The last time I saw Julie Greenberg and Jeff Jenkins, two and a half years ago, they were on the verge of opening their ragtag theater company, the Midnight Circus, in a little storefront theater in Uptown. In true off-off-Loop style, Greenberg and Jenkins, who were engaged, had taken on all the responsibilities–costumes, publicity, business management–as well as writing, directing, and starring. With less than three weeks until the opening, they looked pretty strung out.
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But they talked a mile a minute, like a pair of ten-cup-a-day coffee addicts at the peak of their caffeine rush: interrupting each other midsentence, spitting out their words rat-a-tat-tat like dueling typewriters, telling anyone who asked everything they’d gone through–the excitement of creating a show that combined spectacular circus acts with the structure of a play, trying to get the thing produced (the endless pitch sessions, the inevitable rejections), the period of despondency when it became obvious no one would give them money, and the big decision to borrow money from friends and family to put it on themselves.
“And Barry Lubin [who used to appear in the Big Apple] is a friend of mine,” Jenkins cuts in, “and he introduced us to [Big Apple Circus founder and ringmaster] Paul Binder. We handed him our humble press kit.”
Afterward Binder told the pair that their show reminded him of the Big Apple back in the early days, when it was just a handful of hippie street performers. Then, Greenberg recalls, Binder added, “We’ll work together in the future. I don’t know how, but we will.”
Binder’s plan was to use their show to adapt his one-ring circus to the theater. “The tent and the traditional circus thing is very nice,” Jenkins says. “But it’s much easier to find a theater to perform in than an easy-to-get-to place where they can set up the tent and everything for a show.”
“That way we can work with them without losing our identity,” Greenberg says.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
