circus clown & juggling show
marfa lights festival
Saturday, August 30th at 12 noon
Marfa Live Arts brought the circus to the 38th Annual Marfa Lights Festival. Families from Marfa and beyond were treated to a big-top live performance featuring juggler/comedian Bruce Manners and a local clown troupe show, led by Las Vegas-based performer Paul Matthew Lopez. Continuing on the trend of a magician last year, we were excited to up the ante by bringing the circus to Marfa! ​
photos by Rowdy Dugan
Manners, a Houston transplant, has been a festival-act mainstay for nearly three decades, and has shared the stage with the likes of iconic magician duo Penn and Teller, and has even opened for rock legend Alice Cooper. His passion for juggling began while still a high schooler in Cleveland, Ohio after his mother gifted him the book “Juggling for the
Complete Klutz” as a joke. “I didn’t realize it could become a career option. I performed, invited a lot of high school theater and high school and also in college. And when I graduated college, I had an electrical engineering degree. I got a job with NASA, but I still wanted to continue to perform,” Manners explained. “Ultimately, the juggling seemed a perfect fit for me. I saw jugglers on The Tonight Show who did comedy acts, and I thought, ‘Okay, that's the kind of thing I could do.’ So I started to go to comedy clubs and entering programs, and it took off from there.”
Leading the clown troupe was Paul Matthew Lopez, whose latest stage credit was him starring in the Best-show-on-the-Strip's ABSINTHE at Caesars Palace. Lopez is a Marfa native with strong multigenerational ties to town. “It’s going to be a homecoming for him!” Ananza said. “I have to give a big thanks to Kaki (Auftengarten-Scott) for putting me in contact with him. Lopez’s film credits include parts in Margarita Man, Velocity Girl, and Teenage Vampire, among others work as a stunt rigger and tight-rope walker. Along with his film credits, he has appeared on stage in Elf the Musical and has performed in variety shows as a juggler and acrobat.