The B.O.N.K Show

The B.O.N.K. Show: A lesson in midnight debauchery

By Quinn McClurg

How many times have you heard the tired phrase “nothing good happens after midnight”? Well, if you’d like to prove it wrong once, then right for several weeks afterwards, I hope you didn’t miss the B.O.N.K. Show; all other post-midnight activities will pale in comparison.

What does B.O.N.K. stand for? It’s Better Off Not Knowing, literally— and that’s all you need to know before attending! I attended the first show knowing nothing at all. It was midnight in mid June, and I was pulled by a group of rave-fluent friends to many dark, abandoned buildings to find... a truck? A stage? Some hot jazz and dirty blues from the top of said stage-truck? A topless puppeteer? Whatever it was, it wasn’t a rave, but I knew I had to stick around to find out more. Before I knew it, I ended up going to all three shows this summer.

The B.O.N.K. Show is an eclectic display, a midnight cabaret of acts ranging from puppetry to acrobats, and burlesque to body horror. Even the stage, the Fox & Beggar Theater’s “Gonzago,” fits the B.O.N.K. Show’s ideals of experimentation: the side of this 18’ box truck flips outward to create a stage and the top railings extend upward to create a bandstand. Even sound and light systems are included too.

These are no no-name acts either. Previous performers have included the New-York-based performance artist Enormous Face, Sadye Osterloh and Matt McCorkle of the Flotsam River Circus, Kansas-City-based Molly Balloons, and soul and swing-styled jazz from Miss Myra’s Moonshiners.

The B.O.N.K. Show is also a fantastic showcase of local painters, costume creators, and other visual artists. Stage dressings are sufficiently lavish and whimsical, while costumes are kitsch; clownish enough to stick in both your memory and your heart. Although the summer season of this midnight debauchery has finished, this inexplicable whimsy is sure to continue next summer. If you feel up to the task, consider applying to act in the show yourself. If not, you may just run into me, and dozens of other happily confused folk, soaking up the magic of the stage.