Carny Ville – The Invisible Circus. October 2010.
After a summer of festivals Carny Ville is the perfect way to ease oneself back into the mediocrity that is real life. Carny Ville is incredible, astonishing and marvellous as well as a number of other synonyms of that variety, a festival’s worth of fun condensed into one night.
Run by The Invisible Circus, their aim is to regenerate semi derelict locations into a stage for the creative community. So far The Invisible Circus has colonized abandoned cathedrals, warehouses and run down garages and never one to disappoint this year’s extravaganza took place in Bristol’s Old Fire Station.
As a Carny Ville virgin I wasn’t sure what to expect but the Carny lot are definitely the ‘expect the unexpected’ type. The space was transformed into a post-apocalyptic freak show, a world of its own, equipped with Le Freakery, Haunted Village and Micro Arcade.
Outside Le Freakery a hideously grotesque group of corseted and bewigged 19th century throwbacks, including a woman with three breasts, all cheering on a short, hump-backed man pole dancing against a lampshade.
And that is just the start, there is almost too much to look at, the crowd turned as some sort of unified entity from one spectacular to the next. Ghostly brides scale the sides of the building dropping confetti on the audience and extraordinarily bendy women do things with suspended hoops that to be quite frank, made me question my sexuality.
Inside the Haunted Village there were women dressed as school girls similar to something out of The Shining as well as a half man, half sea monster covered entirely in fresh seaweed (many a guy and gal gagging as they walked past). Chuck in a load of fire throwers, incredible cocktails and a performance from The Correspondents and you’ve got yourself a pretty perfect night, if that kind of things your bag. Notably, not the case for the two middle aged American tourists in their anoraks wondering round extremely befuddled, I don’t think Carny Ville was what they had imagined when they saw that the circus was in town.
The Correspondents performance as per usual was high energy with their revamped vintage tunes accompanied by dancing that can only be described as ever so slightly spasmodic, making full use of the mini tread mill and trampoline they had brought with them.
The attention to detail is evident and it is clear that all the performers involved love what they do, and the crowd love it too, some veteran Carny Villers’ are so well dressed you can’t tell if they are actors or revellers. There’s a plethora of velvet burgundy smoking jackets, feathers and questionable facial hair. One moustachioed old man asked me, slightly disturbingly, if I wanted to be his granddaughter until I realise that it’s all part of the show (I hope!)
After a stint cart-wheeling at a 45˚ angle 20 meters off the floor one performer tells me that incredibly none of the 300 strong actors, dancers or in fact anyone involved are paid for their amazing effort over the weekend. That’s dedication.
How Carnyville works is that the actors and performers come together before the event to decide the theme and narrative structure of the night. And if you’re so awestruck that you literally decide to run away and join the (invisible) circus then you don’t need to run very far. They have their own circus training space available from 5 ‘till ten on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday evenings, and only £2 per hour.
Carnyville is definitely worth a visit, unfortunately this year is the last hurrah, (even though that was also the case last year too) apparently this is definitely the last one and the space is to be used as a youth project. But the invisible circus are always putting on shows around the country and it goes without saying that these guys are for sure something to be proud of!
