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Acts of Conscience – Dr Jane Mullett
Alternative circus began in the 1970s on the basis of a radical political agenda. The founders of the new circuses were influenced by the huge changes in Western society that were happening at this time. The underlying forces for this change have been well documented.
Social movements like feminism, civil rights, indigenous rights, conservation and animal liberation challenged basic tenets of Western society including the structure of the family, the meaning of work, and the role of gender and race in defining people's status. These movements helped literally shape the way we live. The political protests that they generated were influenced by forms of spectacle and conceptual art that ultimately altered the understanding of what constituted political activism (Stephens 1998).
Michael Watts provides a great description that gives a sense of the energy and inventiveness of political protest of the period:
Need I remind anyone that the late sixties produced Jerry Rubin, Alan Ginsberg and company attempting to levitate the Pentagon; the yippies causing havoc on Wall Street by throwing money on to the floor of the exchange; the Strasbourg Situationists denouncing boredom; the Dutch provos unleashing pandemonium in Amsterdam by releasing thousands of chickens in rush-hour traffic; the Diggers declaring love a commodity; and not least Ed Sanders and the Fugs setting off on their march on Prague to masturbate on the Soviet tanks? (2001:160:132)
These forms of protest, although often inventive and humerous, were based on a profound loss of trust in the structures of society - the government, the law, and in most forms of entrenched authority. They were also connected to experiments with alternative governance and living structures. This paper looks at how the early alternative circus made use of the ideas within conceptual protest and makes a comparison with some pointed performances by contemporary circus and physical theatre groups.
Within the circus genre conceptual protest is best seen in the work of Philippe Petit. Petit echoes the interests of his generation. He says of himself in 1968 at the beginning of his work, "I am barely eighteen years old, free, rebellious, and untrusting" (Petit 2002:5) .Petit is a French high-wire walker who is known for his three spectacular and daring clandestine wire walks. They were illegal, they involved the infiltration of three citadels of institutional power: the church, the state and private enterprise (if he'd done the military it would have been a perfect set).
Petit's work is the ultimate expression of the strong anti-authoritarian, romantic aspect of alternative circus. The illegal occupation of these iconic buildings for the period he was rigging the tightwire and walking the wire was an expression of defiance that was the epitome of its period. Benign, fun, brave and clever. He was arrested after each event, but was never held for long. The intent of the act was not to cause pain or hurt – rather it was to celebrate life.
The acts also remind us of earlier tightwire walkers who concentrated their efforts on overcoming the hazards of natural features such as the Niagara Falls. These events all celebrated team-work. Petit had a team working with him to break into the buildings, to get the gear in place, to rig the wire, and ultimately to film the walk. In this way the event is also part of the ephemeral installation artwork movement, which relied on film to record it. The clandestine walks are a testament to the lasting power of a right performance in the right place at the right time. Timing is everything in non-violent conceptual performance protest.
Of course, the New York Twin Towers no longer exist, having been targeted by a much more violent form of organised protest that gives us insight in to the period we are living in now and the one that circus artists must deal with in their response to the world.
Alternative circus, however was, and is, not particularly concerned with direct political action. Circus Oz, and its precursor Soapbox Circus, are two of the few groups that took their politics out of the circle of caravans and into the political arena in the early years of new circus. In the program of the Circus Oz 1985 show there is a picture of Circus Oz at Pine Gap - the joint US-Australian military satellite tracking facility, outside Alice Springs. The heading is "Circus Oz 'invades' Pine Gap" and it is teamed with a series of quotes from the local paper, the Centralian Advocate, "'I shall return' announced Australia's first marsupial spy, holding high his banner of anti-imperialism". Behind the quotes is a photograph of one of Circus Oz's signature life-sized kangaroo puppets at Pine Gap, fist aloft, holding a flag that is an amalgam of the red, yellow and black design of the Aboriginal flag and the southern cross of the official Australian flag.
While alternative circus has rarely become involved with direct political action, it did not ignore contemporary politics. Judy Finelli of the Pickle Family Circus, founded in 1974 in the US says, "Circus Oz. … comes right out and says, 'we're the non-sexist, non-racist, anti-nuke Circus Oz'. I can't see the Pickle Family Circus doing that, But simply ignoring what's going on isn't it either" (Lorant 1986:72).]
So how did the alternative circus express their politics?
The founders of the new circuses, looked to the circus as a way of living out their politics. Most alternative circus founders had already served an artistic apprenticeship within radical alternative theatre groups or had worked as buskers. They came to the circus with a sophisticated understanding of popular performance (Mullett 2005).
The lack of direct political statements in early alternative circus, it can be argued, is related to the circus environment itself, which provided a way for the performers to live out their political convictions. To fully embody one's politics was a widespread goal of the 1960s and 1970s. The feminist catch cry "the personal is political" dates from this time, as does the environment movement mantra, "think global - act local". To the outside world, including the founders of alternative circus, traditional circus appeared to inhabit a self-contained, lived environment. It was an example of a visible apparently self-governing sub-culture.
Circus was "a way of life"; it existed on the margins of society, in some ways. This was one of the substantial attractions for the founders of the new circuses in the 1970s. There were other attractions including; the visible strength of the women performers (Tait 2005) and the popular form of the circus show itself (Orenstein 1998). This paper, however, will concentrate on the visible performed life within the alternative circus. I hesitate to call this performed life 'performative' in the sense that it is used by Judith Butler (1990) nonetheless, I think that the way that the early new circus artists took on the circus was informed by contemporaneous debates about gender and identity. Butler talks about the parody of gender and the impossibility of an authentic original in a way that rings true to me when compared to the way that the new circus artists parodied and 'performed' the circus family, and visibly performed 'being a circus' on the road.
The circus family that the alternative circus constructed was in itself a construction. The performance of being a circus on the road similarly was always already a performance. In making this statement I am using the foundational work on traditional circus by Yoram Carmeli (1987b; 1990).
The earliest alternative circuses Cirque Bidon (1974), New Circus (1974) and the Pickle Family Circus (1974) all operated with aerial rigs, performed within a ring, under the open sky.
The tent, or the aerial rig, gave control over the performing environment. With a moveable rig or tent, alternative circus performers could reach a wider audience than that of the traditional middle-class theatres. In this, the new circuses were continuing the work of alternative theatres which engaged with new audiences in their workplaces, in the streets and in non-traditional theatre venues in the 1960s and 1970s. The tent or the outdoor rig was also closer to the street and to the busking tradition which was another significant influence on the start of alternative circus.
In the period when Pierrot Bidon was involved with Archaos it had a deep understanding of the relationship between space and politics (Little 1995). But most importantly, the tent was part of the performed politics of the early years of new circus.
The act of living in a cooperative community was performed publicly in public spaces. There are many published photographs that document the life on the road of the alternative circus. For example, Cirque Bidon on the road with their extended family was photographed by Bernard Lesaing (1981).
The traditional circus family was a constructed and performed family, as Yoram Carmeli has described (Carmeli 1991). It was also an extended family and a publicly displayed family. In the Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione 2003 program there is a page on which beautiful black and white photographs of the founding brothers are matched with photos of the contemporary Bouglione family. Each individual is photographed formally and separately. There is no sense of familiarity between them. This represents the traditional family - a 'real' family – expressed in its most conservative aspect.
It can be argued that the earliest alternative circus in France is Cirque Bonjour (later Cirque Imaginaire) although the first show of Cirque Bonjour was a clear collaboration with a traditional circus. It is also interesting that 1974 was a seminal year for new circus in France - Cirque Bidon; in Australia - New Circus (also a precursor to Circus Oz), and in the US - The Pickle Family Circus.
Terry Lorant photographed the Pickle Family Circus for years. The name itself, the Pickle Family Circus, is a parody of the traditional family circus name. The early alternative circuses were generally run as loose collectives and often made decisions through collective meetings. Even when there was a director in charge, the circus members can be seen to have influence on the development of the performance. Thus the cooperative nature of early alternative circus was used as a laboratory to investigate and experiment with alternative or radical models of societal structure.
In the contemporary alternative circus, radical politics is less often expressed in terms of a lived experience of communal familial structures. Today the alternative circus structure is much more likely to mirror the formal structure of a dance or theatre company with hierarchical roles of director, choreographer, and performer and so on.
So, how does the current alternative circus express its politics and have these politics changed?
The current use of tents by alternative circuses illustrates one way in which the political climate has changed. Many alternative circus companies are no longer seen as outside the mainstream and many receive funding directly from the government. They have access to privileged spaces that are rarely available to the traditional circus – Big Apple Circus puts its tent up in collaboration with the Lincoln Centre in central New York, Circus Oz puts its tent up in central Melbourne with the support of the Melbourne City Council, Cirque du Soleil as a rule looks for strategic sites of privilege to place its tents. There are of course exceptions, Cirque Ici appears to have a philosophy that links it to the tent and the meanings of being outside the normative structures of the society. Most alternative circuses do not own tents and the artists are also less likely to live full-time on the road in caravans. But the alternative circus still likes to bring 'home' to its audience, and to claim the circus ring as part of their performed familial life. The poster for the 2006 show that the Canadian group Les Sept doigts de la main toured to Australia, depicts the entire cast emerging from an old-fashioned fridge, clearly linking their work with the domestic daily routine of a family.
Many of the critiques of the mainstream that were part of the alternative circus movement in the 1970s and early 1980s have been absorbed into the mainstream or taken up by the cultural elites.
When art illuminates a contemporaneous predicament for an audience, a generation. A transformation of information that re-presents complex ideas in a poetic luminous set of images that allows us to see the world differently for a moment. An instance where art can change our lives. I look to the circus for this level of experience now, as I did in the 1970s.
This year I have seen three Australian companies address contemporary political issues in ways that have been inspiring. Honour Bound, written and directed by Nigel Jamieson, and Smaller, Poorer, Cheaper, devised by Simon Yates, Jo Lancaster and Mozes of acrobat, are two powerful shows that appear as part of the 2006 Melbourne Fringe Festival. Both draw on the practice of alternative circus and contemporary dance. Both provide precise observations of contemporary politics through physical performance.
Without the performed life of the 1970s perhaps political commentary is finding its way into the circus performance? Perhaps the times demand it.
Acts of Conscience – Dr Jane Mullett
Alternative circus began in the 1970s on the basis of a radical political agenda. The founders of the new circuses were influenced by the huge changes in Western society that were happening at this time. The underlying forces for this change have been well documented.
Social movements like feminism, civil rights, indigenous rights, conservation and animal liberation challenged basic tenets of Western society including the structure of the family, the meaning of work, and the role of gender and race in defining people's status. These movements helped literally shape the way we live. The political protests that they generated were influenced by forms of spectacle and conceptual art that ultimately altered the understanding of what constituted political activism (Stephens 1998).
Michael Watts provides a great description that gives a sense of the energy and inventiveness of political protest of the period:
Need I remind anyone that the late sixties produced Jerry Rubin, Alan Ginsberg and company attempting to levitate the Pentagon; the yippies causing havoc on Wall Street by throwing money on to the floor of the exchange; the Strasbourg Situationists denouncing boredom; the Dutch provos unleashing pandemonium in Amsterdam by releasing thousands of chickens in rush-hour traffic; the Diggers declaring love a commodity; and not least Ed Sanders and the Fugs setting off on their march on Prague to masturbate on the Soviet tanks? (2001:160:132)
These forms of protest, although often inventive and humerous, were based on a profound loss of trust in the structures of society - the government, the law, and in most forms of entrenched authority. They were also connected to experiments with alternative governance and living structures. This paper looks at how the early alternative circus made use of the ideas within conceptual protest and makes a comparison with some pointed performances by contemporary circus and physical theatre groups.
Within the circus genre conceptual protest is best seen in the work of Philippe Petit. Petit echoes the interests of his generation. He says of himself in 1968 at the beginning of his work, "I am barely eighteen years old, free, rebellious, and untrusting" (Petit 2002:5) .Petit is a French high-wire walker who is known for his three spectacular and daring clandestine wire walks. They were illegal, they involved the infiltration of three citadels of institutional power: the church, the state and private enterprise (if he'd done the military it would have been a perfect set).
Petit's work is the ultimate expression of the strong anti-authoritarian, romantic aspect of alternative circus. The illegal occupation of these iconic buildings for the period he was rigging the tightwire and walking the wire was an expression of defiance that was the epitome of its period. Benign, fun, brave and clever. He was arrested after each event, but was never held for long. The intent of the act was not to cause pain or hurt – rather it was to celebrate life.
The acts also remind us of earlier tightwire walkers who concentrated their efforts on overcoming the hazards of natural features such as the Niagara Falls. These events all celebrated team-work. Petit had a team working with him to break into the buildings, to get the gear in place, to rig the wire, and ultimately to film the walk. In this way the event is also part of the ephemeral installation artwork movement, which relied on film to record it. The clandestine walks are a testament to the lasting power of a right performance in the right place at the right time. Timing is everything in non-violent conceptual performance protest.
Of course, the New York Twin Towers no longer exist, having been targeted by a much more violent form of organised protest that gives us insight in to the period we are living in now and the one that circus artists must deal with in their response to the world.
Alternative circus, however was, and is, not particularly concerned with direct political action. Circus Oz, and its precursor Soapbox Circus, are two of the few groups that took their politics out of the circle of caravans and into the political arena in the early years of new circus. In the program of the Circus Oz 1985 show there is a picture of Circus Oz at Pine Gap - the joint US-Australian military satellite tracking facility, outside Alice Springs. The heading is "Circus Oz 'invades' Pine Gap" and it is teamed with a series of quotes from the local paper, the Centralian Advocate, "'I shall return' announced Australia's first marsupial spy, holding high his banner of anti-imperialism". Behind the quotes is a photograph of one of Circus Oz's signature life-sized kangaroo puppets at Pine Gap, fist aloft, holding a flag that is an amalgam of the red, yellow and black design of the Aboriginal flag and the southern cross of the official Australian flag.
While alternative circus has rarely become involved with direct political action, it did not ignore contemporary politics. Judy Finelli of the Pickle Family Circus, founded in 1974 in the US says, "Circus Oz. … comes right out and says, 'we're the non-sexist, non-racist, anti-nuke Circus Oz'. I can't see the Pickle Family Circus doing that, But simply ignoring what's going on isn't it either" (Lorant 1986:72).]
So how did the alternative circus express their politics?
The founders of the new circuses, looked to the circus as a way of living out their politics. Most alternative circus founders had already served an artistic apprenticeship within radical alternative theatre groups or had worked as buskers. They came to the circus with a sophisticated understanding of popular performance (Mullett 2005).
The lack of direct political statements in early alternative circus, it can be argued, is related to the circus environment itself, which provided a way for the performers to live out their political convictions. To fully embody one's politics was a widespread goal of the 1960s and 1970s. The feminist catch cry "the personal is political" dates from this time, as does the environment movement mantra, "think global - act local". To the outside world, including the founders of alternative circus, traditional circus appeared to inhabit a self-contained, lived environment. It was an example of a visible apparently self-governing sub-culture.
Circus was "a way of life"; it existed on the margins of society, in some ways. This was one of the substantial attractions for the founders of the new circuses in the 1970s. There were other attractions including; the visible strength of the women performers (Tait 2005) and the popular form of the circus show itself (Orenstein 1998). This paper, however, will concentrate on the visible performed life within the alternative circus. I hesitate to call this performed life 'performative' in the sense that it is used by Judith Butler (1990) nonetheless, I think that the way that the early new circus artists took on the circus was informed by contemporaneous debates about gender and identity. Butler talks about the parody of gender and the impossibility of an authentic original in a way that rings true to me when compared to the way that the new circus artists parodied and 'performed' the circus family, and visibly performed 'being a circus' on the road.
The circus family that the alternative circus constructed was in itself a construction. The performance of being a circus on the road similarly was always already a performance. In making this statement I am using the foundational work on traditional circus by Yoram Carmeli (1987b; 1990).
The earliest alternative circuses Cirque Bidon (1974), New Circus (1974) and the Pickle Family Circus (1974) all operated with aerial rigs, performed within a ring, under the open sky.
The tent, or the aerial rig, gave control over the performing environment. With a moveable rig or tent, alternative circus performers could reach a wider audience than that of the traditional middle-class theatres. In this, the new circuses were continuing the work of alternative theatres which engaged with new audiences in their workplaces, in the streets and in non-traditional theatre venues in the 1960s and 1970s. The tent or the outdoor rig was also closer to the street and to the busking tradition which was another significant influence on the start of alternative circus.
In the period when Pierrot Bidon was involved with Archaos it had a deep understanding of the relationship between space and politics (Little 1995). But most importantly, the tent was part of the performed politics of the early years of new circus.
The act of living in a cooperative community was performed publicly in public spaces. There are many published photographs that document the life on the road of the alternative circus. For example, Cirque Bidon on the road with their extended family was photographed by Bernard Lesaing (1981).
The traditional circus family was a constructed and performed family, as Yoram Carmeli has described (Carmeli 1991). It was also an extended family and a publicly displayed family. In the Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione 2003 program there is a page on which beautiful black and white photographs of the founding brothers are matched with photos of the contemporary Bouglione family. Each individual is photographed formally and separately. There is no sense of familiarity between them. This represents the traditional family - a 'real' family – expressed in its most conservative aspect.
It can be argued that the earliest alternative circus in France is Cirque Bonjour (later Cirque Imaginaire) although the first show of Cirque Bonjour was a clear collaboration with a traditional circus. It is also interesting that 1974 was a seminal year for new circus in France - Cirque Bidon; in Australia - New Circus (also a precursor to Circus Oz), and in the US - The Pickle Family Circus.
Terry Lorant photographed the Pickle Family Circus for years. The name itself, the Pickle Family Circus, is a parody of the traditional family circus name. The early alternative circuses were generally run as loose collectives and often made decisions through collective meetings. Even when there was a director in charge, the circus members can be seen to have influence on the development of the performance. Thus the cooperative nature of early alternative circus was used as a laboratory to investigate and experiment with alternative or radical models of societal structure.
In the contemporary alternative circus, radical politics is less often expressed in terms of a lived experience of communal familial structures. Today the alternative circus structure is much more likely to mirror the formal structure of a dance or theatre company with hierarchical roles of director, choreographer, and performer and so on.
So, how does the current alternative circus express its politics and have these politics changed?
The current use of tents by alternative circuses illustrates one way in which the political climate has changed. Many alternative circus companies are no longer seen as outside the mainstream and many receive funding directly from the government. They have access to privileged spaces that are rarely available to the traditional circus – Big Apple Circus puts its tent up in collaboration with the Lincoln Centre in central New York, Circus Oz puts its tent up in central Melbourne with the support of the Melbourne City Council, Cirque du Soleil as a rule looks for strategic sites of privilege to place its tents. There are of course exceptions, Cirque Ici appears to have a philosophy that links it to the tent and the meanings of being outside the normative structures of the society. Most alternative circuses do not own tents and the artists are also less likely to live full-time on the road in caravans. But the alternative circus still likes to bring 'home' to its audience, and to claim the circus ring as part of their performed familial life. The poster for the 2006 show that the Canadian group Les Sept doigts de la main toured to Australia, depicts the entire cast emerging from an old-fashioned fridge, clearly linking their work with the domestic daily routine of a family.
Many of the critiques of the mainstream that were part of the alternative circus movement in the 1970s and early 1980s have been absorbed into the mainstream or taken up by the cultural elites.
When art illuminates a contemporaneous predicament for an audience, a generation. A transformation of information that re-presents complex ideas in a poetic luminous set of images that allows us to see the world differently for a moment. An instance where art can change our lives. I look to the circus for this level of experience now, as I did in the 1970s.
This year I have seen three Australian companies address contemporary political issues in ways that have been inspiring. Honour Bound, written and directed by Nigel Jamieson, and Smaller, Poorer, Cheaper, devised by Simon Yates, Jo Lancaster and Mozes of acrobat, are two powerful shows that appear as part of the 2006 Melbourne Fringe Festival. Both draw on the practice of alternative circus and contemporary dance. Both provide precise observations of contemporary politics through physical performance.
Without the performed life of the 1970s perhaps political commentary is finding its way into the circus performance? Perhaps the times demand it.
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