The Way of the Showman - III - Sideshow Part Two

Inspired by meeting John Kamikaze and getting invited to join his family of freaks, the Space
Cowboy, Shep Huntly, Tigerlil and myself decided we wanted to create our own sideshow.
The Kamikaze Freakshow was a hardcore experience for the crowds. John Kamikaze's art can be difficult to watch for even the most ardent sideshow enthusiast. So we wanted our sideshow to be a softer experience for the crowds. Personally I have always been drawn in the direction of laughter. A good laugh and gag can make the sideshow medicine go down easier. We wanted to create a show which could manage to convey just how fun and exciting we found the stunts and skills of the sideshows, and make the crowd feel that same excitement. In our talks we talked about wanting it to be a happy vibe show. Shep Huntly had, at the time a smiley face dyed into the hair on his head. He also played the Toothfairy song "You got to be Happy Now," at the start of each of his street shows. Eventually this idea of wanting to make a happy sideshow became our name, not just a description of what we wanted the show to be like.
This next episode in the Way of the Showman series shows glimpses from some of the early exploits of the Happy Sideshow, Australia's Premier Freakshow.
It shows a bunch of the madness arising when The Happy Sideshow opened for the extraordinary showbiz band Machine Gun Fellatio. It was some seriously good times. A deadly cocktail. Rock and Roll meets Shock and Roll.

The Way of the Showman - I - 1 Day in Norway

In this episode Carnival Cinema has dug up an old gem. Flesh hooks, clog dancing, extreme tattooing, and myself without a mustache.
Hamish McCormick and myself traveled to Norway in 2004. One of the days there we spent with my friends at Solid Tattoo and Piercing. It all seemed so normal and straight forward at the time. Looking back at it now I realise I used to be really tough. It was quite a day!

Links to the other episodes

CW Stoneking Film clip
Teaser Introduction
Part I - 1 Day in Norway
Part II - Sideshow #1
Part III - Sideshow #2
Part IV - Act Analysis
Part V - You Create Your Own Reality
Part VI - Confetti and Aardvarks

The Way of the Showman - IV - Act Analysis

Act Analysis

Here I delve into some of my thoughts and ideas, frustrations and triumphs surrounding my physical
comedy spectacle. I guess if I was a musician this would be on my greatest hits album.
Yet again this has been dug from the Archives of treasures in the studios of Carnival Cinema.

It is always interesting for me to watch these episodes, so expertly put together by my good friend and collaborater Hamish McCormick. Somehow he manage to surprise me every time, even though I am in the clips. I guess I have said and done all those things over the years but most of it was so in the moment I have all but forgotten it. Due to his persistent presence he has captured my life in all its ridiculous and glorious detail. Like how I almost loose my famous cool ":-)" as I struggle to come to terms with the changes imposed on my act by a television program I'm about to attend.

The Way of the Showman - II - Sideshow #1

phophotos © LOUISE CHIN e IGNACIO ARONOVICH

Sideshow Part One

In 1998 I found myself thrown into a crazy world of street performers, freaks, homeless people, angry locals, all night parties, and general mind altering experiences. Travelling with to brilliant, vibrant, and inspiring fellows from Australia with a freshly broken heart I watched the world explode in every direction.
I played streetshows at the Edinburgh Fringe and this was before anyone controlled what we did. So it was a little more chaotic, to put it mildly. Amongst all the crazy people handing out flyers me and my
fellow travellers the Space Cowboy and Shep Huntly were invited to see a Freakshow which performed as part of the festival. The show was called the Kamikaze Freakshow and was run by the crazy power engine and freakshow fanatic John Kamikaze. I was blown away by the shows great fusion of theatrics and hardcore sideshow stunts. John did an unprotected neon swallow, sat for an hour pre show "pinning up" as he called it, putting 350 hatpins and hyperdermic needles through his flesh. This was just his costume.

pic: LOUISE CHIN e IGNACIO ARONOVICH

I had dabbled in some human pincushioning and had put three pins through myself. This was dedication on a whole other level. So when we were all partying and dancing in the wee hours of the night and I was sporting some of my flexi stuff on the dance floor and suitably affected Kamikaze, whom we had met and come to fear and love, asked me to join his family, and carried away by the moment I said yes.
Next day he came up onto the High Street, the Royal Mile and saw my show. He was still interested in adopting me. I had been whisked away from a messy break up by Shep Huntly and the Space Cowboy only weeks before and from my brokenhearted haze the world was offering up opportunities faster than I could contemplate them. So I had decided to just say yes to whatever life threw at me.

I had previously had a love of the Sideshow. I had experienced the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and marvelled at the Enigma, Mr Lifto and Mat the Tube. I also had befriended Håvve, the Head of Pain Sollution, an awesome fakir/sideshow outfit from Oslo Norway, but I had never seen anything like the Kamikaze's.

photos © LOUISE CHIN e IGNACIO ARONOVICH

Before long the Freakshow had run away with me and I found myself sleeping literally on the floor in John Kamikaze's little house in Pilton, Edinburgh. Sharing the house with Pinky Pinky, (Baby Dee)-  a hermaphrodite which had been performing with every sideshow and freak establishment in the States, Danny Powertool - a dwarf penile phenomenon lifting unimaginably heavy weights with his privates, and Chris Tanner a musician from Melbourne part of the Freak band. It was a crazy time. Crazy shows.
I read Geek Love at the time, and my strange headspace and living space made the book loose some of its impact. The twisted characters of the book blended in so naturally with my real life new family that it wasnt until a few years later, when I reread the most awesome Freakshow novel of all time that I discovered just how twisted it really was. Those who know that book  will appreciate how strange my life was at the time...

The Adventures of CF Melbourne Comedy festival - 06

This first real episode of The Way of the Showman web series shows some scenes from that crazy time of my life. 1998 seems like a very long time ago. I seem like another person, yet still so much the same. Same block of marble but so much less finished. Life keeps chipping away at me and it still very much is.
The episode also shows bits of my first full solo show called the Adventures of Captain Frodo from 2006, already 7 years ago... wowsa. Time flies and it is great to have Hamish McCormick digging through the extensive archives of Carnival Cinema to dig up and create these gems from the past.

I hope you enjoy episode 1.

More episodes:

CW Stoneking Film clip

Teaser Introduction

Part I - 1 Day in Norway

Part II - Sideshow #1

Part III - Sideshow #2

Part IV - Act Analysis

The Way of the Showman Web series -Teaser

After a freak, sneak, peek into the Carnival archives only a few days ago with the fine collaboration

twixt Carnival Cinema, C. W. Stoneking and yours truly we get a teaser of what's to come. As always the editing and filming is done by my friend and faithful companion Hamish McCormick and I must say it is looking mighty fine!

The background for this web series is a ten year long, ever morphing dream shared by McCormick and myself. Every meeting, every skype chat, or long distance phone call (whilst I'm out on the road peddling my unique brand of Showmanship and he is holding the fort in Brunswick, Melbourne,) invariably ends in deep conversation about the details of the current state of the "project." It has been a merchandize DVD, an art film, a bio pic, a film, and an endless topic of creative conversation. What on earth do we do with all this great footage?
Now finally it is really coming together! 

Hamish has followed me, literally around the world, always with his faithful camera rig handy and documented my trials and tribulations. He was there when I fell off the cans. He was there when La Clique broke into the West End in London. He was there when for the first time I took a crew of artists back to Norway, to my hometown of Haugesund. He was there when I worked with Circus Oz, when I worked with the Happy Sideshow, La Soiree, at the Circus Festival in Tasmania, when I got my first home loan approved, when I did my first solo show, and on it goes.

Now over the next future we will share my life with you. It will be a video diary from my life on the road going back a decade and told in no particular order. It will be slices of life, my life, served up like pieces of fine layer cake.

Enjoy!

The Way of the Showman - a brand new Series

This fine piece of fusion art is created by Hamish McCormick the brain and power behind Carnival Cinema. Over the last 11 years this fine film maker has followed yours truly around with a video camera and pretty much captured way more than the highlights of my life and career. As an ongoing series he will produce videos spanning a decade and fitting all matters of styles and contents. I will be posting them here on the Illuminated Showman and they will also be appearing over at the Carnival Chronicles.

The film below has been filmed in several sessions over a few years and the track is by the extraordinary blues man and raconteur C.W. Stoneking.

I truly hope you like this first installment in the series in The Way of the Showman - the Life and Times of Captain Frodo.

C.W. Stoneking, Blues man and singing showman.