Chris Bennion

Lorenzo Pisoni performs his one-man show about growing up as the youngest member of the Pickle Family Circus.

From the imposing big top of Teatro Zinzanni to the city’s clown schools (yes, there is more than one) to the increasingly frequent Cirque du Soleil shows, San Francisco is circus town.

But it wasn’t always so. In 1974, Larry Pisoni, along with his two clowning partners, founded the Pickle Family Circus, a radical rethinking of the American circus concept.  It was a small, animal-free outfit with an emphasis on performance and artistry that laid the groundwork for similar troupes to spring up throughout the country and helped grow a burgeoning Bay Area scene.

Lorenzo Pisoni, Larry’s son, had the unique experience of watching this happen from the inside. To a casual observer, his was a childhood plucked from the pages of a charming novel: he was the circus’ youngest member, learning the tricks of the trade alongside his father, with whom he performed. But in his one man show, “Humor Abuse,” Pisoni lays out a more complicated version of his childhood —the show is a highly physical homage to Larry, as Pisoni recreates his father’s dramatic acrobatic stunts on stage.

“Humor Abuse” opened in New York, where Pisoni now lives, and then traveled to Seattle, making his San Francisco debut a kind of homecoming. (Garnering great reviews, too: Charles Isherwood, writing in the New York Times, called Pisoni's performance physically "breathtaking".)  It opens at A.C.T. Jan. 12 and runs through Feb. 5. For more information go here.

The Bay Citizen sat down with Pisoni to talk about his show and his childhood. His answers have been edited and condensed. 

What was it like writing a one-man show?

Slightly terrifying. I had a lot of questions, like “Will anyone care”? But [Director/Co-Creator/Writer] Erica Schmidt and I went to college together, she has worked with other people creating shows, so it wasn’t quite such new territory for her. It was really great to have a partner in crime and once I got over the fact that it was just going to be me onstage talking about my life growing up, it was pretty cathartic.

Because I had Erica as a foil, I would write something and she would replay it back to me. Hearing someone else repeat something back to me I would be like, “This is my life? That is just mental.”

What did you learn about your experience through writing the show?

I learned that is was a unique experience. I’d never really thought about it that way, just because it was my reality. From the inside it felt like I just had my parents like everyone else has parents and an older sister and I had a lot of aunts and uncles that happened to do handstands on chairs and swing on the trapeze and juggle lots of objects. Their skill set wasn’t who they were to me.

So, I learned that that was pretty interesting, but then also things like—you know, my father, when he was a teenager, he thought he might go into the seminary and then he rejected that and wound up running away from home and he wanted to be a painter and that didn’t pan out because he started learning clowning and acrobatics and all this stuff.

There was this interesting moment where I was talking to Erica one day and we were talking about how my father always thought his clowning always came from shaman and medicine men and the Monkey King and all this stuff that has a religious bent to it, and the circus rehearsed in the church on Potrero Hill and she said, “Well, isn’t that funny?”

And I said, “What?”

And she said, “He thought about going into the seminary and then he found this new religion and now you’re actually rehearsing in a church.”

Those connections are being made. That was really fascinating.

What was the circus community like in San Francisco back when you were a kid?

There wasn’t much of a community outside of The Pickles. My parents met at the Mime Troupe. My mother was a set designer and my father came in to teach the Mime Troupe basic circus skills and that’s where they met. They started a juggling act together. My father taught my mother how to juggle and she was very good at it. And for the circus, my parents had this notion—it’s a one ring, no animal circus and it’s a collective. The idea was that it was about human power and it was very much these ideals that came out of the 1970s San Francisco cultural scene, like women’s lib, and so those things became part of their circus.

I think it became all metaphor, that’s very intellectual and all that stuff, which wasn’t what circus in the states was. The circus in the states was Ringling Brothers, Circus Vargas, these big spectacle shows. The Pickles really was a reflection of San Francisco. The clowning that was done in the show was much more classic, it was a narrative, and not just pie in the face for the sake of pie in the face. There had to be a true set up and all that stuff.

That was the sort of world they wanted to create in the ring, and I think they succeeded.

How has the show affected your relationship with your dad?

On my end, I think I have such a deep appreciation for what he accomplished in creating the circus. He created it when he was 24, he and his two clown partners.

At the time they resurrected a style of clowning when there were no DVDs, no internet. They had to go find the classics. They had to find revival houses and see runs of movies. That’s impressive to me. They read gags in books.

It was my birthday when we were up in Seattle and he gave me a joke book that he had studied. It was about 200 pages of physical gags, just written down. It was totally bizarre. I have that new respect for him.

He really loves the show and he takes it how we intended it, as an homage to him. First of all, we’ve been able to spend more time together, it might be the most time we’ve spent together in years, I really think it’s been helpful and I also think there’s been a way in which every child has to accept their parent. You’re never going to change them, they just are who they are. That’s kind of been a recent evolution of my relationship with my dad. I think that’s a great thing.

What are some especially vivid memories you have from growing up in Potrero Hill with the circus?

We rehearsed in a church and there was an apartment connected to it. Some people would stay in the apartment, but our house was actually up the hill on the top of Potrero Hill.

I remember early mornings being the first one in the church. I got a key and that was a big deal, I was 11. The circus would rehearse in the main chapel where the congregation would sit. It was cramped. I remember that feeling of rehearsing the show, and to come into the ring, which was just two steps away from the wall, was like walking into a sacred space. It was either nerve-wracking or annoying depending on what I was about to rehearse.

And there used to be a corner shop called The Daily Scoop that was just down the block from the circus studio and the first time I remember going in there I couldn’t see over the counter because I was so small and so every year I was able to see more and more flavors of ice cream as I grew. It marked the passage of time, the more flavors of ice cream I could see. I would make the ice cream the reward for doing good at rehearsal.

What’s next?

After this closes, I’ll start auditioning again. This is the last stop, this is a really physical show so there’s a finite amount of time I can do it, but I figure there’s three years of it in me, and then I’ll really have to hang it up.