Circus World

– Kacie Lucchini Butcher: Did kids… – Scott O’Donnell: Yeah?

– …run away to join the circus?

– They absolutely did.

It’d be like this wide-eyed experience, like, “How do I get to be part of this?”

[upbeat music] – Hey, besties!

I thought I would bring you along for a little get ready with me.

I’ve already moisturized and cleaned my face.

I like using this moisturizer.

Once you’re well-moisturized, what you’re gonna wanna do is get your clown makeup, and we’re gonna start with this foundation.

– Taylor Bailey: Kacie, what are you doing?

– Well, I’m doing a get ready with me.

– With clown makeup?

– I’m gonna run away and join the circus.

I think I could be, like, a mixture between a tattooed lady and a clown.

– Why are you doing this again?

– Back in olden times, kids did that.

I mean, this brochure talks all about the different performers and things going on at the circus.

– I mean, this does have a lot about the performers and the animals, but did kids really run away to join the circus, or was that some big myth?

– I think I’ve got an idea of a place we could go visit and maybe get some answers.

– Okay, let’s go.

– All right, well… – Both: Bye besties!

– Scott: Welcome to Circus World.

– This is my first time here.

What is Circus World?

– Usually we get that, “The last time I was here, I was this tall.”

[hosts laughing] So we’re thrilled to see you and welcome you here.

So Circus World opened July 1, 1959.

This is our 65th anniversary year.

We’re looking real fresh for 65.

– Fancy.

– Gotta say.

[hosts laughing] In 1884, the Ringling Brothers started their circus right here in Baraboo.

They had a big top that sat 400 people, and within less than a decade, they had a touring big top that sat 12,000 people.

So it’s like a modern-day arena when you think about it, and it moved every single day.

So they are the most famous residents of this town, but over 100 circuses have come from the state of Wisconsin, which is unequal to any other state in the nation.

And it’s that legacy that we celebrate here at Circus World each and every day.

– Wisconsin has a long and storied connection to circus history.

Here in Delavan, the Mabie Brothers set up the winter home for their circus back in 1847, a year before Wisconsin statehood.

– Other circuses soon followed, and by the end of the 1800s, dozens of them had called Wisconsin home.

P.T.

Barnum Circus was established in Delavan in 1870, and this program from the 1870s shows another area circus, The Coliseum.

The list of performers even includes a young Al Ringling.

This deep circus history is commemorated here with markers like this huge statue of Romeo, one of the elephants in the Mabie Brothers Circus.

– How do they get all of the people and the animals that are in the circus to the area?

– That’s a great question.

So instead of telling you about it, why don’t we go look at it?

– Okay.

– Sounds great.

– Yeah.

– Yes!

– So how the circus moved, it came from town to town.

Starts off as horse-drawn wagons, which you see surrounding us here.

So on the inside, they’re carrying all the equipment that it took to put on a circus, but on the outside, as you see, they’re painted and gilded up to inspire people.

You know, circus day was like an unofficial holiday.

When it came to town, businesses let out, school was let out.

It was like circus day.

So it’s the Pied Piper effect.

You do a big glorious street parade through the downtown, and then everybody follows the parade to the circus grounds and then watches the show.

When this great assembly of stuff came to your hometown, I mean, you’d be sensory overload.

– Posters were the main way circus advertised and promoted its arrival.

Thousands of these posters would be shipped in advance.

Crews of workers would then spend an entire day covering the area with posters, using brushes and wheatpaste glue, which was kinda like liquid glue.

Each worker could hang hundreds of posters.

Some workers allegedly put up 1,000 in a day.

That’s a lot of work.

Poster artists were masters of using eye-catching designs and text to generate excitement for the circus.

Sometimes, individual artists specialized in just one part of a design.

So one person did the animals, another did portraits, and others did outlines or colors.

The posters were then printed using a process called lithography, which uses smooth stone or metal surfaces to print images and text.

A standard poster was about the size of a bath towel, but both smaller and larger posters could be made by using half sheets or by combining multiple sheets.

The biggest posters used 100 sheets.

These posters weren’t intended to last long, but many of them survive today.

They’re an important part of circus history and show us what appealed to people over a century ago.

– Horse-drawn wagons, a great form of transportation, the original horsepower, so to speak, but it has its limitations.

There’s only so far you can travel each night ’cause the horses need to rest.

Then technology catches up.

Trains and rail comes into the equation, and instead of 25 miles overnight, they could go hundreds of miles overnight.

So the Ringlings at their heyday had 1,700 employees that traveled with them.

That’s a small city, when you think about coming to your city.

They had their own post office, their own fire department, their own police department that traveled along with.

Doctors and veterinarians as well, to keep everybody, whether you were four-footed or two-footed, happy and healthy.

It’s why the Department of Defense comes and studies the circus prior to World War I to learn how to move massive amounts of equipment.

So the circus provided an unequaled classroom, so to speak, for the very specific skillset of large-scale operations on rail.

– Wow.

[static] – The golden age of the American circus began shortly after the end of the Civil War.

By this point, slavery had been outlawed in the United States.

So were there Black circus performers and workers?

Yes, but Black performers weren’t part of the main show under the big top.

Instead, they had to perform in the sideshows.

Some Black performers were exhibited as characters or simply for looking different, while others put on shows or musical acts.

Many of these sideshows were blatantly racist in order to appeal to white audiences of the time.

But Black performers had a complex relationship with the circus.

The work gave them new opportunities to connect with other Black Americans and to help them spread Black music and culture.

Ragtime, jazz, and blues were all shared thanks in part to Black sideshows in the 1910s and ’20s.

The circus could also provide business opportunities.

In Wisconsin, Ephraim Williams became the country’s first Black circus owner, starting in the 1880s.

He ran circuses for decades, helping spread the work of Black performers all across the country.

– So I have kind of weird question.

– Yeah.

– Did kids– – No such thing in the circus as a weird question.

– Okay, good.

Did kids… – Scott: Yeah?

– …run away to join the circus?

– They absolutely did, yeah.

So you can imagine, again, a time before cell phones, and internets, and television, and radio.

It’d be like this wide-eyed experience.

Like, “How do I get to be part of this?”

So yeah, kids would do that.

Different ages, of course.

You know, it’s not like three-year-olds would run away and join the circus.

Typically in their teens, they would do that, and they would do all kinds of jobs on the circus from selling popcorn and cotton candy to helping set up the chairs that were in the big top tent, or they might be apprenticing to learn how to do a circus act as well.

So yeah, it has happened over the generations.

– Wow, that’s a cool summer job.

– Scott: It is a cool summer job, for sure.

Memorable.

– Yes.

– Scott: Yeah.

[static] – It’s time to address the elephant in the room.

Freak shows at the circus.

Putting people with different bodies on display didn’t start with the circus.

These shows had been around for a while, but they surged in popularity in the mid-1800s.

They might include people who were really big or small, people from foreign countries, or those with disabilities, or people with distinctive looks, like being covered in tattoos.

Circuses often used these displays as a way to promote themselves as educational forms of entertainment.

That was a way for them to avoid paying amusement taxes.

But was this the right thing to do, and how did the performers feel?

These are tricky questions.

For many of the performers, the circus provided a decent job and some independence.

It was a way to travel and form friendships, and for audiences, this might be the only time they saw so much diversity.

On the other hand, circus owners didn’t always treat these performers fairly, and all types of bodies deserve respect and dignity.

Being a good historian means looking into these tough questions and trying to learn from the people who lived these experiences.

[static] So we’ve seen the exhibits, we’ve seen the wagon, so we’ve seen it all, so we should go.

– Gotta go into the big top and see the show live.

– Oh, wow.

– Great, let’s do it.

– Scott: Should we do it?

– Yeah.

– Scott: Let’s go.

– Yay, let’s go.

[upbeat music] – Kacie: What did you think of Circus World?

– I thought it was really cool.

Like, I can’t believe the big top was really that big.

– Yeah, I mean, the performers are so talented too.

– So talented.

– I can’t believe that there’s still this whole world of circus, all these performers, all these talented people who are still keeping this circus history tradition alive.

The workers and performers from the golden age of circus were part of an amazing entertainment industry.

And the posters and programs are an example of how wild and varied it could be.

From advertising, to planning, to setting up, to performing and moving on, circus workers formed a traveling city that was on the road nearly every day from spring through fall.

And even if kids weren’t regularly running away to join the circus, it did happen on occasion.

Do you think it’d be fun to perform in a circus?

If you could develop your own circus, what would you include?

How would you advertise it?

See if you can come up with a name and a poster design, and then share these with your friends.

Maybe you’ll even inspire some to run away and join your circus.

Just make sure they get permission first.

Oh, God.

[upbeat music] [Kacie yelps] – Producer: Good!

– Have people ever run away to join the circus?

– Yes, me.

– You, what?

[all laughing] – Yes.

[upbeat music]