Joseph Pratt: FLOTSAM! to unlock minds Sept 2

PORTSMOUTH- Planning a tour of the Ohio River, a group of talented performers have set their eyes on Portsmouth during one of the busiest times of the year, with the intention of entertaining and wowing locals with their various skills.

Of course, we’re talking of the news that has spread like wildfire through social media and talking circles in recent months; FLOTSAM!, the floating circus, will dock in Portsmouth during River Days.

According to the non-profit circus, they are a troupe of musicians, circus performers and puppeteers traveling on a “ramshackle raft,” providing free performances in cities as they float down river.

The group has been active since 2019, and, in that time, has traveled over 1,000 miles of river across eight states, performing for tens of thousands of people. These journeys take them all over in their boat, which they call transit, stage, and even home.

“Our thing is to pick a different river every year, put the boat together, and travel together,” Captain Jason Webley said.

While they travel by boat, the crew also has a school bus that travels ahead of the troupe, landing in their nightly destination to prepare food, get things comfortable for them, and also carry a large portion of their supplies.

Webley said that the troupe becomes very close over their river journeys, but it is mostly work oriented where they are constantly plotting ahead.

At the time of the interview with the Portsmouth Times, FLOTSAM! troupe members were preparing for their opening show in Pittsburgh, while keeping their eyes on a brewing storm and planning their upcoming journey across Ohio River waters.

“At this point, it always feels like there is an impossible amount of work to do,” Webley said. “There is a lot of work with the show, props, things we need; in a lot of ways, it feels impossible, but we always get things together.”

Last year’s trip was a highlight for Webley. The tour took them across the Mississippi River, from the Twin Cities to St. Louis. Their current journey has them traveling from Pittsburgh to Louisville and beyond.

“Last year, at the end of the trip, pulling into St. Louis was one of the most quiet but ecstatic moments of my life,” Webley recalled. “To actually have done this thing that I had been dreaming about, in some ways, my whole life—floating this ramshackle boat down the Mississippi, doing these sorts of magical things.”

The troupe is composed of Sari Breznau, music director, stage-craftsperson, and multi-instrumentalist; Ambalancer, choreographer, gymnast, and balance artist from Taipei, Taiwan; Tanya Gagne, pioneer, icon and innovator of punk rock circus and cabaret; Miriam Oommen, a queer Malayali-American fiddler, banjoist, and rhythm bones player; Matthew “Poki” McCorkle, who creates mesmerizing and surreal spectacle with balance, mime, magic, slight of hand, comedy, with an elegant and eccentric persona; Sadye Osterloh, specializing in dance, circus arts, acrobatics, trapeze, and physical comedy; Kalan Sherrard, who describes themselves as a street physicist and a post-philosophical puppet; Jason Webley, a troubadour armed with an accordion, a guitar, a porkpie hat and a plastic vodka bottle full of pennies.

“It is a circus on a boat, basically; there is live music, world-class circus performers and puppetry, but it is also weird,” Webley explained. “It is sort of an unusual show. It isn’t just a series of circus acts. It is these characters sort of telling this parable, but, at the same time, it is open to interpretation. Like I said, it is kind of weird, but I’d like to think it is weird in a welcoming, inviting way, instead of weird and lofty sort of way.”

Webley explained that river water flows through his veins, he feels at home on the river and his touring past is coupled with this passion to create a life he loves.

“I live in a little houseboat in a river, in an unlikely place, and I’ve always felt a certain poetry in the waters. I grew up under the spell of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as a kid and I’ve known a number of people who have been part of big, floating art projects. I played a small part in those things,” Webley said. “In my experiences, both touring and passion for the river, and the fact I’m lucky to know an incredible number of talented people who want to come together and hang out for seven weeks—I guess it is a number of things that led me to this endeavor.”

While the mentioned reasons are personal to Webley as to why he travels with the troupe, there are also greater reasons that many of those touring consider while trudging the murky waters to their next performance.

“One thing that I do often say, which is true, is that there are all of those mentioned reasons for paddling FLOTSAM! but we also only get so much time in life. I just turned 50, and, for the first time, I’m realizing that things are not infinite; there’s only so many projects I can do, and I have the freedom to pick to some extent,” Webley said. “I feel like I got really lucky and was inspired by certain things in different times that nudged me off the beaten track and find a pretty wonderful and unlikely path in life. I don’t think this is it for everybody, but I always like to think that, when we tour a city, there is an eleven-year-old kid sitting on the bank and they watch this crazy boat pull to shore and create this magic that then packs up and goes to another town. Something about that turns a key inside their haed and opens it, expanding it to accept bigger things that are possible that kind of slightly changes their trajectory, and, 15 years later, creates even more amazing things with new people.”

FLOTSAM! is a 501©3 that survives on donations from audience members after the show or online at www.rivercircus.com They also post photos and a schedule of stops. They will visit Portsmouth on September 2 at Court Street Landing with the intention to open curtain at 6 p.m.