Circus City Festival

Circus City Festival

By: © Nelson Taylor 2012

In the late 1800s, puny Peru, IN was the winter holdover for seven of the world's major circuses. Rumor has it that local Peruvian Ben Wallace housed one of the circus' wild animals in his livery stable. When the circus master defaulted on the feed bill, Wallace acquired a blind lion, a trained baboon, a bevy of birds, a cage full of monkeys, plus an assortment of costumes. And what did the smart guy do? That's right, he started his own circus. Although wayward Wallace was a whopping circus success story, his name was all but erased from clowntown textbooks until the Circus City Festival revived the history in 1958, the year the first event was held. Now an annual event, the festival occurs every July.

But this isn't an ordinary circus, it's the oldest and largest youth (ages 7-21 years) bigtop performance in the country. Here, in a three-ring building near the center of town, some 250 young people prepare every summer of every year to pull off the Greatest Teeny-Bopper Show on Earth. Events include the Flying Trapeze, High Wire, High and Low Casting, Teeterboard and other favorites. Some of the kids traditionally go on to careers with Ringling Bros. And the Shrine Circus. In 1998, a team of tumblers at the Circus City Festival performed an eight-person pyramid and landed it perfectly. This feat landed them in the Guinness Book of Records. The only question is why would any parent want to face the possibility of their kid working in a circus? Whatever the reason, it's a lot of good clean fun for the whole family. (To get a better glimpse of this oddball world, check out the documentary "Circus Town U.S.A.")

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