So when creating this blog, I ran into one of the biggest conundrums that circus folk encounter: what the blazes is the circus? Well... according to some other circus themed blogspot addresses, circus seems to imply disorder. In Google hits, the first page will give you references to Britney Spears music albums and Heidi Montag *shudder* talking smack about her mother, from which we get references to freaks. Granted, this is along side Ringling, Wikipedia, Big Apple, Cirque du Soleil and UniverSoul - all of which are valid circus resources.
The fact of the matter remains that most of the "circus" references on the internet have NOTHING to do with circus as a performance entity -- to which I shake my fist at them for wasting perfectly good domain names while hollering something similar to "Curse yoooooou". Of course this wouldn't be the first time a word has come to have a totally different meaning, but it makes conversations more difficult when you tell people you quit medical school to join the circus. The inevitable response is: "What do you mean?"
The first few times, this made me pause. There's only one kind of circus to join (overstatement, I know). I don't think that was really the question they were trying to ask. I think part of it stems from the idea that there couldn't possibly be a circus so near to them that they don't know about. The other part could be that a person in the circus should be identifiable from a mile away. I do not have the build of the hulk, nor am I tiny and bent over backwards. My face is not painted as a clown's. My clothes are relatively normal - though perhaps slightly more rainbow. I think this is the most shocking brain stopper of all: people in the circus are capable of looking and acting normal.
This questions is usually followed by a volley of the most typical circus acts, which reveals a lot about the person and their interests. "Like tigers and clowns?" "Like juggling and magic?" "Like walking on wires and getting shot out of a cannon?" "Like eating fire and riding on unicycles?" All of which can be parts of circus, but any circus can survive without a single one of these acts (there have been arguments that this is not the case for clowning). My answer to those questions is always a 'Yes', but mostly because I don't know how to better describe the circus myself beyond offering examples of what people do within it. Even Wikipedia can't do it without listing types of people you are most likely to see in the performances - though as an aggregate, they're labeled "stunt-oriented artists". So why isn't circus a stunt show? I would say because circus is a different mindset.
I, personally, chose to dismiss the normal, safe life and hang out with outsiders, un-normals, freaks - the others. I never fully left normality and granted, I returned to a typical lifestyle a few years later. However, for a few years I led a double life: moving in ways people don't move and trying those things people never thought to try - but also being someone people didn't think I was. This is where I feel circus is really nested: in the dark underbelly of not-my-world. Other shows are linked to normal life: stunts are based loosely on real-life scenarios, dancers perform in familiar settings. These performers look relatively normal. Circus doesn't even try. When the these people hit the stage, you know you're not in Kansas anymore. There have been arguments that circus is inherently liminal and marginal (both fancy terms for out there), and that's really all I think you can use to group all of the circuses together. Circus is filled with people who don't want/try to be like everyone else. They don't want to look like it or act like it and it's fantastic and liberating. You can be normal later, when everyone least expects it.
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