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Ringmaster catches the family bug and now guides an amazing troupe
Barbara Virgo Hobbs Photo
Jim Alberti enlists the help of a young audience member during a performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
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Published: September 21, 2009
Come winter, the fleas in the Alberti Flea Circus like to head down to Florida.
"They own a condo in Fort Lauderdale," said Jim Alberti, the human part of the circus.
Their condo is a French poodle.
When I said that sounded expensive, Alberti said, "They had to pool their money."
The fleas deserve a nice rest. They have had quite the season. Alberti and the fleas recently returned to Winston-Salem from a two-day engagement in Washington where they performed, along with such other performers as jugglers and jump-rope teams, outside the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Alberti, who used to teach in the theater-lighting program at UNC School of the Arts, grew up in Washington and received much of his early education in theater at the Kennedy Center. So it was quite satisfying to be back there performing with the circus, he said. "A circle was completed."
A family history
Unfortunately, the experience gave the fleas big ideas. Since coming back from the Kennedy Center, Alberti said, they have been making noises about increasing their fees.
The people at the Kennedy Center heard about Alberti through Merlefest, where he and the fleas have performed for 18 years. They have also traveled to such places as Minnesota, Iowa and Oregon for state fairs. At the festival celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, he and the fleas shared the bill with President Bush and Queen Elizabeth.
Locally, you might have caught them at the Dixie Classic Fair and Historic Bethabara Park.
Alberti has worked with fleas since he was a boy.
"My grandfather did this," Alberti said. "He learned it from his uncle. It's down to me to get the bugs out of the act."
Alberti prefers that line to "It's up to me to keep the act up to scratch."
Flea circuses -- and, as Alberti freely acknowledges, some of his jokes -- have been around for a long time.
"It's a real part of popular entertainment, far older than the United States," Alberti said.
In the early 19th century, flea circuses were a way to draw a crowd to sell something -- a restorative elixir, perhaps.
In a flea circus, the fleas perform such amazing feats as pulling a carriage and diving from a tower into a miniature tank of water.
Demanding performers
Alberti, who also plays the street organ and puts on a Punch and Judy show, began focusing on the flea circus in the late 1980s while he was at the School of the Arts. Working with fleas can be a challenge. Putting it kindly, he said, they can be "willful."
If an adult asks him how long he might work with a particular performer, he might say, "I stay with a flea until he doesn't get laughs any more."
Children get a softer answer: "When they save up enough money, they retire."
In some flea circuses, the human might clap his hands and then express horror at having possibly accidentally crushed a flea. Alberti doesn't do that. He doesn't want a child to get the idea that a flea in his circus might be harmed.
Alberti has to deal with skeptics, of course, such as the little girl who says, "I don't see a flea. I don't think they are there."
In such a case, he might ask the flea what he thinks of that and pass on the message: "I don't see you either."
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
727-7389
www.albertifleacircus.com
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