Kara was one of the original “Big Three” juggling stars of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Born Michael Steiner in 1867 in Nuremburg, Germany, he was impressed after seeing a circus juggler as a child and taught himself to juggle. He started performing a standard juggling act in 1883. Michael started performing under the stage name Carradini, and then changed it to Kara at the request of his agent in his early twenties.
Kara made the switch to the gentlemen juggler style, wearing formal attire and manipulating everyday objects in his act such as umbrellas, eggs, cutlery, napkins, coins, chairs, tables, crockery, newspapers, monocles, hats, candles, and cigars. Most of his routines were highly complex, but a few examples will convey their skill and difficulty. He juggled four balls in his right hand and a hat and ball in his left, caught the hat on his head, and went straight into a five-ball shower without stopping. He balanced a hat rack on his chin while juggling three top hats, and finished by tossing two of the hats onto hooks and the final one onto the top of the rack. Kara did a head-to-head balance with his assistant and juggled three hats, ultimately tossing one to each of the assistant’s feet and the last one on the assistant’s butt. His final trick was the balancing of a plate on his forehead while spinning another on a pole in one hand and juggling two plates in the other. He then let the plate fall from his forehead and juggled three plates in one hand. The curtain would close, and then reopen, showing Kara still juggling.
His career made him the toast of Europe, and he made several triumphant tours of the United States as well, his first in 1892 and his final one in 1921. Kara was often fully booked years in advance. Unfortunately, at the outbreak of World War I, Kara was in France and was captured as a German. He spent four years as a prisoner of war. When the war was over, Kara was 51 and penniless. His rival Salerno loaned him props to restart, and his career took off again.
Kara retired from performing in 1927, but juggled as a leisurely pursuit until he died in 1939.
Recently, my brother Scott and I have discovered some news items from Kara’s career that shed more light on his career.
First is a an illustration from 1891 that shows Kara juggling three umbrellas. As you can see, he is dressed in a fancy leotard, making it one of the only images of Kara that show him before he made the transition to the gentleman juggler costuming and style. He is dressed much like Paul Cinquevalli, the famed juggler that predated him by about seven years.
1891
The next item we located is an article from the December 7th, 1901 edition of the Cincinnati Post. Let’s take a look at it and then discuss some of the new information we can glean from it.
This article gives us at least three new pieces of information. $450 in 1901 is equivalent to $16,766 in today’s money, so that is quite a weekly salary for a juggler. The table slide trick, similar to Salerno’s picture frame trick, is not a trick I was aware that Kara invented or performed. It involves balancing a table on one’s forehead and then letting it slide to a different location on the table to be caught in a balance again. I wonder if Kara slid the table along its edge, like Salerno’s picture frame trick, or across the top of the table. I also wonder if Kara inspired Salerno or the other way around. Finally, the date of this article lets us know when Kara was developing and about to debut his most famous trick, the Kara Box. You can see photos of Kara with this pool ball rack balance trick in the photos below.
Kara and the Kara Box
David Cain
David Cain is a professional juggler, juggling historian, and the owner of the world's only juggling museum, the Museum of Juggling History. He is a Guinness world record holder and 16 time IJA gold medalist. In addition to his juggling pursuits, David is a successful composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and singer as well as the author of twenty-six books. He and his children live in Middletown, OH (USA).