PHOTO BY VANCE LAUDERDALE
The Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Circus performed at then-Memphis State University in 1973. Nick Weber, ringmaster and Jesuit priest, is the fellow with the red hair and beard in these photos, all taken by Vance Lauderdale.
Dear Vance: When I attended Memphis State in the 1970s, almost every year a small circus put on a show outside the student center. Who were these performers, and what happened to them? — G.L., Memphis.
Dear G.L.: On a rare visit to the campus during this time, I also witnessed this bizarre spectacle and snapped the pictures you see here. A troupe of magicians, jugglers, and mimes — all wearing outlandish costumes and accompanied by a monkey — drew a crowd to their makeshift production, which lasted only an hour. Then the group quickly dismantled their equipment and moved on to the next booking.
The Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Circus, a name chosen so you would remember it, and many still do — crisscrossed North America for more than 22 years, making stops at churches, schools, shopping centers, festivals, company picnics, and just about any place they could draw a crowd. The merry ringmaster of this ragtag bunch was a largely self-taught actor, singer, magician, mime, escape artist, and animal trainer from California named Nicholas J. Weber.
Oh, and he just happened to be a Jesuit priest. In fact, the entire venture was an official ministry of the California Province of the Society of Jesus.
I know this because the Lauderdale Library contains a rare copy of Weber’s 2012 autobiography, The Circus That Ran Away with a Jesuit Priest. His life story is, perhaps, even more remarkable than mine. He certainly never set out to run “the world’s smallest circus,” funded only by donations, handouts, and “passing the hat” after each performance, but it made him a national celebrity.
Born in 1939, Weber could have enjoyed an easy life in his hometown of Yuba City, California, since his family owned the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer distributorship. As a young boy he had three encounters that would impact his entire life. First, the family attended St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, an impressive stone edifice, where Weber was fascinated by the elaborate religious rituals that took place inside. Next came a visit to town by the Cole Brothers Circus, and he never forgot the sights and sounds of the Big Top. Finally, he had boyhood friends who were amateur magicians, and trips to a magic store emptied his pockets as he bought, practiced, and perfected the newest tricks and illusions.
At an early age, then, Weber began to think of a way to meld the dramatic elements of performance, spectacle, magic, ritual, and yes, religion, of all three worlds.
Despite his family’s misgivings, he decided to join the Society of Jesus — better known as the Jesuits — and earned a bachelor’s degree in theology from Mount St. Michael’s in Spokane, Washington. He later earned a master’s from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, California. The entire spiritual journey from student to novitiate to Jesuit priest is far too complex to go into here — after all, you want me to tell you about the circus, right? — so I encourage you to read Weber’s book.
“I went to Yale for five years, then Princeton, Cornell, UCLA, Emory, LSU, and Stanford. I never graduated from any of them because I couldn’t stay long enough, but I reaped the treasure of a priceless education.” — Nick Weber, ringmaster
We’ll skip ahead a few years, to 1969, when Weber approached church leaders about an outreach program he had conceived. After all, one goal of the Jesuits was education, and Weber had the notion that parables could be conveyed under the guise of entertainment. He had already experimented with an outdoor act he called “Sam’s Sidewalk Show,” afterwards speaking to the small crowds who gathered to watch his magic acts.
Weber attained the priesthood in 1970 and didn’t waste any time expanding his vision. With two or three other performers, he took to the road, at first visiting shopping centers and Native American reservations, and calling their group the Council Players. Within a few months, they adopted the far more colorful name of the Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Sidewalk Circus and Traveling Taxidermy Show, usually shortened to the Royal Lichtenstein Circus.
Initially working along the West Coast, the circus — with all their props, animals, costumes, and other gear crammed into a Dodge van — began to venture eastward. Weber and his ever-changing cast of assistants, drawn from carnival professionals and amateurs with a knack for unicycle stunts or fire-eating, set up on college campuses. There they had the best chance of reaching a young and attentive audience, seeking an hour’s entertainment between classes.
As a result, Weber says, “I went to Yale for five years, then Princeton, Cornell, UCLA, Emory, LSU, and Stanford. I never graduated from any of them because I couldn’t stay long enough, but I reaped the treasure of a priceless education.”
1 of 12
2 of 12
3 of 12
4 of 12
5 of 12
6 of 12
7 of 12
8 of 12
9 of 12
10 of 12
11 of 12
12 of 12
His book makes no mention of how many times he visited Memphis, or where his circus performed here. My friends — yes, I have a few, even now — recall shows at what were then Memphis State University and Southwestern at Memphis, as well as performances at the Germantown Festival, when it was held in “The Pines” (now the site of Methodist Le Bonheur Hospital).
Along the way, the circus added quite a menagerie to their act: a spider monkey named Penelope, a miniature horse named Othello, a black bear cub, and other creatures. A typical show, writes Weber, “was 55 minutes of rapid-fire entertainment that is a hybrid of theater and the rarified repertoire of circus. It is a seamless parade of juggling, balancing, parables, and acrobatics that only a trained ensemble of men, monkeys, a prancing horse, and a waltzing bear can muster.”
“And before we say goodbye, may we ask a very special favor? Before you fall asleep tonight, would you spend two or three minutes just trying to — imagine — this whole world at peace? Take care of one another, and thank you very much.” — Nick Weber, at the close of each performance
A typical way to open the show went something like this: “Move right in close, folks! This is the chance of a lifetime! A completely chaotic collection of compulsive capers, a cavalcade of chuckle-coaxers confected with the care and cunning calibrated to quell coronaries and quicken curiosity!”
As you might imagine, such an unusual venture began to attract national attention. The San Francisco Chronicle noted the “spellbound crowds” that attended the shows. Time magazine called the troupe “an amiable blend of circus acts and low-key morality plays.” The chaplain of Yale University said the whole thing was “a marvel, full of joy and good humor, raising just the right kind of gentle havoc.”
“The Royal Lichtenstein Circus characterized itself as a circus that talked to you,” writes Weber. “How it talked! What the audiences heard from us could be humor, magician’s patter, conventional announcements, dramatic narrative, poetry, and sometimes — from me — outright social commentary. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that a student seated at our show might think it was the most colorful lecture on campus that day.”
The fact that this lecture came from a clown, perched on a tightrope, while juggling and holding a chattering monkey — well, that just made it all the better.
The circus performers stayed on the road nine months out of the year, returning to their home base in California to rest, repair the sets and costumes, audition new players, and develop new acts. One year, Weber estimated they had journeyed some 14,000 miles, often staying at the homes of friends and fellow Jesuits, and getting food wherever they could find it.
As you might imagine, the years began to take a toll. “By the mid-Eighties, I knew I was tired in the ring,” he writes. What’s more, audiences were changing, demanding more sophisticated entertainment than an old-timey circus, and Weber notes there was “an attitude change on campuses as well. The looser, leisure-oriented dimension that had long been part of college life was evolving, and our favorite audiences were thinning out.”
Nick Weber's autobiography, published in 2012.
What really brought the curtain down, however, was the Catholic Church, whose leaders concluded that spreading the word of God in a circus just wouldn’t do. In 1985, in fact, the Los Angeles Archdiocese issued a bulletin, specifically titled, “The Ministry of Clowns Is Not Appropriate to Liturgical Worship.”
Weber reluctantly sold the trained animals to a private zoo in Florida, after making one final cross-country tour. The last performance of the Royal Lichtenstein Circus took place at a KOA campground outside Williamsburg, Virginia, in the summer of 1993.
The ringmaster moved to Milwaukee, where I presume he is still living in retirement. In his book, Weber mentions he closed each show in this way: “And before we say goodbye, may we ask a very special favor? Before you fall asleep tonight, would you spend two or three minutes just trying to — imagine — this whole world at peace? Take care of one another, and thank you very much.”
Memphis was lucky that Nicholas J. Weber, S.J., brought his little circus here. Having witnessed it myself, I’ll say it was certainly a hard act to follow.
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38103
ONLINE: memphismagazine.com/ask-vance
