Run away to join the circus? As Circus Oz gets ready to raise the big top on its 35th year, Kathryn Kernohan meets three folk who made good their threat.
WHO hasn’t threatened to ‘‘run off with the circus’’ in a moment of pique, when dissatisfied with work or life in general? While not many of us actually follow through, those who have taken this leap of faith have helped create one of the country’s most successful arts organisations, Circus Oz
Since it formed in 1977 hundreds of talented performers and behind-the-scenes staff have replaced their nine-to-five desk jobs with a life of high-flying trapeze thrills, international touring and the pressure of entertaining thousands of people each night.
When MW visits the company’s Port Melbourne headquarters before this week’s premiere of its new production, From the Ground Up, the place is abuzz. In one corner of the vast gymnasium, three performers are suspended four metres in the air as they attempt to nail an acrobatic routine. Others are practising with unicycles and juggling equipment in silent concentration, and a well-used whiteboard nearby details the meticulous moves involved in tricks with names such as ‘‘dragon three high’’ and ‘‘tumble into bird’’.
Next year, the company will move to a larger home at the former Collingwood TAFE. But for now, the Bay Street corner block, where Circus Oz has been based since 1994, serves as a second home to its performers, who regularly spend months on the road away from loved ones.
So is life all fun, games and death-defying stunts for those at Circus Oz? We ask three of the tight-knit ensemble about life in the big top.
Jeremy Davies
When Jeremy Davies’ friends take a a holiday, they head off to explore the world. When Davies gets time off from his touring schedule, he makes a beeline for his Fitzroy home.
‘‘Coming home is the equivalent of going on holidays for me,’’ says the 38-year-old performer. ‘‘I love flying home from overseas to sit on my couch and watch DVDs and eat Tim Tams. You can feel like a stranger in your own house for about a week, especially when you’ve been away for a while, but after that you get into the groove and enjoy unwinding.’’
Davies joined Circus Oz full-time in 2009 after almost 20 years of theatre work in Canberra and Melbourne. The performer, whose act includes a ‘‘deliberately bad’’ magic routine, has toured extensively with the company, including multiple trips to the US and a month in Spain.
Being a performer has involved sacrifice – like ‘‘years of studying and training and a lot of part-time jobs to fund the training’’ – and he’s worked as a corporate circus performer to pay the bills. It’s all helped him to appreciate his job at Circus Oz more. ‘‘I get to be a clown and be funny instead of being all serious and looking like a member of Cirque du Soleil,’’ he quips
Living and working with the company’s 20-strong touring party is different from any international touring he has done previously. ‘‘Before Circus Oz, the biggest tour I’d done was eight people and you go stir-crazy after a while,’’ he says, laughing. ‘‘But with Oz, you can hang out with someone new every day and it’s like having a little family on the road.’’
The company’s 35-year history means tours run like a well-oiled machine. ‘‘Because the company has done it so long, they know when people will feel crappy so they’ll feed us something nice on that day, as you’re about to go crazy.’’
Although he admits to the occasional bout of home-sickness when he’s away, Davies says the highs far outweigh the lows. He particularly enjoys touring regional Australia – ‘‘we go back to the same places every three years or so and it can be a shock to see how much a town has built up in that time’’ – and his girlfriend’s job makes life on the road a little easier. ‘‘She’s a travel agent who grew up in the circus, so she totally understands the touring lifestyle. Thanks to her job, she can fly to meet me every now and then, which is great.’’
Matthew Hughes
Sitting in his spartan office at Circus Oz HQ, Matthew Hughes says his parents gave him away to the circus. The 47-year-old is joking, of course, but given his three-decade relationship with the artform, it seems plausible.
At 14, Hughes joined Albury’s Flying Fruit Fly Circus as an after-school hobby. ‘‘I was pretty sporty as a kid, but the thing with circus was that it was groups of kids working together rather than in competition. It just made sense.’’
At the time, Hughes was a state-level junior competition diver but he fell in love with the big top. At 19, he moved to Melbourne to join Circus Oz just before the company travelled to Los Angeles to perform at the 1984 Olympics.
‘‘I couldn’t believe how exciting it was, seeing all these people from different parts of the world meeting,’’ he says. ‘‘I certainly didn’t expect circus to become a career at that point, but I was definitely hooked on performing and being part of the group.’’
Almost 20 years later, Hughes is still with Circus Oz, although these days his role as the company’s programming director is about as far away from the trapeze as he can get. It’s his job to sort out the troupe’s touring logistics. ‘‘It’s not a standard job. It goes up and down in terms of hours and commitment,’’ he says.
When the show is on tour, he might be called on in the middle of the night to solve passport, visa or freight issues. ‘‘It’s a round-the-clock job that isn’t limited to the time I’m in the office.’’
Although his relationship with Circus Oz is long, Hughes has left the company twice to try his hand in other fields. In the late 1980s, he became a qualified physical education teacher and about five years later he studied business. But he returned to his first love both times. ‘‘Each time when I came back, I found I still loved theatre and the diversity within the industry,’’ he says. ‘‘People who do this type of work do it because they enjoy the people they work with, the excitement of opening nights, moving on to the next project … it’s not a job, it’s part of your life.’’
He recalls touring in the 1980s, ‘‘when you could disappear on tour for six months at a time and you couldn’t keep relationships going’’, but he says Skype and Facebook have changed everything for travelling performers.
Still, it takes a certain type of character to handle being away from home for so long. ‘‘It’s unusual for somebody to be working constantly every day, but the performers have to manage their bodies and their voices. Things we take for granted, like knowing your favourite coffee shop, they have to find those things on a daily basis.’’
Hughes rarely tours overseas these days, opting instead for family time with wife Heather (a former circus performer) and children Kai, 12, and Sarsha, 8. ‘‘At this stage of my life, I prefer to stay in my little place in Brunswick, enjoy life and watch the kids grow up.’’
Ania Reynolds
Ania Reynolds has more stamps in her passport than most, but the musician freely admits she has ‘‘never been into the backpacking thing’’. The 30-year-old prefers to travel when she has a project to work on, which makes her role in Circus Oz’s live band perfect.
‘‘When you work somewhere overseas, you usually get to see things from the inside, not like a tourist would,’’ she says. ‘‘We well and truly get to experience the places we visit, particularly through meeting the local theatre crews we work with, who will show us around and tell us where to hang out.’’
The Coburg resident, who studied music performance at NMIT and plays a variety of instruments, had worked with Westside Circus and Polyglot Theatre for almost a decade before landing the Circus Oz gig in 2010.
‘‘I’m naturally not very physically co-ordinated. Music comes a bit more easily to me but I love being around theatre companies,’’ she says. ‘‘There’s just a great energy and you play to really warm audiences most of the time.’’
Reynolds, who plays the saxophone and keytar, a keyboard-guitar hybrid, among other instruments, has gigged overseas with other musical projects including Afrobeat group Papa Chango and surf rock band Johnnie and the Johnnie Johnnies, but she says touring with Circus Oz is an entirely different experience.
‘‘Bands are like families – you might make good music together but you don’t necessarily get along the best,’’ she says. ‘‘But Circus Oz touring is nice because there’s a lot of group activities. People are free to do their own thing but something great about the company is you don’t just do your gig and that’s it; we spend a lot of time together.’’
She says a highlight of every regional Australia tour, which can last up to three months, is Regional Kringle. ‘‘You pick someone’s name out of a hat and you have to give them little presents for the rest of the tour,’’ says Reynolds. ‘‘At the end we have a big dinner and you have to guess who your Kringle is. It’s fun, creative and a nice thing to keep us entertained along the way.’’
The musician says her touring lifestyle, which takes her away from home for more than six months a year, suits her well. ‘‘It’s interesting coming back and settling into Melbourne after the carefree life on the road. At the moment, I’m really digging it all.’’ n
Circus Oz’s From the Ground Up opens June 20 at the Big Top, Birrarung Marr. Adult tickets from $55. Visit ticketmaster.com.au.
