Jeff Raz has performed with The Pickle Family Circus, Vaudeville Nouveau and Make*A*Circus and in such theaters as Berkeley Repertory Theater, The Kennedy Center, The San Francisco and Marin Shakespeare Festivals and Lincoln Center Theater in New York. He is currently the Director of the Clown Conservatory at Circus Center San Francisco and a Paden parent.

Curtis Goodman and April Wagner are 2005 graduates of the Clown Conservatory.

Trombonist Johannes Mager graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1973. Johannes has also played with the Oakland Symphony, S.F. the Brass Band, Spring Opera, Port Costa Players, the Lamplighters and the avant-garde chamber group the Arch Ensemble. Under the name Ghost Opera, Johannes gave his own performances of free-form musical/theatrical improvisation.

Bronkar Lee is a 2005 graduate of the Clown Conservatory heading off to work with Circus Monti in Switzerland.

Prescott Circus Theatre is a performing group of fourth and fifth graders from Prescott Elementary School, a public school in West Oakland. Led by Aileen Moffitt, the Prescott Circus Theater (formerly the Prescott Clowns) has been thrilling audiences for nearly 20 years.

Carol Kueffer-Moore is a choreographer, teacher, and performer in the Bay Area. She was a founding member of David Dorfman Dance in New York and toured internationally with the company for eleven years. Carol has also performed with the New York Baroque Dance Ensemble and locally with Nina Haft and Dancers. She is the proud Mom of Dylan (ACLC) and Sophia (Franklin Elementary).

Sophia Moore is a kid who loves to perform. She takes ballet at Alameda Ballet Academy and gymnastics at Bay Island Gymnastics.

Natasha Miller began her musical career as a classical violinist, serving as a concertmaster for a symphony in the Midwest. In 1995 she moved to the Bay Area and began composing and performing songs, accompanying herself on the guitar and piano. In 2002, Natasha produced her first album.a collection of her own work called Her Life, and later that year, her first jazz album, Talk to Me Nice.

Her latest album, I Had a Feelin': The Bobby Sharp Songbook, has been called "one of last year's most satisfying pop/jazz vocal albums." Natasha renews her commitment to the community each year by giving her time and talents to raising funds for the music programs in the Alameda public schools.

Diane Wasnak is a diminutive dynamo who brings with her many varied talents including mime, trick biking, acrobatics, and dog training. Diane has studied with Master Trainer Lu-Yi from the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe and the Circus Center San Francisco, and the highly-acclaimed Dog Trainer's Academy of the San Francisco SPCA. She is a former star of the Pickle Family Circus in which she and Jeff Raz performed as the legendary duo - Pino and Razz. She was also a principal physical comedienne in the Cirque du Soleil show Mystere in Las Vegas. She continues to perform around the country on stage and on screen.

Bonzer is a registered member of the Australian Shepard Club of America. She comes to us with a long resume of television and film appearances including Animal Planet's Funniest and Sabado Gigante. Bonzer's many talents have allowed her to perform on stage in different shows around the world from circuses to Shakespeare. Her skills include sit-stay-down, hoop jumping, skateboarding, and singing with accordion.

Jamie Coventry (Mr. Legume) and Natasha Kaluza (Mrs. Legume) are both graduates of the Circus Center San Francisco's Clown Conservatory. For the last two years, they have been performing original material around the Bay Area and beyond, as well as 'edutaining' Alameda County's youth in an interactive show about Recycling. Jamie and Natasha also teach circus skills in various places in our fine nation. Natasha really likes broccoli while Jamie is a fan of the carrot.

Calvin Lai (Little Hat) is a musician of many hats - all of them small. He is particularly skilled with the zurna, didjeridoo, erhu, and paint brush, none of which he will be playing here today. He is also Chinese - and proud of it.

Linie Orrick grew up performing in school plays and generally clowning around. A 10-year member of San Francisco's Children's Theatre Association, she is also a recent graduate of the Clown Conservatory and is currently a student in the second year program. She is married and has three teenage children who all claim to be horrified by her recent clown career, yet continue to use her newly-started career as a paper topic in English classes.

Aloysia Gavre, an early member of the San Francisco-based Pickle Family Circus, has been a movement/dance and circus enthusiast most of her life. She has studied with Pilobolus, Tandy Beal and Debbie Brown. She perfected her circus abilities with Master Lu-Yi of the San Francisco Circus Center and L.Ecole Nationale Du Cirque in Montreal.

Aloysia was a featured act in Cirque du Soleil's Quidam where she performed the aerial hoop act that earned the troupe a special prize at the Monte Carlo International Circus Festival in 2002. After completing 5 years of touring with Quidam, she then appeared in Cirque's water show O in Las Vegas.

Aloysia's other performing credits include Teatro Zinzanni, Velvet Hammer Burlesque and numerous corporate events around the globe. Most recently she co-directed the S.F. Youth Circus's production Elevation 63, as well as last year's Pickle Circus hit Birdhouse Factory. She is currently co-directing and starring in the new Pickle Circus show High Water Radio.

Aidan O'Shea is a former and current performer with the Pickle Family Circus. He will be performing with Aloysia (and Tavis Beem and Linie Orrick) in the new Pickle show "High Water Radio" at the Palace of Fine Arts opening on December 14.

Judy Goodwin is an accomplished musician, singer and songwriter. In 1997, she released her first CD entitled Until Now. Her career in education has spanned 17 years working as a principal, elementary and music teacher. Ms. Goodwin is completing her fourth year as the principal of Paden School.

Upon earning her BA from Bennington College in 1982, Lisa Bush Finn moved to NYC and began performing and touring, both nationally and internationally with several NYC-based choreographers. Since moving to Alameda in 1996, she has worked with several local choreographers, including Nina Otis Haft, Dana Lee Lawton, Carol Kueffer Moore, Randee Paufve, and Jill Randall. Lisa teaches music in Alameda to kids 0-5 and their caregivers through East Bay Music Together® and is mom to AUSD students Emma (Paden) and Connor (ACLC).

Nina Otis Haft is Artistic Director of Nina Haft & Company, a contemporary dance performance group. Sequestered is from Mit a Bing, Mit a Boom! A Klezmer Dance, an evening length dance opera about the daughter of a Jewish gangster in Las Vegas during the 1950s. Catch us next week at 8x8x8 (at the Starry Plough on November 10th @ 9pm), where we will show Midway Match, Point! - another feisty duet in which a ringmaster and elephant dancer work out their differences after hours...

Ben Allen is an advanced student at the Clown Conservatory; a former star of Make*A*Circus and a performer with the Pickle Family Circus.

Jeni Johnson is a 2003 graduate of the San Francisco Clown Conservatory. She performs and teaches clowning and circus arts in Oakland, San Francisco and wherever else such services are needed. Currently, she is touring East Bay public schools as "Sprocket, Sprocket Johnson" with the ensemble cast of Secret Life of Custodians.

Includes an unbelievable that act has been bringing down houses all around the world this year, garnering them the coveted Gold Medal at the Festival Mondial de Cirque du Demain in Paris.