Under the big top, doing the impossible
Published 1:30 am Thursday, May 14, 2026
PORT ANGELES — Twenty-year-old Katie Russo’s heart’s desire was to join the circus. But there was an obstacle. She could not do a cartwheel. She’d even been known to cry because she couldn’t do a backward roll, either.
This weekend, Russo will perform with the agile cast and crew of the Flynn Creek Circus — her first big contract — as the one ascending the Chinese pole to execute gravity-defying feats.
“I climb up and down and do twists. I wear rubber shoes that don’t make me stick, but they help me stick,” said Russo, who also is a musician, comedian, navigator and engineer with Flynn Creek.
Together with her fellow performers, she helped put up the 25-meter crimson- and champagne-colored big-top tent housing the circus on the Field Arts & Events Hall grounds this week. The troupe is poised for five shows: the Field Hall gala on Friday, an adults-only burlesque show at 8 p.m. Saturday, and family-friendly performances at 2 p.m. Saturday and at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets are on sale at fieldhallevents.org and at the box office at Field Hall, 201 W. Front St., Port Angeles.
Russo, 29, has been a circus performer for several years now, and in 2025 signed on with Flynn Creek, an internationally touring circus company founded in 2002. Russo has been traveling with the troupe, raising the big top, wowing spectators, tearing down the tent — and loving it all.
She’ come a long way from growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, to music school in Indiana, to circus school in Vermont.
For Russo, the circus has become the perfect blend of artistry, athleticism and risk — the result of abundant work and step-by-step learning. She also feels that the communal experience of going to the circus, of walking through the tunnel and watching it unfold, live, is a key part of the magic.
Nick Harden, a veteran cast member, also came to this art form as a young adult. He grew up in Illinois and went to the state university, which had a circus arts program.
“I stumbled into that and fell in love,” he said — though none of it was easy to learn.
“It took me a long time to get to the point of juggling three balls,” quipped Harden, who has since developed a unicycle-acrobatics act with his wife, Wendy Harden, and an elaborate, dramatic-comic hat-juggling performance in the Flynn Creek Circus.
In Port Angeles, the troupe will perform “The Bridge,” a show inspired by a Nordic legend; in it, Harden portrays the Emperor.
The most joyous part of all this, Harden said without hesitation, is stepping out there and doing something — many things — that the audience believes is impossible. No editing, no trickery and no AI are found under the big top, he said.
“A tented circus is beautiful. There’s really nothing like it. Obviously, I’m very biased,” Harden added, but “it really is magical to walk into that tent and just see something that hardly exists anywhere anymore.”
As a cast member, Harden also does a number of other jobs: driving one of the circus trucks, helping erect the tent and, once the show starts, pulling the rope that hoists the aerialist away up over the audience’s heads.
So he gets to hear the reactions: grown men gasping when they see the impossible happen, and a child asking, “How is she going to get down?”
Harden also is a teacher at Seattle’s School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts, with pupils who have gone on to perform with Cirque du Soleil and other troupes around the globe.
While on the North Olympic Peninsula, Harden and his fellow performers will meet with Sequim Acrobatics students for some professional training.
His advice to those who are attracted to circus arts: Work hard and try something, even if it feels scary. If it feels far over the top, break it down into parts that aren’t too frightening until you can stitch them together into the whole feat.
Field Hall artistic director Steve Raider-Ginsburg said he’s thrilled to have Flynn Creek in Port Angeles, as performers and educators who travel with their own old-school venue.
The company is “some of the best circus talent touring anywhere,” he said, “and they’re doing it in the traditional setting of the big top.”
________
Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Port Townsend.
