If you’ve attended some of the area’s festivals recently, you may have noticed something new to the area, but as old as entertainment itself.
Rocky Clements, owner of Rocky Clements Show of Wonders has spent a lifetime perfecting the techniques of entertainment before motion pictures, computers and cellphones.
“I live in Jonesboro; I started when I was a kid. When I was about 10 years old, I stated with a toy magic set and I loved playing with all the tricks. I started checking out books at the library and one thing led to another and I did my first show when I was about 14 at a library for 300 kids,” Clements said.
As time progressed, Clements fell in love with storytelling about the great magicians of old, traveling medicine shows, carnival sideshows, hucksters and their con-games, working to create a show that was both entertaining and educational.
“A lot of people hear magic show and just think it’s entertainment for just children, but the show is designed as entertainment for literally all ages and the adults will like the magic as well. There is a lot of storytelling, history and humor in it and of course the kids like the tricks,” Clements said. “I do consider it a performing art. To me, art is anything you use creativity to entertain others and so certainly magic shows fall into that. I started in magic with just generic tricks but found that my real love was in the history of magic and the old effects, vaudeville and the traveling performers a century ago. It fascinated me that you could just make a living traveling to small towns and put up a tent or wagon and put on a show. So, little by little after 20 or 30 years of doing it the show evolved into a historically themed show.”
Clements said keeping history alive is a dying art, but he and a few others across the nation are passionate about keeping the art alive and sharing it with others in hopes they may share the same appreciation for the time, effort and creativity of those who have come before.
“It can sound boring but vaudeville, carnival side shows, traveling medicine shows, the old rain makers who would come during the drought and all those kinds of things are what the show is about. Some of the props go back to the vaudeville era. I do tricks with some things that are almost 100 years old,” Clements said.
When asked which tricks he performs he feels one should see in their lifetime, Clements didn’t hesitate to mention a medicine show trick.
“Bottles and glasses are supposed to change places, but instead they start multiplying uncontrollably until the whole table is filled with elixir bottles,” Clements said.
Clements said some of the stories used during his show are loosely based on his own experience as a child when attending a show and that each aspect of his performance is not only meant to be entertaining to the viewer, but a reminder of a way of life that has since passed.
“During the last century they called the small-town traveling performers “tall grass showman” because they would go usually not more than 40 miles between stopping at a small town and put up their tent or wagon at the grassy lot at the edge of town. Sometimes it was pure entertainment and sometimes it was con artistry where they were selling medicine or rain making. But in order to make people come take the pitch, it had to be entertaining,” Clements said. “So, all of that I find really interesting. To my disappointment I find in the 30 plus years I’ve been doing this, I find fewer and fewer people know what vaudeville was, traveling medicine shows or a carnival sideshow was. It has slowly disappeared and there are a few of us out here trying to keep it alive.”
Clements said he travels a five-hour radius to perform, holding shows from Louisiana to Missouri.
To learn more, visit Show of Wonders on Facebook or RockyClements.com.
Lauren is a an award-winning journalist who decided after 10 years of newspaper experience to venture out. Hallmark Times was born.
