Fire dancers, stilt walkers, sword swallowers, feats of strength and beauty, and of course face painting, are just some of the specialties of the jack-of-all circus trades found in the crew of the Crufeli Gypsy Freak Show.

The Crufeli core, Traye Lovejoy, Brandon Kleinle, Kyle Mertz and ringmaster Cheryl Honchen, was created two years ago as an Eclectic Circus spinoff, after their talents were in high demand for local festivals, parties and music show sidekicks.“It’s Cheryl’s creation,” said Lovejoy.“All four of us do acrobatic acts that take our other talents and bring them in. We do balances while hooping or with fire,” she said.“We push ourselves.”Collectively the foursome have decades of experience, whether self-taught or circus trained in the Philadelphia Circus School.And all that training doesn’t come without a price.Mertz said he suffered a handful of injures while learning his sideshow skills.“Sword swallowing especially,” he said.“It’s not a matter of if you hurt yourself, but when. It’s only a matter of how severe it is going to be. Some people have almost died,” he said.Kleinle started as a break-dancer before becoming the group’s arm balancer.“I was in Animal Farm, a break-dancing group from Philly. I was better at the hand balancing and just started focusing on handstands. I’ve dislocated my shoulder and shattered my kneecap,” he said.Lovejoy had endured an injury or two, including a broken rib during a balancing act.The Gypsy crew is often hired for birthday parties, sometimes to just stand and take photographs with guests.“Most people opt for the bigger show. We do a big fire show,” Lovejoy said.Along with performing at Musikfest, the crew often makes appearances on Saturday nights at Becky’s Drive-In in Walnutport and have been a local busking fixture around Jim Thorpe, staging random street performances for the mulitude of tourists flocking to the historic town.The newest undertaking has been Honchen’s decadelong vision of a movie to be played behind the performers during shows.The film’s debut will take place Friday at the group’s Emmaus Theater show.“She wrote it 10 years ago,” said Lovejoy.The synopsis: It’s the 1920s and a young man is wrongly accused of murdering circus and sideshow folk. After his arrest, he is thrown into an insane asylum, but the murders continue during his incarceration.“The movie is a really cool twisted story of murder,” said Lovejoy.Filmed on a smaller-than-shoe-string budget, the crew has worn multiple hats, from creating its own costumes to using backyards as filming locations.“We’re high creativity on a low budget,” said Lovejoy, who sewed most of the 1920s-era threads herself.“We were filming in a car wash stall for one of the fight scenes,” she said.“None of us are being paid, it’s all for fun and being in the show.”“I wrote it, then it was shelved when I got into the circus stuff. But now I’ve got a good group of people, so it’s been evolving for five years,” said Honchen.Honchen, the group’s ringmaster of sorts, started as a hooper but formed the group so “We’d have more opportunities to perform more often,” she said.“We just did a Wells Fargo company picnic,” she said.“We do kids’ entertainment, face painting, juggling, stilts and acrobatics. Sometimes it’s more interactive. Traye teaches yoga and I give hoop lessons,” Honchen said.“It’s definitely picked up a lot. There’s been a lot of weekends double booked,” she said.“It’s a really awesome way to express our creativity. We always make people smile and bring joy.”“We want to live every day to the fullest and inspire people to find what’s unique about themselves and express it,” she said.Crufeli Gypsy Freak Show will debut its film at 9:30 p.m. at the Emmaus Theater.For more information on booking the group or upcoming gigs, visit

www.crufeli.com.