Jonathan Austin entertains a group at the Bon Air Public Library.
It’s about 10:25 at the Bon Air Library, five minutes until showtime, but Jonathan Austin doesn’t seem at all hurried. He greets friends as they come in — and many in the audience today are friends and neighbors, whose children attend school with his 8-year-old son, Truman.
He sits down in a chair near me and asks — as he does whenever I see him — how I’m doing, and how are Don and Olivia, my husband and daughter? It’s been this way since we first met when Olivia attended an after-school magic class Jonathan taught at Mary Munford Elementary School. He remembers it well. I’m not sure of the year, but he thinks it was the spring of 2011. He says, “I remember the final show being upstairs in the library. I remember Don being very enthusiastic. I also remember talking to you two weeks before that about who Mary Munford was.”
I’ve watched him perform a few times since then — at First Fridays, at South of the James Farmers Market, at Maymont — and we even shared a stage once at a Hamaganza variety show, when I played keyboards and he nearly scared the daylights out of me by juggling torches at the low-ceilinged Poe’s Pub.
Seeing Jonathan at an event always brightens my day, and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. There must be thousands of people who think of him as a friend and who feel that he is, in some important way, an integral part of their lives.
At age 47, he’s been performing around Richmond for his entire career, apart from a three-year stint at Walt Disney World in his early 20s. He started juggling at 12, learned to ride the unicycle at 13 and had his first paid gigs at age 14, at a Vacation Bible School in Lakeside.
“Five shows for $15,” he says. “I thought I had arrived.”
Now, there are some shows he’s been doing for 25 years, and people who saw him perform as kids are bringing their own kids to see him. He performs about 300 times a year, including birthday parties, schools, corporate meetings and summer camps.
Out in public, “If somebody says to me, ‘I know you don’t remember, but …’ before they even get to the ‘but,’ I know everything that went on, everybody who was there. But if somebody comes up to me and says, ‘Oh my gosh’ and just starts talking to me … that’s when you can be thrown off balance. Usually if you talk to them for a second, they’ll give you a piece of information. They’ll say, ‘Bon Air,’ or ‘You were great at Gayton Elementary.’ ”
“The things he can remember, I’m just amazed,” says his wife, Cheryl Spain. “He can see someone that he met 14 years ago and remember where he met them, in many cases their name, what they were wearing — just these minute details.” She met Jonathan when she saw him perform at a fall festival at Meadow Farm in 2001.
“I was immediately struck by his sense of humor,” she says. “He has a way of building such a strong rapport with everyone who’s there to see his show. His ability to draw people in — I was very impressed, quite honestly.”
They talked afterward and he gave her a business card. Then, “I did something completely out of the norm for me and asked if he’d like to go out for lunch or coffee sometime. I made the first move,” she says, laughing.
I’ve often wondered what Jonathan’s life is like when he’s not making people laugh at his jokes, marvel at his dexterity or scratch their heads about how he pulled off a card trick. Is the private Jonathan markedly different than the public persona? Do people always expect him to be the performer?
“You kind of live in two different worlds, where you crank it up to 11 when you see people,” he says. “It’s just kind of an extension of myself. … Be who you are, as you’re told in high school 116 times. Be yourself. At the end of the day, who else are you going to be?”
Even when he’s relaxing with friends, he loves to tell jokes, he says. But Cheryl, who works as an editor at the University of Richmond, says there’s a serious side, too.
“Jonathan’s a phenomenal dad,” she says. “He plays baseball or soccer in the yard with Truman and takes him to batting cages, or to hit golf balls. Jonathan spends a lot of time with Truman.” He also takes his work seriously. “He’s always trying to hone his craft,” she says. “Every day he wakes up and practices. He juggles, and he practices his magic. We go on vacations, and a bit of that comes with us.”
Jonathan usually wakes up at 5 or 6 a.m. and goes jogging. He does sit-ups, jumping jacks and other exercises. He’s run two Richmond marathons and several half marathons; the last three half marathons he’s run while juggling — or “joggling,” as he calls it — the last two without dropping any balls, he notes. The morning of last Saturday’s show at Bon Air Library, Cheryl was out of town, so he skipped the run, but did some juggling and exactly 115 pushups.
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At his hourlong show, the crowd starts off small, but the room fills up as it gets rolling, with many children sitting up front on the floor, raising their hands to volunteer as assistants for Jonathan’s tricks and stunts.
As he juggles some pins, he offers the audience a little deadpan encouragement: “Normally people clap.” He then coaxes laughter by starting to hit his head with the pins and applause by juggling three balls with one hand, saying, “The crowd goes wild!” Soon, no one needs coaxing to clap and cheer.
Midlothian resident Jane Broadbent and her two sons, ages 3 and 7, were among those at the Saturday show at Bon Air. They had seen an announcement from the library about the show and put it on their calendar. She’d first watched Jonathan several years ago when her older son attended Reveille Weekday School.
“We’ve been devoted fans ever since,” she says. The family often catches Jonathan at Joe’s Inn Bon Air, where he appears on Wednesday nights.
“That’s become kind of a celebration place for us, if my oldest gets a good report card, a home run in Little League or whatever it might be,” she says.
With Jonathan, she says, there’s a genuineness that comes through in his performances, a sense that he’s doing what he loves.
“As a parent, he comes across as a peer and comrade, so it’s a nice equalizer,” she says. “He brings this element of consistency that I find really comforting. It’s almost like that favorite movie that you know backwards and forwards. You know all the jokes. You can basically say them with him, but he’s still able to keep it fresh and engaging, and you leave feeling warm and fuzzy and like you did something wonderful for your family.”
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