Green Light Circus returns to Talkeetna

JODI SNYDER -For the Frontiersman

TALKEETNA -- Twenty-three Talkeetna children held a recital on Tuesday afternoon at the Don Sheldon Community Arts Hangar, demonstrating the circus skills they learned while participating in a month-long after-school arts camp.

Held annually since about 1994, the Green Light Circus hasn't been active for a couple of years. Mary Langham, a doctor who said she always wanted to be in the circus, and other community members started the group as a summer arts camp that ended with a community performance. While Langham and her family have been living outside Alaska, Mary Farina and R.G. Denny, both long involved in the program, have been working to revive the circus.

"Basically, it's a community circus," Farina said, "and we have had participants of all ages." Since the community hadn't been doing circus acts for a while, she decided to start slowly, with a back-to-basics camp for the children.

"I wanted all the kids to learn to juggle something, and they all have. We also worked on clowning and unicycling," Farina said. "We have one kid who learned to unicycle in a week and another four or five who are inches away from being able to ride."

Denny met the kids at the elementary school before practice their final week and walked them to the hangar each afternoon. Known locally as Mr. Juggles the Clown, Denny, in costume, led the children through town like the pied piper.

"I had to outdo each previous day's costume," Denny said, "It got to where the kids were expecting it."

The idea was to stir up interest in the circus, he said, and to get the kids excited about participating at the same time they were being safely escorted to the hangar.

To start the show, the performers first shuffled onstage as a giant "spectapillar." They proceeded to complete a series of juggling, unicycling, tumbling, clowning and pyramid-building acts. There was genuine effort made in every attempted act, although they had many unplanned mishaps. The audience of about 50 people -- mostly parents of the performers -- didn't seem to mind, for the mayhem onstage made the show even more fun to watch.

Between Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, baseball and field trips, Farina said she never managed to get the entire group together at one time before the show.

"I was never intending to do a full performance this year," Farina said. "I just wanted to get the kids involved again. But we did want to do a recital, so the kids could show the skills they learned."

Mr. Juggles, aka Denny, and his partner, Bells the Clown, are so entwined with this little circus that they have a green light on top of the three-story bell tower on their home, which he calls the home of the Green Light Circus.

The light, which works a little like a lighthouse lens but operates on a 25-watt bulb, is usually on during cloudy nights in the summer and through the dark days of winter.

The Green Light Circus is organized as a program under the Denali Arts Council. Now that they've gained new momentum, they plan to continue the circus every year.

"We're just trying to keep it alive," Denny said.