Life on Stilts
I just want a sensible platform shoe...
Certain skills in sideshow and circus are merely gatekept by the not insignificant part of your brain that screams “NOPE” when you get near it. Fire eating & stilt walking are 2 of these.
I ate fire long enough to get custom brass torches made but not long enough to fuck up my voice or tempt the inevitable cancer to hurry along and find me faster. After the former Coney Island sideshow man turned small town hotdog vendor taught me the basics in his empty restaurant, it took 3 full hours to overcome my body physically freezing up and not allowing the torch past my lips…I spent another 3 hours the next day scrubbing the soot off my rental ceiling.
Stilts though? You just have to trust the earth. I have a nice talk with my legs and the planet below them before I climb up on the pegs or platforms.
There are 3 different styles depending on the gig - Drywall platform stilts are great for if you are doing a lot of standing still on VERY flat surfaces for photos. Pegs are better for uneven ground, walking, and circus tricks. Bouncing stilts are the third category for the truly unhinged and insured amongst us. Great for werewolves at Haunts and athletes jumping over sticks. I do not fuck with these.
Despite my cute conversational ritual, I often need a SOLID 10 minutes on the apparatus before I can be seen by the public. I am a baby giraffe wearing its first borrowed high heels on the high seas. I talk through where my center of gravity is. I remind my toes and ankles their services are not required and please stop trying to contribute. I make jokes about how I like to “get high”, the client told me to “dress up” and all I’ve ever wanted is a the right “platform shoe.”
I am not a strong or flexy body like a real circus performer. Well - more clown than acrobat at least. My hip flexers are straining, my feet aren’t big enough to fit on the mount of this tool clearly designed for average sized men, and the level changes (on the platforms) are filling me with the same “NOPE” energy of that torch lowering past my lips. Why are you doing this?! The money is NOT good enough for this. You do not have disability insurance this is NOT worth the risk and you look like a fool up on your plastic tinsel covered ladder struggling to look composed THEY CAN SEE YOU ARE NOT GOOD FOR IT.
But then the panic subsides (not fear of heights mind you - fear of looking foolish and then foolishly hurting myself on the way down) and this silly playful euphoria takes over. People are delighted by you - they cannot imagine getting high, dressing up, or walking a mile in your shoes. They want high fives! The children are both afraid and mesmerized! The rolling gait of your walk is just like a pirate captain in command of her ship.
I have done some very weird stilt gigs.
A Christmas elf at a mall - on stilts. My name is Dollop by the way. There’s a whole video version of the Field Notes from 2023 for that below..
An 8 hour long gig dressed as an acid granny holding a weed wand and a spray gun at a giant music festival in Chicago at the height of COVID lockdowns. I was TERRIFIED I’d be knocked down by the heaving sea of drug addled hot people every hour on the hour when we emerged with the orgasmic explosion of confetti and beach balls over their sweating bodies. (I made it up to myself by visiting the Haymarket Memorial and going to the House on the Rock the next day…it was a weird Labor Day.)
A gas station opening near DC where I got into a “who wore it better” dance off with a wacky wavey inflatable tube man. See above video for evidence.
The host of a costume contest at the bottom of the Well of Souls (fine it was a grass amphitheater on the private estate of a wealthy eccentric dressed at the 13th Doge of Venice.) No one else in this contest was on stilts. Just me.
SO….
The question of whether or not I will do this work while in full glamour hobo mode overseas is a probable no. I think my time with them has run out of gas and the idea of roaming the uneven cobbled hills of Edinburgh in them is an actual nightmare scenario. Maybe Adelaide…never seen anyone there and its SO flat. However the sun is already a deadly laser and getting any degree closer to it is unwise. I can really only stay up for about 2 hours before my legs are too tired to be trusted in their compact with the solid earth below - our earlier pep talk being worn out.
I am grateful to the people who lent me their wooden peg stilts all those years ago and I’m continuously impressed by the people who jump up and walz around - literally- on their tiny shoes and big costumes. Looking at you Big Whimsy & The Tipsy Kings!
Loved this. Want more deep dives in the future on combatting the “ nope”