If you hate visiting the dentist, don't read this interview with Australian circus girl Chelsea McGuffin

Chelsea McGuffin
Photo by Raphale Helle
Courtesy of Norfolk and Norwich Festival

The great thing about circus is that no matter how many shows you see you always get at least one thing that’s jaw-dropping amazing. Australian acrobat Chelsea McGuffin provided one of many such moments when I visited a performance by leading Aussie company Circa during the writing of Circus Mania. Midway through the show, Darcy Grant hooked his fingers in her mouth and, to the audible disbelief of the packed audience, dangled her from the trapeze by her teeth, like a fish on a line.


Last year I ran into Chelsea again when she was appearing in Cantina, a show she’d devised herself as the centerpiece of the five-month London Wonderground festival at the Southbank Centre. I reminded her of the tooth hang and had to ask... doesn’t that hurt?

“It doesn’t hurt too much. It’s more about having the will to do it. Circus is something you have to be very passionate about to commit to and want to wake up everyday for. But it’s definitely what I’m passionate about.”

How did you get into circus?

“I sort of fell into it. I thought ballet was my calling but in my early 20s I stumbled across a circus class in Sydney that I really enjoyed. From there I joined a nomadic circus called Circus Monoxide. It was a contemporary circus but very much based on the traditional model of travelling to town and setting up our rig and our tent. That’s where I learned most of my skills as well as things like how to negotiate living on a bus with 12 other people. It was a great life experience.”

An OMG moment
as Darcy Grant
prepares to suspend
Chelsea McGuffin
....by her teeth!

How big is circus down under?

"For a small population like Australia, circus is quite big. Our two major companies are Circa and Circus Oz but there are many smaller groups and a lot of independent work. Every state has a circus school, but we lack the audience numbers so a lot of work gets created but it’s more likely to have its life overseas.”

Does circus have a retirement age?

“I think it’s up to how long you feel like being on stage and how long your body can hold out. I’m 36 and I don’t recover as fast as I did in my 20s. But it’s still something I’m really passionate about and I hope I can keep doing it for many years yet.”

For more examples of the pain circus performers put themselves through in the name of art, read Circus Mania. Be warned, though, that the chapter on the Circus of Horrors is not for the squeamish. One of America’s most eminent circus writers admitted there were some sentences he couldn’t bear to read!

See also: The circus girl with the strongest hair in the world.

HOW LIKE AN ANGEL

NEW CIRCA SHOW TAKES FLIGHT

Australian circus girl
Chelsea McGuffin
in an earlier production by
Circa that you can read
about in
Circus Mania

(Photo by Raphael Helle,
courtesy Norfolk and Norwich
Festival)

One of the most visually unusual circus shows this summer is likely to be How Like An Angel, a mixture of acrobatics and 16th and 17th century choral music that has been specially created to tour four of England’s most striking cathedrals: Norwich, Ely, Gloucester and Ripon.

The show is the brainchild of Yaron Lifschitz, artistic director of Australian company Circa, who has teamed up with Robert Hollingworth, musical director of I Fagiolini to create a show that will see aerial artists flying through the high empty spaces of the four magnificent medieval buildings.

The tour kicks off in Norwich Cathedral June 26 - 28, before moving to Ely (July 2-3), Gloucester (July 16- 17) and Ripon (July 19 - 20). Tickets for Norwich cost £20 by phone on 01603 766400 or in person from the box office of the Norwich Theatre Royal.

In the meantime, you can catch up with the story of Yaron Lifschitz and Circa in Circus Mania by Douglas McPherson.

Circus Mania includes a chapter on Circa’s previous visit to Norwich when the company performed in the atmospheric setting of a traditional European Spiegeltent, or ‘mirror tent.’ A dramatic description of the show’s Chelsea McGuffin being suspended by her front teeth is followed by a next-morning interview with Lifschitz in which the director explains with a chuckle that in circus “Some things just hurt.”

Circus Mania, which also includes some eye-popping pictures of Circa in action, retails at £14.99 but you can save £5 by buying it direct from Peter Owen Publishers at the special offer price of just £10 postage-free in the UK (£2.75 postage rest of world). Send cheques to:

Peter Owen Publishers
81 Ridge Road
London N8 9NP

www.peterowen.com

Also read my interview with Chelsea McGuffin.

Circus Mania Review in The White Tops

“An inside view from the outside.”

Chelsea McGuffin in Circa
- Read about her
daredevilry and the
behind-the-scenes lives
of many other performers in
Circus Mania

My thanks to Mort Gamble for his gracious and perceptive review of Circus Mania in The White Tops - America’s most famous circus magazine! Here’s the full review:


CIRCUS MANIA by Douglas McPherson
review by Mort Gamble
(White Tops Sept/Oct)

If the title of this exploration of Great Britain’s circus world is to be believed, the shows of that island nation are a bit on the wild and wacky side. McPherson’s book, however, comes across as a more thoughtful, restrained treatment of the British circus tradition, past and present. There’s nothing crazy about people earnestly carrying on a performing arts tradition, even if they do step out of the bounds or the normal, by outsiders’ standards, to do it. Outside observer McPherson is impressed.
Watching the Valez Brothers Wheel of Death act, McPherson realizes his fascination with circus performers “and the mysterious glue that binds them to their life of peril. They are, there is no doubt, a breed apart... they seem to exist for no other purpose than to make the impossible seem possible.” It’s easy to dismiss that statement as trite, but it’s helpful to remember that he is writing for a more general audience, not circus fans, not historians or scholars.
His book is a balancing act itself as an overview of circus history, tradition, contemporary formats and modern issues of management - including Britain’s struggles with vociferous animal rights protesters. It’s an inside view from the outside and, if anything, demonstrates the universality of the circus mind and spirit. As he quotes one circus owner, it’s about “the excitement of watching someone attempt something they may not actually be able to do.”
The British circus tradition predates America’s. Entrepreneur Philip Astley - like John Bill Ricketts in this country - built his early circus around horsemanship, adding clowns, acrobats and other acts. Well-known circus names like Smart, Chipperfield and Bertram Mills brought size, fame and fortune to the English circus tradition. Recent years have been less grand as shows abandoned their exotic animals and some took on other forms, morphing into the adult-only, the freaky, the water-worldly, the scary - circus escaping into the witness protection programme of cirque or stage production.
Some tradition big top shows have soldiered on, even daring to bring back their elephants, and

Martin Lacey's
Great British Circus
"Circus undiluted and unashamed."

McPherson gives a nod to them when he listens, at Martin Lacey’s Great British Circus, to the stirring march of Entrance of the Gladiators, breathes in the narcotic of sawdust, trampled grass and animals, and finds himself emotionally involved: “This is circus, undiluted and unashamed. It’s down, it’s marginalized, and there’s not much of it left... but it’s alive, it’s powerful and it will live on.”
Circus Mania lacks the streetwise wit of a Bill Ballantine, functioning more like the industry observations of a David Lewis Hammarstrom. As an overview of the circus in Great Britain, it has value in illustrating a diverse entertainment tradition that may be unfamiliar to Americans. McPherson clearly admires the heroics of circus performers and, equally, the grit of circus managers who find ways to keep going despite the times. He laments that animal protesters, bent on “bullying and intimidating” have missed a good show and concludes on a hopeful note about the positive role of live, physical circus in a digital age.
There is nothing fake about staying alive while training nature’s perfect killing machine - the tiger - he writes. Similarly, in the authenticity of circus life and legend, what you see is only part of what you get. He means to take us into that world for a closer look.

Click here to buy the new, updated 2nd Edition of Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book For Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away with the Circus!

Circus Mania
in the papers

Click here to read a dozen reviews of Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book For Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With the Circus.

Circus Mania a Good Read!

My thanks to Circus Mania reader Shana Kennedy for posting the following review on www.goodread.com :

Australian circus girl
Chelsea McGuffin
- Read the
behind-the-scenes
story of her
wince-inducing
performance with
 Circa
in Circus Mania
(Photo by
Sandrine Penda,
 courtesy
Norfolk and Norwich
Festival)

‘A decent circus book for us groupies... a quote I particularly connected with: "I realize...the rows of seats behind me are going to remain empty... But as the lights go down it ceases to matter. In a theatre you would feel the emptiness of a poorly attended house sapping the atmosphere. The big top, by contrast, seems to close snugly around us, emphasizing only our proximity to the ring and the impending action."’

If you’re tempted to read some more, save £5 off the retail price by ordering Circus Mania direct from Peter Owen Publishers at the special offer price of £10 postage free in the UK (£2.75 postage rest of world). Send cheques to:
Peter Owen Publishers
81 Ridge Road
London N8 9NP
Credit card orders during office hours: 020 8350 1775