PHOTO COURTE SY LUCY
LOYAL
Green Fellowship from the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. Named for the American folklorist interested in occupations and their cultures, especially those that are disappearing, the fellowships support new documentation and research into the culture and traditions of American workers that will create significant digital archival collections (audio recordings, photographs, motion pictures, field notes) that will be preserved in the American Folklife Center archive and made available to researchers and the public. “This research is intended to fill a gap in our knowledge about day-to-day work involved with putting on a tent circus,” Nykolaiszyn said. “Preliminary research found very little documented information on this aspect of Oklahoma or on specific people or occupations within the circuses that have had their winter quarters in Hugo. An occasional article in the Daily Oklahoman would mention a Hugo circus with a personal name or two and would refer to Hugo as the Sarasota of the Southwest or the unofficial Circus City, USA.” Oral history was established as a modern technique for historical documentation in the late 1940s, about the time the first circus wintered in Hugo. Qualitative interviews emphasize the
participants’ perspectives and give them a significant hand in shaping the content of the interview. The Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at the OSU Library was established in 2007.
“The circus is not just family entertainment. It is families doing the entertaining and all that that entails.” — Tanya Finchum “Circus employees have historically been marginalized and their voices are missing from much of the documented record of occupations,” Finchum said. “As researchers we guide the interview as each participant narrates his or her story. We are seeking to learn and document circus life in relation to circus work. “What is involved in the typical day of a tight wire walker during the circus season? How does a performer learn the trade? How does a family life coordinate with work in a circus? These are just a few of the questions this project hopes to answer as participants share their firsthand accounts.”
Finchum and Nykolaiszyn traveled to Hugo and met with the Circus City Showmen’s Club, a group of retired and semiretired circus showmen, to explain the project and recruit potential participants. Twenty people — nine males and 11 females — shared their experiences and memories of circus work and life. The group represents three families with circus roots at least four generations deep. The majority of those interviewed were trained for the circus by either parents or grandparents. Four of the 20 are first-generation circus workers with an additional one marrying into the business and bringing a parent along. “The circus is not just family entertainment,” Finchum said. “It is families doing the entertaining and all that that entails.” Occupations of participants include: boss canvasman, manager, owner, tight wire walker, aerialist, bareback rider and cook. As the interviews were transcribed, read and re-read, the researchers say commonalities and differences began to appear. “With each interview it became more evident that over the course of a career in the circus, a single employee may have many job assignments,” Nykolaiszyn said. “For example, as an aerialist ages and can no longer perform in the air,
(Left) Bareback rider Lucy Loyal performs as part of a Carson & Barnes circus, circa 1975. (Below) Animals, like these camels, traveled by road along with the rest of the circus performers.
PHOTO COURTESY MIKE FULTON
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Research at Oklahoma State University • research.okstate.edu