Who We Are
Exerienced, Professional, and Fun!
The Performers
Playful Productions employs talented professional entertainers and educators, with years of experience and a variety of specialized skills. Our performers have worked in preeminent circuses, operas, theaters, cruise ships, and corporate events around the world.
All performers are carefully screened and hand selected to suit the individual event.
The President
Since 1993, Viveca Gardiner has produced variety arts, circus, and theater; performed as a juggler, ringmistress, trapeze artist, stilt walker, and roller skater; and worked backstage on scenic design, rigging, house management, wardrobe, concessions, ticketing, electrics, and audio/video. She has taught circus skills to thousands of children and adults in residencies, camps, in- and after-school programs, continuing education courses, private lessons, special events, and corporate seminars.
Before founding Playful Productions in 2001, Viveca was a director of the Big Apple Circus where she developed and managed community programs and wrote a study guide about classical circus arts and a circus-themed activity book for hospitalized children. The Brooklyn Academy of Music also commissioned her to write a study guide about contemporary circus. She is on the advisory board of Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and the director of the International Jugglers' Association Championships competitons. She has worked as editor of CircusTalk, coach for Circus of the Kids, contributing editor of Juggle magazine, festival organizer for the American Youth Circus Organization, and rigger for Cirque du Soleil.
Viveca has a bachelor's degree in literature from Harvard University and a master's degree in management from the Yale School of Management.
She might have sawdust in her veins.
Featured Acts & Artists
- Jugglers
- Stilt walkers
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- Acrobats
- Magicians
- Yo-yo players
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- Trapeze artists
- Wire walkers
- Face painters
- Mimes
- Clowns
- Henna artists
- Balloon sculptors
- Fire eaters
- Trick ropers
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- Caricaturists
- Plate spinners
- Kid acts
- Fortune tellers
- Unicyclists
- Mind readers
- Hula hoopers
- Top spinners
- Block heads
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- Musicians
- Bullwhippers
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- Devil stick players
- Knife throwers
- Dancers
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- Puppeteers
- Flag dancers
- Aerialists
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- Diabolists
- Contortionists
- Sword swallowers
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- Cigar box manipulators
- Hypnotists
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- Temporary tattooists
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