Last Monday afternoon–his day off–Rush Pearson pulled a wad of dirty dollar bills from his pocket and offered to buy his friend a beer. “It was a good weekend,” he said. “I made out all right.” The bartender hesitated a moment before he picked up the bills. On one, George Washington’s face was smeared with a gob of dirt. This sort of thing happens to Pearson a lot; he earns his money eating mud.
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Instead, he and a few other members of the group stepped up their careers as Renaissance-fair beggars. In the summer of 1979, they had been hired to perform at the nascent King Richard’s Faire (now the Bristol Renaissance Faire). Bedecked in approximations of 16th-century peasant attire, they named themselves the Sturdy Beggars and wandered through the fairgrounds, doing their best to re-create some of the more sordid aspects of Renaissance life. In their best Liverpool accents. (like many fair workers, they seem to have learned their English affectations from the Beatles) they cajoled and harassed the fairgoers, collecting a quarter or two from an occasional cowering spectator.
Then one stormy day the beggars, left with a sparse crowd and slim pickings, decided to amuse themselves by sliding and sloshing through the mud puddles. “One onlooker offered a dollar to any beggar who would put his face in the mud,” recalls Pearson. “We all fought for the chance.” A group of fledgling mud eaters emerged from the puddle.
Through the years, Pearson has become the elder statesman of the Mud Show tribe. He’s been working a full load of fairs since 1984 when, returning to Chicago after a dismal showing of a Practical Theatre revue in New York, he found himself with a hefty debt and without a home. This year his schedule includes fairs in Atlanta, Tennessee, Chicago, Maryland, and Texas.
Despite this, Pearson continues to revel in the mud and relishes the time he spends entertaining the crowds. “The mud pit is one of the few places I know where grandmothers, bikers, presidents, and little children can sit in close proximity of each other and all laugh at the same joke.” He pauses to scrub the mud off a dollar bill. “Hell,” he says, “I can think of a million much slimier ways to make a buck these days.”
