Circus has a supple and vibrant history. But if it's fused with theatre, what does it become? Barabbas's new 'Circus' production puts it to the test, writes Peter Crawley
It's circus, but not as we know it. The roof of the tent, suggested with ribbons, descends from above and spreads out from a tapered point to envelope the space below. The ring, painted in pleasing, culture-referencing patterns, is properly encircled by tiered seats. The ground is the colour of sawdust - but not the texture.
As Raymond Keane, artistic director of Barabbas . . . the company, explores the space ahead of the opening of his new show, the feint of a circus setting becomes more complex. The Project Arts Centre may be flexible, but we are, undeniably, still in a theatre. And Sabine Dargent's elegant emulation of a big top, though clearly enchanted by the totems of traditional circus, is designed to allow the theatre seep in through the gaps. Here, in a piece of theatre simply entitled Circus, two forms have been asked to fuse together.
"It's about the seduction of the circus world," Keane says of the show, a long-gestating adaptation of Frederico Fellini's 1954 film La Strada, as well he might. Under the influence of several workshops with circus performers, and the assistance of dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke, the project has moved from a relatively straightforward adaptation - Keane originally transcribed the film's dialogue direct from a videotape - to a wordless, physical performance in which the grammar and rituals of circus are employed to tell a story.
If La Strada, a love triangle which features a waif-like circus performer brutalised by the troupe's leader, could be considered a road movie, Keane's earliest transposition was towards "a road play". "I used that structure," he admits, "but made it more theatrical, more surreal, more magical in a way. Theatre can provide a different kind of magic. But it was still just the film on the stage. Somewhere deep down it just didn't feel right. And adapting it, it just seemed to me that it needed to go somewhere else." Having previously worked with Ken Fanning and Tina Segner of Befast's Tumble Circus, the answer may have been staring him in the face, but Keane was uncertain.
"To be honest, circus didn't set me alight for years. I'm not even talking about Duffy's or Fossett's, which I'd grown up with for years. But even modern circus - Cirque du Soleil - it's brilliant and beautiful, but I could never see theatre in it. Or storytelling, rather. That became the huge challenge: Can I tell a story with it?"
Circus, however, has never felt the need to service a narrative, to explain either a story or itself, so much so that Jean Genet could call it "an instance of the ultimate truth" without fear of contradiction, or, it must be said, immediate comprehension.
The name comes from the Latin for "ring", which attaches circus to a structure rather than a content, and the development of the performance circus contains - which is also called "circus" - depends on whoever has entered that ring. The Circus Maximus in Rome may have defined the model as a travelling display of animals and skilled performers, but the development of circus through the centuries was more ad hoc: from the hippodromes of 18th century, which attracted drifting acrobats and jugglers and, later, clowns and trained animals, to a later emphasis on aerialism, trapeze acts and daredevil feats. Given the form has been so supple and hybrid historically, it may be the very notion of "traditional" in circus can seem problematic.
That, however, is where such longstanding Irish circus companies as Duffy's and Fossett's currently find themselves, representatives of what can appear to be an increasingly threatened old order.
"THE TRADITIONAL CIRCUS experience, as far as we're concerned," says Charles O'Brien of Fossett's Circus, "is that it will always be in a tent, it will always take place in a ring, and it will always be nomadic. Within that framework you can have animal circuses, non-animal circuses, circuses with a theme, circuses with a narrative . . . circuses with three people and a monkey.
"But if those three elements are present, then it is traditional circus.
"What's called 'new circus' or 'contemporary circus' is a glass wall that's been built between us and modern practitioners. These people use circus skills, but [ their performance is] really a derivative of, or a form of, traditional theatre rather than circus.
"It's a divisive debate," he adds. "But when people in theatre use these skills, that's an enormous form of flattery."
Recently that debate has become more heated. O'Brien, a forthright spokesman for traditional circus, was heavily involved in the campaign to have circus recognised as a distinct art form worthy of State support. In 2003, four years after the campaign began in earnest, the Government amended the arts Bill to recognise circus as a stand-alone art form. Until then, O'Brien contends, the arts council's support for circus largely extended only to theatre companies that employed circus skills. (The highly physical Barabbas, incidentally, might fit that perception.) "We thought traditional circus, which had begun all this, existed outside theatre, and outside society, and was outside looking in on the party."
The campaign, he adds, may have "looked like a sledgehammer to crack a nut - and it was - but it was forced upon us. They didn't see traditional circus as being something standalone and unique. They thought that circus skills or circus disciplines were themselves worthy of support."
Even with Circus's new-found standing as a subsidised art form, there is a fear that the Arts Council is still supporting the skills but not the structure of circus. At a recent seminar entitled Circus as an Art Form in Ireland, held during the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, O'Brien raised a concern that institutional pressures may steer traditional circus into more contemporary forms.
"One of the terms used by the [ Arts Council's] circus arts officer, Verena Cornwall, who is a friend and an extremely valued member of the circus community both here and the UK, is 'benign influence'," O'Brien says. "That sends shivers up my spine."
Traditional circus, then, is understandably keen to access government subsidy - the expenses of running, insuring and transporting a 700-seat circus are vastly in excess of a still rather meagre grant - but not keen to negotiate about its content. Interestingly, those circus-based theatrical shows that stray too far from traditional means can also come in for a grilling: at the same seminar, Quebec's contemporary circus company, The 7 Fingers, were criticised for their more overtly theatrical elements. The question did not seem to be whether theatre and circus could meet half way, but rather, should they?
Writing in the Abbey programme for the recent production of Taoub, a display of physical circus skills from the Moroccan group Collectif Acrobatique de Tangier, Verena Cornwall traced a "benign influence" that hardly seemed unreasonable. "Within Ireland collaborations between traditional circus and visiting artistic directors are beginning to take place," she wrote, "offering a new kind of traditional circus to be developed." Arguing for a creative cross-pollination, Cornwall pointed to theatre, opera and dance companies enhancing their effect with circus skills, moving "away from the rigidity of scripts to a more fluid way of storytelling [ which] makes performances suitable to a range of people from the young through to the old".
Raymond Keane might agree. As the Project continued its transformation into a circus space, and a set dresser sewed sparkling stars on a rear curtain, Keane lifted his gaze to the high ceiling and described how the performer Colm O'Grady would soon be suspended, upside-down and in a straightjacket, above a six-inch bed of nails. Regardless of the narrative thrust in such escapology, I wondered how the insurers felt about the stunt. "Don't tell them!" Keane joked.
In Keane's play, however, every feat requires significance: the strongman who breaks his chains is still emotionally imprisoned; an aerial silk routine becomes a representation of mourning; a trapeze duet is physical code for lovemaking. Even the off stage rituals - the brisk rub of rosin on the palms of the trapeze artist, the hard smack of powder and the sound of their tacky skin - have found their way into the show.
One may wonder why this play needs to take place in a theatre, but the focus made possible by a more intimate space can assign subtle meanings to the broad grammar of circus. Which makes it sound like an oddly muted piece; a series of acrobatic displays without the rush of a drum roll.
"There's plenty of 'wow' in this show," counters Keane. "But it's a different 'wow'. It's a whole other 'wow'. The story has to be served the whole time and that is the most exciting process for me."
Ultimately, employing circus skills to service a theatrical narrative, or introducing theatrical structure to a circus, does not present a radical challenge to either art form. Equally resilient and fluid in their identities, circus and theatre have always thrived without the dead hand of tradition. (Fossett's, for instance, has recently begun to experiment contemporary dance.)
But just as countless young children have dreamed about running away with the circus, that art form still holds an irresistible allure. Barabbas, which recently saw Veronica Coburn, the second of its three founder members, depart the ranks of the 14-year-old company, has had to reappraise itself and find a reason to continue. Asked whether "circus theatre" might be it, or simply a one-off experiment, Keane barely hesitates.
"I think it will be there now. I think it's got me. I'm seduced."
Circus continues at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin until Nov 10, Fossett's Circus continues in Liffey Valley Shopping Centre until Nov 4
