Audience Joins in the Act at Make-A-Circus

When you hear an Ellington tune waft across the park and see the hand-painted backdrop and the trapeze apparatus suspended over a small, grassy ring, you know you’ve discovered San Francisco’s Make-A-Circus.

Back for a 15th year of free shows in California parks for children and parents, Make-A-Circus, even when not in tip-top form, remains one of summer’s simple pleasures.

The formula is always the same: Put on a comic play for kids with clowns for giggles and acrobats and a trapeze artist for a few astonished gasps; take a break and teach the audience how to walk on stilts, juggle, tumble and clown. Then, put everyone into a second play to show off their new-found talents.

And, season the whole thing from start to finish with one of the sweetest little jazz bands around.

This year, most of the elements cook. It’s the play itself that lacks spice. “Clean Up Your Act” is about Jump (Rene Collins) and Tanya (Patricia Howard), two kids who can’t go to the circus until they clean up their room.

They have an eccentric mom (Gaen Murphree on stilts, in housedress and fuzzy slippers) and some helpful dolls (Alan Kopischke, Rebecca Perez and Teresa Dinaburg). After a battle with a monster dustball (Mary Kitchens), they complete their chore.

The best part is comic tumbling by the cast and Perez’s highly appreciated stint on the trapeze. The play needs more of that.

At Tuesday’s performance at Alhambra’s Almansor Park, participation was eager. Katy Chang, 7, was one of 40 to 50 novice tumblers. She had a little trouble with her somersault, but her painted gold eyebrows were a hit. Matthew Medrano, 6, said his favorite part of the show was the “flying trapeze, but there’s no workshop in it,” so he opted to be a clown.

During the 30-minute workshops, the youngest children were given tied-on tails and painted whiskers and taught how to be ferocious lions and tigers. Other children practiced becoming human pyramids, gingerly walked on stilts or juggled, somersaulted, cartwheeled and clowned.

The short, second play took Jump, Mom and Tanya to the circus and all the budding performers got into the act as family and friends applauded.

At El Dorado Park in Long Beach today at 12:30 p.m., at Live Oak Park in Fontana Sunday at 3 p.m., in Anaheim at Pearson Park on July 27 at 7 :30 p.m. and in Santa Maria at Simas Park on July 29 at 12:30 p.m. It will return for five more Southland performances in September. Free. Information: (415) 776-8477.