"Your personalized performance, along with your skills and sense of humor greatly added to our celebration. I will highly recommend your act whenever possible." ~Javier Fernandez, Lucent Technologies



"It was my idea of the perfect assembly" ~Betty Mayer, Teacher, 1st Grade, Kingston School



"You have obviously worked hard at your craft, making it look flawless and easy" ~Elaine Pollak, Librarian, Township of Hamilton Free Public Library



"No other performer has ever worked the crowd before the show" ~Sue Moore, Haviland Avenue Elementary School

The Cast

Dave Gillies, founder of the Give and Take Jugglers, grew up on a small family farm in Delaware County PA where he milked a Jersey cow before going to school in a one-room school house with a pot bellied stove next to the house where Bill Haley lived before he formed the Comets. After graduating from West Chester State College with a liberal arts degree in the mid sixties, Dave got a job teaching sixth grade in beautiful Chester on the Delaware as an alternative to killing Asians. Hopeful, enthusiastic, naive, and unencumbered by "education" courses, Dave attempted to inspire his inner city students with dramatics, journal writing, humor, and a sense that learning could be fun. He went on to teach fifth grade in Upper Merion for about twelve years, before being catapulted into full time performing in 1982. Dave's father was an accountant, and his grandfather a Methodist evangelist, so a career of juggling with a message seemed ordained. He believes that if everyone learned to juggle and play the banjo they would be happy. He admires Fred Rogers who had the courage to extend respect and appreciation to all in spite of the risk of ridicule; Johnny Carson who didn't need to score cheap points at his guest's expense; and Garrison Keeler who can come up with fairly amusing original material week after week. He once opened for Henny Youngman.

Nick Gregory is originally from Wayland Massachusetts and came to Philadelphia to study theater at Temple University on a tennis scholarship. He lives with his wife Maureen near the Weavers Way Co-op in Mt. Airy and enjoys the High Point Cafe and the Wissahickon woods where he often can be found walking Dost (Turkish for friend), his blond German Shepard. He is active in the community and loves woodworking, cooking, and playing the trombone with local pick-up jazz groups. He also plays baritone tuba, coronet, recorder, piano, and is learning the flugelhorn. Nick coaches tennis locally, plays as often as he can, and aspires to play in the National Grass Court Tennis Championships for his age group. Nick met Dave in 1977 as a result of some snowball juggling while watching the Mummers Parade on New Year's Day.

Kiva Ford, Devin Bird, John O'Brien

David Smith, Greg Kennedy, Miss Lisa, Mr. E. Jugglers