Best known in Minneapolis as the founder of the Brave New Workshop, Dudley Riggs’ show-business career actually began decades before he opened the long-running sketch and improv comedy theater in 1958.

By age 8, Riggs had already performed on the vaudeville stage and under the circus big top, making his debut as a toddler carted around the ring by a miniature horse. Part of a multi-generational circus family, he would eventually join his parents — the aerialist duo Riggs and Riggs — on the trapeze.

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