[ Music plays ] [ Crowd cheers ] [ Music plays ] Man: [ Singing ] Let's get it started.

Narrator: In the historic Wire Works Building in Trenton, New Jersey, where the Roeblings once manufactured wire rope to build the Brooklyn Bridge, young circus performers are honing their skills.

Man: [ Singing ] Get started, get stupid.

Don't worry about it, people.

We'll walk through it step by step like an infant new kid.

von Oehsen: We're talking unicycling and aerials and acrobatics and juggling and clowning.

Once they start learning those skills, then the expectation is they give back by teaching those skills and then by building community by performances.

Moreland: We help them, we train them, but we also try to give them a sense of independence and let them know that it's okay if you can't do something on your own.

But we encourage you try to.

von Oehsen: Our Squad are 12-to-18-year-olds, and we find that the Squad, once they start here, they do not leave us.

So, over the years they keep developing more and more skills and they have many, many opportunities to perform.

So, they really become really strong performers.

And that has opened up a lot of doors and a lot of opportunities statewide to perform a brand-new big-top tent that we have that we're going to be building community throughout the state of New Jersey.

Man: How's everybody doing today?

[ Crowd cheers ] Nice, nice.

We are Trenton Circus Squad.

We are a nonprofit organization, so we run on donations to keep these lights on.

von Oehsen: I think, like all kids, when you're developing, you're trying to figure out what makes you different from everyone else.

Man: [ Singing ] What you wanna do, baby?

Where you wanna go?

I'll take you to the moon, baby.

I'll take you to the floor.

I'll treat you like a real lady, no matter where you go.

Just give me some time, baby, 'cause you know.

Penn: He was having so many difficulties in school that this is the one place that he could come, and he didn't get in trouble for anything.

When he was younger, I used to have to take him for occupational therapy, speech therapy, vision therapy.

But doing all of these things here kind of encompasses a lot of that.

Narrator: Spotting new talent for the Trenton Circus Squad is executive director Tom von Oehsen's forte.

Garland: He showed up at my house randomly one day, and he just asked me, "Hey, I heard that you can dance.

Do you want to join the circus?"

von Oehsen: The circus arts gives them an opportunity to really connect to who they are.

Use this hand.

Okay?

Nice.

And then you want to -- you want to do this.

You want to hit your head, come up, and then do a little cross-eyed and, like, scrambled brain.

Can you try that?

[ Laughs ] I like it.

You ready?

When the opportunity to apply to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College came up, I applied and was accepted.

And I took that opportunity and ran away to the circus.

And what an experience -- I mean, I learned all of the skills that we currently have here.

Narrator: You could say Tom von Oehsen ran away to join the circus twice.

After graduating from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania, later becoming a private-school administrator.

In 2008, Tom reignited his dreams by starting a circus program at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart.

In 2015, it became the Trenton Circus Squad.

[ Music plays ] von Oehsen: The idea was once the students come, we teach them circus skills and to perform and bring joy and smiles to communities that are in need of those kind of performances.

Anybody that walks by these glass doors -- and they're usually open in the summer -- and they look in, they can recognize kids like themselves doing incredible things, whether they're hanging upside down in the aerials or riding around the giraffe unicycles or juggling or even slamming their head on tables and hearing laughter.

There's this draw that pulls kids in, and once they get in through these doors, they are welcomed with our Squad, which are so open-armed and welcoming and so eager to teach them.

It's like, "You can do this."

Our older Squad, which started as 14-year-olds -- they're in their early 20s -- they have not only amazing performance skills, but they also can really run workshops.

The program is completely free.

So, that's another component that's really amazing.

So, it's an equal playing field for everybody that gets here.

It's really amazing to see the friendships that occur with these students that normally their paths would never cross.

Amon: It's been fantastic to be able to get to know other Squad members and grow closer.

Soriano: From the beginning that I've been here at circus, it's felt like a family.

Garland: Tom, we're like, I kind of look at him as like a father figure.

[ Music plays ] Narrator: Following the 2020 murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the Squad processed their feelings by creating a show.

They performed it for the Trenton police.

Thomas: It was important to, like, make a show that was really reflective of how we were all feeling at the time.

von Oehsen: We went through a lot of emotions dealing, reliving all the challenges that everyone's had, and we ended with, "What are we going to do?"

And because they felt so confident with their skills, their circus skills, they said, "Let's tap into those and use those as like an icebreaker to get people talking, to get people to come together."

And they started talking about some of the themes.

I got really nervous because they were not your typical circus show that we typically do.

Thomas: The common ground of it was kind of just that they wanted to be more involved in the community and, like, know us more.

von Oehsen: I mean, some of our Squad go to college, some go to community college, some go to vocational school, some go right into the workplace.

But there's also a handful of kids that are staying in circus.

Moreland: Seeing the audience's face after doing a performance... Ladd: The smile on their faces, the look of astonishment -- all of that is the reason we do what we do.

Moreland: ...it's an addicting feeling.

Garland: Because some days I do have rough days here, but when I see, like, the kids are having fun, I'm like, "Okay, this isn't so bad."

von Oehsen: Just like I ran away to the circus, I think that circus should be something that all youth run to.

[ Crowd cheers ]