Rick:

Hello, and welcome to Northwest Philly Neighbors.

I'm Rick Mohr, and my guest is Dave Gillies, with stories from his long career as a juggler and wire walker.

We'll hear how as a teacher he inspired his fifth graders for years to learn juggling and create weekly performances, until an uptight principal got him fired for juggling.

Also how he mastered the art of street shows, using ideas from his street preaching grandfather, studying other performers, and using his own knack for theater to draw people in.

We'll hear about some of the colorful circus artists he joined with along the way, and how an unexpected injury helped him discover a love of wire walking over rivers, which he calls taking my fear for a walk.

And that's just part one.

Don't miss part two next time, with stories of wire walking on Easter Island, living in a mansion at the circus school campus, and more.

Enjoy.

So you were a public school teacher for many years.

Dave Gillies:

And private.

I started teaching in the mid-60s as an alternative to shooting Asians.

I thought that was a very bad idea, and even worse, the idea of Asian shooting me.

That was not a good idea.

So at that time, teachers were in short supply and were needed.

And if you got a job teaching school, it would change your draft status, and you got a higher number and probably would not be drafted, which was the case.

So I taught school for four years in inner city Chester, which was President Johnson's target city in his war on poverty.

He lost that war too.

And it was an adventure for me because I had a degree in English literature and liberal arts.

I was trained in Shakespeare and Chaucer and 18th century literature.

And there I was in a classroom with 25 inner city kids and a pile of books.

And you're on your own.

So I figured it out day by day.

And it was an adventure.

I learned a lot.

Some of the kids learned a lot.

It transformed some of them.

Some of the things that I did worked.

Some things didn't.

I read some kids, not others.

You know how it is.

Then after teaching for about 12 years, one fateful day, the PTA invited a troupe of jugglers to perform at an assembly program in my school where I was teaching fifth grade.

And I watched these jugglers, I thought, that's really cool.

I want to learn how to juggle.

At that time, nobody that I knew juggled.

It was a very uncommon thing.

So I went to the Meridian Bookstore on South Street.

There was a paperback book on how to juggle.

It was written by some hippie named Carlo.

And it had diagrams and drawings on how to juggle.

This was before the internet, before YouTube.

And I propped it open on my desk, followed the diagrams, and the book kept closing.

It took me like a week to learn a basic three object cascade.

And I then proudly showed that off to my fifth graders, who of course, being 10, 11 years old, wanted to do it.

Yeah.

I said, well, I'll show you, but it took me a week.

And so I brought in a bunch of bean bags and had a lesson with my students.

And in about 15 minutes, half of them were juggling.

I realized, of course, the secret was good teaching.

That was why.

But it became a thing that they were thrilled with, because their older brother couldn't do it.

They could do this cool thing that would impress people.

And it was a wonderful teaching device because a little effort, success, and it became a positive feedback loop.

And they would practice more than I wanted them to.

It got to be so that the younger grades, the fourth grade, the third grade, they thought that when you get to Mr.

Gillies' fifth grade, all you did was juggle all day.

That's the cool class to begin with.

Rick:

Was the principal supportive or did you have to sell it?

Dave Gillies:

It depends on which principal you're talking about.

I had a principal who was innovative and creative and thought it was the best thing ever.

He helped me with video equipment.

We had a room with four screens and projectors and we made up wonderful things.

And then I transferred to another school in the same district.

And I had a principal whose ideas about education were different from mine.

He equated order and immobility with learning.

If the children were seated, quiet, not moving, then that was good.

Yeah.

Rick:

And unfortunately, his ideas have held more sway these days.

Dave Gillies:

And when we worked all morning and it was lunchtime, then we had to go to the cafeteria.

My view was, okay, now we're going to the cafeteria as a group of people, of human beings, that wouldn't walk in a straight line.

Why would you do that?

That's absurd.

You're people, you walk down the hall, you're going to lunch, you know, you talk to each other.

He said, no, you have to line up in single file and not talk.

I said, why?

I'm not going to do it.

On Fridays, we had open stage, which started out as a way for the kids to show off the juggling routines that they had made up.

But it quickly expanded to include whatever sketch the kids wanted to make up.

And we had a film crew, we had an artistic director, we had somebody doing the scheduling.

It was a production that the kids did.

Yeah.

Friday afternoon.

Rick:

Every week.

Dave Gillies:

Every week.

And no kid was ever absent on Friday.

And they would come in at lunchtime to rehearse their sketch that they're working on for Friday.

And I would be in the teacher's room having lunch and then I'd go down and join them.

And I told them, don't come in to the room until I get there and I'll let you in.

But there was a back door that opened under the playground and I'd come in.

They'd be working away at their sketch.

And the principal who thought everybody should always be in a straight line, said, oh, they can't be in the room by themselves.

There's no coverage.

I said, okay, I'll tell them.

So I told them.

And they come in anyway.

I come down.

The kids are there rehearsing.

And that went on again and again.

And the principal finally said, no, you can't continue with this.

You have to stop the program because the kids are coming in and working on their things without being covered.

I said, well, I'm not gonna stop it.

It's the best thing in the year.

The kids love it.

So what are we gonna do?

And he said, well, I'm gonna report you to the superintendent.

I said, good.

Let's invite the superintendent to come and see this Friday's program.

And we'll invite the parents to come in and talk to the superintendent.

And then the result of that was the superintendent asked me to go to other schools to explain how to do this program.

So I had an enemy then who kept the anecdotal record of every infraction that he thought that I was committing.

So that was one principle that we didn't have.

Same philosophy of education.

Rick:

How was it with the kids who weren't quite so quick at getting juggling?

Like there must have been kids who struggled and never quite got it.

Or did everybody get it?

Dave Gillies:

That was very interesting.

They all wanted to learn.

And there were kids that it was just hard for them to do it physically.

There was a boy named Scott Stanton that I tried to discourage because it seemed to be causing him so much stress to try to learn to juggle like the other kids.

And I tried to encourage him to do something else, but he persisted and he learned and he got pretty good.

Of course, there's a range.

Some kids do everything well.

They're good students.

They play soccer.

They excel.

They play the clarinet and they learn to juggle.

They do everything well.

And it was just another thing that they did well.

The ones that it made the most difference to were kids who didn't succeed academically and had a hard time, but then they learned this cool thing and they felt really good about it.

So it meant more to them.

So, you know, it meant different things to different kids.

Rick:

Yeah.

Dave Gillies:

And some ended up, well, we started getting invited to perform at other community events.

Mr.

Gillies' fifth grade was this unusual phenomenon.

We would have articles written about us and have interviews, and then CBS came out and did a program on us.

And then we started getting invited to perform at community events.

So what was a hobby for me and just fun to do then started to be something that was a performance, which wasn't exactly the same.

It wasn't how I originally thought about it.

Rick:

Yeah, the students were doing their own performances, but that was something that they came up with.

Dave Gillies:

Yes.

Rick:

These external things were the first time that you were kind of orchestrating.

Dave Gillies:

Right, then when we got invited to come to community fairs, we would go, and then we were at some fair and a person came up and asked if we would go to this other community fair.

They said, well, come.

And they said, well, what's your fee?

I said, what?

You'll pay us to do this?

So then we had an income stream to buy equipment, and that changed things.

Then I started noticing street performers in places that I traveled to, like in Boston, in Harvard Square, in San Francisco, in Mallory Square, in Florida.

And I paid attention to street performers, especially ones who used juggling in their acts.

And I thought it appealed to me because I grew up being part of the street preaching that my grandfather did.

My grandfather was an evangelist, a Methodist evangelist.

And he would preach on the street in Chester in front of the post office with somebody from the Salvation Army.

There were two people, one with a bass drum and one with a trumpet.

And they would play and gather a crowd, and my grandfather would preach.

And then he would pass a plate, and they would give out these little pamphlets that were called tracks.

And I think there was even an altar call.

It was this very emotional, spiritual experience.

But it was theater.

It was very impressive to me to watch and gather a crowd of people and all these people standing around listening to my grandfather preach to them.

So when I taught people how to juggle at festivals, I had this image in my head of my grandfather preaching.

And that it was this kind of a message that I was imparting.

And it was the subject, of course, the content was totally different, but it had a feel to it like evangelism.

That has always been with me.

Rick:

And were there specific things that he did that you kind of consciously adopted, or was it more kind of the feel of it?

Dave Gillies:

It was very much the feel, but specifically using a trumpet and a bass drum to gather a crowd.

When I decided I would try to street perform, I watched this Asian fella from Vietnam who had come over, an American family adopted him, and he was a very good technical juggler, and he was performing on the street.

It was 1975 or 1976, I guess it was, during the Bicentennial.

And I watched how good he was technically, but nobody was watching him.

And I had been paying attention to street performers, and I went up to him after a show, and I said, you have to gather a crowd and then perform.

Don't do all this wonderful technical stuff that you can do.

First, get people around you, and he said, well, how do you do that?

And I said, well, I'll show you.

And he said, I do something called a double stick, and he had a double stick there.

So I just stood with my hand stick on the other stick that was on the ground, and I just looked at people, and it was like the statues in Barcelona.

You just do something that looks visually interesting, and people wonder what's that, and they gather around.

And then I said, I'm gonna make this stick rise into the air, but I have to say the magic words.

Of course, people expect one thing, but I say something, magic words are get up stick, and people laugh, I think, oh, wow, this is material, I'm just making it up on the spot.

And then I do a little move with a stick, and stop, and people applaud.

And I said to the Asian guy, I said, see, that's how you do it.

But I was faking it.

Rick:

So you had a knack for it, for that side of it.

Dave Gillies:

Well, I always liked theater, and I used theater in my teaching.

When I was making up teaching for those four years in Chester, I used theater, I used drama a lot, because kids liked it.

Rick:

Can you think of an example?

Dave Gillies:

Yeah, this time of the year, Halloween, we had reached the ancient Greeks in the history book.

And I had each kid become a god or goddess that they would then read about and give a little talk about what this god or goddess did.

And then we come for Halloween.

We had a Halloween parade, and they would come dressed as that person, that god or goddess.

Or I would get a play, and they would read to learn their lines, because they wanted to do the play, even though it wasn't something that they really knew what it was about.

But we put it on, and we invited the other classes to come and see the play.

Rick:

Where do you think those insights of yours came from?

Or what did you sort of see in the day that motivated you to bring things like that in?

Dave Gillies:

I grew up on a small farm, and it was in the country, and we would make up games to play with ourselves.

And I remember making up stories to tell my little brother and sister.

I don't know where it came from.

I just made up stories out of my head.

Rick:

Well, so back, we left you starting to do shows.

How did that all evolve?

Dave Gillies:

I'm happy talking about it at this point, because it's sufficiently in the past.

I've heard the comedy described as a tragedy plus time.

So, you know, you could make a joke about the Titanic now, because it's so much in the past, but you couldn't make a joke about the Twin Towers, for example, because it's still tragedy.

I was catapulted from teaching because of using my sick days to perform.

I never get sick.

My family is healthy.

We grew up on a farm in the dirt.

I never get sick.

Then we had 10 days for sick days.

I never took sick days.

My colleagues all took sick days, but they were shopping, or I don't know what they were doing, but I never took them.

Then I started getting so many shows.

I would get requests for shows on school days.

I figured, I don't want to call in sick, go do this show.

Rick:

Not with your students.

Dave Gillies:

No, my students.

At that time, I had met some other performers, the Vietnamese guy and some other jugglers, and I could do a solo show too.

I would take shows and call in sick.

I mean, you shouldn't do that.

But I mean, I had like 80 sick days.

I figured, my colleagues are taking their sick days, they do whatever, I'm gonna go do some shows.

But I had this adversary who was watching everything I did to try to get something on me.

And so one day that I had called in sick, he went into my classroom, into my desk, and he stole my appointment book.

And he went through my appointment book, which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

I have a right to privacy.

It was not on my desk.

He had to open my desk and go into my personal space.

And he photocopied the pages that were bookings.

And then he came to a show where I was booked.

Rick:

So you looked out and saw him.

Dave Gillies:

He hid.

He was like a spy versus spy thing.

He was hiding.

I didn't see him.

I found out that he had come.

So then we had another meeting with the superintendent.

He said to me, he said, Dave, you have an interesting life.

You have another career.

Why don't you just go with the performing?

We'll give you a letter of recommendation.

You're going to resign.

Say you want to go into performing.

That probably would have been a better choice.

But I talked to the teacher's union and to a lawyer.

He said, well, you do have a Fourth Amendment, right to privacy issue.

You can take it to court and you might win and you might lose.

So I took it to court and I lost.

So I was fired for juggling.

So it was OK because I really did like performing.

So I was catapulted out of one thing that I loved into something else that I loved.

Rick:

So what makes a good juggling show?

What are the really important elements of it?

Dave Gillies:

They're different.

This is something I think about a lot and talk about a lot with my colleagues here at the Philadelphia School of Circumstance.

A circus school has to emphasize skill.

They train students in circus skills.

You know, how to perform on the rope, how to work on the trapeze is skill.

But a show has to do with elements of theater that are involved with connecting to the audience.

So the more skill you have, the better.

But you have to make the audience care about your skill.

When I get up on the high wire, on that pedestal, I have a little portable wire that's kind of high.

People are looking at me, wondering, what?

Should we intervene?

Should we stop this guy from doing something crazy?

But then I take a couple steps, and it looks like I'm in control.

Then they want me to get to the other side.

But they care.

So I get them to care about it, because I'm not sure it's going to work.

So I'm not faking that.

I don't know if I'm going to do this or not.

I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to make it.

And then the audience feels that, and they are with me.

So that show that I was talking about as you came in, I got up on the wire, and I have my short pole that I put extra weight on the end because I have it only half the length that it ought to be because of just fitting in the spaces that we're in.

And I have rolled up lead in the ends of my walk pole.

And I take one step and I hear something loose.

The lead has slipped out of the end of my pole.

So it's not going to do what it needs to do because it's totally lopsided.

And I say to the audience, excuse me, I have to run to the van and get some duct tape.

They wait.

Kitty plays the calliope and smiles.

And I get the duct tape, and I come back, and everybody applauds because I came back with the duct tape.

And it's a connection.

They were with me.

They were happy to wait, and they're happy to see me fixing something and then doing it.

So what makes a good show?

You have the audience care about what you're doing.

Rick:

So as you were developing your juggling show, how did you make them care?

What things did you put in?

Dave Gillies:

My first ball routine, I juggled three balls and did a few tricks that I could do.

On the street, you try things out, and then there are certain things that work on the street that you wouldn't do in a school assembly program.

But you learn how to connect to the audience and make them care about what you're doing.

Then I met Nick Gregory, who was from Boston, and he had watched street performers in Harvard Square.

Then he moved to Philadelphia, and I was juggling three snowballs, waiting for the mummers to go by one New Year's Day.

And a young woman came over to me and said, oh, I have a boyfriend who juggles.

And that's how I met Nick.

And Nick and I were partners for 30 years.

And I did the talking.

His skills are very good.

I mean, I have very basic juggling skills.

I'm a decent juggler, but not a great juggler.

Nick is an athlete, and his juggling skills were great.

And he had a wonderful winning smile, too.

So it wasn't just his skills that made us successful.

It was that he was likable.

And he went to Temple, and I went to Westchester.

And we would tease each other.

He was a tennis player.

Temple never actually played Westchester in tennis, but we pretended that they did.

And I would say, Oh, you went to Temple.

What did you major in?

And he says, Communication.

I said, Oh, you never told me that.

And then I'm about to juggle an egg and a bowling ball, and they hold up, I'm going to juggle this fresh egg from Am Am.

And he takes the eggs and turns them around and says, Wah wah, English major.

So we were playful and teased each other and competed and cooperated.

The audience got to know us.

They felt like they knew us at the end of the show.

So that made a good show, just to be likable and accessible and a little vulnerable.

Rick:

I went to McAllister College in St.

Paul, Minnesota, which had a great Renaissance festival.

I learned the bagpipes, and I played out at the Renaissance festival.

And the Flying Karamazov brothers were just coming up, and they performed a dozen shows a weekend.

And Penn and Teller were also there.

And I also was playing the pipes and trying to grow a crowd.

I mean, because that's the economics of the Renaissance festival, is they don't pay you to be there.

You've got to play the crowd.

So that was a big education for me and watching all these masters do it.

Dave Gillies:

I watched Penn very carefully at New Market.

He did a 12-minute street show and passed the hat, did real well.

And a lot of street performers like me watched him and they tried to be Penn.

But I could never be Penn.

That's not my personality.

He can be aggressive and insult the audience and make them love him.

But that's a real special charm that he has.

Most people just end up being annoying when they try to do that.

But he went on.

I mean, that's the time when we were all starting.

And he went on and did very well, didn't he?

Rick:

Yeah.

Well, that's what's always seemed so cool to me about juggling, is that the people that have made it really big are not particularly like the Karamazovs were, you know, happened to know each other because they were computer operators, you know, and they just started practicing and got good and they had a knack for showmanship, you know.

And it's like it doesn't, you don't have to be a superhuman person to have a good juggling show.

You have to work at it.

Dave Gillies:

No, what I did learn from Penn Gillette was that it's about the relation to the audience and about talking is not about the juggling.

He juggled three balls and says, the grasshopper walks into a bar and the bartender says, we have a drink game after you.

What?

Irving?

He's just saying those words while he's juggling.

It kind of has the same rhythm, the words and the juggling, but it's not exactly connected.

And it isn't about the juggling.

I remember that guy that was like 30 years ago.

I heard that.

Rick:

So as your troupe grew, you started teaching people.

You wrote that you saw juggling draw your young apprentices toward becoming more kind, curious and patient.

I just wonder if you could talk about that a little bit.

Dave Gillies:

Well, I think that's the way that we ought to be.

In order to have a show that people like, you have to be likable.

So when my partner and I were teasing each other, it wasn't mean.

And the audience could tell that we really liked each other.

I would try to explain to other performers that you don't get a volunteer up and embarrass them.

And you have to be curious about your audience and think, well, who are they?

Where are they from?

What are they experiencing?

To make a show work, you have to have some curiosity about something outside of yourself.

It's not just, look at me, look what I can do and you can't.

It's, you know, oh, this is fun.

Maybe you'd like to try this.

I'll show you.

So being kind and curious makes a good show and makes a good person.

Rick:

Yeah.

And you saw people move in that way as we were with you.

Dave Gillies:

Well, it's kind of like my dilemma thinking about the Quaker schools that we performed at.

We were a big hit with all the Quaker.

We performed at every Quaker school in Pennsylvania, New Jersey.

And we would perform for middle school-age kids in Quaker schools.

And these kids are nice.

They're supportive.

They're not obsessed about, is it cool to admit that I'm liking this thing?

Though I have to check first with my friend before I react.

You know, like a typical middle school kid in a public school.

And I thought, is there something about the Quaker program that makes them like that?

Or is it nice kids who come to the Quaker school?

I never really got an answer.

Some combination, I'm sure.

So people who work with the give and take jugglers, they have to have a certain personality to be kind and curious, or else they don't fit with what we're doing.

You had one boy who I am confident did change and become a nicer person in the direction that we're talking about.

Because his mother wrote me a beautiful card thanking me for that evolution of her boy.

He became a nicer person.

He might have been going in that direction anyway.

I don't know, whether it's our effector, that's how he was going.

So it's the Quaker school dilemma.

Are they nice to begin with, or does the program make them like that?

I don't know.

We work with nice people in our group because that's what we do.

We don't want a show off.

We want somebody who is likable.

Rick:

Yeah.

So what first pulled you to wire walking after all the juggling?

Dave Gillies:

Well, I had been juggling, using it to be part of a show, the street show that I created, based on juggling.

But it had to do with connecting with people.

And I just used the juggling as a vehicle for making this little theater piece.

And I was practicing there with my friend and colleague, Greg Kennedy.

We had rented a studio together on Green Street, but farther down Green Street, in Germantown.

And I was training together with one of the aerialists who was working on trapeze.

And I took it into my head to try some of the trapeze moves that my friend was working on.

And I did what's called a gazelle roll up and pulled a muscle in my shoulder during this crazy move.

And while my shoulder was healing, I couldn't juggle.

So I started training on the tight wire.

And that was the first time I ever tried tight wire.

Rick:

And did it.

Dave Gillies:

And I loved it.

I thought, oh, this is fun.

Balance is something that you have what you have, but then if you keep training, you can actually improve your balance.

It was just like learning the guitar.

You could do it a certain amount.

You might have a natural gift for music or not, but if you work at it, you'll get it.

And walking the tight wire is like that.

I don't have any special ability, but if I work at it enough, I get it.

And then once I get it, it's a thrill.

Wow, I can do this.

And then I'm off the ground, and I'm on a tight wire, and it just feels transforming.

And on the long wire with a pole over water, I feel like a bird.

I feel like I've gone into another element.

It doesn't stop being scary, at least at a certain height.

It's still scary.

I call it taking my fear for a walk.

I don't leave the fear behind.

I take it with me.

But then it gets transformed.

And I look at the pedestal, I look down at the water, thinking, oh my God, I'm going to die.

I can't do this.

And I think, now I've trained.

I breathe, I relax, I take three steps.

I realize I haven't died.

I'm on the wire.

I'm okay.

I can do it.

And then the terror gets transformed to triumph.

And that's such a rush.

Rick:

And then does it come back again with the next step?

Dave Gillies:

Right.

I mean, now I have a certain amount of confidence.

I know I'm going to be able to do it.

But four years ago, when I took the workshop in Brussels, it ends with walking over the canal, which is a working canal.

There are barges going back and forth.

And it's about 30, 35 feet, the cable over the water.

And my coach said, You're ready.

You've mastered enough skill that you can do that.

I looked at the canal and I froze.

I said, No, I'm not ready.

I can't do this.

I didn't do it.

I had accomplished quite a bit at height, length in training in the shed, where the lawnmowers were.

But then I came back and I continued with it.

And I created my own rigging that were longer and higher than that one over rivers.

And I couldn't wait to come back four years later with some other colleagues that I was then working with.

I took an Uber from the airport to the canal.

We had an Airbnb, but I wanted to go to the canal.

And I stood on the edge of the canal on that bridge.

And I said, you're not going to defeat me this year.

I want to do it.

And I did.

I walked across easily.

It was just so totally different.

But four years of doing it and also walking to music.

I used Jay Unger's Shogun Farewell that he wrote for the Civil War documentary.

Rick:

He actually wrote it before that, and it was used for the Civil War.

Dave Gillies:

It's just so lyrical and peaceful, but it has a surging motion to it.

It keeps going.

And it kept me on the wire.

And I trained to that.

And then I had it on a file on my iPhone and they played it as I walked.

And it was just me and the music and the wire.

And it was so peaceful.

Well, and a triumph.

It was a triumph.

Yeah, it was like my own personal Olympics.

Four years passed, I come back, and I can do what I couldn't do four years ago.

And at my age, which I don't like to make a point of, but I want it to be man on wire.

It's just me on wire, not, oh, look at that person that age on the wire.

No, it's just me on the wire.

But you can learn things at any age.

I work a lot with young people and with children, and I learn as much from them as they learn from me.

We do a workshop at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in Tulsa-McGrove, and a lot of wires set up there.

And the kids come, and their concept of a mistake, of failure, is very different from grownups.

It's not failure to them, because they're trying things all the time.

They're always falling down.

They get up and do it again.

And we have kids that come, they know that we're going to set up the wires, that I put them up first, the ones that are low, and then the pipes that are like balanced beams.

And kids come and work on their own, teach each other, they want to know what new thing I can show them to do, and I'm setting up the other stuff that we set up, and everyone will check on them.

The way that a child learns is something to keep in mind.

You should always be like that.

Just keep trying it.

It doesn't work, try it again.

You learn from your mistakes, don't get discouraged, just try it again.

And you can keep learning things.

Childhood should last till like 60, and then focus on what you're going to do.

But keep trying things.

Rick:

Dave had so many good stories that we're doing his episode in two parts.

Next time, we'll hear about rigging tight wires in beautiful places around the world, scooping famous wire walker Philippe Petit, Dave's part in the Dynamic Philly Circus School community, and other great stories.

You can also read more in the show notes on our website, nwphillypodcast.net.

And I'd love to know that you're listening.

So please take a half a minute to leave a rating or a quick review in your podcast app.

Thank you.

I'm Rick Mohr.

See you next time for more stories from Northwest Philly Neighbors.