Avner Eisenberg "Avner the Eccentric" (born August 26, 1948) is an American
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
performer,
clown
A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms.
History
The most ancient clowns have been found in ...
,
mime
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email messages to support text in character sets other than ASCII, as well as attachments of audio, video, images, and application programs. Message ...
,
juggler
Juggling is a physical skill, performed by a juggler, involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling. Juggling can be the manipulation of one object ...
, and
sleight of hand
Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or ''legerdemain'' ()) refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card ...
magician.
[Frank Cullen ''et al.'', "Avner the Eccentric" in ''Vaudeville, old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performers in America, Volume 1'', Routledge, 2007, , p. 49 ''et. seq.''] John Simon described him in 1984 as "A clown for the thinking man and the most exacting child."
Born in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
, Avner went to four different universities with a variety of tentative
majors; he ultimately received a theater degree from the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
in 1971. He then studied mime in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
under
Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Lecoq (15 December 1921 – 19 January 1999) was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime which he taught at the school he founded in Paris known as ...
, interrupting those studies to spend some time as a
puppet
A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or Legendary creature, mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. The puppeteer uses movements of their hands, arms, or control devices such as rods ...
eer. Returning to the U.S., he taught at Carlo Clementi's
Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre The Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre is a private school in Blue Lake, California. It offers a NAST-accredited three-year MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre, a one-year professional training program, summer workshops, and a ...
in
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
He performed at
Renaissance fair
A Renaissance fair, Renaissance faire or Renaissance festival is an outdoor gathering open to the public and typically commercial in nature, which purportedly recreates a historical setting for the amusement of its guests. Some are permanent the ...
s and on stages, before playing the title role in the 1985 film ''
The Jewel of the Nile
''The Jewel of the Nile'' is a 1985 American Action film#Action-adventure, action-adventure romantic comedy film directed by Lewis Teague and produced by Michael Douglas, who also starred in the lead role, and reunites with co-stars Kathleen Tur ...
'',
[Janet Maslin, "Film: 'Jewel of the Nile'", ''New York Times'', December 11, 1985, p. C22.] a film that also featured his fellow vaudevillians
The Flying Karamazov Brothers
The Flying Karamazov Brothers (FKB) are a juggling and comedy troupe that has been performing since 1973. They learned their trade busking as street artists starting in Santa Cruz, California, eventually going on to perform nationally and internat ...
.
In a review of that film,
Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
singled out Avner for praise: "Avner Eisenberg very nearly steals the film…"
Roger Ebert, on reviewing the film, also singled Eisenberg out as "a true comic discovery".
Other notable roles have included a self-titled 1984
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
show, an appearance in a 1987
Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
production of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's ''
The Comedy of Errors
''The Comedy of Errors'' is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. It ...
'', and the principal role Srulik the
ventriloquist
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is v ...
in the 1989 Broadway play ''
Ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
''. He has also played both Vladimir and Estragon in productions of
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
's ''
Waiting for Godot'', costarred with his wife,
Julie Goell, in the world premiere of ''
Zoo of Tranquility'', and portrayed
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...
in ''
Comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...
''.
He has performed his wordless solo act at numerous festivals, including the
Edinburgh Festival
__NOTOC__
This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...
,
Israel Festival
The Israel Festival ( he, פסטיבל ישראל) is a multidisciplinary arts festival held every spring in Israel. Its center is Jerusalem. The festival operates as a non-profit organization. Some of the shows are offered free. Street performance ...
,
Festival of American Mime, and the
International Festival du Cirque in
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...
.
In 2004 he sold out the Theatre Fontaine in Paris for three months.
[Biography](_blank)
Avner the Eccentric, official site. Accessed 2009-09-25.
In addition to his performing, he is certified as an
Ericksonian Hypnotist and
NLP Master Practitioner, and has taught workshops on silent theater skills as a therapeutic tool for students and professionals in health care, education and counseling, as well as teaching theater workshops.
He also sits on the board of directors of the
Etz Chaim Synagogue
Etz Chaim Synagogue is a synagogue in Portland, Maine. Located at 267 Congress Street, it is the only immigrant-era European-style synagogue remaining in Maine. It was founded in 1921 as an English-language synagogue, rather than a traditional ...
(
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropol ...
).
As of 2009, he lives on an island in
Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...
.
Notes
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Avner The Eccentric
American mimes
American clowns
Jugglers
American magicians
American male film actors
American male stage actors
1948 births
Living people
University of Washington School of Drama alumni
Male actors from Atlanta
Male actors from Portland, Maine
Jewish American male actors
Jewish American artists
Jewish mimes
American people of German-Jewish descent
20th-century American male actors
L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq alumni
American expatriates in France
21st-century American Jews
Academy of Magical Arts Special Fellowship winners