It's a wonder that the Northwestern Circus didn't last forever. In its time, it combined the University's well-known knack for theater with the highly developed sense of irony that any upper-level institution of higher education cultivates in its undergraduates. As an all-school activity, the circus involved hundreds and attracted thousands.

The N.U. Circus looked like just that, a circus, with a parade and even a midway with sideshows and booths. But during its prime in the 1920s and early 1930s, it was nothing like Barnum and Bailey. Among dozens of acts each year, "The Native Band of Hamberger Island" was an example of the originality of the circus; this band provided offbeat musical entertainment in a mock ethnographic vein. "A Life and Death Study in One Act" was a fair parody of the thespian histrionics sometimes performed on campus stages. Organized mostly by fraternities and sororities, the skits, stunts, and routines included contorted gymnastics, extravagant costumery, trapeze artists, and more than one elephant gracing the spotlights in the old Patten Gym "big top."

Having begun modestly in 1908 as a "country fair" outside old Willard Hall to raise money for the YMCA, the circus quickly grew into the biggest burlesque-cum-carnival-cum-fundraiser that anyone could imagine. When the circus ended after 1932-- the biggest and best ever, it was said--it was not for a lack of interest but because it had grown so big. Planning took too much time away from the real purpose of the University.

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