens of languages and dialects of the area, and they do watch a lot of American TV. "They have become very good at identifing the shape of a joke, and knowing when to laugh. But it doesn't sound like just polite laughter to me. It's a mystery."

Arrangements for tours and performances are especially difficult considering that the four current members reside in four distant cities: Howard is from Portland, Oregon, Tim's home is in Seattle, Paul lives in Los Angeles, and Mark calls New York City his home. They spend months at a time on the road, with the performers and stage manager in a bus driven by their prop man, and their 2,400 pounds of equipment in a truck driven by their sound man.

One of the most difficult parts of being a successful performer is having to be away from home so much. For up to ten months each year, the Brothers are apart from their families. This was a major reason Sam decided to leave the groupÑ he needed to spend more time with his wife and twin five-year-old sons.

Howard is wistful about time spent away from his home and kids. When asked if he's ever considered leaving the group, he replies "Yeah, every few weeks. My kids have grown up without me." He said that he only sees them about a quarter of the time, but that his attention is quite focused on them when he's home. There was a time when his wife and children would travel with the group. While that worked well with his older son (now 16), the younger was a bit more interested in exploring the world on his own, scaring his parents silly. "At the Australian Expo in 1988, we lost him. He wandered off into the crowd. When we found him, my wife Seiza said, 'I'm going home to get a life. See you when you get here.'"

She homeschooled the boys on their rural property, Arcadia, in Port Townsend, Washington, for several years before they moved to Portland, where the elder son is an aspiring actor and the younger is a "hot" trumpet player. They share a co-housing situation with seven other people, what Howard calls a "four generational hippie commune." The whole family juggles and passes clubs together when Howard is in town. Looking back, he seemed saddened by the years that went by so quickly: "I wish I'd been there."

Paul is also married, to Beka Chace (who once dated Michael and knew Mark's wife in a private girl's school). She's a novelist and an accomplished actress, having just finished a run of Cider House Rules in New York She was recently cast as a Who in the film version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas starring Jim Carrey, and is currently in Los Angeles being fitted with the appropriate Who prosthetics. They have two daughters, ages six and two.

Mark is also married and has two daughters, thirteen and eight.

The current touring show, Sharps, Flats & Accidentals, is a collection of many favorite routines from the five shows over the last 20 years. Possibly the oldest act is Tim's cigar box routine, which he did at the Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire in the mid-'70s. "Rhythm One" is another old favorite developed in the '70s. "Jazz," the consummate and comical demonstration of a three-man feed with Paul as point man, and "The Gamble," where Howard juggles items offered by the audience, are considered trademark pieces of the troupe and have been in performances in some form or another since the '70s.

Other favorites in the current show include their frenetic weave while passing clubs to the music of Grieg's hall of the mountain King; B.P. II (shorthand for Big Production Number Two, from the Comedy of Errors program), which includes passing under black lights and musical juggling with a marimba and their unique "backdrums" (a set of four drums, one behind each shoulder and beside each hip, played by a club juggler- a discovery of Paul's one night in a London theatre); and their finale,"Whole World (Gotta Learn To Juggle)" an original number extolling the virtues of juggling, where backdrums and regular drums are played with clubs, balls are bounced off of an oversized floor piano, and music is created by Howard slapping and bouncing balls off of an impressive full body suit studded with sensors and snaked with wires.

Newer pieces in Sharps include their ballet routine (complete with tutus), and "Fan Dance," where the troupe dances, juggles, and passes giant fans to each other. Tim said that he had to learn those pieces from scratch when he came out of retirement recently, as those pieces had been developed after he left the group in 1992 and Michael had joined on. Randy had already retired (again) in 1988 to join Next Computer and later, Pixar Studios (see "Pixar Jugglers," JUGGLE Nov/Dec 19981)

Here's the point in the group's recent history where it all gets a bit confusing. Sam had surgery in January of 1998, and Tim filled in for Sam from February through April. Sam, fully recovered, returned to performing in June, leaving for good in December of '98 to take care of his family. Michael left at the end of the summer of '98, and Tim filled in for Michael from September through November. When Sam lett in December, Tim started filling in for Sam again. Mark began rehearsing with them in the fall of '98, but was unable to start in January 1999, so Michael came back for the Winter '98/'99 tour, and continued to perform until Mark was ready to start in mid April '99.

Mark joined the Brothers on-stage formally on April 23. Tim's now doing a mix of Sam and Michael's parts, some of which are his own from pre-1992 pieces. He says that this is moit confusing when doing one part in afternoon rehearsal and another in performance that night. No noticeable incidents ot multiple personality disorder have occurred on stage.

New recruit Mark is an old pal of the group. He is a musician who juggles (Tim taught him about ten years ago) and can play a wide variety of instruments, including string bass, mandolin, keyboard, tuba, baritone horn, and guitar. He also happens to be a certified symphony conductor with a degree from the Mannis School of Music.

Howard says that musical juggling, the hallmark of the Karamazov's show, turns out to be really hard to do, even for jugglers who are very musically talented."I'm the only one who can do it to my satisfaction," he said. Sometimes, usually well into a tour, the group can get into a good groove where everything works smoothly, but it's a difficult place to get to. During the Comedy of Errors, "where we were working with some of the best jugglers in the business, I was surprised to see how hard it was for them to do the musical stuff," Howard remembers. "So Mark has the ear, and he knows music. To have someone who can hear it makes a big difference. Tim is definitely the best juggler in the group, and the music stuff is still hard tor him to play perfectly."

Mark been doing very well as the newest Brother on stage, Howard reports,"After months of rehearsal, he's essentially starting over again... you can get everything in practice, but when you start performing, it's a whole new deal. What he'd do when he dropped was our primary concern, but he's been perfectly charming. My sister, who laughs at the same jokes every time you can always hear her in the audience said that when he dropped, nobody cared."

The stage character that Mark has been developing, Alexi Karamazov, is turning out to be a combination of innocence and impishness, and it's playing very well. "And he's got a wonderful ear," according to Howard, "Doing the intermission song has been great with him it's good to know that if anyone is out of tune, it's me."

It appears that Mark is the only Karamazov with a degree even remotely close to what they explore through performance: Howard holds a BA in biology (yes, that's a Bachelor's degree in the Art of Biology), Paul has a BA in English literature (both from UCSC), and Tim has a double major in architecture and philosophy from Stanford (where he folk-danced and juggled with club-passing guru Martin Frost).

Tim will finish up this tour while auditions for a fourth sibling are being held. He may or may not tour with the last round of Sharps, Flats & Accidentals this coming fall, depending on how fast the new Karamazov can join in.

The successful candidate will have to be somebody with heavy experience in acting and music, a good club-passer, and most of all, said Paul, "must be a nice person! It has to be someone you can live with." Howard noted that it would he nice if the new member sang bass (Paul and Howard are baritones, and Mark sings tenor).

In addition to getting up to speed on the current material, the recent arrival will be quickly pressed into, service during the creation of the FKB's new show, which will go into workshops in Seattle this June.

New props now in development will be incorporated in Noember, and the premiere will be at the ACT Theatre in Seattle, Januany of 2000. If the new Karamazov has experience with physics, astrophysics, and subatomic particles, so much the better, as the new show will be mining those ideas for comic potential.

This upcoming show will have some serious firepower behind it. As Sharps has been described as a musing on the juxtaposition of juggling and music, the new show is being created to demonstrate the convergence of juggling, music, and the universe, according to Paul. L'Universe (the working title, pronounced "looniverse" ) is a collaboration between the FKBs, the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and possibly Mircrosoft and Pixar Studios (which makes one think that Randy is being dragged out of retirement once again, at least during L'Universe's development). Think experimental, computers, inventions to push the technological envelope involving virtual reality, sensors and lasers.

The troup recently met with the MIT folks to present their wish list ot ultimate stage toys. Howard says it was a fantastic visit, with a11 these vastly intelligent folks jesting about quantum physics."I got 30 or 40 percent of the jokes. The group is doing a study of quantum physics for the new show."

"As we kept listing the things we wanted, they kept saying 'yes!' We finally got to some things that were beyond reach," he said. "We wanted a moving holographic display to share the stage with, and they said that was just too much for this moment in technological history. We also joked about helium clubs, and one guy said they could maybe have some sort of radio-controlled helium cartridge with little thruster jets, so they could steer the clubs up off the stage. They have the materials to make a club as strong as... or stronger... than our clubs, but light enough to float. It's not going to happen, but that one engineer said,'Well, now you've ruined my day. I'm not going to be able to think about anything else!'"

The "Gamble" Hall of Fame

One of the more popular acts in the Flying Karamazov Brothers' current show, Sharps, Flats & Accidentals, is ~The Gamble. The Champ, Ivan |Howard Patterson| juggles any three objects supplied by the audience, provided that they are heavier than an ounce, lighter than ten pounds, and no bigger than a breadbox. He gets three tries to keep the objects in the air for at least ten count. If he succeeds, he wins a standing ovation. If he fails, he gets a pie in the face. The Champ generally wins two out of three.

JUGGLE asked the Brothers to list some of the more Memorable objects that have been chosen for the Game.

Here's a partial listing:

Various musical instruments, including a trombone

Bucket of paint

Working techno toys, including:

laptop computers
Cell phones
Personal items, including:

Sextoys
Breast implant
Food, including:

Pizza
A gallon jar of mustard Spaghetti
Raw eggs tied in nylons
Animal remains, including:

Peeled lamb's head
Pig's head
Brains
Liver
Tripe
Cow hearts
Our marine friends, including:

Many different types of crustaceans
Nine-foot octopus
A "horrible" spiny fish
One of the most difficult objects presented had been designed specifically for the challenge. An artist had sculpted a teardrop-shaped hollow metal cage, with a ball inside it. The ball made a terribly distracting noise when juggled, and the Champ lost the challenge. He promptly asked the artist if he could have it, just to make sure it would never be juggled again. The artist gave it to him.

It is generally agreed that the most incredible combination of three objects accepted for "The Gamble" was during a Broadway run at the Beaumont Theatre: Slinky, chocolate cream pie, and plastic bag of about 150 dead frogs in formaldehyde. Astoundingly, our champ got about seven counts into the challenge when the bag split open. Everyone was so impressed, he got his standing O anyway.

Virtual instruments will possibly be featured in the new show. Howard marvels at the work being done in this field. "One MIT grad student's project involved bringing in Yo Yo Ma to play an instrument full of sensors, to measure the movement, tension, acceleration, the whole vibrational scheme of a Stradivarius cello. It was fascinating."

There will also be a study of Chaos theory in the new show, an ultimate permutation on their current "Jazz" routine, according to Paul. The new riff will be an act where the feeder changes randomly while the performers are in constant motion.

While Sharps was a compilation of older routines, L'Universe will be an all-new presentation. Paul calls it a "much bigger show, more visually spectacular, and very high-tech. You'll see things that have never happened before, both theatrically and visually. Math and science and juggling are so related, we want to manifest that relationship as entertainment." He also noted that the "Gamble," another popular feature of the current show, is not scheduled for inclusion in the new show. If you haven't seen it yet, the fall tour will be your last chance.

In addition to the new show, the group always has several other projects on the back burner. One of the biggest would be launching a television series, a sort of variety sitcom. They were actually getting pretty close this last year, meeting with several network executives to pitch the idea. "Fox was showing the most interest." said Howard. "Paul and I have discovered that we're a really great pitch team. We'd start by juggling swords around the most senior executive- they're all so cool, nothing ruffles them and later the agent would say,'l've nexer seen him smile before!'" Television networks, however, had such a terrible season last year that heads rolled and many prospective projects were either put on hold or dropped altogether.

"I didn't understand the meaning of the phrase,'That's showbiz,' until we had several projects fall through close to completion," explained Howard. But the Karamazovs aren't ready to abandon the idea vet. "The road is wearing pretty thin these days. With a series, we wouldn't have to work as hard. Well, we would work insanely hard while we were doing it, but creation work is always the most fun, even when it's frustrating. And on film, once the work is done, it's done; you can go home instead of doing the work over and over for the next two or five years."

He continued, "We've tended to alternate between presentational shows without a real plot line, and narrative shows where we try to apply our varied skills and peculiar world view to storytelling." Several of the dance pieces in Sharps are from Le Petomane, a show that had no juggling in it, which upset some people.

Their last show, Room Service (based on the same play from which the Marx Brothers made a film, using about half their own dialog and half from the play) was directed by Woodruff and had runs in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. "We felt we'd gotten the balance between lateral storytelling, skill, music, and general tomfoolery pretty much right," Howard said, and in general, so did the audiences and critics. Unfortunately, according to Howard, the one most influential critic in each town didn't get it, and together they managed to squelch the show's further life.

"So for the next one," Howard said, "we're looking forward to making a good old, powerful, word- and idea-juggling presentational show that doesn't have to tie itself to a conventional story line and can just explode in whatever direction we want it to."

Once the new show is up and running, Tim hopes to retire for good. He plans on spending more time at home and traveling for his own amusement. He's the Karamazov who, despite his silence, most enjoys socializing at juggling conventions and festivals. He looks forward to traveling to the Hawaiian festival in February, in addition to other juggling and vaudeville gatherings.

When asked for words of wisdom to pass on to a new performer who wants to some day reach the realm of success that the Karamazovs currently enjoy, Tim paused a moment for reflection, then burst out: "Come to your senses, man!" He emphasized that it is not easy, the hours are long, you're on tour for months at a time, and that it's especially hard for those with families. Certainly there are some fun times, but they've paid for these with lack of sleep, driving on the road for hours each day, and visiting new and interesting cities but seeing nothing more than the inside of the theatre and hotel.

"Go for it," Tim advises,"but, every now and then, re-examine what you are doing. Think if that's how you want to be living your life."

Has it been worth it? "You could say that millions of dollars have passed through our hands," said Howard."lnstead of being rich and famous, we say that we're fairly well-known and middleclass. Our kids have new shoes and we own our homes, or at least parts of them. Our incomes vary widely from year to year we tried touring for only six months a year a few times, and we were poor those years. We keep hanging on, waiting for the big thing to happen."

"We've waited for the big break for a long time," he continued. "and we learned that there are just a bunch of small breaks. But we wanted to make it on our own terms, and it took a long time to do that. About 10 or 15 years ago, we turned down a Pepsi ad. We just didn't feel comfortable selling drugs to the people of America. But if you asked us again now, we might do it."

"We're more pragmatic now," Howard went on."We've been around longer than just about anyone else. We keep trying to come up with new stuff, and it's hard to create things that don't look like the old stuff. But Paul and I are still eager to do this. We're looking forward to working with folks who are still hungry."

"We'll be around for a long time. Eventually we want to spend six months a year on the road. I'm expecting that we'll always find new blood and new toys. The material for the next millennium will be wonderful. We're simply floored by the number of technical jugglers that are so far beyond us, and I admire that they're challenging us to move forward... but the stuff we do, we do better than anyone else."