This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 15, 2013 - Duncan Wall grew up in St. Louis County, went to public schools, played soccer and edited his high school yearbook, then went off to college in Iowa. Aside from showing an early interest in being a writer and a self-confessed lack of interest in circuses, he was not particularly unusual, as he points out in his new book. But he changed.
In “The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present,” Wall describes a study-abroad program in Paris, where he experienced a new kind of circus world. Anybody who has been to a circus in the past 10 years knows that circuses have changed. From the intimate environment of a local Circus Flora to the massive international extravaganzas of Cirque du Soleil, the world of the big top has changed.
For starters, the show often does not even include a tent, much less a big top. Circuses may have their own million-dollar buildings or no ring at all. They may not include a single animal. Those shifts and many more are presented in Duncan Wall’s personal story of how he fell in love with the circus, as an adult.
Wall’s book starts with a study-abroad program during his junior year of college. Attending a smorgasbord of “cultural” experiences in Paris, he happened onto a circus world he had never known. At the end of the program, almost on a whim, he applied for and received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the national circus school just outside of Paris.
“The Ordinary Acrobat” chronicles Wall’s fascinating, somewhat frightening entry into a world of acrobats who climb high wire ladders (“which resembled a series of metal chopsticks strung between two wire fishing lines”) and swing out into the void and let go, people who can juggle five clubs and more but then obsessively cannot stop, or who become clowns, the only performers in the circus who deliberately “fail” and whose function is to be mocked.
Along the way, he interviewed dozens of performers, teachers, fellow students, living legends, and circus historians. He wrote a column for “Spectacle,” the American circus magazine, founded his own clown-theater company and did professional acting. He is now a teacher of circus history and criticism at Canada’s national circus school, École Nationale de Cirque, in Montreal.
“The Ordinary Acrobat” is most original in being simultaneously a personal memoir and a history of the circus. In addition, the book presents a curious picture of the 21st-century world of entertainment in circuses from Paris to Macao and on every continent except Antarctica.
In every case, the success of today’s circus goes far beyond the question of juggling, clowning, and wire-work. The old circus issues were
- who is the audience,
- where does the money come from,
- and does the show center on animals, clowns or trapeze acts.
Those questions continue, but on top of them are complex new issues:
Should the circus be a small family business or a billion-dollar revenue stream? Is it a spectator sport or an interactive art? Sometimes it operates as a government-sponsored cultural model, other times it becomes a new kind of workout that ordinary people can sign up for.
If your vision of a circus is itinerants at a fairgrounds doing old fashioned routines, then just like Duncan Wall, you are in for big surprises. A circus can still be a dazzling eye-opener for little kids eating cotton candy, but it also includes weekend clown workshops available online. And it can be a dark inscrutable story presented in a purpose-built room in a Las Vegas hotel.
Wall is on a seven-city “Circus Now” tour, which comes to St. Louis on March 19. He will host a two-hour program of local performers, who will present aspects of the circus scene, plus a book-signing.
Update: Duncan Wall talks about the circus in a New York Times Sunday Review article.