Crack

After a summer of festivals, Carny Ville is the perfect antidote to the mediocrity that is real life. Carny Ville is incredible, astonishing and marvellous as well as a number of other pulsing synonyms. A festival’s worth of fun condensed into one night.

Run by The Invisible Circus, their aim is to regenerate semi derelict locations into a stage for the creative community and the slightly barmy general public. So far The Invisible Circus has colonised abandoned cathedrals, warehouses and run down garages. Never one to disappoint, this year’s extravaganza took place in Bristol’s Old Fire Station.

As a Carny Ville virgin, Crack wasn’t sure what to expect, but the Carny lot are definitely the ‘expect the unexpected’ type. The space was transformed into a post-apocalyptic freak show equipped with Le Freakery, Haunted Village and Micro Arcade.

Outside Le Freakery, a hideously grotesque group of corseted and bewigged 19th century throwbacks, including a woman with three breasts, were all cheering on a short, hump-backed man who was pole dancing against a lampshade. It’s like all the messy parts of Glasto in a condensed space.

And that’s just the start, there is almost too much to look at, the crowd turned as some sort of unified entity from one spectacular to the next. Ghostly brides scale the sides of the building dropping confetti on the audience and the crowd watches extraordinarily bendy women do things with suspended hoops that, to be quite frank, made Crack question our sexuality.

Inside the Haunted Village there were women dressed as school girls similar to those in the The Shining, as well as a half man-half sea monster covered entirely in fresh seaweed (many a guy and gal gagging as they walked past). Chuck in a load of fire throwers, incredible cocktails and a performance from The Correspondents and you’ve got yourself a night of beautiful mayhem for your grain. Notably, not the case for the two middle aged American tourists in their anoraks wondering round extremely befuddled. It's safe to say Carny Ville wasn't what they had imagined when they saw that the circus was in town.

The Correspondents performance, as per usual, was energetic with their revamped high octane tunes accompanied by dancing that can only be described as ever so slightly spasmodic, making full use of the mini tread mill and trampoline they had brought with them.

The attention to detail is incredible and it's clear that all the performers involved love what they do. In the crowd, some veteran Carny Villers are so well dressed you can’t tell if they are actors or revellers. There is a plethora of velvet burgundy smoking jackets, feathers and questionable facial hair. One moustachioed old man asked one of our entourage, slightly disturbingly, if she wanted to be his granddaughter until she realised that it’s all part of the show (we hope!).

After a stint of cart-wheeling at a 45˚ angle 20 meters off the floor, one performer tells me that none of the 300 strong actors, dancers or in fact anyone involved are paid for their amazing effort over the weekend. That’s dedication.

Carny Ville’s method involves the actors and performers come together before the event to decide the theme and narrative structure of the night. So if you are so awestruck that you literally decide to run away and join the (Invisible) circus, then you don’t need to run very far. They have their own circus training space available from 5-10 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and only £2 per hour (follow link).
Carny Ville is definitely worth a visit, unfortunately this year is the last hurrah, (even though that was also the case last year too) but apparently this is definitely the last one as The Old Fire Station is to be used as a youth project. But the Invisible Circus are always putting on shows around the country. This is a venture Bristol should be proud of and continue to support.



Words: Lucinda Bounsall

http://invisiblecircus.co.uk/invisible_circus/TheInvisibleCircus/Training.html

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