The sun is the only spotlight for the circus performers who bound onto a ramshackle raft, docked in Parkersburg, West Virginia just across the river from Belpre, Ohio.
A crowd of more than a hundred spectators watch in awe as a unibrowed trapeze artist flips in flippers, clownish sea captains attempt daring feats and strange puppets dance up and down the gangplank to the tune of fiddle-filled sea shanties.
It’s the eighth stop on a month and a half long voyage down the Ohio River for the Flotsam River Circus. The ragtag team of rafters are floating downriver at a five-mile-per-hour pace, bringing acrobatics, hula hoops and spinning plates to many Ohio rivertowns.
“I'm not really a boat guy, and I'm not really a circus guy,” Jason Webley said. “I've always just felt this sort of poetic attachment to rivers.”
And so, he built a raft. Sometimes, it’s a floating stage, where performers entertain audiences. Other times, it’s transport, taking performers to their next tour stop.
The ringmaster on the river
Webley launched the Flotsam River Circus in 2019. After years of touring in a bus as a musician, Webley was looking for a new creative adventure. He had a few friends in the circus and a love for the water, so he decided to take a show on the river.
“We live on the boat, it's kind of close quarters every day,” Webley said. “It's not the easiest life. But it's a really magical idea to be floating down the river doing these shows in riverfront towns.”
His crew of actors and acrobats take audiences through a darkly comedic show set in a world that's ravaged by climate change. Mutant fish puppets antagonize sailors in the ecological collapse. Much of the performance is pantomimed by clownish characters, but, occasionally, the mutant fish queen on the drums, played by Sari Breznau, moves the plot forward in song.
Even with the dystopian setting, Webley said the show is meant to spark joy for all ages. Each whimsical performance is free to the public and runs on donations. It usually attracts hundreds to the shoreline for each show.
A balancing act
Webley said it doesn’t take much convincing to get performers to run away with the circus. The troubadour’s project has attracted people from around the world.
Amber Gibson joined Flotsam all the way from Taiwan, where she attended circus school. She was picked out of around 100 applicants to perform balance tricks on the boat. At the start of the show, she balances a rain boot on a large pole – a challenge in rough waters.
“It's wobbly, it's sunny and it's pretty small,” Gibson said.
Despite the technical challenges, Gibson loves performing on the water.
“You build up this certain image for the audience, ‘cause they already look forward to what's going to happen on this weird looking boat, which you don't really have when you're in a theater or like a street performance,” Gibson said.
Keeping dreams afloat
Gibson is a freshman performer aboard Flotsam, but many of its members have traveled with the group years past on voyages down the Mississippi and Willamette River in Oregon. The Ohio River is their longest trip yet, spanning more than 1,000 miles from Pittsburgh to Paducah.
“The Ohio actually is the river that I had my sights set on way, way back when we did our first tour,” Webley said.
So far, Webley said the troupe’s Ohio shows have been a success. The performers drew large crowds in East Liverpool, Steubenville and Marietta. At each performance, Webley said they can count on seeing “Jetsam”, the nickname for fans that follow them from rivertown to rivertown.
The circus has four more stops in Ohio: Ironton, Portsmouth, New Richmond and Cincinnati. Webley hopes each audience is able to embrace the peculiarity of the performances – whether it’s laughing at the mutant fish queen dancing the tango with her tail or singing along with the sailor songs.
“I want people to have a fun time, to just have a slightly bigger sense of possibility,” Webley said. “Maybe a few kids in the crowd will grow up and start weird, crazy performing troupes like traveling on blimps.”
He wants young people to feel encouraged – not to run away with the circus, but to create their own.
