**MONDAY, APRIL 16TH** - Combo Ticket for both Monday events $15 (click here to purchase)
CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM, 7:30 PM (Lecture) - $7 (click here to purchase)
Amy Herzog: Architectural Fictions: Economic Development, Immersive Renderings, and the Virtualization of Brooklyn

Amy Herzog returns to our stage to assess the use of architectural renderings in imagining and promoting new development in 21st century Brooklyn as well as the fabulous and fantastical work of Albert Grass in Coney Island in the 1940’s. Playing with the notion of Brooklyn as a virtual playground she will explore the relationship between immersive experience and architectural fantasy. Those lucky enough to have seen Amy’s lectures in previous Congressional gatherings will know that her performances are not to be missed.

Amy Herzog is a professor of Media Studies at Queens College and the Author of “Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film”.

SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 9:00 PM  -  $10 (click here to purchase)
The Circus Emporium Roadshow, featuring Coney’s Island USA’s own Ray Valenz and Miss Coney Island 2011 Lefty Lucy, make their triumphant return to Coney Island with a mix of sideshow feats and slapstick burlesque and they are bringing some special guests.

**TUESDAY, APRIL 17TH** Combo Ticket for both Tuesday events $15 (click here to purchase)
CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM, 7:30 PM - (Lecture) $7 (click here to purchase)
Philip Kadish: “Pinhead Races and the White Man’s Burden:  Racial Science and the Politics of P.T. Barnum’s “What Is It?”.
In 1860, showman P.T. Barnum began presenting a number of “pinhead” performers (persons with microcephaly, or unusually small heads) as members of newly discovered races or evolutionary missing links between apes and humans. These “pinhead race” acts were enormously popular as America stood on the brink of civil war over the issue of slavery, and as racial “science” was poised to become the foundational justification of Jim Crow segregation. Unsurprisingly, the most successful of all of these “pinhead race” acts was the “What Is It?”, an African-American microcephalic who became a public sensation, to the point of being used in political cartoons attacking President Abraham Lincoln.” This lecture is structured around a trove of amazing images including photographs, posters, advertisements, political cartoons, news illustrations, and stunningly-offensive scientific charts.

Philip Kadish is completing his PhD in American Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He earned an MFA in fiction writing, and has written about the world of nineteenth century freak shows in fiction as well as scholarship.

SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 8:30 PM  -  (Performance) $10 (click here to purchase)
The Squidling Bros Carnivolution. Squidling Brothers Carnivolution is a combination of sideshow, aerial, burlesque and perverted puppets. A theatrical production of a cabaret with a story. The Squidling Brothers travel with the perverted puppets in an adventure through space and time in a nipple shaped space ship flown by a large puppet named Great Grandma Madoodi, bringing the strangest acts from other dimensions and worlds to Coney Island USA.

**WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18TH** Combo Ticket for both Wedneday events $15 (click here to purchase)
CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM, 7:30 PM (Lecture/Performance) - $7 (click here to purchase)
An Evening of Fate, Chance and Mystery' with Lord Whimsy and Les the Mentalist
Lord Whimsy and Les the Mentalist will dazzle our audiences in their virtuosic return to the Coney Island Museum. In this hour-long presentation, they will give a historical overview of the topics of Fate and Chance with a nod to Culture and Folklore, while amazing the crowd with Mentalist effects and a phenomenal display of arcane knowledge.

Whimsy wrote, designed, and illustrated The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One (Bloomsbury 2006), which has been optioned for film by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. A devoted enthusiast, lower-case adventurer, and explorer of what he calls “the local frontier,” Whimsy spends most of his time among the nooks and margins of the forgotten, the curious, and the speculative that is found beneath, around, and between the everyday.

Les the Mentalist first amazed the Coney Island audience during last year's Grand Guignol Variety Show. His magic explores the mysteries of the human mind by exhibiting feats of uncanny congnition, parasychology and clairvoyance.

SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 9PM, (Performance) $10 (click here to purchase)
Jo Boobs Wild Wild Women
Jo Boobs moderates a panel of some of the wildest women (and the people who love them) to ever hit the stage at Coney Island!

For over a hundred years sideshows have featured women behaving savagely and inappropriately as social and psychological curiosities. Who are they?

Why do they do it? Featuring Bambi the Mermaid and The Great Fredini, Producers and Curators of
Burlesque at the Beach for over a decade, and special guests Bunny Love and Princess Pat. With a performance by Julie Atlas Muz.

Read the Brooklyn Paper article by clicking here.

**THURSDAY, APRIL 19TH** Combo Ticket for both Thursday events $15 (click here to purchase)
CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM, 7:30 PM, (Lecture/Performance) - $7 (click here to purchase)
The Museum of Interesting Things, WHAT THE SAM HILL IS THAT! If you like Quack Medical devices from the turn of the century, if cool inventions titillate you, then this is the show for you. The Museum of Interesting Things scoured our collection for the most bizarre, weird, unusual or kooky stuff we could find and put together a show just for the Coney Island Congress of Curious people. We are a traveling museum, like a circus…just no elephants…and you are allowed to touch!

SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 8:30 PM, (Performance) $10 (click here to purchase)
Donny Vomit and Heather Holiday Present The Curious Couple from Coney
She was a Sword Swallower.
He was a Blockhead.
They met in Coney Island.
They wanted to run away with the circus, but the circus ran away with them.

Donny and Heather’s partnership was forged at the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. For seven years they entertained thousands of tourists and New York locals with their acts of the odd.

Escape arts, Sword Swallowing, Chainsaw Juggling, Fire Eating. These and other skills would land them in the strangest of places. From being the faces of a beer company, ordaining weddings, to becoming an MTV VJ.

Now Donny and Heather return to the stage where they first met to perform and reflect upon the stunts that have taken them across the country and around the world.

This evening of awe is sure to amuse those curious about a life less ordinary.

**FRIDAY, APRIL 20TH** Combo Ticket for both Friday events $15 (click here to purchase)
CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM,, 7:30 PM, (Performance/Reading)- $7 (click here to purchase)
A reading of VENUS by Suzan-Lori Parks, Directed by Donya K. Washington
Sarah Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus, is one of the most tragic and often-cited figures in the history of the spectacle. In her 1996 play about Baartman, entitled Venus, Suzan-Lori Parks' "finds poetry and comedy, as well as drama and meaning, in one of the most embarrassing episodes in our collective history: the life of the Venus Hottentot, a South African woman who, due in part to her enormous posterior, was exhibited in a cage throughout Europe and exploited professionally by the doctor who loved her."

Tony Kushner called Parks "one of the most important dramatists America has produced" and Coney Island USA is happy to be able to offer our visitors a reading of Venus, directed by Donya K. Washington in the Coney Island Museum.

Cast:
Venus: Lynnette R. Freeman
The Mans Brother, later The Mother-Showman, later The Grade School
Chum: Nehassaiu deGannes
The Man, later the Baron Docteur: Michael Levinton
The Negro Resurrectionist: Eric Lockley
Chorus /Uncle: Alan Tyson
Chorus/ Father: Alan McNaney
Chorus / Young Man: Sheldon Best
Chorus/Bride-to-Be: Stacy Osei-Kuffour
Chorus /Mother: Alexandria Wailes 

SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 9 PM  (Performance/Lecture) -  $10 (click here to purchase)
Cabaret of the Flesh- With live music from Amour Obscur, Sideshow with the Freak kings, Live Flesh suspensions with The DisGraceLanD Hook Squad

The DisGraceLanD Hook Squad is committed to presenting modern day flesh suspensions in the rawest, most primal way possible. We are here to show the world that body suspension is not strictly a form of enlightenment, but also a very real recreational way to have pure simple fun.

Amour Obscur is a Brooklyn-based gypsy punk band that offers a theatrical performance that draws from the striking visual aesthetics of the Weimar cabaret and American sideshow. Mixing unique instrumentation—vocals, accordion, upright bass, trombone, mandolin, tenor banjo and percussion—and original composition that draws upon such eclectic influences as traditional Romani music, Kurt Weill, Americana, and klezmer…to contemporary dance music—Amour Obscur creates a sound that reflects the experience of the underground for artists, hobos, neo-gypsies and revelers everywhere.

**SATURDAY, APRIL 21ST**
SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 1PM - 8PM, $10 (click here to purchase)
CONTINUOUS ADMISSION - Last Entry is 7pm.
Super Freak Weekend Jason the Illustrated Penguin will be Master of Ceremonies for this event featuring Nati the Patchwork Girl, Baron Von Geiger, Serpentini and Little Jimmy.

Colonnade of Curiosities in the Freak Bar, 1PM - 8PM, FREE. A bevy of odd and attractive objects to entice your wallet! We’ve scoured the earth for strange and unusual vendors and purveyors of goods that you, our audience, would like to buy! Come by and take advantage of this amazing gathering of talented and interesting entrepreneurs. Vendors include: Katie Innamorato, Carrier Pigeon: Illustrated Fiction and Fine Art, Huckster Fabrication, Museum of Interesting Things, Twig Terrariums, Coney Island USA

CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM, 11AM - 6PM (Day 1 of a 2-day Symposium) $30 for full weekend
(click here to purchase)
The Congress For Curious People - 2 Day Symposium
Now in its third season, the Congress for Curious People is a 2-day symposium that caps the 10-day Congress with a participatory event featuring our audience and a group of scholars who bring their expertise to the conversation on a number of relevant topics. The Congress for is a project of the Coney Island Museum and the Morbid Anatomy Library.
See the following link for full details: http://www.spectacularium.org/congress-of-curious-peoples/symposium

**SUNDAY, APRIL 22ND**
SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE, 1PM - 8PM, $10 (click here to purchase)
CONTINUOUS ADMISSION - Last entry is 7pm.
Super Freak Weekend Jason the Illustrated Penguin will be Master of Ceremonies for this event featuring Nati the Patchwork Girl, Baron Von Geiger, Serpentini and Little Jimmy.

Colonnade of Curiosities in the Freak Bar, 1PM - 8PM, FREE. A bevy of odd and attractive objects to entice your wallet! We’ve scoured the earth for strange and unusual vendors and purveyors of goods that you, our audience, would like to buy! Come by and take advantage of this amazing gathering of talented and interesting entrepreneurs. Vendors include: Katie Innamorato, Carrier Pigeon: Illustrated Fiction and Fine Art, Huckster Fabrication, Museum of Interesting Things, Twig Terrariums, Coney Island USA

CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM, 11AM - 5:30PM (Day 2 of a 2-day Symposium) $30
The Congress For Curious People
Now in its third season, the Congress for Curious People is a 2-day symposium that caps the 10-day Congress with a participatory event featuring our audience and a group of scholars who bring their expertise to the conversation on a number of relevant topics. The Congress for is a project of the Coney Island Museum and the Morbid Anatomy Library.
See the following link for full details: http://www.spectacularium.org/congress-of-curious-peoples/symposium

This event was made possible by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.