Paul Magid, kingpin of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, describes his merry band’s blend of theater and juggling as “visual music.”
“Theater is the queen of all the arts,” he said from his home in Bologna, Italy, “because it encompasses everything: architecture, writing, acting, dancing and music. You have to be able to do pretty much everything.”
The Flying Karamazov Brothers will bring their show to the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto on April 26. It’s a homecoming for Magid, who grew up in the South Bay. He had his bar mitzvah at Temple Emanu-El in San Jose, graduated from Saratoga High School and earned a degree from UC Santa Cruz, where he co-founded the troupe more than 50 years ago.
Since forming, the group has toured the world, performed on Broadway, appeared in hit films, collaborated with major orchestras and had a memorable guest-starring role in an episode of “Seinfeld.” Over the decades, Magid has written and directed plays for other theater companies, and scripted 22 original FKB shows. Some are redolent of Grand Guignol and Commedia dell’Arte, others riffing on works by Igor Stravinsky or, obviously, the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In any given performance, the quartet unspools novelistic narratives while juggling bowling pins, telephones, Champagne bottles and Tonka trucks. They dress in tutus and tuxedos. They play tubas, ukuleles and fiddles. They deftly cook a breakfast on stage while juggling the pan and eggs.
At 70, Magid is the oldest of the Karamazovs (he adopted the stage name Dmitri, after a character in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”) and is the last remaining original member. The troupe has gone through several iterations over the years; his current colleagues are much younger. Magid doesn’t try to keep up with them — he says they try to keep up with him.
“Right now I’m doing fine on stage, juggling as well as ever,” he says. “Some of it is genes. My great-grandfather lived to be 112.”
In the original 1973 lineup of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, all members were Jewish. Indeed there is a tradition of juggling and similar physical entertainment in Eastern European Jewish history. According to an article in Brandeis magazine, “‘tummler’ is Yiddish for a person ‘who makes a racket,’ a jester, entertainer and emcee all rolled into one.”
But Magid does not come from an Askenazi line. He is Sephardic. His ancestors were from Spain and were forced into exile in 1492, immigrating to Turkey. His 112-year-old great-grandfather was born in the Turkish town of Marmara. “They were fishermen,” he says.
Once his family immigrated to the United States, the Magids turned their attention to tikkun olam, American-style. “My grandfather was in the IWW,” Magi added, referring to the radical labor organization Industrial Workers of the World. “He fought for justice. My father worked at Stanford, and was [farm labor organizer] Cesar Chavez’s doctor.”
Magid intended to become a scientist or a doctor. At UC Santa Cruz he studied English lit and medieval Muslim history. Everything changed when, on a whim, he auditioned for a role in a university production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” He got the part, and was hooked.
Not long after, he and his friend Howard Jay Patterson volunteered to come up with an opening act for a Commedia dell’Arte play coming to campus. It was to include juggling.
“We invented something in an hour, and we got a better reception than the play,” Magid recalls of the birth of the Flying Karamazov Brothers. “We made loads of money while having loads of fun. It fulfilled my theater thing. Then, when we graduated, we were pretty well known, so we said we’d give it a try, and in a few years we were on Broadway.”
Immortality for the FKB is guaranteed thanks to their role in the 1996 “The Friar’s Club” episode of “Seinfeld.” The troupe portrays the Flying Sandos Brothers, who borrow Jerry’s dinner jacket (loaned to him by the club) during a performance, then promptly make it disappear, which forces the Friar’s Club to deny Jerry membership when he cannot return the jacket.
“I really liked everyone involved,” Magid recalls of the week they spent on the set. “They were big fans. I love the show, and Larry David was a great guy.”
Though he has a home in Italy, Magid does not consider himself an expat. He also has a home in Port Townsend, Washington, and he belongs to three synagogues: one in Bologna, one in Port Townsend and another in Seattle.
While giving no thought to retiring from the FKB or theater in general, he does have one fascinating goal that has nothing to do with the arts, and everything to do with his family’s long history of expulsion and exile: He will soon obtain a Spanish passport.
And when Spain issues that proof of citizenship, he looks forward to an ironic next step. “I will,” he says, “then pledge allegiance to the same people that kicked us out.”