WORDS: KATE HODGES


"FREAKS & FIRE":
The Underground Reinvention of Circus"
by J. Dee Hill, Phil Hollenbeck 
Publisher: Soft Skull Press (October 10, 2004) 
ISBN: 1932360522 
Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.8 x 0.4 inches

All the gore and wonder of the modern circus

Dee Hill spent over three years travelling and living with a whole array of circuses - everyone from the Jim Rose Circus (pictured) to the burlesque Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. Freaks &Fire is her definitive chronicle of modern sideshows.

Who was the most remarkable performer you met on your travels?

It's hard to say. My jaw dropped open the first time I saw Jennifer Miller, the director of Circus Amok. She's a petite Jewish woman and social activist with a naturally full beard. When I first saw her onstage she was juggling axes and ranting about health-care reform at the same time. There was so much going on I couldn't take it all in, my eyes were going back and forth: boobs - beard - boobs - beard. It was a total visual disconnect. And then she was doing this amazing juggling act and delivering her social-injustice harangue and making everyone laugh at the same time! Talk about multitasking!

Her relationship with her beard is very interesting; she didn't start developing it until she was in her early 20s. And, of course, she was initially horrified and started doing all the plucking and shaving that any other young girl would probably do. But as the hairs grew more prolific she made a radical choice of self-acceptance and has since grown very attached to this aspect of her appearance. She told me that when she accepted a temporary job as an acrobat for a travelling show they made her shave her beard and she actually cried. I think she's remarkable in that most 'freaks' historically have been content to simply present themselves as they are. Jennifer's appearance is merely one aspect of what she does.

Who had the most bizarre act?

The Lizardman, a fully tattooed freak living in Austin, Texas, has a trained snake that goes up his nasal passages, down his throat and comes wiggling out his mouth. Ewwww. Now, the sinuses go up into the head as well as down into the throat. He told me that one time the snake got kind of lost and went up the wrong passage and he could feel it moving around behind his eyeballs.

Who had the most bloody or gory act?

Zamora the Torture King has a very extreme stage act, using 8in steel skewers to do major piercings through his bicep muscles, cheek-to-cheek piercings, and so on. But he doesn't bleed much and the act isn't so much gory as it is playing on everyone's phobias of needles and pain.

Beyond that, you really get into a separate subculture of people in the piercing community who host events that involve extreme piercing and hanging from meathooks by their own skin. But by then it's not really circus any more. I recently got in touch with a troupe in Portland, Oregon, though, called Societas Insomnia, that combines a dark circus aesthetic with some body-manipulation and meathook-flying. As for pure vileness, the Know Nothing Family Zirkus/Zideshow has now disbanded but will continue to live on in infamy thanks to Freaks & Fire. They did some really nasty stuff involving piss, vomit and live enemas. One of their former members saw the book recently and expressed shock that we had photographs of their show in it, as their usual policy was to smash any cameras at their events.

Are people still scared or suspicious of circus performers?

People are not suspicious of circus people, but circus people are definitely suspicious of each other! In fact, the circus has probably saved the lives of a few people travelling around in more conservative areas of the US. Several performers told me they came close to fisticuffs with the locals until they said they were in a circus. And then tensions relaxed - being in a circus made the weirdos OK. A flaming homosexual in a bunny suit is subject to being beaten-up in parts of this country - until he starts juggling. And then some little circus switch flips inside the brain and everyone starts smiling and reverting to their memories of childhood glee. On the other hand, some circus people really don't like other circus people. The traditional circus establishment, in particular, really hates that young people without years of training are getting onstage and calling themselves circus. They don't get that the newcomers are injecting vitality into the art and reawakening an interest in the traditions of the past that the traditional circuses represent.