Circus in a Bullring April 19, 2008

In Spain, circuses have an advantage when it comes to hit and run one day stands without the palaver of building up the tent every day.

Almost every town, no matter how small, has a bullring, the local Plaza de Toros.

(In places like Australia, the town is more likely to have a pub, but that’s another story…)

So one of the best circus venues is already in place, with a ring, seating and plenty of parking for the wagons.

Of course you might have to work around the bloodstains from the last bullfights, but usually the attendants are thoughtful enough to clean it up for you…

Except at Malaga, where they proudly point out the spot where the famed Manolete bled to death, and I suspect, replenish it with red dye every year.

This is also the bullring where a blood transfusion unit was first introduced, following Manolete’s demise. You can see how this rough and ready facility looked in the 60s in the picture, right].

It is quite wonderful to work under the stars in a bullring, all reservations about bloodstains aside.

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For aerial acts it is one of the most spectacular settings imaginable.

Some of the bullrings are huge, but the Plaza de Toros de Monumental in Barcelona makes them all look tiny.

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It was so big that the owners of Circo Americano were able to put up a six pole tent in the ring, which was a blessing because there was no shade otherwise from the hot sun.

Because they have to compete with the sought after bullfight posters that collectors prize, the Spanish circus posters display incredible artwork.

The poster that heads this article is the one that featured my father, marksman Little Beaver, the year we toured there.

So if you would ever ask me where the most magical circus setting is, I would say in Spain, where the magic of the circus never dies.

What Can the Circus Teach You About Life? April 19, 2008

What can the Circus teach you about life?
Not much, some outsiders may think. It looks like a fantasy world, where people get paid to travel about and have fun. Hardly the stuff life’s hard lessons are made of.

But those in the circus know better. The circus is a world in itself, a multicultural world where people of different cultures, religions and backgrounds learn to get along because they have a common goal.

You will rarely find overt expressions of prejudice on a circus, and if it does surface, it is quickly dealt with.

Circus people, after all, know they are different from the rest of the community. Many have suffered prejudice because they are travellers and will not stand for prejudice and bigotry within the circus world.

So the first thing Circus teaches you is an easy tolerance for the community’s diversity. This is a tight, closed community, with little opportunity to put down roots, so for the season at least, these people are your neighbors and work mates. You better get along.

There is no more fascinating picture of cultural diversity than a circus camp. A tumbling troupe will be preparing to feast on curry, while the Italian jugglers in the next wagon are dishing up the pasta.

The kids flit between them both, sampling everything, and stopping to grab a chunk of the home made black bread the aerialists have just received from Germany.

A polyglot of languages fills the air. How do all these people communicate? By picking up words and phrases in each other’s language (usually the cuss words first!) and using the time honored method of sign language.

It can look funny, but it is wonderful too.

Humor is universal, so there is a lot of laughter on the circus. This is not to say no one ever loses their temper, or has a beef about something, but we can’t always understand what people are angry about. On the other hand, we always laugh at the same things.

The clowns come from all over the globe, but once in the ring, their blend of pantomime and slapstick humor makes audiences of any language see the fun.

And the breathtaking skill of the artists needs no translation.

I’ve never known a circus performer who seriously studied languages. I’m sure there are some, but most of us learned to get along in foreign countries by listening, picking up the language as we went along.

When you have to live in a country and do your daily shopping, you soon learn the words for milk, meat, potatoes and so on.

a poor language scholar like me learned enough to get by and hold a fairly legible conversation.
The next important lesson you learn from growing up in the circus is to take life in your stride. This isn’t the most predictable lifestyle you could choose.

Anything can happen, and usually does. What do you do when the tent blows down, for example?

You clear away the torn canvas and perform in the open air. If only all the problems life throws at you were solved that easily.

Circus folk are very resilient, and have to think on their feet. We never knew we were lateral thinkers until people started talking about it!

Life with the circus does breed a special kind of toughness. Circus folk perform with broken bones and broken hearts, but never with broken spirits.

And that perhaps is the most important thing you learn on a circus.

It is all about Spirit.

21st Birthday in the Circus Ring April 19, 2008

21 is a major event in anyone’s life, but I remember my 21st for a very special reason.
We were travelling the South of England with a small Circus owned by Charlie Waite and his family.

For a small dog and pony show it was well set up. Charlie had two talented children who performed a number of fine acts and we were touring one of the nicest parts of England.

The show even had a performing goat, something I had not encountered before. The only trouble was the the goat liked to eat everything within range. This included clothes on the washing line, and one one memorable occassion, the wiring under one of the trucks.

The route took us through Kent to delightful seaport towns like Ryde. But it was a small show, requiring all hands on deck for work and so we were very busy, day after day.

The day of my birthday I thought everyone had forgotten. No one said anything to me and as it was show day as usual, we had two shows, a matinee and a night show.

The weather was very fine for an English summer. In the few times we had to real we would all lie around on the grass and swap yarns. It was certainly one of the friendliest and happiest shows I have ever known.

Most days we did a matinee and a night show, on a string of one night stands, which meant a very intensive day of building up, showing and pulling down before moving onto the next place. Fortunately the distances between towns and villages was very short.

I did my act in the night show as usual, then, as I was taking my bow, Charlie Waite came into the ring with the mike and announced to the audience that Jojo (me) had turned 21 today and the whole audience was invited to help celebrate!

You should have heard the cheer that went up…I never got such good applause in my life!

The circus crew and performers brought on a birthday cake and they had me blow out the candles in the ring. The audience came pouring into the ring to congratulate me.

There was a huge cheer when my father handed me the key to the caravan tied with a big pink bow. I had been coming and going as I pleased for years, of course, but the audience loved it.

It was great…I had many happy time with the circus but I will never forget the night the audience came to my 21st birthday party.

Days of Canvas April 19, 2008

Recently, the touring production of Cats came to our town, and I got a close look at the famous black tent.
It was certainly magnificent, with its spires and curves, but it would just not have been possible before airconditioning. It would have been stifling under that big black top.

Tents used to be pretty straightforward, and even then they were a complicated nightmare to put up. Of course, we used to do everything the hard way and what couldn’t be accomplished by our brute strength was left up to the trucks and the elephants.

Canvas and rope need fine dry weather to be manageable. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on that with a British circus. More often than not it was sodden and heavy, the ropes so swollen they had to be forced through the eyelets when lacing the sections of the Big Top.

Newbie tentmen would swear that a roll of canvas was as heavy as a small car, but that was becaue the wiser older hands would put them up front and let them bear the whole load. Fork lifts? You’re joking!

On some cicuses, the elephant was employed to carry the canvas rolls. One inventive circus I knew used a large pram to put up the sidewalls, dragging it behind her like a shopping trolley.

Canvas stood up to most weather but once it seriously deteriorated, new sections had to replace it. On one small circus, struggling to make a living, there was only one section without gaping holes.

During rainy weather, there was always an argument whether this should go over the best seats or over the ring doors. On one memorable occasion, the acts won the battle, and the holefree section was put over the ring doors.

That night, a circus luminary came to visit and sat in the best seats with an umbrella over her head.

Bless her, she still applauded every act. Maybe she understood how demoralising it is to enter the ring looking as bedraggled and wet as if you’d just put up a circus tent.

Not My Finest Hour… April 19, 2008

I don’t like to boast, but once I was the musical director for a small British circus.
Well, more accurately, I was lumbered with changing the records during the show.

When people think of circus music, they generally think of the circus band, blaring away in support of the acts.

Unfortunately, the smaller shows couldn’t afford a whole bunch of musicians, so they employed a Panatrope, a record player attached to a loudspeaker system. Back in the days of vinyl, this was state of the art, so stop laughing.

On this particular circus, I was idle for most of the show, so I was charged with making sure the right records were playing at the right time, something that had proved almost impossible when it was just a matter of whoever was free at the time dashing over to the Panatrope and throwing on a record as the act emerged fom the ring doors.

In particular, my father’s act required four musical changes. He was the one who suggested I could be roped in to “man the panatrope”.

Before the show even started I was faced with the most incredible contraption imaginable. It seemed to have been made of spare parts held together with chewing gum. I had the records for the show neatly stacked in order to one side, but I was also charged with playing music before the show to keep the patrons entertained as they waited in their seats.

For this, the show’s owner had provided one Top Ten hit, Sugar In the Morning by English singer Alma Cogan.

I probably did more damage to that poor woman’s career than she ever knew. I played that record over and over again until the customers were begging me to take it off. But I figured it was their fault anyway, for filling the seats so slowly. It seemed to take forever before the show actually started and by then, everyone was ready to smash my one Top Ten record.

Things proceed fairly smoothly after that until halfway through the second half of the show. I put on the first record for my parents’ act and there was a deafening silence. The Panatrope had decided to stop working.

I could hear my father starting to snort like an enraged bull. The audience giggled as his furious head appeared round the canvas screen of the ring doors. “Where’s the music?” he demanded.

I pointed to the Panatrope, and the record spinning under the needle with nothing coming out of the speakers.

When the boss used to tell this amusing yarn later, he always said that the best part was coming into the tent to find out what had happened to the music, only to find an angry Red Indian pulling the Panatrope apart, determined to fix it so he could have music for his act.

Dad got the blasted thing going. And I was retired in favor of someone who had enough electrical intelligence to check whether or not the speakers were still plugged in.