Contemporary Circus 101: A Back-to-School Circus Book List
As an undergraduate theatre student, I wasn’t assigned readings about circus. I remember reading about physical theatre, live art, dance, puppetry, opera, new media arts, and many other performing arts over the course of my four-year degree. But, despite theatre and circus having many shared historical milestones over the past 100 years, my theatre education did not cover circus. Now, I am a PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies and I get to create my own reading lists. So, in the spirit of the back-to-school season, and to support other students who don’t know where to start with Circus Studies, in this article I will recommend some books on contemporary circus that have impacted me over the past few years. For seven MORE book recommendations, you can watch my accompanying YouTube video.
First, though, why read about circus? In his 2021 Circus Talk article, Thom Wall writes that, as within any higher education in the fine arts, circus students should understand “the history of their field, its notable participants, and how past efforts helped shape the present.” He notes that the “backtucks before books” approach to circus education teaches students that “spectacular circus skills are themselves the end goal, rather than tools to be used for creative expression.” In other words, when a circus student reads circus history, they become a more creative, informed artist.
Reading circus history, though, can also make us feel like our work has to fit within a particular box to be “circus.” Today, circus artists are making work that was unimaginable just 30 years ago – either because the technology and techniques weren’t yet advanced enough, or because it wouldn’t have been considered circus. In the fabulous book Thinking Through Circus, the editors made a conscious decision not to define circus. Explaining what circus is assumes what circus isn’t, and they believe that “kind of abstract, normative thinking tends to shut down potentiality and produce exclusion” (9). The same thing could be said for our own circus practices. If we think we know what our circus is, then we likely won’t find new ways it can be. Reading about the circus of others, and scholarly analyses of that circus, empowers us to be open-minded creators. Books about contemporary circus can introduce us to new ways of training, creating, and performing that we didn’t think possible or didn’t think was “circus.”
The editors of Thinking Through Circus further argue that the separation of “thinking” (usually associated with written texts) and “doing” (usually associated with circus practice) does circus a disservice. In her book Homemade Academic Circus, Camilla Damkjaer argues that “theoretical ways of thinking are ultimately informed by our embodied being in the world,” and she documents how she developed an aerial rope practice to think through academic theory (39). Although historical texts about circus are and always will be necessary, to research and innovate within the academic field and artistic form of circus we also need to consider how circus is “a way of thinking” (48). As circus artists, you can do research through the art form. And as scholars, you can live out your theories through the circus arts.
As you engage with the texts on this reading list, consider:
- How can you get a deeper understanding of theoretical texts by responding to them through your circus practice?
- What new forms of circus might a scholar’s research questions provoke?
- How does your physical relationship to circus aid in your understanding of theoretical ideas?
Congratulations to all the students starting classes in circus arts, circus studies, and related fields this fall – and happy reading!
Contemporary Circus, edited by Katie Lavers, Louis Patrick Leroux, and Jon Burtt
This book is a series of interview segments with contemporary circus creators. It seeks to include the artists’ own voices in the academic circus discourse and works to undo the myth of (white, male, able-bodied, heteronormative) human dominance over nature that was perpetuated in the Traditional Circus. This text is an approachable and engaging introduction to how Circus Studies scholars are thinking about contemporary circus today and how those scholarly interests emerge in each artist’s practice.
In these pages, I discovered how unique – almost contradictory – circus theories result from different approaches to circus practice. This was most obvious to me in the section on approaches to “apparatus.” Adrien Mondot, who combines circus with a motion tracking software he developed, defines the circus apparatus as “the structure of play with forces” (42). Johann Le Guillerm, on the other hand, who creates new sculptural forms to perform with, defines the circus apparatus as “a human prosthesis… [a]n extension. A growth” (32). These theoretical understandings of the circus apparatus emerged directly from the artists’ approaches to their work. And this book is filled with similarly thought-provoking insights in the areas of politics, performers, and new work. If you work in any area of circus today, I think you will get value from this book!
Performance Matters Vol. 4 No. 1-2 (2018): “Circus and Its Others,” edited by Karen Fricker and Hayley Malouin
Technically this isn’t a book, but a special issue of an academic journal. Many of the articles in this issue were first presented at the Circus and its Others conference in 2016 (that conference, by the way, is another great place to think with, through, and about circus!). This publication interrogates circus’ relationship to Otherness by asking the question, “in what ways is circus always-already different, and about difference?” (1). Or, does circus simply reflect society back at itself, confirming its already entrenched values?
The introduction to this issue offers an overview of contemporary circus research prior to 2018. Many of the articles are written by MA and PhD students who are documenting the current circus landscape and speculating about its future. A wide range of topics and fields are included in this text, including social circus, circus training, queer and gender theory, semiotics, and much more. A highlight from my personal reading was Ante Ursić’s analysis of human-horse choreography in Cavalia’sOdysseo. He argues that the modern circus was the “spectacle of the biopolitical regime” because it staged bodies as “disciplined, docile, obedient, and trained” (44). However, he also cautions against feeling safe in our apparently-reformed “contemporary” circus, and to question how we continue to verify the “dominant prevailing discourse of Western Man” in our work (49). The essays in this collection are bound to give circus artists and scholars alike a lot to think about.
Functional Juggling by Craig Quat
Craig Quat is a vocal advocate for accessibility in juggling and this book explains his philosophical and practical approach to juggling technique. Everything his organization (Quat Props) produces is inclusive, collaborative, and open-source, so this book isfreely available for download on the Quat Props website. Quat’s core thesis in this text is that defining juggling by its physical expression (throwing and catching) not only makes juggling inaccessible to many people, but also ignores important aspects of the skill; for instance, “the manner in which we are affected by the experience itself” (9).
This text looks at juggling from the perspective of the juggler themselves, rather than the performer’s or the audience’s perspectives. Personally, I think introducing circus arts to a wider range of potential participants can only result in good things for contemporary circus performance. If audiences have personal experience with the circus techniques they watch, and if artists consider more diverse approaches to that technique, then contemporary circus practice and performance will progress in an inclusive, sustainable, and innovative way. Ultimately, Quat notes that he is not trying to “define the future of juggling for everyone, but rather to invite everyone to redefine it for themselves” (85).
GRIP: toolkit for creating contemporary circus by Zinzi Oegema
Interested in how contemporary circus is created, but finding a lack of books on the topic, Zinzi Oegema set out to write her own. To do so, she interviewed circus creators she admired in the hopes of compiling a toolkit for the contemporary circus artist.Unlike, perhaps, in the traditional circus, though, there is no unified method of creating contemporary circus. GRIP is not a step-by-step manual for circus directors and dramaturgs. Rather, it introduces the reader to a range of elements that go into contemporary circus creation (technique, choreography, dramaturgy, scenography, soundtrack, etc.), how we might approach them (with a concept, with a team, through improvisation, etc.), and how current artists create with these elements. Oegema poses questions for readers to ask of their own work and offers exercises that help achieve particular working relationships and performance styles.
The most eye-opening section of this book is Oegema’s interviews with contemporary circus makers. Reading such diverse and detailed approaches to performance creation is bound to inspire every reader. If you are fascinated by how different artists approach their work, are stuck in the creation process of your own act, or need circus case studies for a theory you’re developing – this book probably has what you’re looking for.
Semiotics at the Circus by Paul Bouissac
In direct opposition to Oegema’s conclusion that all contemporary circus requires a unique approach, Paul Bouissac is fascinated by how the traditional circus show always unfolds in much the same way, no matter where you are or which company is performing. The audience, he notices, knows more or less what will happen, as if the circus is operating based on some unwritten score. In this book, he seeks to unpack that score from the audience’s perspective. By playing the role of “semiotician at the circus,” Bouissac hopes his analysis will “double” the reader’s enjoyment of watching traditional circus (2).
Although its use of absolutist language excludes the new or contemporary circus, this book did teach me a lot about what various circus disciplines might communicate to an audience and why audiences continue to fall in love with circus. Bouissac himself owned the Debord Circus, a single-ring affair featuring trained animal acts, which toured in Canada in the 1960s. So, Bouissac’s writing is coming from a personal love and experience with the entertainment form.This in itself makes Semiotics at the Circus an engaging and educational read.
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For even more reading recommendations, check out the YouTube video I made to accompany this article. And leave your own favourite circus readings in the comments section below this post!
Works Cited:
Bouissac, Paul.Semiotics at the Circus, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co, 2010.
Damkjaer, Camilla.Homemade Academic Circus, ebook, iff Books, 2016.
Fricker, Karen and Hayley Malouin.Performance Matters: Circus and its Others, vol. 4, no. 1-2, 2018, https://performancematters-thejournal.com/index.php/pm/issue/view/7.
Lavers, Katie, Louis Patrick Leroux, and Jon Burtt.Contemporary Circus, Routledge, 2020.
Lievens, Bauke, Sebastian Kann, Quintijn Ketels and Vincent Focquet (eds).Thinking Through Circus, Art Paper Editions, 2019.
Oegema, Zinzi.GRIP: Toolkit for Creating Contemporary Circus, Tent, 2020.
Quat, Craig.Functional Juggling: A Book About Juggling, Quat Props, 2021.
Wall, Thom. “Pathways to Circus Legitimacy: The Library.”Circus Talk, 10 May 2021, https://circustalk.com/news/zh/pathways-to-circus-legitimacy-the-library.
All images courtesy of Morgan Anderson
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