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Circus250: Celebrating Circus History & Embracing Circus Present

Dea Birkett’s love of circus goes way back. But it was when she received a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to run away and join the circus that her life changed forever. She has been running away ever since. In some ways, it is clear why the art form attracts her so much–her curiosity and her itch to travel have led her to some amazing places. She has worked as a creative director of films, documentaries and plays. As a published author who has written seven books, several about travel, and a columnist for the Guardian as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is perhaps the ideal spokesperson  for circus past, present and future. So it’s no wonder that she was the person who had the hutzpah to organize Circus250, a year-long, multi-facedted collection of events in the UK that celebrates the 250th anniversary of circus. But Circus250 has a broader mission than just educating the general population on the roots of circus. They also hope to bridge the traditional/contemporary divide by making the historical aspects not just more accessible to contemporary practitioners, but also by creating opportunities for them to converse and perform throughout the year. One of the key messages listed on the website is “Circus today takes many wonderful forms, but shares a common root.”  Another is “Circus250 enables and supports a step change in circus practice, bringing radical new expressions and experiments across the arts.” But those aren’t the only key messages they espouse and each of them deserve a good read. Circus Talk was lucky to have a word with Birkett about the project:
How/why did you decide to start Circus 250?

In April 2016, I was sitting in a trailer on a pitch chatting to some artistes. It was a traditional circus in UK, and like all British traditional circuses, 1768 is a hugely important date. Everyone in the trailer started talking about how it was going to be 250 years since the very first circus in 2018. A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in another trailer, with different artistes. Exactly the same conversation happened. Then in another … until I realized we needed to stop talking about it, and start marking it. And  while all of us in the trailer knew about this significant anniversary, not many others did. In particular, those in the contemporary circus world. So we set about letting them know about it. At that stage, I wasn’t really sure what we were going to do beyond letting them know.

For Circus250, I simply copied the format of Shakespeare400 (the organization that coordinated celebrations around 400 years since the Bard’s birth) to create the brand. I quickly realized that we needed to be an organization. We set up as a community interest company (not-for-profit)– appointed an advisory committee embracing everyone from contemporary and classical circus to national museums–and plotted.

What is the mission of Circus 250?

Our mission evolved quite naturally from the start. We worked around the words: celebrate, promote, collaborate, educate, advocate, develop, embed and surprise. We wanted to celebrate circus in all its fabulous forms, but for 2018 to be more than a celebratory year. We wanted it to be a seminal year for circus. To do that, we also had to promote what was happening to new audiences so that everyone has the chance to see and be part of circus today. We also wanted to unearth the diversity of circus – from Degas’ Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando to the vast array of nationalities in today’s traditional circuses. We wanted to emphasize how radical and boundary-breaking circus is – strong women were around in the 19th century before women in the UK were allowed to even go to university. These circus women were powerful in every way – professionally, financially, physically. We mustn’t think we invented strong women and diversity now. We’re just rediscovering it.

Personally, my mission was  to celebrate our shared heritage – there are too many false divisions in the circus world. We all come from one root, but we express ourselves in different ways. That’s the wonder and richness of circus, and that’s what I wanted Circus250 to celebrate.

Once we unearth all the circus within, it’s far more difficult to marginalize it either as a traveling lifestyle or as a contemporary art form. It’s both of those, but more.

What organizations are you partnering with?

We have over 200 partners ranging from big national museums to tiny contemporary circus companies. We needed to collaborate, to take circus beyond performance and reveal its influences in film, literature, the visual arts and beyond. o we asked  museums, archives, and festivals to look at what they could do to join in the celebrations. I’m really pleased that around half the activity during 2018 isn’t circus performance, but exhibitions in galleries, circus film threads at film festivals, or talks in libraries. Circus is at the heart of our culture – we want to expose that. That’s where ‘embed’ came in. Once we unearth all the circus within, it’s far more difficult to marginalize it either as a traveling lifestyle or as a contemporary art form. It’s both of those, but more.

What are some of the highlights of this initiative over the next few months?

Our Cities of Circus program is very exciting – focusing on six cities throughout the UK which have significant circus heritage and where you can see excellent circus today. They’re Bristol, Belfast, Blackpool, Norwich and Great Yarmouth, London and Newcastle-under-Lyme (where Philip Astley, the founder of circus, was born). We knew from the start that unless we forced the spotlight out of London, where the very first circus show ran in 1768, it would remain there for the year. We wanted to emphasize that circus was and is nationwide. From the very beginning, Astley toured not only throughout the UK but over to Ireland and throughout Europe. He ran shows in 19 countries.

So we’re particularly proud of Circus250 programs in the highlighted six cities, from the life-size elephant puppet parade in July in Norwich as part of the Lord Mayor’s Show, to all the celebrations around the birthplace of Astley in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It’s good to have Blackpool and Great Yarmouth highlighted, where Britain’s only two remaining purpose built circus buildings stand and still have daily shows. And it’s even better that we can highlight these great classical performances alongside cutting-edge contemporary work. It’s all circus. It’s all fabulous.

How is Circus 250 significant or impactful for the modern circus performer or industry person in the UK and beyond?

Unless you know your past, you can’t invent a future. I was sitting in a meeting and one of the participants said, ‘I am the first woman to fly a trapeze on the west coast of Scotland.’ I had to say, ‘Only if you discount the women who did it over 100 years ago.’ You can’t innovate if you don’t know what’s been before, or you are in danger of just repeating rather than moving forward. So I hope modern circus performers look to the past to discover the future. I know many are using the profile of 2018 to do just that.

I also think looking to the past is particularly important for women circus performers. There’s a tradition of being powerful of which we should be proud.

At the end of 2018, what do you hope you will have achieved by organizing this UK and Ireland-wide celebration?

In the school holidays, my 16-year-old son works in a circus as ring crew. It’s where he’s happiest – he loves building things, teamwork, the risk and trust. He recently started a new school. At the end of his first day, I asked him how it went. ‘Not great,’ he said. ‘The form teacher called me bloody cheeky.’ What had caused this? The teacher had asked all the kids what they wanted to be when they left school. Some said doctor, accountant, actor, writer, lawyer, business person, nurse, footballer. My son said, ‘I want to work in the circus.’ The teacher replied, ‘Stop being so bloody cheeky.’ The teacher thought he was joking. If a child is never told they’re cheeky again for wanting to work in a circus, I count Circus250 a success. 2018 will establish circus as an art form for everyone to be part of and enjoy. Let’s celebrate it as such.

Kim Campbell
Writer -USA
Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.

Editor's Note: At StageLync, an international platform for the performing arts, we celebrate the diversity of our writers' backgrounds. We recognize and support their choice to use either American or British English in their articles, respecting their individual preferences and origins. This policy allows us to embrace a wide range of linguistic expressions, enriching our content and reflecting the global nature of our community.

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Kim Campbell

Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.