This article is part of the “Inter-magazine Circus Festival 2026” project that is a collaboration between the UP- Circus & Performing Arts Festival, the Université Libre de Bruxelles and six international circus magazines: Juggling Magazine, Stage Lync, Zirkólika, DYNAMO Magazine, Sztuka Cyrku, CIRQUEON, all part of the INCAm network. Students at Université Libre de Bruxelles share their thoughts on current stage and circus performances. Their diverse backgrounds ranging from literature and journalism, to acting and cultural studies bring unique perspectives, whether already familiar with the art form or newcomers. They are united by a curiosity about performing arts, which led them to the MA Arts du spectacle program, offering exposure to various art forms, including the circus. As part of the interdisciplinary and international project Circus | Studies led by Dr. Franziska Trapp, theatre students explore circus, collaborate with emerging artists, and engage in performance analysis and critique. Their experiences culminate in MA theses or articles like the one that follows.
That’s it: we are seated in the dark theatre, waiting for something to happen. Facing us, a messy desk and a white screen stand at the back of the stage. A woman enters, suitcase and backpack in hand; she addresses us directly. The fourth wall is broken, and it remains so throughout what seems to be, at least, a “show.” We are witnessing the creation of a one-woman performance in which the actress, Marianna De Sanctis (an Italian circus artist), exposes the many difficulties she has encountered (administrative, personal, familial, financial, etc.) while creating her show, as a mother, as a woman, and as a circus performer: the circle of her life. We, who have always been accustomed to appreciating only the final result of things, are reminded by Marianna’s approach of this old maxim: “It’s not the destination that matters, but the journey.”
This is the testimony of an artist who no longer accepts being reduced to a mere performer, who no longer accepts being nothing more than a puppet in the hands of a director. She now wishes to stage HER own show. It is her story, the story of a creation in progress, but above all the story of a mother, a woman, and an artist questioning the patriarchal structures embedded within our society. A blend of autobiographical documentary, stand-up comedy, and circus arts, delivered with disarming sincerity.
In this article, we will focus on Marianna’s use of stand-up within her stage proposal through three aspects that define this art form. First, the creation of empathy and the process it triggers in the audience; second, the use of humour to reinforce her message; and finally, the moments of improvisation with the audience. Although the artist was programmed for the UP 2026 festival in Molenbeek (Brussels), dedicated to contemporary circus, the Italian performer displaces the circus itself: she does not perform circus, she talks about circus.
Well… I won’t hide it any longer: I loved this show. What can I say, except that it was a magical experience? We are not attending a show, as Marianna herself so aptly puts it, but rather a show that may possibly come into existence. We create, think, and move forward with her. She gradually integrates us into her narrative, leading to the birth of a pure sense of mutual trust. We are not passive; we are her play partners. She recounts her adventures to us, the adventures of someone who fails, who constantly finds herself up against a wall. We believe in her, and we catch ourselves dreaming alongside her in her quest.
The elements mentioned above emerge thanks to Marianna’s humour. Her entire performance is built around the codes of stand-up comedy; through this choice, she establishes a dialogue with us that lasts until the very end. There lies one of Marianna’s greatest strengths: through this constant dialogue, she creates empathy within us in order to prepare us for what follows. This may seem trivial, but without this path one that every stand up comedian must also take her message would risk lacking impact. Yet this empathy is not directly induced by her, but rather by the facts she exposes.
At one point, Marianna presents a list of phrases she has received from people within the artistic world, projected onto the white screen at the back of the stage. As spectators, two words come to mind: “What a disgrace!” Yet Marianna herself does not seem shocked. She stands there, upright, motionless, staring ahead. She mobilises us simply by exposing these realities, before pointing out the contradictions and absurdities of our world through humour, once again generating a deep inner disgust toward it all. What outrages us does not shake Marianna, and this only makes us even more revolted by what we have just read.
This performance engages in a double catharsis: first for her, and then for us. She confronts us with her ordeals, which echo individual stories. Even if the resonance varies depending on our socio-cultural background, there is always a way for us to identify with her experience— whether as women and/or mothers, as artists, or, from another perspective, as men. Although we are faced with the experience of a woman, men remain omnipresent in her narrative as agents perpetuating the patriarchal system, forcing us to question our own mental structures. This feeling stems from Marianna’s own acceptance of the traumas she has experienced throughout her life.
The emotional distance she maintains throughout places us in a complex position. How could one not be scandalised by the violence inflicted upon her by her ex-husband, or by the endless list of sexist remarks she recounts? Yet her refusal to adopt a victim posture compels us to question the normalisation of such acts. Through humour and insight, fuelled by the distance she takes from her own experiences, she raises a genuine societal issue. Like her, we find it absurd—so let us move forward and change it.
What truly allows us to connect with her and accept these horrors is her command of laughter. Beyond merely relying on clownish playfulness, the circus artist appropriates the rules of stand up comedy. Marianna chooses to set aside her aerial hoop in order to confront this art form, which in many ways resembles circus, particularly through the presence of humour. Yet she takes the opposite approach: a humour inhabited by speech, with brilliantly constructed jokes (the one about the seven dwarfs is incredible), whereas circus traditionally favours a language that relegates speech to the background, relying instead on a humour embodied through the body itself.
She adopts the conventions of stand-up—a microphone, an audience, and jokes—while adding her own touch and preserving more visual gags as a tribute to her roots. Circus humour first creates an image through the body in order to make us laugh; Marianna paints her picture through language. We can only imagine or identify with the situations she has endured, and we oscillate between these two worlds, allowing the many individuals present to find something that resonates with them.
One of the particularities of circus lies in its use of the aesthetics of risk through apparatuses. Here, however, the risk is displaced: it lies within her, in what she tells us, in all those phrases heard throughout her life, in the violence—whether verbal or physical—displayed on that white screen. She takes our breath away through the exposure of her life, yet allows us to breathe again through her humour.
We are disoriented by what Marianna places on stage. We expected a performance centred around her apparatus, the aerial hoop, yet she offers us a hybrid form instead. Circus possesses this ability to actively involve the audience in the art being practised, and stand-up belongs to the same lineage. Breaking the fourth wall in order to create a sense of closeness with the audience is one of its foundations. Marianna, who uses this principle throughout the performance, places us in a position where we converse with her.
She punctuates her show with moments of questions and answers, literally asking: “Do you have any questions about what I’ve just told you?” At first, the audience seems hesitant, unsure how to respond to such an unusual request. Then one hand rises, a question appears, and through a snowball effect, an avalanche is unleashed. The show becomes a round table discussion, where the artist no longer questions us alone; rather, we question together through the gift of her anecdotes—and above all, we question ourselves.
A group of teenage girls (they must have been between fourteen and eighteen years old) occupied the front row. Their presence radically changed the dynamic. At one point, Marianna recounts the violence she suffered from her ex-husband, whom she has forgiven. After this passage, a flood of questions crosses the group: “How did you experience that moment? Why did you forgive your ex-husband? Did you have children with him?” (Questions heard during the performance.) We suddenly find ourselves in an agora. Societal issues are no longer delivered solely through the artist’s speech; they are debated collectively by everyone present in the theatre, in an exchange worthy of a final at Roland-Garros. Society awakens and moves forward together; it is no longer passive, it enters into action.
What produces all of this is the plurality that constitutes the audience. During the show, Marianna asks us who we are—our jobs, our ages, our relationship status, and so on. The necessity of multiculturalism within a theatre space creates this singularity. The audience was made up of master’s students in Performing Arts from ULB (of which I am one), circus professionals, and this group of young people from the Molenbeek youth centre. This fusion personalises the event we are witnessing and sends the performance in a new direction that leaves a lasting mark on the mind.
Marianna was supposed to perform for one hour, but thanks to these interludes, we were given forty additional minutes. In a bad stand-up show, this might be called “holding the audience hostage.” Yet here, we are set free. We feel involved, reinforcing this feeling of uniqueness and singularity.
And then comes the ending—her ending, her apparatus: five minutes of aerial hoop performed to “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. A nectar nourished by the preceding hour and a half. I sit there watching; my eyes begin to well up, a tear slides down and reaches my mouth, where a smile is born. Through this ending, she magnificently concludes her performance. The hoop symbolises the vicious circle in which society confines her, and we too, as spectators, had been prepared to watch an hour of aerial hoop performance—we had already placed her inside a box before even seeing her. But the more she dances, the more she transforms that hoop into something virtuous, encouraging us to take over and become agents of broader change. Her individuality is but a grain of sand capable of shaking the entire beach.
Through her approach, Marianna De Sanctis puts us back in our place as artists. Where art often enjoys using imagination to speak about reality, Marianna speaks to us about her own reality— and everything about it feels real. No embellishments, no empty talk, no disguises: she presents herself exactly as she truly is—a mother, a woman, an artist.
So, to sum it all up:
Grazie Marianna.
© CREDITS Created and performed by: Marianna De Sanctis & Maë Lestage Life support: Yaelle Antoine Artistic support: Nicanor de Elia Photography: Camilla La Verde Graphic design: Alma Kaiser Administration: Collectif Tarabiscoté ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS / PARTNERS Residencies and training: La Grainerie, Erasmus+, Pistacatro, EsacTo Lido, Le Samovar, CNAC
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This post was last modified on June 8, 2026 6:32 pm