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SALT LAKE CITY — Marriage and family life is sometimes like a circus. For Matt and Heidi Morgan, it is a circus. For two weeks they’re living their professional and family lives in a west-side parking lot under the big top. Well, it’s more like a little top—a small one-ring, 150-seat circus called The Petite Palace.
In the 1990s, Matt Morgan went to the University of Utah Department of Theatre to become an actor. He turned into a clown.
After graduating he attended the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus’ Clown College “and then,” he said, “my world sort of exploded.”
“It’s (the circus is) so immediate, so present. It’s happening right in front of your face.”
For two years he toured with “The Greatest Show on Earth” and has since worked as an actor, cabaret and circus performer.
Actress Heidi Morgan joined the circus when she married Matt.
“I married a clown,” she said.
“We had a traditional wedding except one of the groomsmen was a clown and we had him in full whiteface, wig.”
The Morgans, who live in Las Vegas, produced The Petite Palace with juggler Dario Vazquez Vertti. Their first stop was Boulder, Colorado. Last week they arrived in Salt Lake.
Heidi Morgan said marriage in the circus has its challenges. “It’s challenging but the circus is built on families. It’s traditionally a family affair.”
The Petite Palace includes husband and wife hand balancers and their contortionist daughter, and Vertti's wife is an aerialist.
“It’s probably not for everyone to spend all day and night every day of every week of every month of every year together with the person they’re married to, but somehow we kind of make it work,” Matt Morgan said.
This circus tour, there’s a new member of the cast—the Morgans’ 14-month-old son, Parker. Matt Morgan calls Parker “a spectacular straight man.”
“Bringing on our 1-year-old has been easy, so easy,” Matt Morgan jests.
“It takes an extended family to make that work,” Heidi Morgan said.
It’s challenging but the circus is built on families. It’s traditionally a family affair.
–Heidi Morgan
“Once the tent is set up and the people are coming in, you forget about all the work, you forget about the days it took to build the tent and the stress and the anxiety,” Heidi Morgan said. “It’s like it’s magic. It really is. Life’s too short not to do these kinds of things.”
The Petite Palace runs through Nov. 12. It’s at the Utah Arts Alliance at 663 W. 100 South. There’s a show for general audiences and one just for adults.
