Bindlestiff Family Cirkus to Open KU Presents! Family Series Sept. 20

Bindlestiff Family Cirkus to Open KU Presents! Family Series Sept. 20

By Susan L. Peña

KUTZTOWN, Pa. - People of all ages can enjoy the magic of traditional American circus arts at the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, Schaeffer Auditorium, as the first event of the KU Presents! Family Series. The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus will bring special guests Ellie Steingraeben (contortionist/aerialist) and Jasper Murphy (juggler/one-man band) in a program featuring an array of gob-smacking skills.

Tickets for Bindlestiff Family Cirkus are $20 for adults, $17 for seniors and $15 for students and can be purchased at https://www.KutztownPresents.org or by calling the KU Presents! Box Office 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, at 610-683-4092. Established to be the center of cultural life at Kutztown University, KU Presents! serves the campus and community by bringing world-class live arts that entertain, educate and enrich.

Bindlestiff was founded in 1995 by Keith Nelson and Stephanie Monseu, who had been performing in New York City as a fire-eating duo during the 1990s. As venues where they were appearing began closing during that decade, they decided to take the show on the road, and the Family Cirkus was born.

Nelson, unlike many traditional circus performers, did not grow up in a circus family. Asked to explain what lured him into that life, he dug back into his childhood. "When I was a kid, my parents gave me an Emmett Kelly ventriloquist doll," he said, laughing (Kelly was famous for his sad-sack character, Wearie Willie, a silent clown based on the Depression-era hobos). "That left an imprint. Later, in North Carolina, I saw a 'mud show,' which was a small traveling circus that would set up in dirt lots and move every day, and they'd perform rain or shine. For 25 cents, you could see the Elephant Dog, which was a shaved dog."

When Nelson enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., "my best friend taught me to juggle and eat fire. After I graduated, I moved to New York and got a job as a fire eater in a cabaret. That's when I learned you could really make a living doing this."

That was 35 years ago, and now he has accumulated a whole array of skills, some of which he will be demonstrating in the Kutztown performance. He can swallow swords, lie on a bed of nails, spin plates and, after meeting a Brooklyn-based "cowboy," he learned Wild West skills like rope spinning, whip cracking and knife throwing.

When he began performing with Monseu, he found that she also had many talents. Starting as a jeweler, she took a left turn and became a fire eater. She learned to ride a motorcycle on a high wire and do targeted whip cracking with the best of them, as well as many other skills.

So, in 1994, they packed some other circus people into a van and began touring as a troupe. As they continued further west, they met a West Coast punk-rock circus in the deserts of Burning Man and were inspired to become a traveling circus permanently. They came up with the name Bindlestiff, which means "hobo," and entered the "mud show" tradition, but in better venues.

Now, Nelson continues to perform in the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, but Monseu has retired from performing and now devotes herself to the educational wing of their nonprofit, Bindlestiff Family Variety Arts Inc. They run afterschool circus clubs, camp programs and experiences for neurodivergent adults, as well as providing grants for emerging circus artists to do further study at circus schools, like the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts in northwest Philadelphia (where Jasper Murphy learned his skills).

Nelson said circus arts provide a great way for kids who are not necessarily into team sports to learn similar life lessons, such as teamwork and the benefits of practicing a skill. "So often, a kid will come in and say, 'I can't do that!' But in our programs, if you say 'I can't' you have to do 10 pushups. Then they discover that they can do something they never thought they could do, like the unicycle. They learn that with time and practice, you can learn anything.

"We're creating an environment where they can throw things and be really silly - things they can't do at home (or in school). And then, all of a sudden, you see the kid who always gets picked on be the first to learn to juggle three balls.

"And if you stick with the program and get to a higher level, circus can take you around the world."

He said there are travel programs like Clowns Without Borders, which bring joy to countries in crisis or that are simply poor. Or they can go to a juggling convention in the Netherlands and find common ground with people in spite of language differences.

Bindlestiff also runs an Open Stage Variety Show (similar to an open mic) six times a year in the Voorhees Theater at New York City College of Tech (part of CUNY) in Brooklyn, in conjunction with the theater tech program. Circus artists of varying levels can sign up to present their acts to the public, either to gain experience in performing or to try a new idea.

Nelson has no regrets about choosing what many think of as a precarious career. "If you have sawdust in your veins," he said, "you can never stop doing it."