A buoyant spectacle is coming to Rochester this weekend.
The Flotsam River Circus is traversing the Erie Canal from Buffalo to New York City this summer and is expected to anchor at Corn Hill Landing in Rochester on Friday. They're scheduled to perform there at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
The name Flotsam, which means floating garbage but also unwanted people, lends itself to the show they are performing along their journey, the troupe’s captain and accordian player Jason Webley said.
“The show is set in a world where ... there's not many humans left, but the dominant species are Human Fish,” Webley said. “And so, the idea is that the audience is all mutant fish, and the band are mutant fish, and we're watching some of the last humans on this on this raft.”
Webley said he hopes that the show sparks curiosity and whimsy, especially for children.
“The night before last in Lockport, the whole front was all these kids under the age of eight, and they were so invested in the show,” he said. “And my hope is that, just a handful of them, something shifts their idea of what's possible in the world — shifts just a little bit. And that in 20 years or so there's all sorts of crazy, beautiful and perhaps a bit pointless art happening all around the world.”
WXXI reporter Noelle Evans caught up with the crew as they make their way eastward along the 200-year-old man-made waterway that connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.
What follows is the transcript of a story aired on WXXI. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
KALAN SHERRARD: My name is Kalan Sherrard ... and I am the puppeteer, and this year the art director for the Flotsam River Circus. I'm also the Prophet of Doom in the show.
EVANS: Where is it that you are right now?
SHERRARD: We're floating down the Erie Canal on a barge we built out of out of trash. ... This is our sixth tour down the Erie Canal for the bicentennial of the canal. ...There's some deer on the side of the canal watching us go by, some deer and some geese and some bikers. ... We go through all the locks. Yesterday there was a 90-foot lock, this massive, massive drop. We go in there, and it's real echoey inside the locks. ... And sometimes we play a little concert. Yeah, earlier we were trying to play with the geese. We almost got their sound on the trombone.
EVANS: Wait ... you've got musicians, you mentioned playing concerts in the locks. Is that just for yourselves? Or?
SHERRARD: There's been times that the locks have been full of kayakers. We played for the kayakers, but it's nice to play for animals and for the water.
EVANS: How do the geese respond?
SHERRARD: I think they're very curious, and also sometimes they oscillate between curiosity and fear and probably just bitter annoyance.
EVANS: So what can folks expect if they decide to come out and check out this, you said, barge made out of trash?
SHERRARD: ... There's a handful of mutinous, weird sort of clowns and circus performers who do amazing tricks all over it. And it's set in a future world that's been devoured by, overtaken by, invasive mutant fish. And so you'll probably see a whole bunch of invading fish monsters and also acrobatics and aerial work and all kinds of stuff like that.
EVANS: What is it that you all are looking to achieve? Or like, is there a desired outcome here, like a message or something that you're hoping to bring to the audiences?
SHERRARD: At best, some five-year-old kid is walking along the canal and sees this weirdo looking, dilapidated vessel go by covered in puppets playing weird music. Maybe that kid ... can think the world is a vaster place than they ever imagined, and actually, anything is possible. ... In a wider sense, of course ecologically, like we the way that rivers and bodies of water exist in our collective imagination now and just in our society as sort of industrial ... sort of vestigial infrastructure, right?
EVANS: Just going back to the barge, or boat, in terms of it staying afloat, like, how stable is this? And, I mean, have you run into any issues along the way, in the travels that you've already had?
SHERRARD: No we're doing okay. We're doing okay. You know, sometimes we do repairs. Sometimes we have technical problems, but we make it work. ... We have an emergency, actually. Yeah, yeah. We're staring down this bridge. It's got to be six feet above the water, and we're probably 14 (feet).
EVANS: Okay. So what does that mean?
SHERRARD: We'll just get in touch with the bridge and they'll raise it and we'll go under.
EVANS: ... Do you mind, Kalan, staying on the phone with me while you guys figure out this bridge?
SHERRARD: Yeah, it's okay. We've slowed down. We're approaching the bridge. ... (to crew) Want me to do it? The reporter is desperate to stay on the phone during this emergency. (to Evans) Oh, we just bottomed out. (to crew) Everybody okay? Want me to swim ashore? I can just swim ashore. We have a bike. I'll just ride around. I'll find some police department. (to Evans) Okay, there's nobody here to raise the bridge, and I think we just — and we may have just struck the bottom with our mast extension. We'll see. Everything should be fine.
EVANS: ... First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. It sounds like just kind of part of the journey.
SHERRARD: It just started raining. We got to go. We got to cover a bunch of things.
EVANS: All right, take care.
SHERRARD: Okay. Bye.
EVANS: Bye.
