To learn a new juggling trick, you fail. A lot. In this comedic hybrid film, three performers travel to the 77th International Juggling Festival to practice old tricks with new friends. Along the way, they’ll take the lessons of failure & apply them to life. Can Sonal confront the mime who impregnated her? Will Cyril choose a passion for acting over success in juggling? Can Lucy find a way to make juggling sexy?

Serious Play takes center stage in this hybrid documentary about the International Juggling Festival– a microcosm of the global juggling community, where enthusiasts from all walks of life converge to share, learn, and showcase their juggling skills. The film offers a glimpse into the festival’s daily rhythm, where attendees engage in workshops, practice on the bustling expo floor, and reconnect with old friends. By night, the crowds shift to a nearby theater for captivating live performances. This year, the festival takes place in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Over the course of the festival, our main characters—Sonal, Lucy, and Cyril—confront the personal and professional obstacles of being working artists. We have crafted their stories, which blend reality and fiction in playful ambiguity, based on their real-life experiences. The storylines feature significant life changes and high-stakes decisions. Throughout these challenges, we explore how juggling and its associated metaphors assist them in navigating these critical choices.

Sonal, a 40-year-old flow artist and stand-up comic, has been hustling to create a fulfilling career and lifestyle, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. However, after a one-night stand with a mime resulted in an unexpected pregnancy, she faces a life-altering decision. Can she count on this mime to co-parent? Does she even want to be a mother? How can she be a working artist and a single parent? She tries to deflect her anxiety by joking about the silent man who supplied the sperm, but when she keeps spotting mimes at the festival, she can’t avoid the truth any longer.

Lucy is a street performer who works on the San Francisco pier. She’s on the precipice of making a living as a performer, but can’t find a way out of soul-sucking corporate gigs. She’s more focused on incorporating burlesque into her show and merging the two forms for mainstream performance.

Cyril is a world-renowned juggler, but he recently quit his dream job at Cirque du Soleil. He can’t stand the way the job has sucked all the fun out of juggling, and he finds himself at a crossroads. How do you keep pursuing your art when the only avenue for expression is paved with capitalist drudgery? After seeing a performance at the festival crash and burn (due to Sonal’s messiness), he commits to improvising his performance at the festival’s gala show, with no music, and no plan.

Meanwhile, the documentary scenes of the film delve into the juggling community’s strengths and contemporary challenges, including how even organizations dedicated to silliness can grapple with issues of equity and inclusion. Historically dominated by white, cisgender males, juggling has prioritized ball, hoop, and club manipulation as the true form of juggling. In recent years, however, the IJA is proactively working towards inclusivity for jugglers of color, LGBTQ individuals, and those with neurodivergent identities. In turn, other forms of juggling such as hula hoop, poi, and flow arts have gained increased recognition and acceptance. It’s clear that a diversity in types of juggling leads to a diversity in people. Two of our main characters are pushing up against the standard homogenous juggling community as Payel is an Indian-American woman, and Lucy is a trans woman.

Through our years of research, we feel confident in the themes and stories we explore. Our main participants are encouraged to play & improvise, and have jugglers’ feelings & questions about the “state of “play” direct our storytelling. We’re excited to catch up with familiar jugglers & meet new ones—crafting this movie around the peculiarities of the community as a whole.

DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE.   Please note donations made via credit card incur 3% fees.  If that’s something you want to avoid, email [email protected] to set up a wire or bank transfer. Or, checks can be sent to UnionDocs 352 Onderdonk Ave., Ridgewood NY, 11385 (please make it clear it’s for this project)