There is a community gathering this weekend on West Finger Road in Fayetteville. Freak Show Day Fest is a celebration of music and circus arts. Jacqueline McKinney, one of the co-organizers and co-founders, says this three-day event offers up a cornucopia of arts and skills.
McKinney: It is everything that is weird and different and other about performers and artists in Northwest Arkansas. Freak show also because we are a traveling show, so we also have a show in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and then Little Rock, and then we’re hoping to expand this year into Fort Smith and Kansas City as well. So that’s kind of our goal.
Also freak show because it’s a circus carnival theme. There’s going to be dozens of circus performers about the property throughout the weekend.
And then Day Fest because we are like the first, you know, true overnight camping festival in Northwest Arkansas, or at least in Fayetteville. But our programming is from 12 o’clock in the afternoon until 12 o’clock in the morning. So we don’t have scheduled structured overnight entertainment, even though there are people entertaining themselves on the property overnight. We say Day Fest because a true, like, large-scale festival, they’ll have DJs until 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning, and we don’t.
Kellams: People can drop in, though. You don’t have to camp.
McKinney: Yeah, you don’t have to camp. People come and go, and a large majority of our population are locals, so they want to go home, shower, check on the dog and then come back the next day.
Kellams: All right. Carnival performers.
McKinney: So fire. We have fire. We have aerial. There’s some contortion. We’ve got magicians, comedians, you know, clowns. There’s a lot of different options. Previously we’ve had a lot of stilt walkers and things, but I don’t think we’re going to offer that this year. We’re trying to keep a lot of variety in what we offer.
Kellams: So what led you to want to put this together?
McKinney: Well, my best friend and I are both circus entertainers ourselves. She currently is a stilt walker, fire breather, professional mermaid. I could go on. And then we’re both living characters. So I’ve been, like, a table in someone’s wedding where I wore the table as the dress. I’ve been a champagne skirt. I’ve done just a variety of characters. And that’s kind of my thing.
I got into circus entertainment because I was into the aerial arts as a kid, and the two of us were always looking for opportunities in Northwest Arkansas to perform. We had done things in larger markets, but we were trying to bring that here. And there really just wasn’t a structure for that.
Now we have circus arts schools, and she teaches even, like, aerial classes at a lot of different gyms. But in terms of performances, we didn’t have any local residencies. So it was really difficult to get permitting for aerial, insurance for fire. And so being able to do, you know, all of these things on private property and, you know, in the county is kind of what gave us the access. We had a really unique opportunity there to be able to do it on a larger scale.
I also juggle and am part of the Northwest Arkansas Juggling Club. It’s a great group of folks who also, you know, are involved in local entertainment. And so we’re just, I guess, performers ourselves, and we’re creating this festival because we want to bring, like, a larger awareness to the skill set that we provide, because we want people in Northwest Arkansas to know that we have that here.
Kellams: It seems like there’s a renaissance in these arts.
McKinney: Yeah. So one of our performers, Isaiah, last year, he grew up, like, kind of at the castle. So I don’t know if you know them up there, like the Ren Faire in Muskogee.
Kellams: Yeah. In Muskogee.
McKinney: And so he’s a really, really talented fire performer. And he’s kind of, like, one of, I would say, like, our most skilled performers. And definitely there is that element of, like, whimsy that comes from, you know, those things, but it really just comes down to the population.
Every single year we get different kinds of people that come into the show in terms of the audience, and they really bring the energy. So we are an adaptive show. We give the people what they want, and we adapt the show to what they’re giving us.
So when people come in and they’re really, really interested in the rave side, then we’ll have more DJ-heavy shows. When people want to come and chill and bring a blanket, bring a chair, they’re going to bring their families. Then we get more into the singer-songwriters, the live bands and things like that. So we’ve always kind of changed and adjusted our programming based on, like, what the demographics are of the audience.
Kellams: All right. So we’ve concentrated on the sort of circus skills. What else will be happening?
McKinney: So it is a two-day, 12-hour live music show. So in the daytime, we kind of start with, like, easing them into just being in the woods, being at the event. It’s supposed to be an immersive experience. So they come in, there’s going to be a sound bath, there’s going to be yoga, and then we’re going to get into singer-songwriters in the daytime. I know that should be, like, the first hour or two both days, Friday and Saturday.
And then as you get into Friday, we have a lot of hip-hop performers. So we got rappers, we’ve got R&B, spoken word artists, and then even some of the DJs that evening, we’ll have hip-hop in their sets, even though they’re primarily EDM.
And then mixed in between all of that, we’ll have fashion shows going day and night. We’re going to have burlesque performances, belly dancing. There’s going to be fire breathing, fire spinning, all of the above. Both nights.
And then Saturday during the day, that’s when we get more of the singer-songwriters, the 30-minute, hour-long sets with the live bands. I believe we have four live bands going that day. And then same thing. We’re getting into the fashion shows, the dance elements, we’re bringing the audience in and we’re doing interactive stuff.
And then throughout the whole event, we’re going to have vendors day and night. We’re going to have food, we’re going to have shopping opportunities. We’ve got an art walk that we’ve built, a carnival. There’s going to be a hookah lounge because we’re 18 and up. So this weekend, you’re going to leave the kids at home. And yeah, we’re just going to show them a good time this weekend.
Jacqueline McKinney is one of the founders and organizers of Freak Show Day Fest, Act IV. It’s taking place tomorrow through Sunday at 3901 W. Finger Road in Fayetteville. You can find out more about the event at their Instagram feed.
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