Last Days for the First of May
I have always enjoyed driving in Vermont simply because of the lack of heavy traffic and the ability to have the entire road to myself. I do my best thinking when I’m driving alone. But on the drive back to Greensboro, I was not behind the wheel, nor was I traveling alone. Instead, I was cramped in the back corner seat with a paperback novel and seven troupers and I was splitting time absorbing the words on the pages and then looking up to watch the pastures, farms, and woods fly by in a green blur. Counselor Danielle Kehlmann is…
One more jump
Every evening before we tear down the site, the staff gathers on the bleachers inside the Big Top to eat dinner and discuss the next day’s “jump.” These meetings are aptly called “jump meetings” and throughout this tour, I’ve become familiar with the feeling of déjà vu while I eat my dinner and our operations director, Judy Gaeth, moderates the order of business. I will admit that at first glance, the details regarding parking, grey water disposal, or laundry availability seemed excessive. It would be a mistake to think so, as I’ve learned over the past few months. These meetings…
Ten reasons why circuses are better dates than movies
I arrived in Montpelier Tuesday morning. After weeks on the road, it is great to be back in Vermont. From the lot, I can see the golden dome of the State House. In the evening I found myself with some free time and downtown Montpelier, easily in walking distance, had everything I wanted: a bank, Rite Aid, Laundromat, and a movie theater. Eager for a taste of what the world is like outside of a traveling circus, some co-workers and I walked into town and saw that Batman movie that everyone’s been talking about lately. While I’m not going to…
In which Circus Smirkus attempts organized sports
The match began unassumingly with both sides lacking in numbers and the stakes were hardly high. The options when playing at Revere have been traditionally either kickball or wiffleball and until this point, the staff had never won at the former and the troupers had never won the latter. Would today’s kickball match prove an upset? I took the camera and went to see for myself. Since this site is an athletic field, the amenities were surprisingly complete with a chain-link backstop, sand baselines, empty Chaquita Banana boxes for the bases, and a standard red rubber ball found on playgrounds…
Landing Gear
We are in Revere, MA. The field behind the school is a grassy athletics field complete with soccer goals, tennis and basketball courts. Somewhere just yards to the south is the tarmac of Logan Airport. The grass grows thick here and when we set up just the other day, the ground was soggy and muddy from the previous night’s torrential rain. We laid down sheets of plywood over the muddy grass as the trailers drove onto the lot. We spent the morning tugging and realigning the plywood as the rigs came sliding through the mud, their tires leaving gashes in…
The Site at Night
At quarter past 11 on a Thursday night, the Rockin’ Horse Farm in Kennebunkport, Maine is entrenched in fog. It is a thick, soupy mist that has enveloped the entire site. The Big Top tent rises out of the fog and the four lights at the top of the masts are the only source of light powerful enough to illuminate the trailers and trucks around it. As people move about to or from trailers or the pie car, the fog swallows them. We walk from the parking and the van back towards the tent’s ghostly light that pierces the muggy…
Smirkus Rufus Nasus
“News 8’s Meghan Torjussen reports…” The video is grainy and filmed on an iPhone connected to the mic held in the reporter’s hand. Wearing a black button-down dress with her hair tied back at an angle, Ms. Torjussen begins: “Kids at the Barbara Bush Memorial Hospital at Maine Medical were treated to a performance from Circus Smirkus…” The camera pans down and to the right and the scene in the room she stands in is made visible to the viewer. The visitor’s atrium at the children’s hospital is awash in natural sunlight. It is a big, bright and comfortable room…
The Laundromat, The Airport, and Me
On our first night in Freeport, I arrived in the evening after the entire site had been set up. The concessions and novelties tents were set up in their usual fashion on either side of the midway with the Merriconeag Waldorf School’s blue-gray buildings just up the hill. From the parking lot where we parked the vans, the blue and white Big Top tent overlooked the rest of the site behind the trailers in the back lot, parked in orderly rows. The narrow alleyways between the bunk trailers created shade for staff members to sit and read. It had been…
A wonderful secret about our shows in Freeport, ME
Not everyone knows that more than half of all Smirkus shows are used as fund-raisers by other non-profits. Our shows in Freeport, ME today are among them. They’re sponsored by the Merriconeag Waldorf School. Merriconeag has been an enthusiastic partner for the past 8 years. “Our presentation is truly a community event, and Circus Smirkus has become the hub of our performing arts wheel that allows us to travel far in the Greater Portland area, “ says school spokeswoman Trace Salter. “ Smirkus proceeds give us fuel for the trip.” The school splits its Smirkus earnings between the operating budget,…
Pie, anyone?
Troy Wunderle is coming to get you. “The Pie” is an essential component of any successful clown act. Before I joined Smirkus, I thought that the pies clowns used were made of whipped cream. This is not true, as whipped cream would damage fragile costumes. Shaving cream is the favored material. When applied liberally to a paper plate it becomes the key ingredient for a good time. Give Artistic Director Troy Wunderle one or even two pies and he’s unstoppable. He will find you and when he does you’re getting a face full of Barbisol. I have witnessed six “pie-ings”…