Buy tickets to Casey Carle’s BubbleMania! on Sunday, Feb. 25 at 1 p.m. at SOPAC.
Bubbles are Casey Carle’s art form and he travels the country entertaining crowds with his one-of-a-kind feats of soap and comedy.
“I bubble,” Carle said. “I discovered quickly that wrangling soap bubbles could wow an audience.”
This month, Carle is bringing back his beloved show to the South Orange Performing Arts Center. It’s an act he’s been honing for nearly four decades that began as a clown with the Ringling Brothers Circus.
“I was a comedian who wore an excessive amount of makeup, wigs, and big shoes,” Carle said. “I gave that all up, except the big nose – I was born with that.”
Toward the end his brief stint with the circus, where he was growing tired of using the hackneyed props and gags, he began brainstorming new mediums for his comedy, hoping to craft a routine that would set him apart.
“I was told by many clowns that I wasn’t going to create anything that hadn’t been done before,” Casey said. “That’s not the kind of thing you say to someone who was one of nine children growing up – I always wanted to stand out and be different.”
In 1987, Carle had just finished a performance in New Orleans and was strolling through a flea market. One of the stands was selling a bubble mixture, where a 10-year-old boy was creating unusual shapes with a toy.
“I was so taken by the size of the bubbles, I asked about his formula,” Carle said. “I built my own homemade contraption using a broomstick — that was making pretty darn good bubbles.”
He knew he had stumbled on comedy gold — and after a year at the circus, he and his wife, a Ringling Brothers showgirl, struck out on their own. Much of Carle’s performance relies on crowd work and audience participation, which makes a lot of what happens on stage unpredictable and in the moment. “No other show is going to be like the one I do at SOPAC that day,” he said. “I don’t repeat myself twice.”
Joey Novick recalls seeing Carle perform at a family-friendly New Year’s Eve celebration in Flemington, NJ.
“He brought kids on stage and put them inside this gigantic bubble,” Novick said. “The interactions with the audience, and the silliness of it, just make you laugh through the whole thing.”
Carle, who is fond of puns, said the secret to his act’s success is that it’s a comedy show first. “I keep it clean,” Carle said, “and that’s not a pun because I work with soap.”
