Carnytube

Here are some snippets of carny relevant moving pictures that I have found fascinating and hope you all might enjoy.

Carnival Casino, a short film by Carnival Cinema.

An animal act to blow you all away! I am proud to say that I discovered this on a late night exploration of the shady world of russian animal circus. Amongst bear, and hippo acts of dubious nature I found this gem. A goat on a tight rope, with a monkey on its back doing a one armed handstand the goats horn sounds unbelievable, but it is not even the extent of this incredible act.

I am a contortionist and watching this makes me feel stiff and in serious need of practice. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Ross Sisters!

And finally the ultimate one man circus. The first time I saw this I got a lump in my throat as the high wire exited the tent. It is beautfiul and inspiring.

That's all for now folks.

Følg Drømmene dine

In early october 2010 I brought a bunch of friends with me to Haugesund, Norway and for one night only we became Captain Frodo's Carnival of Dreams. (To read a review in Norwegian click here.) The show was sold out and got a great five star review in the local paper. Further I was contacted by a journalist from Haugesund Avis and asked to write a piece for the paper. What follows here is that piece as it appeared on 13th of October, 2010.

Hope you like and understand it. If your Norwegian is rusty scroll down and click below for a rough translation.

Etter å ha vært borte siden 1996, kom jeg

hjem til Haugesund for en kveld for å

vise hvem jeg har blitt siden sist.

Jeg er ikke lenger bare Frodo Santini,

jeg er også, eller snarere, Captain Frodo,

The Incredible Rubberman. Veien dit var

ikke lett å finne.

Det finnes ikke noe opplæringskontor

som skaffer plass på en gumminannsbedrift.

Vil man, må man være fleksibel og

plukke opp lærdom der man finner det.

Jeg begynte min karriere som assistent i

Santini’s Magishow. Det høres gjerne

stort og imponerende ut. Det var det vel

også, på sin måte, men det var bare meg

og pappa – Store Santini og Santini Junior.

På åttitallet var det oss to som var sirkusmiljøet

i Haugesund.

En så snever interesse reiste mange

spørsmål om mine valg og verdier.

«Koffår syns du de e’ så kjekt å øva på

syke triks?»

"Fiskarane" og Bykjirkå

«Ka ti’ ska’ du få ein skikkelige jobb?’

Spørsmål enhver kunstnersjel stiller

seg selv. Tvilen er der alltid. Nok til å

slukke gløden i et barnehjerte. Jeg

trengte et større sirkusmiljø før gløden

døde. En plass jeg kunne bli akseptert

for den jeg var. Ingen spørsmål stilt.

Den som intet våger, intet vinner. En som

akkurat er blitt ferdig på skolen, har

fullført Ex.phil., har et hode fullt av tanker

og et hjerte som banker for ting som

han tror på, som ikke har studiegjeld

fordi han har gjort gateshow og laget

ballongdyr på det nyåpnede Amanda

senteret – har lite å tape.

Dette er en god tid å ta sjanser. Finne

seg selv og gjøre drøm til virkelighet. Å

mane en drøm til liv er en dans på roser.

Myke føtter, skarpe torner. Bloddråper

en ikke kan skille fra knuste rosenblad.

Vondt og vakkert på samme tid.

Edinburgh-festivalen 1998. Jeg har

begynt et gateshow. Jeg setter kofferten

ned og begynner å samle folk. Når jeg

snur meg har noen stjålet kofferten med

alt jeg eier. Pass på tingene, sier Verden.

Jeg bor i en Ford Transit, våkner

febersvett, kondens på veggene. Jeg har

bronkitt. Helst vil jeg sove, men kjører til

Covent Garden. Trenger penger til antibiotika

for å bli kvitt bronkitten.

Etter showet, teller jeg opp det i hatten

og ser at jeg fremdeles ikke har nok.

Skjelven begynner jeg på ‘an igjen. Du

må lage en bedre finale, sier Verden.

Glastonbury-festivalen 2000. Et stappfullt

sirkustelt reiser seg når jeg endelig

slenger tvangstrøya i scenegulvet.

Nå begynner det å komme seg, sier

Verden. Applausen lokker drømmen litt

nærmere virkeligheten.

Haugesund

Som oppdagelsesreisende i sirkusverdenen,

beskrevet på de hvite sidene

bakerst i atlaset, fant jeg litt etter litt

andre som delte min drøm og som ville

henge seg på min ekspedisjon.

Jeg samlet hjelpere med ferdigheter

minst like utrolige som Askeladdens.

Med dem dro jeg drømmen helt inn. Vi

skapte en ny virkelighet.

På flyet til Helganes slumrer jeg. «Du

blir aldri stor i Haugesund» sniker seg

inn i min bevissthet. London, Paris, New

York, ikke noe problem, men Haugesund?

Vil de forstå? Tvilen er der alltid.

Veien ut i det ukjente er lang og

kronglet. En ung kunstner uten form,

med lite å fortelle bortsett fra et rop fra

lengst inne i sjelen.

Utydelige ord med ingen annen

mening enn at de vil bli hørt. Små spirer

The Great Santini Enjoying the show.

av det romantikerne kalte Håpets Blå

Blomst, så sarte og sårbare.

Hvor kult hadde det ikke vært om Haugesund

var et drivhus for disse spirene, og

at haugesunderne var frivillige og entusiastiske

gartnere, så unge spirer slapp å

reise for å vokse seg sterke.

P Byscenen sitter jeg tre meter

over bakken, på toppen av en vaklevoren

stabel blikkbokser.

Captain Frodo’s Carnival of Dreams

spiller en kveld i Haugesund. Jeg ser

publikum tørke svette håndflater på

bukser og kjoler. Stolthet i øynene deres.

De forstår. Jeg er kommet hjem. Full

sirkel. Jeg er akseptert, ingen spørsmål

stilt. Min drøm har blitt virkelig – også

for dem. En vakker virkelighet de trygt

kan flykte til. En virkelighetsflukt til min

virkelighet.

Følg drømmene dine, mine damer og

herrer. Våg å drøm. Jeg ville bli den

Utrolige Gummimannen – nå er jeg det.

Sier jeg fra stabelen.

 For the few of you not quite up on your Norwegian I did a google translate of it for you. (It is funny at times...)

After having been away since 1996, I came home to Haugesund for a night to show who I  have become. I am no longer just Frodo Santini, I am also, or perhaps rather, Captain Frodo, The Incredible Rubberman. Way was not easy to find. There is no vocational office that provide work at a rubberman-shop. If you want to, you have to be flexible and pick up the lesson where you find it. I began my career as an assistant in Santini's Magic Show. It sounds large and impressive and it was too, in its own way, but it was just Dad and me -  the Great Santini and Santini Junior. In the eighties it was us two who were circus environment in Haugesund. Such a narrow interest raised many questions about my choices and values. "How come you like to practice all those sick tricks? " "When are you gonna get a real job?' Question any artist soul asks themselves. Doubt is always there. Enough to put out the glow in a child's heart.  

I needed a bigger circus environment before the glow died. A place I could be accepted for who I was. No questions asked. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. One that just been completed at school, completed Examin philosophicum, a head full of thoughts and a heart that beats for things he believes in, who do not have student loans because he did street shows and made balloon animals at the newly opened Amanda Shopping Centre - has little to lose. This is a good time to take chances. Finding themselves and make the dream a reality. To conjure a dream to life is a bed of roses. Soft feet, sharp thorns. Blood Drops one can not distinguish from crushed rose petals. Painful and beautiful at the same time. 

Edinburgh Festival 1998. I started a street show. I put my suitcase down and start to bring people together. When I turn around, some stolen suitcase witheverything I own. Watch your stuff, says the World. 
I live in a Ford Transit, wake in fever, sweating, condensation on the walls. I have bronchitis. Preferably, I would sleep, rather than drive to Covent Garden but I need money for antibiotics to get rid of the bronchitis. After the show, I count up there in the hatand see that I still do not have enough. Shaky start I 'an again. You must make a better finale, says the World. 
Glastonbury Festival 2000. A packed circus tent rises when I finally throw the straigh jacket on the stage floor. It's getting there, says The World. The Applause entice the dream a littlecloser to reality. 
As an explorer in the circus world, described in the white pages back of the atlas, I found, little by little, others who shared my dream and who would hang on my expedition. I collected helpers with skills at least as amazing as Askeladden's. (Famous Norwegian fairy tale character.) Together with them we pulled my dream into reality.
 
On the plane to Helganes I slumber. "You never get big in Haugesund "sneaks into my consciousness. London, Paris, New York, no problem, but Haugesund? Will they understand in my home town? The doubt is always there. 

The road into the unknown is long and crooked. A young artist without form, with little to say except a cry from the furthest recesses of his mind. Unclear words with no other meaning than that they want to be heard. Small sprouts of what the Romantics called Hope's Blue Flower, so delicate and vulnerable. How cool would it have been if Haugesund was a hotbed for these seedlings, and that Haugesundians were voluntary and enthusiastic gardeners, so the young artist sprouts did not have to journey to grow strong.
At Byscenen I sit three meters above ground, on top of a rickety stack of tin cans. Captain Frodo's Carnival of Dreams has a one night stand with Haugesund. I look out and see someone in the audience wiping sweaty palms on his pants. Pride in their eyes. They understand. I have come home. Full circle. I'm accepted, no questions asked. My dream has come true - even for them. A beautiful reality they can sagely run away to.  Escapeism to my reality.Follow your dreams, ladies and Gentlemen. Dare to dream. I wanted to be the Incredible Rubber Man - and now I am. I say from the stack of cans.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 55

"The Question for the performer in forming an effect should not be “what can I do?” or “How can I use this?” The ultimate question that will lead to truly magical effects must be spectator-centric. 

“What would really freak out a spectator?” What would convince them that I possessed this power?” “What would move them in a particular way?” And "What would they want to see?” Only after answering this, I think, one should ask – “And what then can I provide to take it a step further?”

Derren Brown - (Pure Effect.)  

Marc Chagall and the Circus

 

"For me, a circus is a magical spectacle, a passing and dissolving like a little world. There is a disquieting circus, a circus of hidden depths. These clowns, riders, acrobats are imprinted on my sight. Why? Why am I moved by their make-up and their grimaces? With them I travel on toward other horizons. Their colors and their painted masks draw me toward other, strange, psychic forms which I long to paint.

 
Circus! A magical word, a centuries old entertainment parading before us, in which a tear, a smile, a gesture of arm or leg takes on the quality of great art.

 And what do circus people receive in return? A crust of bread. Night brings them solitude and sadness stretching on to the following day until evening, amid a blaze of electric light, heralds a renewal of the old life. For me, the circus is the most tragic of all dramatic performances.

 
Throughout the centuries, its voice has been the most shrill heard in the quest for the amusement and joy of man. Often it takes on a high poetic form. I seem to see a Don Quixote tilting at windmills, like the inspired clown who has known tears and dreams of human love.

 
My circus pitches its Big Top in the sky.
 
It performs among the clouds, 
among the chairs,
 or in the moon-reflecting windows.
 
In the streets a man goes by.
 
He puts out the lights and lamps of the town.
 
The show is over."


Marc Chagall, Circus (1967)

"Chagall saw circus folk as the perfect example of artists who desire to be loved and achieve their dreams. He identified himself with these people and the representations he made of them can be seen as self-portraits."

Chagall’s son, David MacNeil.
 

  "For him, clowns and acrobats always resembled figures in religious paintings... The evolution of the circus works... reflects a gradual clouding of his worldview, and the circus performers now gave way to the prophet or sage in his work—- a figure into whom Chagall poured his anxiety as Europe darkened, and he could no longer rely on the lumiére-liberté of France for inspiration."

Jackie Wullschlager

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 54

Why do we do it? 

Make up your mind for your intentions will be written on you for the Crowd to see. If so, why not write something beautiful something that will make them think: “There is no lie in this Showman’s Fire.”

Not doing it for the fame or the fortune, but doing shows to help people a bit, to heal them a bit, and to free them a bit. Small steps in the right direction will get you there in the end.

Imagine reading that and knowing it was true…

Joseph Carey Merrick - The Elephant Man

Joseph Merrick - The Elephant Man

"The showman—speaking as if to a dog—called out harshly, “Stand up!” The thing arose slowly and let the blanket that covered its head and back fall to the ground. There stood revealed the most disgusting specimen of humanity that I have ever seen. In the course of my profession I had come upon lamentable deformities of the face due to injury or disease, as well as mutilations and contortions of the body depending upon like causes, but at no time had I met with such a degraded or perverted version of a human being as this lone figure displayed."

"From the intensified painting in the street, I had imagined the Elephant Man to be of gigantic size. This, however, was a little man below the average height and made to look shorter by the bowing of his back. The most striking feature about him was his enormous and misshapened head. From the brow there projected a huge bony mass like a loaf, while from the back of the head hung a bag of spongy, fungus-looking skin, the surface of which was comparable to brown cauliflower. On the top of the skull were a few long lank hairs. The osseous growth on the forehead almost occluded one eye. 

The circumference of the head was no less than that of the man’s waist. From the upper jaw there projected another mass of bone. It protruded from the mouth like a pink stump, turning the upper lip inside out and making of the mouth a mere slobbering aperture. This growth from the jaw had been so exaggerated in the painting as to appear to be a rudimentary trunk or tusk. The nose was merely a lump of flesh, only recognizable as a nose from its position. The face was no more capable of expression than a block of gnarled wood. The back was horrible, because from it hung, as far down as the middle of the thigh, huge, sacklike masses of flesh covered by the same loathsome cauliflower skin."

Sir Frederik Treves description in The Elephant man and other reminiscences of his first encounter with Joseph Merrick.

Thoughts surrounding a poem

Joseph's hat/mask

A man should be measured by the soul, but perhaps not from his soul alone. The man with the noblest and loftiest ideals but a temper uncontrollable enough to cause grief and harm to those it might fall upon is but a flawed soul. Man’s actions springs from his mind so through action a soul enters the world and the persons biography becomes the manifestation of their souls.
The biography of Joseph Merrick stands like a lighthouse. He was a man nature gave nothing to guide calloused minds of common men towards his inclusion in the human race, demonstrated so aptly in the famous words screamed out at the mob in David Lynch's 1980 movie.

“I!… am!... Not!... An animal.”

He acts, speaks and lives as a human being even when humanity shuns him. He did not ask to be born this way, but into this world he came. But still in this misery his humanity found its way through the severe physical deformities, through the torture and abuse by exhibitors and so called friends. Inside the Elephant man resided a soul that could not be crushed by all the worlds hardships. A poem from his autobiography adapted by Joseph from Isaak Watts' "False Greatness" expresses his feelings about himself and his formidable appearance with grace and burning beauty.

Cardboard church created by Joseph.

“Tis true my form is something odd,
but blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you

Was I so tall, could reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with a span;
I would be measured by the soul,
The mind’s the standard of the man."

Never could the poet Isaac Watts even in his wildest imaginations, if indeed the ‘father of English Hymnody’ had a wild imagination, just how fantastically apposite his words would become for a  man deemed by his contemporaries to have been “Gods foulest creation” or “Natures grossest mistake.” To the point that today a google search for "False Greatness by Isaac Watts" brings up Joseph Merrick's version rather than Watts' as the first hit.

Never has there been a man more adept at making us behold the durability of the very essence of humanity. With the troubled and deprived life this brave soul led, he should be a reminder for us all that no matter how much deprivation of those things most often imagined as necessities for human happiness should we let it bereave us of upstanding and heroic dignity.

Still from Lynch's movie

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 53

Barnum and General Tom Thumb

 “This is a trading world, and men, women, and children—who cannot live on gravity alone—need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the author of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.”

P T Barnum 

Butterfly Circus

A tremendous circus short film. Winner of the first ever Clint Eastwood Filmmaker award and several others. It is a beautifully written, and realized film. Inspiring and truly about the heart of circus, not just a love story set in a circus setting which often is the case with circus films.
It is apparently on its way to become a feature film so keep your eyes out.
Here is their website.

A Child’s dream – The art of the Circus poster

“The circus of the present day is judged by the quality of its paper."

W C Coups promotional Carny Cash

"I believe I ordered the first three-​sheet lithograph ever made… This was considered a piece of foolishness; but when I ordered a hundred-​sheet bill and first used it in Brooklyn it was considered such a curiosity that show people visited the City of Churches for the express purpose of looking at this advertising marvel. How things have changed!”

W C Coup –

Sawdust and spangles, stories and secrets of the circus (1901)

“One of the most beautiful and artful of the posters is “The Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth:  a Child’s Dream,” 

an 1896 lithograph that depicts a child in bed surrounded by a Bosch-like wreath of circus performers.  The poster dances toward nightmare, with clowns riding ostriches, bears with clown collars standing on one another’s shoulders, a monkey riding a harlequin in a makeshift rodeo, all printed in the rich, fermented colors of a Max Ernst painting.  Collage couldn’t do this:  there’s something both innocently disturbing and disturbingly innocent here, with a text banner at the bottom reading:   

  

“This smiling face is multiplied a million times a year.  Whereas the children’s friend this wondrous show appears:  with sunny gleams of fairyland, with scenes of merriest glee, with cute and cunning animals for either side of the sea.”

"The language is arcane, the imagery antique, but there’s a mysteriousness that transcends purpose, and gives this poster a nostalgic fervor “fine art” doesn’t usually muster.  It’s serendipity:  you the gallery-goer stumbling upon an accidental connection between circus and Surrealism, Barnum & Bailey and contemporary art (the “street art” of Banksey or Shepherd Fairey for instance) that tries to use the forms of advertising (text, printing, hyperbole) but can only come up with thematic irony at best, self-aggrandizement at worst."

"Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the element of a childhood pastime.”  Joseph Cornell.

 "The sincerity involved in trying to sell the dream to the child gives this poster its enigmatic power, and somehow allows this simple, humble poster a way out of kitsch and into dream.  

It’s the same alchemy Joseph Cornell employed when building his shadow-box paeans to lonely glamorous hotels:  what is publically fashioned as luxury and thrill becomes a secret you keep in order to return to a paradise that really isn’t there, on Earth at least.  Cornell’s shadow-boxes, like many of the posters in “The Amazing American Circus Poster,” depict life as transient and full of moments you can only capture through fantasy, an encyclopedia of cotton-candy mysticism, seediness transcending into longing, and longing melting into trance."

"These posters still mirror desires and excitements that become renditions of what we often forget we need:   

spectacle, absurdity, delight.”

Keith Banner - The American Circus Poster

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 52

"The rise of modern showbiz began during the seventeenth century, alongside the beginnings of a decline in the power of the Church. It was no coincidence. Prior to that time, the people's entertainment was despised and repressed by the ecclesiastical authorities. Their attitude did not change, they just gradually lost the power to enforce their prejudice. What was it about the medieval jugglers, minstrels, acrobats and rope-dancers that the Church found so objectionable? Did the churchmen suspect that these merry pleasures were the left-overs of an older religion, the remnants of ta once powerful and ancient magical tradition?"

"In order to penetrate the mysteries of showbusiness, we must begin somewhere near the beginnings of human culture. For modern showbiz is, in reality, a huge disguise. It is not as it appears to be..."

Rogan Taylor

Carnival Lullaby

All the world has gone to bed

and the fairground lights gone dead.

Little child its time to sleep,

the night is no reason to weep.

The strongman is drunk and passed out,

nuzzling the sea lions snout.

The Siamese twins called Ying and Yang

slept before the church bells clang.

Sleep my child don’t be afraid.

Rest your head on the pillows brocade.

If you sleep to night I promise true

the world will still be there for you

Don’t believe what the mad jester said,

dear child you’ve been mislead.

The world will go on without end

even if you sleep my friend

For the night is a time for dreams

when nothing is what it seems,

carousel horses flies through fairy floss clouds

high above the crowds

Sleep my child don’t be afraid.

rest your head on the pillows brocade.

If you sleep to night I promise true

the world will still be there for you.

 

The Happy Sideshow

From the now defunct Happy Sideshow website...

"The Space Cowboy, Shep Huntly and Captain Frodo had been talking about a name and wanted one that could describe the awesome energy that was created when we performed together. It became evident what it would be during the Lizard festival for the total eclipse of the sun in 1999 in Cornwall, UK, where the dudes were booked to perform and Tigerlil was along for the ride. After arriving and doing solo shows for two days the management called a meeting to tell us that there was no chance the festival was going to make it financially. There was not enough paying custumers. This meant none of the performers would get paid. A lot of the performers and bands cracked the shits. There was a whole lot of shouting, threats and bad vibes all around. At which point Captain Frodo raised his hand and asked the flustered organizers:
"If we all decide to stay and entertain those few thousand people that are here, will the ecclipse still be on?' This broke the ice.

The birth of The Happy Sideshow
photo by Tigerlil.

The three boys decided against doing solo street shows and in a collaborative evening with Howard Marks, The Happy Sideshow was born in a cabaret big top in Cornwall during a total ecclipse of the sun.
From then and for the next four or five years the Happy Sideshow consisting of Tigerlil, the Space Cowboy, Shep Huntly, and Captain Frodo toured the world with their sideshow revival under the slogan "The coolest, Slickest, and Happiest Sideshow on Earth!" The hyperbole was right, as the Way teaches us - with theater less is more, but with sideshow less is not enough.


From the archives of Carnival Cinema comes an almost complete performance of a show called "Torture for Fun." The show was filmed in Stockholm, Sweden in 2003 during Circus Cirkors circus festival called subørb.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 51

People love mystery. In performing magic there are two types of mystery involved.
On one level is the Great Mystery, the magical experience, the uncanny, the other, the mysterious deep feeling of experiencing something unknown and unfathomable.
The other level is more superficial, it is the technical question of how something was done. A whodunnit murder, a puzzle, or a card trick are all mysteries seeking to be solved.
A magician, or indeed any Showman, should ask themselves what level they are encouraging their audience to experience their performance on. A performance at its best can function to symbolically awaken us to other realms of experience.

Ask yourself what you are expressing with your acts.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 50

A Showman relishes reactions. Genuine reactions, not mere polite applause. He often values the reactions over the show itself. For in those moments of true response his art simultaneously becomes meaningful for him and the individuals in the Crowd, in this unity lies all the power and all the glory.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 49

When you have developed a skill try making it more meaningful than pure demonstration. If you have the crowds attention why not say something that matters.
Think of your act symbolically. Let it point to something greater than "I can sit on a can."

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 48

Develop and foster real relationships.
Cherish your family.
Seek perfection and beauty of course.
But remember good shows are no consolation for a lonely life.

From the Illuminated mind of MS Shep Huntly.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 47

You set the pace of your onstage reaction patterns. If you slow down it is easier to think.

If you slow down its easier for the Crowd to read you and they feel smarter than you. Which is good for a clown.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 46

Your ideas ripen and grow when you least expect it. In times of rest and in good conversation great ideas grow. Carry a notebook! The wording that flows so well when asked at a party is often gone by the morning.

Circus Baobab

The first africa acrobatic circus created in 1998 in Guinea-Conakry a country in West Africa. With some help from the late great Pierot Bidon from Archaos fame. A circus road movie from an amazing team of acrobats and circus folk traveling through Africa with all that entails. Building their stage and flying trapeze rig from tree trunks, using old truck tires for mini tramps, high energy drumming, dance and acrobatics. Awesome music, awesome experiences and awesome reactions from the crowds as they drive their trucks through village streets and fill arenas.
Grass roots circus for the people. A phenomenon that changes peoples lives.

See Laurent Chevallier's full documentary here.