Ten years ago, our director Kat came up with the concept of a touring project called The Elephant in the Room – a circus tour in a big top, that only performs contemporary circus acts, against traditional expectations of circus. The mission statement of this project? To dispel notions of circus as being the vision seen in mainstream media such as the Greatest Showman, which portray a specific time in US history. It’s a very different world to our reality as circus artists in Scotland today. Kat didn’t pursue the project at the time. Recently, we wondered if there would be any point to revisiting the idea. Surely, there would be no need for this project ten years later, when circus is so much better understood? But then, a conversation with a potential funder showed how wrong we were…
A fortnight ago, I got an apologetic email from a funder Think Circus had applied to. Nothing new to find that we weren’t successful in receiving funding for our project – it happens! – but a little surprising to hear that while this funder will fund local arts projects, and include multi-art forms, circus isn’t currently supported. Filling in the gaps, the assumption is that for this funder, circus is not seen as arts but rather entertainment, or sport. While we have no issue with funders deciding what their criteria are, it was a curious moment to realise that even for some people whose dedication is to promote and support the arts, there isn’t as much knowledge of what contemporary circus arts looks like.
So… what is circus in Scotland today, if it doesn’t look like Hugh Jackman in his shiniest jacket dancing in a big top? Let me try to answer the questions you might have and introduce a portrait of circus arts in Scotland in 2025.
Can artistic things not be entertaining? Aren’t you both? Yes! But we consider our audiences when we make work, and we know that people are interested in circus performance that is not just a spectacular display of human abilities, but also that stokes curiosity, evokes emotions and plays with imagination.
But your website is full of traditional circus costumes and characters? Correct! We do offer entertainment services and are delighted to make an event feel like an exciting circus experience along traditional lines. You can absolutely hire us for stage shows, walkabout characters and children’s parties, and we are super proud of doing this to a professional level. But, with all due respect to Jackman et al, this isn’t exactly our most creative calling. Circus can be a whole lot more than looking glamorous and dazzling you with skill.
So what else is circus? And isn’t the opposite of being entertaining kind of boring? We don’t think art is the opposite of entertainment! Contemporary circus brings on board elements of dance, theatre and innovations in technique. Cirque du Soleil are a good example of a storyline or strong theme transforming circus skills into a vessel for building interesting characters and worlds. Australia’s Circa create pieces of breathtaking movement choreography which deftly fill every second with gravity-defying acrobatics that push the limits of dance and movement. Scotland’s very own ThrowPoi create juggling combinations that explore the creative limits of what humans can do with objects, and inspire other jugglers around the world to build on these techniques. Think Circus’s film project, Imagined Bodies, explored the social theme of body image, through circus and cinematography. In contemporary circus, we get to play with new technology, projections, light artistry, sound and much more. Like most art-forms, we express ourselves, reflect the world we are in, and explore creativity for it’s own sake. And we want to encourage everyone to experience it too – because perhaps circus is a wider, richer place than it first appears.
OK, OK, I’m starting to see your point. But what do the people in charge of funding say? Isn’t circus a physical activity too? Well, yes, but circus is not classed as a sport, as it is not technically competitive. For this reason, we do not meet the definition of being a sport. After some campaigning over many years, circus has been classified by the Edinburgh Fringe as being a distinct artform (it used to live in Dance and Physical Theatre) and gets dedicated circus arenas. Creative Scotland classify circus under dance or theatre currently but do give the option for us to identify as a separate artform. Things are a little better than they were a decade ago, to be fair.
So… what do you think? Should we still carry out our Elephant in the Room project? Or shall we stick to our sequin top hats? Let us know!
