Filling the Big-Top

   We are lucky to live in a country where art is not only accepted but supported by the population.  I have experienced a wide variety of responses to performance on my travels around 30 or so countries in this wonderful world; from the almost holy respect in India to the near on illegality of street performance in countries in ex-Yuogoslavia.  I think England is probably somewhere in the middle.

   One thing I am really grateful for is that funding is available for artists and performers who wish to reach out to a wider audience.  The Invisible Circus have not (to my knowledge) ever applied for funding until now, and therefore, every penny made so far is thanks to the generosity of the crew and the faithful support of ticket paying public!

   The Happiness Machine marks the first time when some extra money has come our way and it means that the performers will be paid.  There are however still a lot of costs to cover with the ticket sales and those of us involved in shows before, know just how important it is to fill the venue to make enough to break even (and if we're lucky of course, make enough to start a new show)

   The flyering and promotional work has always been done by the crew.  I quite enjoy going around the town, handing out flyers at Bristol's other cool events and popping into the interesting places on our streets to blue tac yet another amazing event to the wall!

   This time, Jamie Walker suggested that we really go to town on the flyer mission and go out in character; a sort of flash mob type effect where we hit the streets with little extracts from the show to catch people's attention and then offer them a flyer!   .......not only more effective advertising but also, loads of fun for us too!

   The first chance we got, we took my tall bike, a small speaker and a few hundred flyers into and around the city centre!

real rehearsals start - day 1

What a fantastic day! After the end of the key labs, yesterday, I got into the paintworks at about 9:30am to a real buzz of excitement. I counted 30 people as Sarah (our director in situ) sat us down and revealed a 15' wooden board with the rough outlines of the 14 scenes of our show -The Happiness machine.
It felt like with the preliminary meetings, we had found the corner pieces and even most of the straight edges out of the jigsaw box; and were starting to believe that we would be able to construct the final picture. Finally; here were the missing bits... All we had to do now was figure out which one goes where!

For my part, I was asked if I could start to develop a slack rope act and somehow work in some interactive communication with other performers on the ground. Slack rope has been my main focus in this last decade of my career so I felt confident I could push the boundries, it was also exciting to see how we can develop the play from ground to air.

The Warm ups

Just three days in to the physical work now and my muscles are begginning to feel it.. of course, we have to take care to warm up and stretch down well before and after each physical session. This can be up to four or five times per day.

I start before most of the crew get here with an hour or so of astanga yoga which helps to iron out the creases from the day before. We then meet up at 10:00am and it's time for a group warm up. Something I really love about this process is that we take it in turns to lead the warm up, inevitabley we all have different phsiques and different approaches to training different disciplines. To share in each others styles, not only gives a window into each others world but wakes up different parts of different muscles, and of course, it's loads of fun!

Whether it is a disciplined set of exercises from circus schools or martial arts teachers, or a more free, fun approach, we have to do what we can to prepare and keep our bodies in form for the demands we put on them!

Whether it's an aerobic dance off from Shelly aka Sheila from the deep south of the good ol' U.S. of A; or getting in tune with our spiritual depths with Kino's Yoga and Thai Chi, through all the range of more traditional circus exercises that our crew have aquired from there studies worldwide!

playtime

   We spent a few days working with Petra - a German teacher of clown and physical theatre who has like a 15 year history with Dougie and was there from the begginning of The Invisible Circus, learning to move together, exploring theatrical and dance oriented techniques which seemed to help me let go of my ego and learn to move with the group, finding the flow, letting go of needing to lead at times and finding times when i must take the lead when i actually felt like taking a back seat. As a ropewalker, i know a little about balance and now with the group dynamic, i was learning to balance my movements and personality to fit my fellow performers.

   Until; disaster struck.  After a successfull first day where I pushed myself to my limits, i awoke the following morning to discover that i had clearly pushed beyond my limits. Exertion caused a serious strain in my lower back muscles and by evening, i could not stand up.  The pain was so severe that I could not walk for about five days.

   Now I see that i was lucky in that time to be able to come in and watch the process from the outside inside if you like.. people exploring their discipline and trying new ways to attain heights which alone we might not reach!

   The next phase of rehearsals was a series of weekends we called key labs where as many as possible of us would meet up and explore our various disciplines, seeing in which way we could work together on them or use them more collectively than we usually do when creating incividual acts for a cabaret format.... i really liked watching them throw people up the chinese pole, only time will tell if we will actually use that in the 'final cut'

what can we do

   We knew that between us, we had a big and varied pool of talent, spread out across the circus disciplines, dance and movement... It was cool to see so many different body types and skills all in one room, all my friends and what often feels more like an extended family coming together to to all do the same thing; the thing that unites us -circus!  At the same time, all of us so different, with backgrounds in martial arts, acrobatics, dance, mime, music, balance, juggling and so on.. to look at a room full of circus people often seems like we have nothing in common but whenever i look behind the differences, and at times i think because of the differences, it is clear that we are actually all doing the same thing. Tapping into that creative energy.  Reaching down inside ourselves and through movement and sound travelling through time and space, we all explore which ways we can make something beautiful, something that reflects the world we live in and something that hopefully will delight, entertain, and dare I say sometimes even inspire a sense of wonder and magic in those who behold it.

The beginning..

    Dougie and Wim, started to paint the dream... a circus show -details to be disclosed- created by us through a thorough process and then performed in a whopping big 'big-top' at Temple Meads!  A dream coming true I thought; not only a great new show with a great team but putting up a giant one thousand capacity tent in Bristol.. splashing colour amongst the concrete!

   Since arriving at The Invisible Circus in September a few years ago and blagging my way through the doors and not only onto a stage but onto a very high wire at Carnyville; I found myself involved with many of The Invisible Circus shows.  It was therefore with pleasure - but no surprise - that I heard that they wanted me on board for the latest show.

    We were told that the cast would be a condensed version of the massive crew of Carnyville which sometimes numbered over 300 per night.  Coming to the first stage of rehearsals a couple of months ago, I stepped into the familiar surroundings of the training space at the Paintworks to see about 50 odd performers, techies, roustabouts and other familiar circus freaks and uniques.

who am I and what's it all about?

I am Chris, the man behind Anaspitos, the rope walker from The Invisible Circus in Bristol and I've set up this blog to give an performer's eye view into what goes on behind the scenes as we create a circus show. I will document the creation process as we rehearse our latest show called "The Happiness Machine" which we will perform at the big top tent (Creative Common) outside Temple Meads train station in Bristol in October 2012.