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Many dream of leaving their mundane jobs and doing something more exciting, but Shawn Marren has taken that to an extreme. After a career as a musician, he now makes his living by being shot out of a cannon, traveling more than 100 feet and landing on an airbag as part of the Royal Hanneford Circus show.
"I go zero to 60 in half a second," says Marren, who is subjected to 7 to 8 Gs as he's hurled out of the gun. "It feels like getting hit by a bus."
Marren happened into his new career when he was playing trumpet in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus band. He began giving music lessons to the daughter of that group's human cannonballs, Brian and Tina Miser. "Brian told me, 'I've got all these cannons sitting around my garage, you should buy one,'" says Marren. He settled on a "small" one that is 20 feet long. After a year of training and planning, he and his wife were ready to strike out on a new life as a human projectile.
He contacted Hanneford, which decided he was a perfect fit for its primarily indoor schedule. Marren was set to make his debut early this month for a season that runs through Thanksgiving, with a stop later this month in Westchester County, N.Y.
Marren, who's billed as "The Human Lightning Bolt," says the way a person is thrown from a cannon is one of the most closely guarded of circus secrets. His preparation includes gymnastics, physics, hydraulics and electrical engineering. "It's all business before the shoot, even when I'm climbing into the cannon," he says. "The real adrenaline rush doesn't hit until I get off the airbag and hear the applause and see the audience's faces. Making people smile I've got the greatest job in the world."
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