BY KAREN BOSSICK

He calls himself the Wizard of Whimsy.

He pioneered comedy juggling. And he pioneered illuminated performance art that plunges audience into darkness as a tapestry of illuminated illusions fill the stage.

Now, on Friday, Michael Marlin will show off some of his mind-bending manipulations, as well as a “symphony” of balls and juggling scarves from 7 to 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 17, at Ketchum Town Square.

The show, presented by the Ketchum Arts Commission, will also include performance pieces by Footlight Dance Centre students.

“A lot of my show is clever word play  geared towards adults. And I’ll do some juggling to classic music like that by Franz Liszt and Aaron Copland.”

Marlin, who took up residence in Bellevue following last summer’s total solar eclipse, was 9 when he created his first show for a six-year-old’s birthday party. He cast himself as a circus ringmaster and led children through a menagerie of toy animals caged in shoe boxes.

At 15 he began juggling on the tennis courts of Houston between tennis sets. And at 16 he joined hands with the International Jugglers Association and began performing on street corners.

At 17 he ran away to join the circus.

Quickly disenchanted with the life of a clown, he hired on as an elephant groom, shoveling a half-ton of manure a day for six young elephants.

And in 1976 he became one of 50 applicants selected from 3,500 to attend an eight-week clown college where he learned to throw a pie, make a clown nose and sew his own oversized pants and coats. He returned the favor by teaching other students to juggle.

But his clowning career only lasted eight months.

“The circus is not that easy—it’s very challenging and the schedule is grueling. And when America created the three-ring circus, the tents became so big that the audience couldn’t see the nuances of the clown so you can’t do a act like Jackie Gleason or Red Skelton or Jim Carrey,” he said. “In contrast, clowns are stars in European circuses, which are far more intimate. Those circuses are very sophisticated highbrow nuanced performances that capture the pathos of human existence and both the comedy and tragedy that goes with it.”

At 19 Marlin took his comedy juggling to the nightclubs of Houston. He made his first nationally televised appearance in 1977 and even landed a gig on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” only to be bumped by a buffalo chip thrower from Beaver, Okla.

He became the first talking juggler in history to appear at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. He performed with symphonies and did a pantomime act with ballet companies. He landed in the history books as paving the way for other jugglers who emulated his comedy style.

And then, after 15 years and at the height of his career, he committed what some would call professional suicide by walking away from it all. He spent the next five years living in a treehouse in the jungles of Hawaii trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing with his life.

“So many people were copying what I was doing, it was time for me to reinvent myself,” he said.

Marlin homesteaded a solar-powered house near the Kilauea Volcano, growing his own fruits and vegetables. He invented a few toys, such as the Slingerzz: the Original Lasso Coil based on the lsso invented by Spanish cowboys in 1780. And Marlin addressed his philosophical and creative bents by writing  “The Contemplative Naval” and producing a screenplay, “Horror in Hawaii: Nobody is Immune.”

And he found his next great passion—a consequence of journeying into the desert to escape the false day of Los Angeles city lights and being amazed by the canopy of stars above.

“It was one of these awe inspiring moments of resonance,” he said. “People take the dark skies for granted. But, in reality, 80 percent of Americans cannot see the Milky Way.”

Marlin started to create works in the dark, hoping to inspire the kind of wonder people have when they look up at a millions of stars splashed across the night sky.

He created a “Laughing in the Light/Dancing in the Dark” show for cruise ships in which he combined his juggling act with illuminated illusions.

And he created LUMA, an ever-evolving show that has been seen by a half billion people. The show features shadowed performers set against brilliant images of color and motion. There’s even a theatrical experience of the aurora borealis for good measure.

Marlin presented a shortened version titled “LUMA Art In Darkness” to the National Association of Counties when it held its conference in Sun Valley earlier this summer. And he performed a version for the International Dark Sky Committee.

He’s also championing new lights designed to protect the dark sky.

The lights are manufactured by Lumican, a Canadian startup that provides energy-efficient outdoor LEDs that are shielded to focus the light rather than letting it shine out and up. The lights also provide a warm amber light instead of the blue-white glare of traditional LEDS that have been linked to insomnia and ill health in humans and messed-up migration paths in birds.

Lumican has installed 500 lights in Jasper, Alberta, which is located within the second largest dark sky preserve in the world. And the City of Bellevue is trying a few on a trial basis outside the Silver Dollar Saloon and Mahoney’s Bar & Grill.

Marlin is also trying to convince the City of Hailey to use the lights to light the skate park and the City of Stanley to retrofit its streetlights.

He will address the subject in a speech called “By Embracing the Dark We Can Impact the Trajectory of Climate Change,” during the third annual TEDXSunValley on Sept. 16.

“The American Medical Association has determined that harmful light from LEDs impacts human health, upsetting circadian rhythms, even causing breast cancer,” he said. “And the Royal Canadian Astronomical Society has determined that leaving a 100-watt incandescent bulb on all night creates enough CO2 to fill 44,438 inch balloons. That’s equal to 54 railroad boxcars from one bulb.”

Another professor has determined that every second a 70-watt incandescent lightbulb is on it creates enough energy to lift 15 pounds one meter off the ground. That’s enough to lift 790,000 pounds of weight—the weight of a 747 commercial airliner—over the course of a year,Marlin said.

“We contribute to climate change in ways we don’t see every time we leave a light on unnecessarily,” he said. “We don’t leave water running every time we leave the room. Why would we do that with light?”