Skagit County Fair 2016

This year, Wren and I (along with Chipp, Nate, and Harmony) were hired to be circus teachers and performers at the Skagit County Fair.

Wren and I performed three 8 or 9 hour days, which included 4 shows a day and teaching in the blazing sun.

  It was quite a fun and exhausting feat!

Here I am teaching diabolo to some fun young ladies.

 And Nate teaching a group of budding plate-spinners.

The scene.

 Wren, entertaining some curious young passers-by.

 Below is the article from the Skagit Valley Herald about us, well, mostly a highlight on Wren. Pretty neato!

MOUNT VERNON — When Wren Schultz was a student at Anacortes High School, his performance in the talent show involved juggling two hatchets and a hammer.

Though Schultz now lives in Whatcom County, those skills brought him back to Skagit County on Wednesday as part of a circus performance at the Skagit County Fair.

Known as the Circus A Team, Schultz, Della Plaster and Nate Wheeler drew more than 100 viewers, mostly children, during their first performance.

The group danced, performed tricks and juggled, with Wheeler catching a ball on his head to the delight of the crowd. As a finale, Schultz and Plaster performed a juggling routine that culminated with Plaster being perched on Schultz’s shoulders.

Schultz said he took up juggling after a visitor left some juggling balls.

“It was before YouTube,” he said. “You mostly had to teach yourself.”

In time, Schultz began performing. The Circus A Team is scheduled to perform multiple times a day during the fair and will feature a slightly changing lineup. The group is affiliated with the Bellingham Circus Guild.

This year is the group’s first time at the Skagit County Fair, although they give frequent performances at festivals, birthday parties and other events throughout the summer.

After Wednesday’s debut, several of the young audience members filed onto the grass to try their hand at some of the group’s tricks. Members of the group lent them juggling clubs, balls, hoops and other objects to try.

“All the kids lined up. It was sweet,” said Plaster, who performs as Della Moustachella.

The performers showed the group a few tricks to help them get started.

“When we started, we just performed,” Schultz said. “But people want to play as much as watch.”

RFS in Farm to School guide!

The Real Food Show is in the NW Regional Farm to School Guide!

It  is loaded with valuable information for schools in Island, San Juan, Skagit, and Whatcom Counties that are making farm to school work. This guide is for parents, teachers, administrators, food service staff, school board members, and community organizations. Way to go Real Food Show!

Western Front reports on My Circus Valentine 2016

The Western Fronts article about My Circus Valentine. Notable quotes about Wren and I... " The other team juggled pins with each other simultaneously. They rarely missed a beat or comedic moment." And one for me, "...an alluring piggy that was easy to love." Pretty neat-o.

My night with the circus

by Lauren Brigolin

Terril Teran Mire, circus aerialist, suspends herself in midair during Valentine’s Day performance put on by the Bellingham Circus Guild in Bellingham, WA, Feb. 13. // Photo by Daniel Liddicoet

Just outside the heart of historic Fairhaven stands an unassuming building. Inside this modern, metal building, live a talented group of dedicated performers. These performers make up the Bellingham Circus Guild.
This Valentine’s Day, the group hosted a themed event called My Circus Valentine, complete with an array of acts to entertain and awe the audience.
It was the eve of Valentine’s Day and my boyfriend and I didn’t know what to do. We’d exchanged presents and went out to dinner, but what about an experience? It’s only once a year where everyone is encouraged to observe love in all its forms.  That’s when we decided to see the show. As we followed the painted signs that said, “Circus Show” we knew we had picked a unique way to celebrate this year.
“I have never really liked Valentine’s Day,” said Anneka Deacon, the artistic director, stage manager and producer of the show. “I don’t like the clichés of it and that everyone should be having a sweetie and all of this heterocentric stuff around it.”
Deacon has been a performer for 10 years and decided she wanted something different for Valentine ’s Day that supported circus performers. She started the show seven years ago. This year is the first time she hasn’t performed.
“This is a really good opportunity for circus artists to perform in a way that is really special to them. [It] allows them to share open-heartedly and get paid for what they do,” Deacon said.
At this point in my life, I’ve seen Cirque du Soleil, Ringling Brothers and my small town’s yearly carnival, but nothing had prepared me for the intimacy and closeness of the Bellingham Circus Guild’s stage.
As I entered I was greeted by the smell of fresh popcorn. The giggles of children and an aura of excitement illuminated the room; Spinning above my head was an artist wrapped in blue silk welcoming guests and surprising young kids when she’d compliment them on their circus-like outfits of tutus and tights.
As showtime grew closer the audience chose their seats and in the front row on a mat was a group of kids excitedly gazing up at a performer on stilts who towered over them. The lights dimmed and the sixth My Circus Valentine began.

The stage burst to life. The opening act was a singer and dancers who set the tone of the show by singing a Bellingham version of “Let’s do it (Let’s fall in love)” by Cole Porter. Each act was an expression of the hard work the artist put in and it showed on the stage.
The jugglers in the show weren’t just juggling balls, one was juggling round discs. He would spin and catch with one disc while the thrown disc would land still spinning in the other. The other team juggled pins with each other simultaneously. They rarely missed a beat or comedic moment.

Performers from the Bellingham Circus Guild conclude a song and dance routine during a special Valentine’s Day performance in Bellingham, Feb. 13. // Photo by Daniel Liddicoet

The space between the audience and the stage was nearly non-existent. The acts invited you into their space and you were given a front row seat to the experience. The room had a sense of togetherness with its excitement.
One of the acts involved a large rope that was strung to the ceiling. The artist climbed to the middle of the rope and began to perform. Wrapping the rope around a leg and an arm, she’d let go. The rope would hold her weight suspended in the air. Then she would tie herself into another form and unravel once more. It appeared as easy as untying a silk ribbon from a present.
Another act, which caused my heart to skip a beat, was a pair of trapeze artists. The two told a story of a young woman picking apples before she snags the hat of a man who was raking leaves. The woman climbs onto the trapeze and the pair mischievously work together to tell the tale. During the performance the man would hang upside down and she would hold onto his arms spinning and then ascend back to the top of the trapeze. The two worked together to perform the stunts until the end when she politely returns his hat and steal his rake.
The atmosphere was a collective one that uniformly morphed from one act to another. Between each act was a storyteller that discussed themes of love and pain that created a narrative woven through each performance. The audiences’ cathartic response was different for each person, but it’d be hard to say that someone walked out of My Circus Valentine without experiencing anything.
“My favorite act was the trapeze,” my boyfriend, Nathan Moore said. “It was amazing to just watch them on one trapeze being able to do so many stunts. You could see how athletic [they were] and how much training they put into it because it was so precise. It was amazing to watch.”  
There was a tidal wave of emotions from the heightened stakes of the trapeze pair that caused us all sweat. To an alluring piggy that was easy to love. To the display of aerial silks that morphed the artist from one entity to another. The artist looked like a flame to a waxless candle. The red silk transformed her. I heard one child call out, “Look, it’s a butterfly!” as the artist danced above our heads.
One of the last acts was an aerial hoop act, also known as lyra, performed by Dream Frohe. The hoop hung from the ceiling and Frohe used the hoop to suspend herself and create images for the audience’s imagination to shape. At the end of her act the rest of the company slowly joined her and they swayed slowly back and forth like a pendulum keeping time.

Jules McEvoy, circus juggler, juggles five discs in the air during a Valentine’s Day performance put on by the Bellingham Circus Guild in Bellingham, Feb. 13. // Photo by Daniel Liddicoet

“After my act, we all come onstage a few at a time. It felt very powerful and sweet,” Frohe said. “Just standing there with everybody at the end of the last show and the audience was so stoked and receptive it felt really awesome.”
Frohe is an aerialist who uses many apparatuses. She has been an aerialist for nine years and is specializing most recently in the aerial hoop.
“I wouldn’t have had the guts to perform as much I have or in the way that I do without this community,”  Frohe said.
Frohe said when she initially started her performance career, she thought the Bellingham community was supportive.
“My friend Anneka started [My Circus Valentine] with my input. [My Circus Valentine] is a show that encompasses love in all of its facets. The painful and the joyous and the tender parts,” Frohe said. “We hope it’s a show that people in any relationship with love can feel connected to people and feel a sense of belonging and being moved.”
This Valentine’s Day will be something I’ll forever hold close to my heart. Maybe next year you’ll get to see the pigs fly too. However, between now and next Valentine’s day, the Bellingham Circus Guild presents Vaudevillingham on the 15th of every month. If you’re up for it, you and your significant other can run away with the circus for a night too. Here is the link to online.
*Lauren R. Brigolin used her boyfriend, Nathan Moore, in her first person story as a source to describe their Valentine’s Day date.

I'm in the Weekly!

Come to the Valentine's Day show! You won't see this act, but you will see me!

Happy Valenitne's day!

BCG at Whatcom's Mardi Gras

Article on the Bellingham Circus Guild at Mardi Gras by The Horizon, the official student newspaper of Whatcom Community College. Wren and I juggled things, Terril did aerial things, and Heidi stilted.

 

Mardi Gras Madness

By Cailean Mcleod
Students curious about the tradition of Mardi Gras were entertained on Feb. 9 a Whatcom Community College’s Pavilion.
Acts included the Bellingham Circus Guild, and various traditions such as King Cake and prizes.
“It’s going to be pretty fun, you can could come with your friends and hang out” said Laura Albert, Programming and Diversity Board coordinator prior to the festivities.
Albert said that the event included traditional Mardi Gras king cake, a table to make your own mask and featured the Bellingham Circus Guild members to come and perform.
“I think it brings out kind of just what we are about, in a sense that we do things in a diverse sense; we try to include all kinds of activities for the students,” said Landan Campbell, another Programming and Diversity Board member.
The origins of Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday comes from Catholic medieval Europe as the day before Ash Wednesday, where towns celebrating would prepare and eat every piece of food in their house in preparation for Lent, which occurs for forty days between Ash Wednesday to Easter.
“There is a tradition where there’s little baby dolls made of plastic, and traditionally they bake it inside the cake,” Albert said, describing another tradition called the “king cake”. ”The way it works is whoever has the cake with the little baby in it is the winner”
Albert said that the prize for finding the doll inside their king cake was an Amazon gift card.
Eventually, this tradition carried over to the American continent via French settlers who were the first Europeans to populate what is now modern-day Louisiana, which is why when people think Mardi Gras, they think of New Orleans.

 

Heidi Sorgen prepares for the annual Mardi Gras festivities on her pair of stilts.

Photo by Alex George

According to New Orleans’s website for Mardi Gras, the holiday was not originally celebrated in Louisiana with big parades in the streets. Instead, it was celebrated in elegant ballrooms. It was not until the 1780s when the first Mardi Gras “Carnival” was announced that it would become similar to more modern Mardi Gras festivities.
“We are just doing ambient performance today but we’ll be club juggling, knot throwing, ball juggling, and hat juggling; and we’ll have a stilter and an aerialist,” said Della Moustachella, another Guild performer at the event.
Moustachella said the Circus Guild originally formed when its mother company, Dream Science Circus, rented a space on Cornwall Street which the regular talent acts frequently used as a hub for practice and get-togethers.
“We are performers because we love performing, and so typically any gigs that come in we are excited for and always try to make it work” Moustachella said, adding “It’s also fun to shape what we do to fit the event.”
Terril Mire, a Guild aerialist performer, said the Circus Guild was excited to be here.
Campbell said that the event went very well and that it was “cool” that the Circus Guild performers came.
“I am super proud to be a part of it,” said Moustachella, adding that the Guild helps advocate education and entertainment.
Campbell said that he would have liked to have seen more people at the event. A handful of people came and went but most seemed to be there for the food and Circus Guild performers. “I think it is something that could be attempted again at a different time of the day” he said.
Online article here.

Bellingham Alive Magazine

We were in it! I'm right under the gray arrow.

Real Food Show in Herald

Frank & Beans 

Food Co-op's comedy show teaches about healthy food 

- and children lap it up.
By: Kie Relyea The Bellingham Herald

 

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/31/4320259_bellinghams-real-food-show-uses.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

In the gym at Bellinghams Parkview Elementary School, children giggle as "Frank" tries to corral "Beans," who's zipping around him every which way after eating sugary foods for breakfast. Clowning aside, the students are there Wednesday, May 27, for a serious lesson about eating healthy and being active in a 35-minute presentation titled "The Real Food Show," which was produced and developed by the Community Food Co-op in Bellingham.

This lesson comes with bad jokes that the students love, juggling - from eggs to bowling balls - singing, goofiness, unicycle riding, slapstick, balancing acts, and even time and space travel. All courtesy of Frank and Beans, the characters played by Jason Quick and Della Plaster of the Bellingham Circus Guild.

Using humor, the duo teach the kids about reading labels to find out what's actually in their food and the importance of eating a balanced diet of vegetables, fruits, grains and proteins. And that means avoiding some breakfast cereals and other things sugary. "Since pop is so full of sugar, what do we drink instead?" Plaster asked the students at one point. "Water!" they yelled in reply.

A total of 9,286 elementary school children in Whatcom and Skagit counties, as well as the city of Olympia, have seen the show since its start in 2014, thanks to the effort of Karl Meyer, outreach coordinator for the Community Food Co-op in Bellingham, who came up with the idea of teaching kids about food by making them laugh. "Learning while something fun is going on makes it easy to learn," Meyer said. "It's edutainment. I've seen the show so many times now I enjoy watching the kids. At that age they're such a sponge for knowledge and learning, and being in the moment with it."

In addition to Meyer, "The Real Food Show" was written and polished by Sam Williams, also known as "Smerdyakov" of Flying Karamazov Brothers fame, as well as Plaster and Quick. Schools haven't had to pay for the show since its pilot in 2014; the Bellingham food co-op has footed the bill for the presentations in Whatcom County. Local co-ops did the same in Skagit County and Olympia.

Meyer said he'd like to see that model repeat itself all over. "My goal for 'The Real Food Show' is to get the show in front of as many elementary school kids as possible," he said. "This show can be a catalyst for the children in our communities to embrace the importance of real food and a healthy lifestyle in a fun, entertaining and impactful way." The youngsters continue their education, and possibly their family's, when they leave. Each child is sent home with a place mat on which nutritional information, games and jokes are printed.

The show is part of the Bellingham co-op's commitment to educating the community, according to Meyer. "We do things for adults in the community," he said, referring in part to the co-op's cooking and health classes. He added: "It's so crazy right now with the media messages the kids are getting. I felt like kids need to see how real food is so important." Wednesday's show at Parkview dovetailed with other programs that have been teaching students about food and being healthy, including growhappykids.org from WSU Extension Food $ense and Whatcom Farm-to-School, which helps schools introduce fresh, healthy and local foods into meals and snacks.

Mardi Solomon, co-coordinator for the Whatcom Farm-to-School support team, is a fan of "The Real Food Show." "They're all the kinds of messages we want kids to get about healthy eating, but they're delivered in such a fun way," Solomon said. "I think 'The Real Food Show' grabs a lot of kids because of how the message is delivered." She sees it as another way of reaching children. Some learn about healthy eating through presentations in classrooms, others through the school garden or by eating local foods, and still others by watching Frank and Beans play, Solomon explained. She praised the co-op for producing and sponsoring the show. "We're united in our efforts to try to promote healthy eating in the community," Solomon said.

Melinda Ashbaugh, a Food $ense educator who saw the show for the first time Wednesday, praised it for being engaging. "They did a great job," Ashbaugh said. "It's important information and especially important at a young age. It's so much to easier to develop healthy habits than to change unhealthy habits. Getting that information when they're younger is pivotal."

The article, along with short video can be seen on the Herald website here ...

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/31/4320259_bellinghams-real-food-show-uses.html?rh=1

Wren's Wheel write-up

Wren n I in the Anacortes American.

Wren informed the Anacortes American about his upcoming television debut on Wheel of Fortune, and here is the article... Wren says, with only a few minor discrepancies in facts (like he didn't try out online first, he just went to Seattle to try out... and he didn't drive there, he took public transportation).

I'm so excited for October 30th! Good job Wren!

Spring Colophon Ad

I've been really enjoying creating ads for the Colophon. This ad for spring was pretty fun to put together. It's surprisingly rare that I get to make a moustache out of foamed milk, as I am not a coffee latte drinker. Nonetheless I found myself whipping up a cup from a friends espresso machine, and being quite impressed by the foams staying power.Wren, a bit more disgusted than impressed, did a fine job as photographer.

Dave (Colophon Bossman) suggested the idea of advertising for coffee and a muffin. I was stoked to come up with the "Hot Milk" title as a play on Got Milk. So come on into the Colophon for a latte and a muffin, and help support a wonderful, and also supportive, local business.