What happened to the clown?

A conversation with Arne Mannott, artistic director of ON THE EDGE, the international festival for experimental circus in Vienna. A shameless act of excitement for the long-called art of the people.

Eliska Brtnicka / Thin Skin /// © Anna Benhakova

We are talking about the art Napoleon forbid to call “theatre”. The circus was so loved, so popular, that theatre houses made it take place outside of their regular programming times to avoid the competition. The virtuosic artists relegated to the outskirts of the city, the encapsulated spectacle within the fence. The family, the lion and rabbits jumping out of top hats, glitter-birds dangerously swinging across the red and white tent matching the red noses. Sand under the feet and cotton candy rolled around the fingers. An unforgettable smell. Did we grow out of circus?

Five years ago, Arne Mannott founded ON THE EDGE, Vienna’s experimental circus festival. Showcasing contemporary, innovative circus creations, supporting the development of artistic research and consolidating the establishment of circus on the upper shelf among recognized artforms, ON THE EDGE welcomes international performances during two weeks of November every year. Coming from a background as a circus performer, a juggler, Arne created performances for years, crossing his discipline with dance and visual arts, before closing the curtain for himself and focusing on artistic direction and programming. We met on a freezing cold day in November within the welcoming space of Theater am Werk under a huge disco ball, in the 12th district, where the festival takes place.

Art for children?

Mannott also wrote and directed Thinking Circus, a film gathering the experiences and visions around circus from artists and other professionals. In traditional circus, you could witness strength and skill: in other words, technique advanced to the point of mastery. It historically grew as a fascinating seed out of the boredom of the warless cavalry, as triumphantly successful among audiences as it was unwanted and despised by theatre and opera houses, as Mannott points out. Flourishing as an anti-bourgeois artform, traditionally proletarian, for all and everyone, an audience of all generations gathered to find joy on the amphitheatre-like wooden benches. It was pure exhilaration, euphoria. The first attempts to draw wider circles across its boundaries only arose roughly 40 years ago, Mannott underlines.

Odd one out

One might walk into a circus performance expecting many codes, to witness a precise genre with a given repertoire of practices. What can we expect from circus in post-variety show times? Mannott notes that dear old circus techniques (juggling, acrobatics, aerials, clowning, tightrope walking…) are being reinvented, innovated in destabilizing ways – it has never been seen before.

© Phil Armstrong

Entertainment in the form of spectacular illusion had become tagged with question marks. As in other contemporary art practices, Mannott recalls, many artists felt a growing disconnect in the creation of pure distraction from reality. Circus relied on the exhibition of supernatural virtuosity and dangerous undertakings pushing the boundaries of bodily capabilities. Artists from a variety of circus disciplines felt ignited with a will to explore new storytelling. Hollywood under the tent had grown a little sick of itself.

In Thinking Circus, there is a clear-cut statement: “The thing expressed there exactly is, let’s not entertain, you know, let’s show how life is difficult and we are worried, let’s show how much we worry. And that’s a big difference where in traditional circus, we were the solution, we were not the problem. We were showing solutions, like, there’s nothing to worry about, we’re all happy. And it’s ridiculous, both things are ridiculous, so there should be something in between. And I think we are not there yet.”

The supernatural body is a worn out, pale little figure, questioned through and through across the artistic landscape. It begs for new molds. In contemporary and especially experimental circus, Mannott explains, techniques are deepened and deconstructed. Apparatuses and instruments are disassembled and put back together differently, not solely used to show tricks we have all seen before, but also personal, social-political themes. A triple somersault can be seen on Youtube ten times in a row. Technical virtuosity lies on the shores of digitalization, finding itself easily replaced, underwhelming. What more can it do for us, can it tell a new story? Mannott underlines that the time has come for the circus to ask itself these questions. As a newly critically read artform, it quickly grew self-reflective, and is successfully flipping the narrative.

Who’s afraid of circus?

The label “circus” is still taboo. The convoluted connotations which jump up with the word (Mannott laughs, “Oh god, oh god, the red-noses!”) grew a circus-fear for many artistic directors, across festivals and established institutions. The audience might think “frivolous tricks and clowns” and who wants that?

Interestingly, here in Vienna, household-name festivals such as the Wiener Festwochen sometimes will have circus performances on their programs but won’t label them as such. On the contrary, in countries like France and Belgium, Mannott adds, where the tradition is deeply rooted, there is no shame around the name. There is an openness and a set-in culture of circus-going. The director of ON THE EDGE thinks that here in Austria, we are running a little behind, twenty years or so, and are still working on getting people to associate circus to contemporary practices, and thus, see it in a positive light.

Meet you there

As Sacha Guitry said to his son in his famous monologue on the art of being a pantomime: “To those who make us smile we don’t say thank you.” (Deburau, Guitry, 1951) Back when our feet didn’t touch the ground under the widespread spotlight, we sat in magic, wonder, mystery, laughter, surprise, heartbeat-skipping and jaw-clenching drops, a boom here and a bouquet there. We got played well. One of ON THE EDGE’s highlights, Tout/Rien by Alexis Rouvre and the Belgian Modo Grosso Company, an Austrian premiere, gathers maybe half a minute of actual juggling, yet the artist’s background, where his practice is rooted is juggling artistry on the dot. It is circus, it is everything we remember, the emotions feel the same, yet they are masterfully tied to new ropes. It’s still a trick, and you will still feel your spine twist. As we look onto the stage, artists will look back, leave questions, and point out conflicts along the wonder and thrill. The expression of complex concerns in new forms, new languages kneaded without words, will have us lean in closer, and try not to blink.