October in Review
Gig-tober 2026: Halloween Entertainment, Sdeshow Acts & Fire Performances
Many performers affectionately refer to October as Gig-tober, especially our sideshow and burlesque Artists. The spooky season brings with it an explosion of opportunities of all shapes and sizes; some with months of advance notice and others with a week or less. Although we specialize in family-friendly, all-ages entertainment, this is the time of year when we get to focus more of our attention on adults and bring a little more maturity to our guest interactions, costuming and music choices.
Here's a rundown of the October events our company was a part of this year!
October 3rd
The season started with Nightmare Off 8th Street in Manitowoc, WI. One of our longest-standing members, Jessi Bichel of the Web Weavers, brought her professional makeup skills and LED Poi to the event, performing as a zombie with Halloween imagery displayed on her props. The Spiritwalker, a creator of high-end stilt creatures and a collaborator in our network, was also there of their own accord. Although we didn't contract them for this event, we take pride in how often our Artists run into one another in the field!
October 14th
In late September, we began discussing a production with Make-A-Wish Wisconsin for a fundraiser in Green Bay. The event highlighted the story of Little George, a 3-year-old Wish Kid who recently visited the San Diego Zoo. With a relatively short planning window, we worked with Tommy and Amanda of Paint and Inflate to transform our performers into characters from George's favorite movie, The Lion King. It was a pleasure to return to the Resch Expo Center, work with the incredible AV team from Lighthouse Productions and share the stage with Wish Kid Kennedy, an amazing singer who performed as we crowned Little George the new King!
October 22nd
The Milwaukee County Zoo annually operates Boo at the Zoo, offering family-friendly Halloween programming over several weeks. This year, they introduced an adults-only night, where we worked with Dustin of Kryptic Movement to provide ongoing ambient fire dancing throughout the evening. As guests wandered through the Zoo, they would come across our performance area two or three times, frequently stopping to enjoy a few fire performances before continuing their evening. Our inspection and observation by the Milwaukee Fire Department was also wonderful.
October 24th
Krysten and Ryan needed to divide & conquer with Krysten in Middleton, WI, for the Bishop's Bay Halloween Party. There, she oversaw a collaboration between Madison Circus Entertainment (Josef, Goose and Nora) and Professor Pinkerton of Dead-Man's Carnival to provide stilt walking and an LED Halloween show, including some family-friendly sideshow acts. Coordinating two entirely different productions on the same day takes some planning, but things went incredibly smoothly, and everybody was even able to join us at the Berg party later that evening!
In 2024, our company was brought on by Berg Development for their extremely unique annual Halloween party. This year, we got in touch in June to get ahead on planning and landed on a package with a variety of entertainment elements. At the core was a series of sideshow acts performed every 30 minutes throughout the evening, accompanied by professional scare actors Deadlock and Dred the Demon as well as Brandon and his assistant Dusty as the Spiritwalker.
Guests arrived to valet parking and a long, dark walkway filled with inflatables, animatronics and a scare from the Spiritwalker. From there, they navigated a haunted house, where another team plus our scare actors, before finding their way under enormous tent structures built into the backyard and over the pool.
On the main stage, we worked with Double Platinum DJ on AV and tech for our production of sideshow acts. We contracted Avi Kritzman as a foot juggler, Cryptid Kid as a burlesque sword swallower, and Claira Bell, who put together a sideshow sampler variety act featuring mouse traps, pins and interactive stapling. It was a pleasure working with these Artists, some for the first time, as well as assisting other acts with AV cues and overall stage management.
Being part of such a high-end event also gave us the opportunity to run into more familiar faces from our network, including:
Kim with Witte Artistry, painting the client and their wife as Beetlejuice and Lydia.
Dustin and a team of four or five others with Kryptic Movement, performing fire shows at the opening ceremony and on the main stage.
By the end of the evening, our client had heard from other talent on-site that they also work with our company. It's always rewarding to see these relationships come together organically, especially on productions of this scale. For next year, we're already exploring the potential to offer more comprehensive entertainment coordination for the event as a whole.
October 29th
Finally, to close-out the season, we coordinated a smaller entertainment package for the Adyen Halloween Party in Chicago, IL. Tommy and Amanda with Paint and Inflate provided balloon twisting and face painting, while James the Magician performed a series of 20-minute magic shows. Everything was a hit and went off without a hitch!
With that, Gig-tober finally came to a close. Looking back, it's pretty incredible how much of our work is made possible by the relationships we've built with other Artists and production companies. Some of these events were in the works for months, others came together in just a few weeks, and several gave us the opportunity to reconnect with familiar faces or work alongside someone new. There's a lot that happens behind the scenes to make these productions possible, and it's a pleasure to share a little of that process with you.
We're grateful to the clients who continue to trust us with their events and to the Artists and collaborators who make it all happen. For now, we're enjoying a little downtime. It won't last long, but it's a well-timed blessing to slow down for November before the Christmas and New Year's Eve events roll around.