Friday, June 13, 2014

Welcome to the Big Top

I can remember the first time I encountered the mystique of the circus. It was because of my grandfather. When I was young, maybe 8 years old, he told me about a show that he had seen when he was my age, which would have put it squarely during the golden age of the circus in the 1920's or early '30's, and what he remembered wasn't the animal acts or the aerialists, the elephants or the clowns. It was a sideshow act, one that I've since learned comes from Barnum and Bailey's "Black Tent" attraction in 1903, later picked up by the Ringling Bros. when the two shows combined later in the decade. The black tent featured various stage illusions framed as human oddities and that one that had caught my grandfather's imagination was "the headless girl," a woman's torso with an array of fluid filled tubes sticking out from the neck, apparently keeping her alive.

Now, my grandfather and I both had early flirtations with stage magic. He taught me the first card trick I ever learned. So when, for a small added fee, he could go behind the scenes and see how the trick was done, he jumped at the chance. That's what has, in the years that followed, stayed with me. Not the spectacle, the grand performance of the thing, but what goes on behind the scenes, the seemingly impossible feat of mounting a show over night featuring hundreds or thousands of performers, animals, elaborate equipment and then packing it all up and appearing a new town the next day.

Join me each and every Thursday as I delve into the history and the mystery of the circus.

Dr. Tobias H. Gentleman.

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