What does circus mean to you?

If you haven’t heard, Brisneyland is getting it’s very own circus festival - the highly anticipated CIRCFest22 Meanjin. Circus for young folk, for those looking for an extravagant night on the town, for lively teens, for sweet and shy people, for those with a sick sense of humour, circus for everyone! We’ve gone out to some of the incredible artists that will be performing across the festival from April 21 to May 1, and we asked them… What does circus mean to you?

Clare Bartholomew – The Long Pigs & The Anniversary
“To me, circus is…exhilarating! Very often it’s a combo of physical skills that I cannot do and/or a hilariously funny physical comedy routine that will blow my mind.”

Pictured: Clint Bolster in High Tea With Booff. Cover image: Casting Off

Clint Bolster – High Tea With Booff
“Exciting – Exhilarating – Breathtaking – Inspiring – Rejuvenating – Confronting – Fiercely Honest & Authentic!”

Natano Fa’anana – Knee Deep
“Circus is another means of telling a story. Or a place for being a voice. Or a way of demonstrating what humans can achieve. Circus has given me the ability to share my artistry and more importantly. My culture.”

Thom Stewart – Assume People Like You
“To me, circus is building a connection with a group of people through impressive skills. I wish I could one of those actors that can read a Shakespearean Sonnet and produce tears from an audience, but instead I rely on the strange things I can do with my body to try and produce endearing laughter.”

Ela Bartilomo - Let Them Eat Cake

“To me, circus is entertainment, joy and collaboration. It's about the audience first and foremost and bringing wonder through creativity and spectacle. Personally I love a good spectacle so to me circus encompasses not just the artists and their skills, but the storyline, the costume, set, props, everything!”

Moira Finucane – Diva Dive
“I am not a circus artist: but I have created and performed in carnivals, cabarets, sideshows, the world’s most awarded provocative variety, and in each of these shows there are artforms blended together in strange and unpredictable ways, including circus. I love old-school entertainment forms, they open hearts, release ribcages, and are like electricity cables; they can take power anywhere.”

Charmaine Childs - POWER and Minus the Monkey
“To me, circus is a place where what makes us different from each other is what makes us special - something to be proud of and put in the spotlight rather than a thing to hide. Somehow this celebration of our uniqueness makes for more connection and has the effect of making us feel like we belong.”

Jesse Scott in Knee Deep.

Jesse Scott – Knee Deep
“Circus is community, Circus is connection and Circus is creativity. I have been with the circus snice I was a baby so circus to me is also my world and I’m so grateful for that because circus is endless.”

Tim Monley – Monster Siege
“Many of my memories of my twenties involve juggling and doing adagio in the park with people all over Europe. Circus people were always so open and happy to play wherever I went and language was never a barrier to a performance. We could entertain each other by communicating, playing, and connecting with the joy of seeing what bodies can do.”

Debra Batton – Casting Off
“To me circus is a tradition that celebrated inclusivity long before it was a buzz word or criterion for arts funding.  (This does not mean it was without its problems though). Contemporary circus continues this tradition of inclusivity while also challenging the patriarchal (and often exploitative structures) that have dominated all artforms (including traditional circus). The intelligence of embodied knowledge is revered in circus practices today, it is the body interacting with apparatus and / or other bodies that communicates beyond our cognitive limitations allowing us (audiences and artists) to feel our connections with environments, politics, identities and possibilities.
I love the “lowbrow” connotations of circus, it is art for the people often made by marginalised and ‘other’ people who subvert the white male perspectives that continue to make the rules of neoliberal planet destroying constructs. Circus is as varied in style and content as theatre, dance or the visual arts, it embraces all art forms with a wildness that continually produces new species. It can be entertaining, challenging, confounding, confronting and awe inspiring and sometimes all of these at the same time!”

Harley Mann – Arterial
“Circus is a medium for storytelling. It is a tool to share a connection between the audience and the performers to express culture, identity, vulnerability and to challenge pre-conceptions.”

Robbie Curtis – In The Arms of Morpheous
“Circus is making the unreal real. Pure physical innovation. It is a magical thing circus, watching humans express themselves with such virtuosity, I believe it inspires all of us to push ourselves fully.”

Nicci Wilks – Runt & The Long Pigs
“To me, circus is…everything and anything. Circus embraces people from all walks of life with all kinds of abilities. It’s entertainment, it’s theatre, its dance, its physical, its athletic, its graceful, its daring, its dextrous, its comedy, it’s stupidity in its finest form, its low fi, its hi fi, its glitz and glamour and its filthy and funny and it’s made for one and all.”

Check out the full program at circfest.live
This is the first of a series of behind-the-scenes articles, so enjoy, and keep an eye for the next one!