Tommy, a 26-year-old former circus performer, lives on a caravan park in Gloversville in upstate New York, where he spends his days alone and confined to a shed, watching cartoons and nature programmes on television.
Paco Lozano-Wiese is an actor, playwright, and performer, living in Brooklyn with his wife Maiken, who is an actor, playwright, and registered dietitian.
The 2-4 foot performers live in colorful mushroom-shaped houses and emerge twice a day to perform various shows, sing songs and engage in sport contests.
Performers live in the moment and remind us of its transitoriness and its irreplaceable value.
"I want my child to watch Filipino performers live," explained Maria's mother, Cora, who works as a nursing home supervisor.
After the lights go down in the tent, the brothers walk to the trailers in Damrosch Park nearby, where they and some of the other performers live.
He has pored over Manhattan directories and countless Web sites to determine which performers lived and worked side by side.
That ideal is probably too much to ask, however, of choreographers and performers living in so different a time.
The Marlboro spirit stems from the performers' living together, eating together and spending summer weeks in the country far from the protocols of typical concert life.
A month later, Ms. Jackson started the Black Patti Project, which sponsored entertainment programs for former vaudeville performers living in nursing homes.
