Sideshow: What Lies Beneath
Sideshow performers and their relationship to their bodies
by Yian Huang and Matthew P. Moll, 15 February 2008

What they do, and why they do it

Performers Use Their Bodies

Nails, ice picks and turkey thermometers enter nostrils with a nudge of a hammer, and several feet of steel slide down vulnerable throats. All of this is done by willing participants to delight their onlookers.

The building is a rusted hulk covered with multi-colored banners and filled with multi-faceted, injury-defying artists. Near the Coney Island boardwalk at the corner of Surf and 12th Street in Brooklyn, performers who were once relegated as secondary attractions are the focus of the Coney Island Sideshow.

Sideshow performers like Coney Island mainstay Todd Robbins and his pupil Adam "The First Real Man" must use their bodies as tools for visual effects. But these acts are not David Copperfield-like illusions and there is no slight of hand. The slightest error results in bodily harm.

“This stuff is real,” said Todd Robbins, who has been a sword, glass and roach swallowing sideshow performer for over 30 years. “It’s all based on technique and if you don’t have someone explaining the alignment you could easily puncture your esophagus and bleed to death in five minutes.”

Over his career Robbins, 49, has become the utility infielder of sideshow performers. He puts a variety of objects in his nose and mouth – balloons, fire, even the head of Joey, his Pomeranian. He has also mastered walking over broken glass and driving nails into his skull as a the “human blockhead.”

One of his biggest acts was helping to start the Coney Island Circus Sideshow School. Adam, "The First Real Man," began his career as a sideshow performer six years ago under Robbins’ tutelage.

Increasingly, Robbins said, sideshow performers are more like Adam, who is a career elementary school teacher, and chase the art in their spare time.

“I could never commit to that full-time, it’s a grueling, grueling lifestyle,” Adam said, referring to the sideshow. “It’s something that I’m not used to.”

Performers at the Coney Island sideshow put their bodies through about 10 shows a day, back to back.

"I wouldn't be a responsible husband or father to give up my career," said Adam who has two young boys with his wife Debbie. "So I pursue the sideshow as much as I can."

The amount of physical stress the body must endure, Robbins said, is compounded by the emotional resolve required to focus during gigs and find enough energy to land the next.

"I'm not a young man anymore," Robbins said. "Luckily I was successful early in my career and I can work less but still make a living."

The repetition can sometimes dull the mind and increase the chances of bodily risk, but the reward is something Robbins said is unlike any other form of entertainment.

"This stuff is really dangerous,” said Robbins. “But it instills this sense of awe that goes beyond a magic trick, because there is no deception to it. It is reality at its most amazing."

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