An exploration of lives that turn the assumptions of exploitation and disability upside down.
FREAK is an ongoing research project that is stranger than fiction – a true story that reaches from depression era America, through the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the second world war, the phenomenon of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, and the burgeoning civil rights movements of the ’50s and ’60s.
The research so far tracks freak shows from the peak of their popularity, through controversies of human rights, to a visit I made to the oldest living sideshow operator in the USA. It is an exploration of difference, tolerance, and the lives of tattooed ladies, rubber-skinned men, fat women, conjoined twins, and the ‘world’s strangest married couple’.
This research is led by a reckoning of my own disability and the limits of performance. I suffer from a life-long medical condition shared by freak show performers of the past, who exploited their disability in performance. Although the aim of this project is publication, I’m still very much a performer at heart. So, up to this point, I’ve also put on a handful of ‘work in progress’ style performances to showcase some of the material I’ve uncovered, and to help open up dialogue on a contentious area of disability politics.
Supported by:
The sideshow bally recording is used with permission from Wayne Keyser, and taken from the CD ‘Bally!, Sounds of the Sideshow’.
Check out Wayne’s Ballycast – the podcast of sideshow, carnival and burlesque ballycast.com
With thanks to Ward Hall, Red Stewart, World of Wonders, Showmen’s Museum, The Ringling Centre, Gary Davies, Vault Festival, and VFD for the open arms.
This research has been supported by The Society of Authors’ Authors’ Foundation Award, and by Arts Council England.
