FAMILY : Circus Troupe Gets Audience Into Act

The judge is an octopus, the lawyer is--what else--a shark, and a killer whale sings the blues because the groupers laugh at his tutu. These eccentrics are part of San Francisco’s 21-year-old, one-ring Make*A*Circus, visiting Southland parks with its crowd-pleasing, kid-friendly combination of offbeat comedy theater, circus stunts, audience involvement and live jazz.

The professional troupe is performing its three-hour, free family show Friday at Paramount Park, Saturday at Wilson Park in Torrance and Sunday at Beach Park in Bakersfield. In mid-August, it returns for shows at several other Southland locations. The Make*A*Circus formula: troupe members put on a scripted comedy filled with circus derring-do and high jinks, take a break and teach audience members of all ages a few rudiments of juggling, tumbling, pyramid building and stilt-walking, then they pop the new performers into a second scripted “community” show.

Everybody gets into the act in this year’s second show, “Water World,” about a greedy developer who builds an underwater shopping mall/amusement park and is put on trial by angry sea creatures.

“All the children in the workshops get to be different animals living on the coral reef,” said artistic director Peggy Ford. There are “dolphins, dancing shrimps, spider crabs on stilts . . . and then we have a big ring dance where we invite the whole audience to come up and celebrate the end of the day with us,” Ford said.

Audience participation is part of the first company show, too. “Pirates!” is about shipwrecked buccaneers who try “to scrape up a new crew” at the circus, according to writer/director Drew Letchworth, who was with comedy troupe Fratelli Bologna for 12 years and was a Make*A*Circus performer in the early ‘80s.

Although the emphasis is comedy, there is a message underneath all the clowning, comic chases, jokes, stilt-walking, bungee jumping, pole-climbing and trapeze stunts, Letchworth said.

“It’s seeing that while pirates are romantic and glorified--just like gangs--and people join to belong to something cool, you have to deal with the fact that the pirate’s job is to pirate--to maraud, burn and kill,” Letchworth said.

“My emphasis as a writer, actor, director and comedian are generally not social--I’m looking for broad characters and broad comedy. But we wanted that theme to be the pulse of the circus.”

So, although the circus “kids” (circus professionals in their 20s and 30s) “really get into” pirating at first, they have second thoughts. Meanwhile, the captain learns some manners, sort of, and his parrot (aerialist Nikki Byrd) learns to fly.

* Make*A*Circus, Friday, 1 p.m. at Paramount Park; Saturday, 12:30 p.m. at Wilson Park, Torrance; Sunday, 5:30 p.m. at Beach Park, Bakersfield; Aug. 20, 12:30 p.m. at Pomona Civic Center Plaza, Aug. 21, 12:30 p.m. at Barnsdall Art Park; Aug. 25, 5 p.m. at El Sereno Recreation Center; Aug. 27, 12:30 p.m. at Chapparosa Park, Laguna Niguel; Aug. 28, 12:30 p.m. at Rennette Community Park, El Cajon. Free; (415) 776-8470.