PHOTOS
Alicia Grega-Pikul
An annual performers’ convention produced in conjunction with Marc’s Tattooing’s Inkin’ the Valley weekend at The Woodlands, The Sideshow Gathering has been regarded nationally as THE gathering for alternative circus performers since its founding in 2002. This weekend’s festivities feature the expected bill of daredevils and mystifying underground entertainers Friday through Sunday.
A Wilkes-Barre native, Franco Kossa talked business partner Marc Fairchild into adding sideshow performances to the tattoo convention, then in its eighth or ninth year, for entertainment’s sake.
“If you’re not getting tattooed and you’re sitting around waiting for your friends to get tattooed, it can be a long day,” Kossa said. “I figured a sideshow would be a perfect marriage and it was. It really took off.”
Sideshow was something he had personally become enthusiastic about after seeing the 1999 documentary
Alive on the Inside. He slowly began collecting sideshow memorabilia — his own collection includes 14 human skulls, half a human skeleton, a cyclops piglet in a jar, and a baby rabbit that was stillborn with one head and two bodies — and was officially hooked when he crossed paths with living legend
Ward Hall (Hall & Christ World of Wonders) at the Bloomsburg Fair.
"We got to meet him and I left all psyched up,” he recalled. “There are a handful of people who have kept sideshow alive. And they’re not doing it for the money. They’re doing it for love. It’s what they know. There’s no glamour. You’re out there on the road, putting up tents and taking them down. You’re working. Nobody’s getting rich in that business right now.”
This year’s attractions include acts from Tim Cridland, who is Zamora the Torture King (
www.mindandmatter.net) and came to national attention with the
Jim Rose Circus in the early days of Lollapalooza, to Hazelton’s own Professor Fountain (
professorfountain.com) who performed fire eating feats and challenge escapes at a benefit for the Hazleton Art League last month.
Groups like the Crispy Family Circus (
www.crispyfamily.com) and The Knotty Bits Sideshow (
knottybitssideshow.com) are also on the bill.
“Stage time is a premium,” Kossa said. “I have more acts that want stage time than I have stage time. There are so many acts. … We pull people from all around the world, actually.”
Kossa relies on word of mouth, reputation, and his own gut instincts when deciding who to book.
“It’s God roll, as we used to say in the gamer days,” he said. “It’s who we haven’t seen, maybe who was here previously that I want to give another spot to. I go heavily by reference.”
The intimate setting allows fans to actually meet the acts, most of whom are in town for the entire weekend, watching their peers when not on stage.
Fans will invariably cite different reasons for their attraction to sideshow arts and freaks of nature. Kossa tells the story of a woman he saw profiled when he was maybe 20 years old. Born with no arms and no legs, she played a keyboard with her tongue on the Boardwalk to support her kids.
“She put three kids through school and she never took a dime of welfare. And you’re surrounded by people crying the blues — they’ve got this problem or that problem — and here’s this lady getting wheeled out there five days a week,” he said. “These sideshow freaks all had full lives. They were married, they had businesses. Some of them had their own shows. They inspired me. They headed out at a time when there wasn’t a lot of money around and basically with their wits, they put shows together and made a living a nickel, a dime and a quarter at a time.”
Visit
www.inkinthevalley.com for the schedule of events, list of participating artists and more information, or e-mail
franco@thesideshowgathering.com.