Okra P. Dingle, the newest addition, flirted with the Cirkus for a year, joining them briefly on tours and working the Winter Cabaret in NYC, before throwing caution – and aspirations to being North Korea’s next figure skating champion – to the wind, and joining full time as a knife-thrower and hard-headed ballerina. "You cannot learn to swim in the desert," was his only comment.

There have been plenty of other, true life, run-away-with-the-Cirkus stories as well. During the 1998 tour, a young man in Florida asked if he could do a one-minute contortion act in that evening’s show. Within a week he had moved out of his place, sold his belongings and followed the Cirkus to New Orleans. Now he performs regularly in Vegas and other large scale venues as a top notch contortionist. The hardest part of joining a tight-knit travelling circus, however, is not merely having a skill, or the more difficult ability to present the skill with an engaging storyline built around it. Rather, it's the interpersonal skills required to work cooperatively with an assortment of personalities under trying conditions on the road. Although the current ensemble of the B.F.C. come from a variety of backgrounds, they share a familiar tale of dissatisfaction with their previous jobs and the determination to create a new life with the Cirkus doing what matters most to each of them.

As Dr. Flummox and Mr. Dingle see the Autonomadic Bookmobile, it is a splinter in the paw of the death culture, delivering revolt at 65 miles an hour.

Aspects of the show are clearly meant to amaze and astound the audience through the willing suspension of disbelief. But there are also perfectly contained moments which present both the display of daring know-how and the notion of an underlying liberatory presumption of play, as when Kinko the Clown sits smoking a cigarette and reading Hustler while rubbing himself; or a re-evaluation of power and authority when Philomena Bindlestiff, as the aggro cop, solicits the sexual favors of Kinkette on a bed of nails. There is a power with an unconscious grace here. It may take a while to understand its source; these kinds of images have an indeterminate half-life, seeding long after the show is over in ways which proselytizing would never be able to equal. "It's good to let people know about radical history and ideas, through the acts, without hitting them over the head with it," says Cirkus co-founder Keith Nelson. "They'll take home more of the ideas if it's still within the context of good entertainment."

Fast-forward to nearly the end of a B.F.C. show. The audience groans as Mr. Pennygaff swallows a succession of swords, scissors, a neon glass tube, and a bayonet "held by my great grandfather during one of the last great battles for independence in this country. Some of you old timers might remember it – it was the battle of Waco." Taking a bow, he announces, "A one hundred thousand dollar liberal arts education, and THIS is what I do for a living!"

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