When Avner Eisenberg hits the stage at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 14, at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono, he’ll be alone, but behind the scene, a special addition will be helping his show, “Exceptions to Gravity,” come to life — his son.
Eisenberg, better known as Avner the Eccentric, isn’t your typical clown. You won’t find him with a painted on smile or huge shoes. He doesn’t wear frills or polka dots. His performances are commonly called physical slapstick humor, but he’s a self-described “dropologist.”
“If I pick up three things, one of them is bound to fall,” Eisenberg said.
Audiences can expect a “theater predicament,” as Eisenberg described it, consisting of his character, the janitor, who enters the stage after a show is over to clean up.
“He realizes that the audience is there, but he’s got a job to do, so he gets on with it,” Eisenberg said.
From there, comedy ensues.
Eisenberg has been on Broadway. He’s performed in Paris, London and Madrid and traveled the country. But since 1984, he has called Maine home.
“It was over 30 years ago, and I was hanging out in New York waiting for my show to open on Broadway. A friend of mine’s parents lived on Peaks Island, and it was a very exotic sounding place to me. I took a weekend and flew up, and two weeks later, I bought a little cottage,” Eisenberg said.
Eisenberg raised his son, Zev, on Peaks Island, a place he describes as “perfect.”
“It was the most amazing place to raise a kid,” Eisenberg said.
Zev Eisenberg grew up watching his father perform, but when he was young, he was introduced to the behind the scenes work by a man named Jeff, who toured with Avner Eisenberg for several years.
“Jeff took him up to the light booth. After that, he didn’t want to be anywhere near the stage,” Eisenberg said.
Eisenberg’s son is now a software engineer living in Massachusetts, and though he isn’t a performer, he still juggles. He recently returned from Juggle MIT, a juggling festival at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I never seriously considered theatre or vaudeville as a career, but I’ve always been interested in it,” Zev Eisenberg said.
He helps out when he gets the chance and looks forward to returning to his old “stomping grounds” to run the lights and watch his father perform again.
“It’s kind of amazing how consistent he is and how well he knows the audience,” the younger Eisenberg said. “I know the movements so well, because I’ve seen it so many times, but it never gets boring.”
The word clown is often synonymous with small children, but Avner Eisenberg said that his performance depends on the irony of situations, and it is therefore better appreciated by older audiences — so don’t be shy, all ages are welcome at his show.
Once, years back, someone asked Eisenberg what he did if people didn’t find him funny.
“When they don’t laugh, thank goodness, I’ve got enough problems to worry about before being laughed at,” Eisenberg joked. “The audience has to have the sense of humor, not you.”
And if all else fails, he’s learned to just roll with the punches.
“If you can’t succeed every time, learn to fail magnificently,” he said.