Juggler Has Hands Full With Multifaceted Career

For someone just turned 25, Daniel Rosen has racked up some mighty impressive credits, from winning an international juggling championship at 18 to appearing with Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller in “Sugar Babies” to writing his own comedy-rock songs to--this year alone--briefly serving as sidekick/announcer on “The Late Show” and appearing twice on “The Tonight Show.”

Whew.

He has always been a precocious performer. “When I was 8,” he recalled during an interview at the Improv in Hollywood, “I was doing comedy and magic shows at other kids’ birthday parties for $5 and a piece of cake.”

As he grew out of the birthday-party circuit, the challenge was to find places that an ambitious whipper-snapper could work. “I was doing shows anywhere I could, mostly street-performing,” said Rosen, who used to spend summers in Newport Beach. “When I was about 12 or 13, I would street-perform at the Balboa Pavillion.” This week, he’s back in Orange County, for appearances tonight through Sunday at the Improvisation Comedy Club in Irvine.

The path from then to now has been both circuitous and sharply focused. Those pre-teen flirtations with the roar of the crowd convinced Rosen that he and show biz were a perfect match (“From the time I was 13, I knew exactly what I wanted: to be a performer”). He made some unlikely choices along the way to fulfilling his goal. But even they were marked by potent ambition, unusual self-discipline and a pit bull’s persistence.

Take the way he approached juggling. At 10, Rosen accompanied his folks to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura and immediately gravitated toward a guy who, for a dollar, was giving juggling lessons. It was Rosen’s last stop of the day.

“Instead of going to the rest of the fair, I stuck around there the whole day trying to learn (to juggle)--and I couldn’t learn ,” he recalled, his voice still evoking frustration.

So, “I went home, made some bean bags, started working real hard at it and eventually learned. And then the next year, I went back to the Faire and taught for him .” Juggling “started being all that I’d do. That was it,” he continued. “I started working on the streets the next year.”

Along with the Balboa Pavillion, his street performances took place at the La Brea Tar Pits and Westwood. And these were hardly the efforts of a dilettante: “I left home when I was 16 and was supporting myself entirely on the streets.”

Juggling full time not only paid the bills but also helped Rosen sharpen his skills for the 1981 International Juggling Assn. championship in Cleveland, where he won top prize.

From there, he made another unusual career move: He decided to join the Ice Capades. “I wanted to work big audiences,” he explained, “but I didn’t have the experience to go to Las Vegas, and I didn’t want to be in the circus.” OK, but the decision still was a little odd, considering that he didn’t know how to ice skate.

No problem. He took lessons and eventually befriended the night manager at a rink so he could practice juggling on the ice at odd hours without endangering other skaters with flying pins or flaming clubs. “I’d get to practice from about 2 to 4 in the morning, every night, for about six months, until I was ready. Then I auditioned and got in.”

After completing the Ice Capades’ 82-83 season, Rosen “realized what I really liked most about performing was the comedy end of it.” And, although there still have been occasional sidetrips, that is the end he has most avidly pursued.

He started working the Improv and other L.A. comedy clubs before hitting the national club circuit. The road work, along with the “Sugar Babies” stint, gave him a higher profile, more confidence, and a stronger and smoother act.

Rosen--who sports a striking hairdo that suggests a punker who watched one too many horror flicks (“I’m really mad at Supercuts”)--launches his act (which is varied but still heavy on juggling) with patter and a demeanor that treads an unlikely line between engaging and annoying. Sort of Goofy with a capital G.

“Yeah, I’m like a little cartoon,” he said of his on-stage persona. “It’s child-like, animated. I like to think of myself as a modern-day Gomer Pyle. He’s my idol.”

His contract with the post-Joan Rivers “Late Show” was for six weeks. Rosen said the producers who recruited him (along with hosts Jeff Joseph and John Mulrooney) had planned an “innovative thing. They were going to make a really wacky, adventurous show.”

But, Rosen said, concern increased over the way Fox affiliates and advertisers might respond to this approach, and as a result a blander one was taken. Between that, and the decision to replace Joseph and Mulrooney, Rosen wasn’t keen to stick around. He said he was told that he “was welcome to stay and announce . . . but now it’s just a regular, safe talk show. And I didn’t want to just sit there and be Ed McMahon.”

Still, the “Late Show” exposure certainly didn’t hurt him. Rosen now has a number of projects cooking. Most are on hold because of the writers’ strike, but once that is resolved, he said, there is a good chance that he may join the cast of a hit sit-com, portraying a character he created.

Meanwhile, among other things, he will be performing at various venues, he will turn up on a McDonald’s commercial juggling bottles of salad dressing, and he will be recording comedy-rock tunes with the hope of releasing them soon. Of at least equal importance to Rosen will be the songs’ accompanying videos.

“I want to be on MTV more than anything,” he said, laughing.

That is his main goal?

“Either that, or to do a new series of ‘Gomer Pyle.’ ”

Daniel Rosen performs tonight through Sunday at the Improvisation Comedy Club, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine, on a bill with Jeff Cesario. Show times: Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, 8 p.m; Friday, 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 8 and 10:30 p.m. Admission: $6 to $10. Information: (714) 854-5455.