If you’re running away to join the circus, more than one type of conveyance will do.
Older generations used railways. The Flotsam River Circus prefers a scrappy-looking, 35-foot-long pontoon boat. And it’s launching this year’s ambitious, 29-city tour of the Ohio River this weekend at the river’s source, in Pittsburgh.
Flotsam is an all-ages circus that uses live music, clowning, acrobatics and puppetry to tell a darkly comic story — one that involves mutant fish. With help from Pittsburgh nonprofit Riverlife, it docks in three different locations for shows starting the evening of Fri., Aug. 16, on the Allegheny River side of Point State Park.
The troupe detours to the Monongahela for Saturday’s show, in South Shore Riverfront Park. Sunday, it’s back to the Ohio for a performance at the North Shore’s Great Lawn before the raft lights out downriver for a tour set to end in mid-September, 940 river miles away, in Paducah, Ky.
The troupe was founded in 2019 by Jason Webley, an internationally touring musician who’s worked with such talents as Amanda Palmer of punk-cabaret icons The Dresden Dolls. Webley, based in Seattle, built the boat and recruited performers for that year’s short tour of towns along Oregon’s Willamette River.
The pandemic capsized Webley’s plans for 2020, but Flotsam was back on deck for a 2021 Seattle-area tour, a short 2022 Sacramento River jaunt to the Bay Area, and 2023’s epic tour of the Upper Mississippi, covering nearly 700 river miles, from Minneapolis to St. Louis.
This year’s tour is the biggest yet. Webley said it’s the latest development in a dream of his inspired by other river-borne punk circuses, his own concert tours, his time living on a houseboat, and the Huck Finn mythos.
“It’s been years, and some ways my whole life, of being drawn to performing, drawn to rivers, wanting to make some kind of magical, unlikely thing happen,” he said.
The troupe’s raft was hauled to Pittsburgh by trailer last week and reassembled at a donated spot on the Allegheny River upstream of the Highland Park Bridge.
A rehearsal early this week found Webley, on accordion, fiddler Miriam Oommen, and drummer Sari Breznau in a boatshed practicing lively, lustily sung tunes redolent of circus music, cabaret numbers and sea shanties. Meanwhile, on the raft itself, the troupe’s other five onstage members rehearsed some of the acrobatic sequences.
The hour-long show revolves around a loose narrative set in a post-apocalyptic world altered enough by global warming that invasive mutant fish have taken things over.
But Flotsam members describe the show as more silly than serious.
Breznau called it “sort of old-school community artmaking that just sort of feels good to bring people together and see communities out enjoying the sunshine and art all together, and it’s a real adventure.”
Other troupe members include aerialist and acrobat Sadye Osterloh; illusionist and mime artist Matthew “Poki” McCorkle; punk-circus pioneer Tanya Gagne; puppeteer Kalan Sherrard; and the troupe’s newest member, Taiwan-based balance artist and choreographer Amber Lian Gibson.
For the most part, the performers don’t live on the raft during the tour, instead seeking donated accommodations in the towns they visit. And they are accompanied by a converted school bus, complete with mobile kitchen. But the raft, equipped with two outboard motors, really does sail all the way down the river, Webley said, if at a pace barely faster than walking.
Webley said Riverlife helped secure the permits and pay various fees associated with its shows here.
“Riverlife’s mission to create, activate and celebrate Pittsburgh’s riverfronts comes to life through moments like the Flotsam River Circus,” said Riverlife CEO and president Matthew Galluzzo in a statement.
The shows are free but the troupe passes the hat at shows. Webley said that has allowed previous tours to roughly break even.
Stops after Pittsburgh include Monaca, Pa.; East Liverpool, Ohio; Wheeling, W.V.; Cincinnati; and Louisville, Ky.
