the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
161 - Folk Circus is Real Showmanship with Jay Gilligan & Captain Frodo
What if the most compelling part of a show isn’t the illusion, but the honesty? We sit down with juggler and creator Jay Gilligan to unpack “folk circus,” a performance style built on concrete skill, visible tech, and a fearless embrace of the room as it truly is. No hidden light booths, no invisible sound cues—just a performer hitting the button, moving the fader, catching the club, and meeting the audience where they are.
Jay traces how constraints—touring by plane, school circuits, gym floors, libraries—shape an aesthetic that prizes minimalism without feeling small. We compare the spark of a set in a sports hall, where it transforms a familiar space, to the way expectations can swallow that same set on a grand stage. Along the way, we talk independence versus big-company sheen, why legacy comes from your own name on the poster, and how real-time presence turns glitches and interruptions into connection instead of cracks.
The conversation dives into juggling as proof—throw, catch, repeat—and follows that concreteness through sound, light, and staging. We explore handling drops and disruptions openly, building trust by acknowledging reality, and crafting family shows that never talk down to kids. There’s a deep kinship here with folk tales and folk music: direct stories, shared moments, and a room that can swing from laughter to hush and back because everyone feels included. Authenticity isn’t a look; it’s when intention, skill, and environment line up so cleanly that the cables become part of the poetry.
If you’re curious about making honest work that travels light and hits deep, this one’s for you. Listen, share with a friend who cares about craft over spectacle, and leave a quick review to help more curious minds find the show.
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Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the Way of the Showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo, and I will be your host and your guide along the way.
SPEAKER_01:And uh today we are uh having another conversation, also from January, and this time the topic is folk Turkist. What is it? Is it a useful term? Is the name something that we need to get uh hung up on? I have found it uh uh important in my thinking about what I do and about uh classifying a kind of uh authentic uh Turkist experience and that. So um since this uh term came from Jay Gilligan, that's uh the man who I am questioning about it. So um if you are a regular listener, or even if you've just tuned in and you don't want to miss out, please click subscribe. And if you've listened to me before, or if at the end of this episode you find that it was valuable to you, you could do me a great free favor of just uh going on to iTunes or somewhere like that and clicking five stars. And if you're feeling extra generous, why not write a review? Say some of the things that it made you feel. Um it would be great. Great to get a few more people, such as yourself, checking this out every week or every time it comes out. This has been a year of a lot of touring for me, and it is always such a great experience when I meet up with someone and they know me from the podcast. I've had that several times this year where I meet people for the first time and they are listeners and fellow travelers. So good. I would very much like to talk about something that you uh developed and named and brought as a concept to me. And I should have just looked at this, but I think it's episode eight or episode six, I don't care, of your first season of Object Episodes, Jay Gilligan and Eric Aubrey, their podcast Object Episodes. If you haven't already listened to it, you should listen to all of it. And it's a it's like a mystery bag. You don't know what's in each episode. You have to actually listen to it. So much so that when I was driving and I asked you which episode is that? Because I have some ideas to some of the stuff that I'm thinking about a folk circus. I wanted to revisit it again, and there's nothing on each episode. So it really is a mystery episode. You go in there and you don't know what you're getting. But from me, what I'm what's true is that it's always of value. The things that you guys talk about have been thought about so much. Yeah. Like the definition of juggling that Eric talked about and all that. So it's absolutely worth thinking about. And it doesn't matter whether you're interested in juggling or not, because if you're interested, I mean, it helps because you guys are specifically talking about it. But if you watch Mystier, not just to look at the show, but to see the deeper significance and see the depth of it, then and see how it relates to normal life. If you can look at it like that, if you can look at the way of the showman, the life that I live as a performer, and see lessons from everyday life in what we do, and I learn about life by being a showman, that I know that what I do is only a microcosmos of the macrocosmos. If we can look at what you guys are saying, there's lessons to be learned about any kind of showmanship or life itself by listening to you guys. So that's my review of your uh seasons so far.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we should be less conceptual with our episode titles and then we would know what we were talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Use AI to make a synopsis of what's in the episode and that's what so you can Google it and find it. But be that as it may, in episode six or episode eight, I don't care. You choose. We've just watched Danny Dotees, and this is this language. It's your life. It doesn't matter. It's real life, it doesn't matter. It's your life. It's your life. Um anyway, what you talk about there is the concept of folk circus. And recently, in lead up to me coming here, meeting you, I asked you, can you just summarize up what it was that you originally meant? But then what you instead grabbed onto was where to take this concept. But what I wanted is to, as always, you can say, you need to go to this other uh type in HTTP backslash backslash object lessons, but people never do this. So I wanted to put on the way of the showman an accessible uh uh what Folk Circus actually is. Okay. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I don't even I don't even remember what I I said to you recently about it when you asked me when I was in when I was in Rotterdam. So No.
SPEAKER_01:And to be honest, I don't remember the full details of that either. Yeah. But it wasn't that original concept because the original concept more or less seemed to me like it coalesced in your mind from what had happened before or whatever. But what made it into a thing was a season of shows that you and Eric and other people, you can expand, that where you went to Iceland and you did some specific shows around at highly unusual performance basis. And that this, if nothing else, was what you used there as the thing to picture what it is. And we will look into the experience and stuff that the way that I think about things. But first, it'd like just starting with that practical practical thing of what you think folk circus is.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so I can I can try to speak that out. And and just to say that that this folk circus, at least the name, which we'll get into later, that's something that that Eric brought to me and this this title folk circus. Uh, and it was a way, I think, to to concretize um this type of performing that we've just been doing for many years. And maybe it was in our podcast where where Eric used uh this Iceland, these these tours we did in Iceland as a way to speak about the work. But I think in general, it it's just this type of performing we do in our lives in general, not specific to Iceland. And that comes from a couple of places, which is, for example, just the types of markets of shows that we play. It kind of comes, it comes down to where we live. So we live in Sweden and and uh the track so that means a couple of things. Either you perform locally in Sweden, which means that the Swedish performing market is a certain way, uh, for the most part, very specifically for circus and juggling sort of culture. The performing in Sweden is for it's for schools, it's for kids in schools. And there's not really a lot of circus shows for the general public, which means then if you're gonna do circus shows for the general public, you might have to leave Sweden. And then it means if you're leaving Sweden, how are you traveling? Are you traveling by car or by airplane? Frequently it's by airplane. And then if you're traveling by plane, well, then you have to fit your show in a suitcase. So it's coming down to these kind of very, in one way, mundane or non-artistic or you know, not not emotional or whatever, like just very practical details. It's like, well, I'm gonna go perform for general public. Can't really perform that like that in Sweden, so we're gonna perform somewhere else. It means I have to put my show in a suitcase, which starts to limit perhaps the the physical things at least you can you can use. And that leads to a certain style of performing. But also I think it's um we we also I mean, Eric more than me, but Eric has always been a real vocal champion of being an independent artist, which I also can really value and respect a lot of his ideas around that, such as that, you know, maybe when you're younger, starting off, it's attractive to go work for a big company. Um, first of all, it's a lot of maybe I mean, uh the show, the venues are big and there's a lot of audience members. And I mean, if you go work for Cirque du Soleil or whatever, or go work for a bigger company, you know, it's very attractive. You're like, oh, there's lots of performances, and we travel and they take care of you, and there's producers and there's there's physical therapists, and there's catering and like a lot of perks. And then you get a you get a stable paycheck, and you get to keep doing your training, and you keep get to keep doing your own physical maybe you know, preparations, and then you go do your show and everything else is kind of taken care of. But you know, Eric has pointed out to me uh when I was younger, where he said, Yeah, that's a that's definitely a great option, right? There's there's a like we both me and you specifically have done those contracts.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:But at the same time, at the when those contracts are done in terms of that specific work, you you're left with nothing except for money and perhaps a broken body to be more extreme.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And in the way that you are literally giving your body and your physical time and work and life to a bigger company in their name, literally under their name, their brand and everything. And so he's always been a champion of like, hey, let's just stop and take a moment and take a step back and say, well, yeah, that big shiny contract in the big city in Vegas is really attractive. But at the same time, what do you really get out of it at the end of the day? And what are you left with? And what more importantly, are you trying to build with your work? Are you trying to create your own? I don't say legacy in terms of necessarily an artistic legacy, which could also be super valid, but even just on a more practical level of a business of like, well, I'm gonna do these little scrappy shows in parks around Norway or something, and I'm not gonna get the big Cirque du Soleil money. But at the end of the day, it's my show, it's my name, it's my brand. And after I do that season of shows, I'm still gonna be some something that I can potentially sell further on. Whereas like if I go work for uh Cirque du Soleil in Vegas and I'm done, and then I start calling people and like, hey, you should hire me. Oh, okay, what do you do? Well, I was in Cirque du Soleil in Vegas. Great, but what do you do? Well, I have this new show. Well, I've never seen it. Where has where has it played before? Well, it hasn't, you know. So there's there's the whole business aspect of huge part of my life.
SPEAKER_01:So when you're 12 years with Schwary Lakes with uh Circus Os before that, right, and then back doing my thing in Norway in a country that I had not actually really performed in before. So now you go, how do I it start to put my name on the poster? Yeah, and then people see that name and they go, Oh, it's Captain Furdo, it is uh uh Indiana Jones, a new Indiana Jones movie. Oh, it's Bob Dylan. I'm gonna have to go and see that because I know that name and I expect certain things. That I it's the stuff that I want. So I've been dealing with this a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean from a business side, it's good you work for Cirque du Soleil. It helps you, it gets your foot in the door, but it doesn't replace just an automatic, like, oh, here's your golden ticket to go do your own.
SPEAKER_01:And especially even if you work in a duo or because circle sole is the only time when I have been able to in Norway to go, oh yeah, I worked for Matt Apple and Cirque du Soleil. Oh, that so so but even then there are people who don't know what Cirta Soleil is. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. So that you're talking to the general folk circus booker, somebody who has a badminton club and once heard that you do some tennis stuff and you can come and do it at our badminton gathering.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um but those people then I go, yeah, but I work well, I work for Selta Soleil, or I have worked 12 years for Las Ferrey. We reinvented cabaret and brought that back, blah, blah, blah, whatever we might think of ourselves. Yeah. And they go, never heard of those. I might as well have said abalabus. And then they go, Yeah, now tell me what you actually do. Great things, amazing, wonderful. And they I you've still not said anything because they only know you for this encounter which just happened on the phone or whatever. So, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean, even if you work in a duo and you were that person that was in that theater last week, and let's say you you you go out, strike out on your own, and you have your own show now and you call that theater back, it's good to have your foot in the door. Hey, remember me? I just saw you last week. Well, I got this new solo show. And they're just like, well, that's not validated yet. Even you were just doing, you know, an anyway. You did your duo. So this idea about doing an independent, being an independent artist also, I think, really affected uh my work with Eric and my solo work over the years, where it's at a certain scale, that's what I'm trying to get to. So if you're working with Circuit Soleil, you can have the multimillion dollar stage set design and you can come, you can pop up out of the floor, and your your equipment can fly down from the ceiling and magically appear on stage. But well, if you're not working for Circuit Soleil and you're working on your own, maybe your show is at a different type of scale. And that scale of work that I've found um again comes back to, for example, flying on an airplane with suitcases. You're at a certain scale, the work is a certain dimension. And so that's one part of it of the starting point. There's another entry point into it that's equally important, and then they kind of meet into this performance style. And that is um ever since I was even uh well, eight years old doing my first show, or or and then of course developing into the teenage years and then into a young adult, and the work develops as well. For me as a performer, the focus of the work has always been on the content of the show itself, in terms of I am that hobbyist who turned into a performer, but it was really driven by the the the technique and that journey of learning a technique. And there's something for me about juggling that attracts me to that discipline where it's very concrete. I throw the ball and I catch it or I don't. And it's not ambiguous. Um, there's a real yeah, there's a real proof. It's like, well, I threw the ball and now it lands back in my hand, and therefore I've done the thing. And therefore I am juggler.
SPEAKER_01:Therefore I am a juggler, yeah. And they go, how do we know? Right. Then you go out, you do a fireball cascade. Catch it on the neck, and then you go, Yep. And they but this is also really important to my with with the truth of skill or the truth of tricks. It's that then afterwards you are undeniably a juggler.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that's what I mean. Yeah, so it's not ambiguous.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's not ambiguous that you come out and go, ah, I am an explorer on a North Pole. What is this? Five white balls, snowballs, I believe. Let me just see if they float in the air and then you juggle them or whatever. Like then there is a level of pretense, which is not impossible in a folk circus, but that what you talk about the pure purest kind of thing is I am juggler. Once you juggle, now I am an okay.
SPEAKER_04:Well, no, I mean I mean just just on a technical level, I think that's what I'm attracted to with juggling. That for me it's very it's a very straightforward activity. I'm not even talking about performing, just talking about in my life. It's it's just like it's it's a it's a pretty clear-cut activity, like five-ball juggling. I throw the five balls up, I catch them in my hands. It's pretty clear that I'm doing the thing. Whereas I mean other activities are more interpretive, like dance, for example, yeah, which I didn't find until I was 18 or whatever. And it's just like just uh as you know, because me and you have talked about it a lot, uh, where it's like the first time I saw dance, I'm just like, this is stupid. I don't understand it because what are they doing? They're waving their arms around and kind of spinning around and going low to the floor. For me, there wasn't a clear, concrete utility of the actions because I didn't understand yet about emotional expression or artistic expression or composition or all the things that that dance is doing that's not about this dry technical, like I got it that ballet dancers would jump high or do these amazing splits or they're very flexible. But so that's from a technical observation.
SPEAKER_01:But all the stuff in the middle where they were just uh expressing with their arms, you just go, oh, this is filler. I didn't get it. When does the loud uh high jump come again? Is that I understand? No, exactly. Uh which was the point, which is not the point of the art form. Not the point of that art.
SPEAKER_04:And so, but I but I was a juggler, and so like fair enough. I mean, juggling wasn't and still many times isn't considered an art form. So I was coming from a a place of not being in not looking at as as the arts, the performing arts or whatever. Um and so but what what attracted me to juggling in the first place is that it's very it's very practical. And what I like about juggling is I go on for so then when I translated that into performance, um, I go on stage and I catch the ball, and I'm not pretending with the audience that I don't catch the ball or that the ball is a is a is a yeah, a snow, a snowball or uh, I don't know, uh whatever uh interpretive thing that that I'm not asking the audience to suspend their disbelief. I am an Easter bunny and these weird-looking hair are my Easter eggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. So it's like, and so then when I got more and more uh deeper into my process and more mature with my performing, I started to understand that for me personally, and this is not judging anybody else who's not doing this thing, I'm just talking about myself.
SPEAKER_01:I'm trying to define eventually what folk circus as as a thing is that as something so that we can talk about a particular style of so for me for me personally, um this concreteness of the activity uh was the was the valuable thing.
SPEAKER_04:And there there's a there's a there's a there's another sort of uh dimension that I could have gotten into, which was that I myself as the performer or my personality or my character or me was the more maybe interesting or more riveting or captivating thing. But for me, it was always about the objects and the technique and the juggling. Um that's just how I thought about it in my own head, right? And so that's why I like the concreteness of the juggling, that that was what I was really trying to share with the audience, as opposed to maybe more interpretive aspects of my personality or the largeness of my character as opposed and having the juggling be a vehicle for that. I was really trying to be a vehicle for the juggling. Juggling is concrete, and then following that kind of uh observation, then all the other elements of the performance also became concrete. And then that then now we're getting into this origin of folk circus because that means that um if there's an electrical cord on the floor, uh I don't pretend there's not one, and I don't pretend that there's uh that it's nighttime when it's day or uh we are where we are, and what's happening is really happening, and kind of all the design choices of production design, which is like set design, costume, makeup, sound design, special effects like fog or fire or lightning or whatever, they all follow uh this this idea that that is concrete and what's really happening is happening, and there's no quote unquote hand of God uh that's that's uh yeah, that that that that's facilitating the changes on stage. So, for example, if you go to see a traditional theater show, um, Romeo and Juliet, and then the the performers come on stage, and then maybe it's the morning time, so then suddenly there's a light that appears from the side of the stage. Well, that person who's making that action happen is hidden in the back behind the whole audience in the tech booth. It's the lighting technician, you know, moving the slider, the fader on the control board or something. And the audience doesn't see that gesture, that action of moving the button, but they do see this light fade up. But because They're in this uh this environment this theatrical environment experience and they know how to uh consume or or experience a theatrical show. They take it, it's the suspension of disbelief, and they go, Oh yeah, now we're gonna pretend it's morning and and we're gonna feel that emotion of what that can mean with the characters and their lines, what they're saying, and the characters of who they're inhabiting, and we're diving into this play. And so for me, one idea of keeping juggling to be concrete was that all, for example, all of the technical aspects of a show, which is lighting, which I need as a juggler because they need to see me and I need to see what I'm doing, and the audience needs to see me. And and there needs and I use music a lot, so there should be some technical aspect of playing music or you know, technology to facilitate that. I've tried to move all of those uh those elements on stage where the audience actually sees the gesture. That's why in Reflex I have this little grid of buttons that Brian Crabtree made me. And when I push a button, then the song starts. And I, as the artist, push the button and you see me do it. And it's you don't understand what the box of buttons is, you don't understand the circuitry behind it. We're not delving into what is electricity, but there's a clear physical gesture, which for me is directly related to the juggling of the objects as well. Like I press the button, you hear the song, I throw the club, I catch the club. And same thing for the light design too. It's like many times if I do a solo show, I'll move a light board on stage, and then I can move the faders myself. And there's no hand of God magically making it morning time now. It's like you see me do it myself.
SPEAKER_01:So it's an strong emphasis of concreteness, and but it's also it's instigated what I feel like that it comes from the general kind of gigs that you did growing up in Ohio, and as you started to go around, wanting to be an independent artist and doing all the stuff yourself, where maybe the wage that you got for doing that gig, if you had to share it with a sound designer or a sound technician and a lighting uh and come in there early enough for them to set up the lights, then the this show could not actually happen because the budget was only a small amount. Thank you, yeah, exactly. So it's so it's also a particular kind of budget. Because this also is what we talked about when you describe what you describe now, this is what happened with me and my father when we did shows.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It was a uh it's called gymnasium in Norwegian, but like which is the the gym sports hall, like the school.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:And it was the local football club that had hired this place or whatever, and then you went there, or it was a business, uh like a company that had their Christmas tree, Christmas party uh for kids and stuff, and we would come and we would do our thing, or the Freemasons or whoever it was that booked us to come and do some sort of show for them. And we did a half-hour magic show, and I came out and did so. It was very concrete. They wanted some entertainment, they wanted at that point, it was called the magician, even though I opened with juggling and ended with a straitjacket escape. The everything in the middle there was magic.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And we did both together and whatever. And um uh when we were doing that, it was very like uh Eva Hecksha says, it was very clear and concise and necessary. They were having a Christmas uh party for the families. Now they had finished eating, and to make this a special event that was more than just coming in, eating some food, and then having everybody getting a mandarin from somebody dressed up as Santa. They wanted something extraordinary to happen so that everyone would be the the experience would be different than other times. And that's where we would come in. And and the concreteness of it was not that they had any specific idea, but they wanted some kind of magic to happen. They wanted it to be a fun, exciting kind of thing. So, and so that that's that feels the same as you guys. And we had a music box on wheels that dad had made with speakers in built into it, and a tape player on the back, an actual tape player from the car, with which had an amplifier in it at the top of it. Genius. Couple of cassettes at the back with my opening track, the general track that was underneath the thing, followed my opening track, and then there was only one tape change where I taped it and played played in the belly of the Steel Beast from Indiana Jones and uh Last Crusade, that I became the music that I did my straitjacket to. So I would put that on, and then we would go into that act in the end. So the music comes from here. There was actually so that my dad had a microphone around his neck, uh, small mic microphone, a headset thing, and so that you knew that it was coming from the box. You knew that because there was a black lead coming out between behind the tails going up to the thing. So you could follow the lead to where it was. It was very concrete. The box was rolled in, the magic box with all the stuff in it, was built on top of that. So everything is concrete, even though it's totally strange. Then we open it up, and here are some flowers, and they're made out of feathers. Those are not flowers, but so everything is artificial and weird and strange, and you guys are juggling, and it's not something they can fully get their hand on, but it's still concrete. You throw up and you catch. I'm gonna do something impossible. Is it impossible? Yes, it is. Did it still happen? Yes, it did. That's that's magic.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's funny you say that. I mean, I think the the performance style, it's very I guess one word could be in English is pragmatic. Yeah, that's it, too. It follows the needs of the situation. And so, for example, we wouldn't have uh maybe um curtains on the side. Like in a normal theater stage, you have the cur the wings, the curtains on the side. And then when you're done with your straight straight jacket escape, you go to the wing, you you leave the scene so they don't see you. First of all, from just the logistics of the opportunities to perform, and then also the artistic intent behind my attraction and juggling of it being a concrete activity and not a some sort of fantasy or other maybe more character-driven uh perform style of performance. That that everything was really happening for real in this moment now, in this space, in this time with these people.
SPEAKER_01:Um Yeah, acknowledging the reality of the situation. So for example, you guys are at the Christmas party. I am standing here performing for you now. That's all real. And then I am the magician, and these are my magic tricks. I am the juggler, and these are my soul.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I'm not gonna and so right, so I'm not gonna pretend that you don't see me now. No. That I'm gonna run to the the I'm gonna have a curtain that I stand by.
SPEAKER_01:Someone stands, and here is the show, and in walks you with your equipment somehow. Like I don't we there was not a chance for us to go in, set up all of our stuff, and everyone's looking at us, and then we go out afterwards. No, exactly. And then they go, here they are, and then we come in and pretend we haven't been there yet. Exactly. So it's when I come in. You're confronting the reality. Yeah. Yeah. So they say our name, and then we go, Oh, here we come, and dad turns on the music and he's speaking as we go in, and we might have to get some kids to move to get on, but this is all now part of the show. As soon as they've said our name, the show has started, and all those things that are not just doing the tricks, but how we get onto the stage and the jokes that we do to make the kids move or or whatever, all of that is the is part of the performance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So this is the thing. No, that's a good way to say it. That's a good way to say it. The logistics are incorporated into the performance.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think that a part of the reason why I think that's important is because that anyone that thinks that they aren't are uh in a sense either they're deluding themselves that it's not a part of the show, or it is that they uh that the audience also accepts, like this thing that we have talked about a lot, like uh somebody says on, hey, they calm, but that person that comes in who's gonna do the area like now, for instance. That's the great example. They turn the lights off and everyone can see you walk in the shadow. It's not totally dark. No. So they've they've walk in, they go down. Not everybody pretends we couldn't see it, or we just that hasn't started yet. Because they start their music from their apparatus. But in real life, that can't happen. That they don't know that you're there, and then the apparatus is not a good thing.
SPEAKER_04:Well, many times even on that example, the the aerialist performer is a great example of normally they have to climb up to the trapeze or to the tissue. Climb up the right. Climb up, right?
SPEAKER_01:And that whole time Yeah, they might start their act exactly hanging.
SPEAKER_04:Many times they do, right?
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_04:And that whole climb up, the demeanor of the artist who's climbing up to the to start that starting position is this isn't important. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So they climb up for themselves, like you talked about in the last one where you had to do six attempts at running off across the stage before the guy goes, This is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a caricature of somebody running. Yeah, yeah. You are actually running. Stop acting. Yes. Just run. Yeah. And then this person might, in the worst case, he comes in and he climbs up to the rope, and you and it's that thing that we talked about with the with with the few in in in a very stylized performance of uh whether it is like you're in a circle show and all of a sudden some something terrible happens in the audience and they start the show and everybody goes from a stylized way of behaving and moving to go and they become their real self and go, Oh, somebody is is fainted. Is it all oh no, everything is okay? And then they go, show back on again, and all of a sudden everybody puts on a funny face.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, but even but even worse of that example, which I think you've seen, I've seen it a couple times, unfortunately, is you you are in a show that has a heightened uh reality somehow, right? And there is uh maybe a medical emergency in the audience, and the performers on stage don't know that yet. And that's the that's even that's maybe the worst feeling in the audience, right? Because you know there is a real life reality here, and it you feel so bad in one way that the performers on stage they they're not engaged with that reality because that's also just not the level where the show's at, right?
SPEAKER_01:They're not paying attention to what's going on in the world. It's so bad. And it takes in those two or three minutes there, yeah, where the whole audience's attention is going over onto this. And the person on stage is still being the color blue or oh, I'm dancing and I'm doing those. Or or like it's oh Romeo, thou art thy thing, and you're you're saying words from 500 years ago, well that's not five hundred, but hundreds of years ago, doing the thing and pretending that you're some lady from somewhere, and then but there is a real person out here suffering.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you if you're not acknowledging it, and then when they stop, it's a hard stop. So it's it's it's it's a hard situation to be in. And this is not uh because I love watching the circ shows. So it's not to say that, and I love the come in and do the full art house circus on there. I I watch and love those things and I love the those aspects too, and theatre. Watch it and get moved. So it's more, this is just it's not to cast a value on anything, but it's to try and name, and which I think the folk circus has for me, is become the shorthand for that kind of experience that we go around where in I didn't show you on the on the on the I filmed the first proper show that me and my family did.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:My wife and my daughter, and we're doing the show, and we're about, and I'm trying to move into this next routine, but there's I become aware, and you can see it in the video, I become aware that there's a child who's yelling for their dad. Papa, and and I tune in towards it whilst I'm speaking, and then I stop speaking, and I let the child say, because I see that there's like a three or four-year-old child, four or five-year-old child, standing second row, now standing up, facing back towards the audience in a room where there was 80 chairs put out, but 250 people came. So it the this gymnasium school sports hall is completely full. People are hanging in the wooden beams on the wall, like the ribs. I don't know what they're called in English, but they're hanging up there and watching. It's an awesome atmosphere.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And the child is yelling for their dad, which is at row 12 at the back, and I can't see it. So I see that this kid has a half-eaten muffin in their hand.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm doing a show, hear that some someone is calling here, and this is the kind of call that happened with my child when when something needs to be dealt with. I see the child has halfway eating their muffin, and instead of just putting it down, they need their father to take this muffin and take it away, like only children do. Exactly. And so I see that and I say, Oh, you finished eating your muffin. And I walk over, and for a moment the whole audience is like, what happened to you talking about magic is like this and that, because I'm just about to go into a magic trick. And then I just drop that and I go over and they go, Oh, and then I say, Oh, you're almost finished eating your muffin, and you want your dad to take it. I can take this paper and take it here. And then I look at them and they're a little bit uh they they find this a little bit surprising, and all of a sudden I'm talking directly to this child. And to make sure that they don't cry, I am placating a woman like, oh, see, I I take the muffin, because there's half of it left, I place it here on my amplifier, standing right in front of you. So when you want it, or after the show, you can take it or and then you can give it to your dad afterwards. Sounds good. The kid got nods their head and uh go, you can just sit down. Kid sits down, then I start and I continue to go. And and I get a laugh, and I get, I can't remember exactly, I can look at the video. But this moment now is real. And and the the parents, and because this is a family show, they all recognize the situation, and I was aware enough to stop my thing. It wasn't a medical emergency, but for the child, it was an unsolvable situation. I have half-eaten muffin. What the flip am I gonna do with it?
SPEAKER_04:Sure, but also you're in that situation where if you were in a Circus Philet show, they could just crank the music up louder and put the lights on bright. Like you would have other production elements to maybe deal with that situation, right? To to to to to kind of be like we're doubling down on being in this bubble of non-reality or whatever, but this is a good weapon.
SPEAKER_01:No child just shouts and eventually the dad would put it.
SPEAKER_04:But in the style of performing that we are talking about now, it's I think it's impossible to not confront the reality on that level of having to engage in the moment something that's happening like that, in terms of um dividing people's attention and pulling focus from the show. Because we don't have the stage lift to come up to shock the child into being quiet or just the the the big heavy metal guitar player rock drums, something that will just drown out a crying child, right?
SPEAKER_01:So But it is that and I am here, you are here. This is the truth of this situation. Yeah, yeah. It's a crazy. You have come here and you're expecting something. So I am here to give you something. You you want sort of what I'm giving you, but you don't know what it is, and I'm going to do that. So I am we're sharing this actual reality of here and now, and I see you all. So when you guys say something, I need to respond if it's if it's not an a dick thing to say or whatever. Yeah, but here there's a real situation. I respond to the situation, and as a result, everybody in the room goes, Oh, we can relax. Well, you're exactly whatever happens now is all okay. It doesn't matter what happens, and those things that happen when the person walked into that show that you saw with me, somebody came in late or whatever, and I can't remember. But I made some comment and everybody laughed, and it was a good situation.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it's because it's the performer thing of normally when a performer is on stage, not normally, but sometimes in certain uh genres of performing, um everybody in every in everybody in the audience can see the thing that's happening, but the performer doesn't acknowledge it. And once you acknowledge what everybody can see, there's the release of tension and and like this. And if somebody's trying to hold the serious character, you know, to break a character out of a solo soliloquy from Hamlet, oh, are you okay? You know, that would that would kind of suck in one way artistically, because you break the illusion, but on the other way, it relieves the tension that builds up in the room between there's a crying child and then there's a performer on stage, and we're str we get stressed as humans.
SPEAKER_01:There's discord now because the reality of the situation is that there's a crying child in the front row or somebody shouting because they have a half-eaten muffin. And everybody eventually on and pretend that that's not happening, they know that I can hear it because the child is standing two meters away from me and it's standing up facing the wrong way, and it's like, okay, so and by acknowledging that, yeah, it makes them relaxed. Because the of course then there are cases where people go, Oh, thou shalt not cry, child, come and comfort this child here. And anyway, to be or not to be, shall be. And then that might bring down the house because you respond you responded in character. And then you acknowledge I I don't know if that's the same.
SPEAKER_04:Well, no, no, no, but it but what you're getting, I mean, as a juggler, uh, I guess I drop sometimes. How do you deal with that? Do you think that's a good one? And that's the same thing as the yeah, right. So that's the same thing as the crying child, right? Like you get into that situation of like, well, everybody saw you, everybody saw you drop. And if you kind of pretend you didn't, I know every every situation is unique, and of course you can just pick it up and keep going again, but you have to at least pick it up. And if you the you know, if you just let it lay there on the ground and you kind of keep going and pretend that it did it's not there, what you're doing is you're not confronting the the the reality of the situation. And the the the basically the side effect of that for me is the audience gets taken out of the moment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And what you want them to do is just be absorbed in the moment and in the flow of things and not distracted by other outside thoughts other than the experience that you're sharing together. And so once you incorporate the current the crying child, it's suddenly, and and I pick up the ball, or of course, if you're a comedy juggler, is doing a street show, you can make a joke about the drop, you acknowledge it in whatever way. You've suddenly incorporated reality into that flow and they cannot be distracted, and still things can happen that are real that are going to happen, but they can still not be distracted because it's incorporated into the moment.
SPEAKER_01:And the next time something then happens, if somebody if their first child is calling for their parent and then I solve it like that. They are you put them at ease because I am the conductor controlling experience. You say it's okay. And I say, Yeah, I have the stuff that I have prepared and I'm going to show it to you. But if I am interrupted by reality, we will take time to solve those things and then I will continue. I will not lose.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So that gives, I think, in those in those situations, those kinds of shows, it kind of builds a trust with the performer where they are not afraid to give themselves over to you because you are a master of the real situation, not just with what you'd pre-prepared. Exactly. But you do the show, and then halfway through the music stops, and then you just continues and pretend that the music is playing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you do your choreography or whatever. I'm not saying that's the ultimate ever for always wrong, but yeah, whenever something happens and then you pretend that it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's so distracting.
SPEAKER_01:It's then you go, oh, uh he is not here in reality.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then you go, oh, but often you can also go, I understand, I will overlook that, and we will continue. Well, that's what I mean. I'm suspending my disbelief. But it's hard given it. Yeah. It it it you're asking more of them. Yes. And I then often say to people when I go when we're making a show, where they go, okay, I want to be on the North Pole and want to be the Easter bunny and want to be this, and you go, okay, well, you can only ever ask the audience to suspend their leaf a day. The disbelief onto a certain level. Yeah. Let's say you can they suspend it up till five. Yeah. Or whatever. And if you're gonna before you start come out and say that I'm the Easter bunny and these are my eggs and whatever, then you already ask them before you have proven yourself to them. You're asking them to start at three, and you're asking more and more of the audience. And what I want is that I want to come in and I want to talk to them. And I often do that, ask the kids, um like ask them goes, how are you guys going? And ask them there and any questions. And when I was doing these school shows, they started doing this. And after a while, when we've been talking and everyone has been sharing and we've gone, and then I go, okay, well, it's really nice to meet everyone here, but um, I have a show that I'm gonna do. Are you guys really want to see some of the cool stuff that I have? And then it's almost like an afterthought. Because I'm going, the main thing that I am doing here now is being here with you. And so later on in the show, when I'm gonna play the saw and I go, who here plays music or whatever? And then somebody comes out now, I need to stagger them to go, oh, oh, stop, stop, stop. We can't talk about everybody, but like lots of people play who plays an instrument? That's great. Okay, I have an instrument that is unusual.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And and then you so you have that thing where I have the start of the relationship is established. I am here, yeah, and whatever happens and whatever somebody says, I include. And then later on, when I start putting the hand up, I go, we're gonna take the questions in the end. So put your hands down, I'm gonna ask you questions, but it's gonna be later. So save your question. Okay. That's cool. So and then about us being together first. Yeah. Then go. And if you do that first, then everybody will will join in.
SPEAKER_04:And if some yeah, so they're and they're they're relieved because the the relationship was established, the game is more clear, and they're not confused.
SPEAKER_01:The kids don't care as much as the adults do, because the adults now go is this is now all of a sudden become something that is invulnerable. It's bulletproof. This whatever happens in the show, this guy will do it. And I just had this recently. Performing at a place in in um in uh my hometown. It's a place where you know it's you can get food, it's an after-school thing, and it's for aimed at people who uh need a little bit of support in society or whatever. And he had me there doing magic at the at this uh event uh several times. This is the third time we were there. And when I came there that time, in the meantime, between my second and third performance at this place, he had had another magician there. And uh he said it was a very difficult experience. Wow. This guy came and he had some props and some things that he needed to set on the stage beforehand. Yeah. A table that could levitate, but that must not be touched by any child. And these are children who are ready to pounce. And he had already commented previously after I did the first show. It's amazing the contact and control and res uh r like resonance that you have with these kids. He'd said that, so he knew that. But then after that, last time he goes, there was a moment there where he got into an argument with one of the mums of the child, because the child had gotten on stage and he said, You cannot touch these things, but because of the antagonistic kind of thing that you uh that we've talked about, the do one more that people do to sort of start trying to fuck with you or whatever, like as a juggler, and they go, do one more, do one more, and then it's not a good situation for anybody, or whatever. But if you get that antagonism, I can do the magic, and this is totally crazy, and you must not do and you and then the kids do what kids do. They of course they're a gang of kids, so they're like going, Oh, we found something. Yeah, I think weak spot. Attack, attack. Yes, and then you go, Oh, it's a weak spot. Or like you you make the the nicknames for someone and they go, Oh, I see they make seven nicknames and nobody s none of them sticks, and then they call one nickname and you go, I don't like that, and this is your name now for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And so they and he said he got into an argument with a with a mum and uh of the child, and it was like he goes for a moment. I thought he was just gonna have a spec attack or whatever. Like so, so why am I saying this? Well, yeah, just that thing of going this thing that we're talking about, of acknowledging the kids and being present and taking the time to do it and being invulnerable in that way that that I never say to them, don't come onto the stage or in that way. But I might say it at a certain point, but I don't set rules or in an in an antagonistic way. I go, oh, to make this happen, we're gonna do this, oh, oh, just move your legs a little bit there. Or I have another way of dealing with the reality of the situation that that allows, and that's what the Folk Circus thing I believe does. Even though what I've now saying, maybe it doesn't become quite clear. But me meeting the kids and talking to them first, and the magic props are all it has not nothing, it doesn't matter. Because we're now here, and I prove myself as somebody who's there caring, and I'm talking to them and asking them little things and actually having little conversations, that's totally different than okay, and here is the name, and then you walk out, which works on the stage, but it doesn't work in the back corner of that that youth club. There that you come out and you have the music playing, you come out, you have your hand in a funny position, and all of a sudden there's gross. And like that stuff doesn't work in those situations. That dude, and I don't confront his name, yeah. But that dude might kill it in the theater in town if he was there to do a show in uh in the actual theater and this guy had come out to do a thing, charity thing for these guys, then it's a totally different thing. But uh this is what I believe is the power of the folk circus. You acknowledge the situation, and in in in one way, because this is a lead that goes across the stage, if you kick that then it then something happens and you need to go and fix it, you don't have to justify anything because you you can go, I just kick the lead. This music is awesome, we're gonna play it now, but I'm just gonna have a quick time fixing it.
SPEAKER_04:There's no so that's that's a great example. So, like you're saying, this this magician was maybe in the wrong context for the material they were doing.
SPEAKER_01:That space needed folk circles and he did stage circles, uh stage magic.
SPEAKER_04:I almost uh got in a fight with a producer over a black cloth because we were hired to do a show uh with me and Eric and some other people, and I had all my electronics on a table. I was playing a live soundtrack and just wires and cables everywhere. I was like, oh, I just need a table on stage to put all my gear on, and then I think it looks cool with all the wires hanging off and kind of you know my aesthetic. It's just this kind of mad laboratory, kind of just stuff everywhere, kind of a mess and analog-looking equipment with like the MOOC synthesizer with a million leads. Yeah, so and so then but then but then the producer comes and says, Oh, we really need to cover that uh table with a black cloth. And I was like, No, why? Why would we why why do we have to pretend this table is not here? No, but it looks bad. And in that comment, I get it, man. I I mean I get the the cultural tradition, the weight behind that comment. It looks bad because we've been taught in one way it's the fantasy of theater. In theater, things are clean and it's it's the black curtains in the back wall. The back wall isn't brick, it's a black curtain. We need a neutral space on which to paint our picture, right? And anything in the space that colors it, it will taint it, will tarnish it. Sorry. But uh for me, I think it's beautiful. I think the but it's the beauty of the juggling too, that you throw the ball and catch it. I think that's beautiful. So for me, you see the mess. I don't see a mess in a negative sense. I just see the confrontation of reality of like I am here and now these things are actually here. This is how they actually work. I need electricity, it's a table, it's brown, and that's not a bad thing. I totally get it. It can be bad in a different context. That's why I thought that was great, this example of this magician maybe in the wrong context. Yeah. If I roll that up to the opera house or the, you know, I don't know, whatever venue that's that's velvet curtains and everything, and I have my scrappy little table, I get it. The audience can be distracted by that just as much as they can be distracted by a crying child. There's a subtle unconscious cue there. Oh, that that table, it's kind of broken and brown. And I'm over here juggling, and maybe it's not a conscious thing in their mind that they're obsessed with this stupid table, but maybe unconsciously there are these cues inside of them that that that they're just like uh that they get a feeling or something, or that it again, it takes them out of the show, or they're look I don't know. They're looking in the wrong place. Yeah. It's about and so that's right.
SPEAKER_01:So just like this guy in the in the uh this guy in a folk circus setting came with a stage mad uh like stage magic, stage circus. That needed a stage. That needed a stage to be amazing. But if I would have taken that specific folk circus show and put it on that stage where he performed later that night, I would not have gotten the standing ovation that he might have gotten.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Uh so if I was there, I needed to do something else and adapt to the reality of that situation, which is like we've talked about before, where we have a folk circus show and then they go, we want to do that, which we saw in the in the gym here. We want that on our stage. It's a culture house with black curtains and all of that, and then you go on, and you cannot reproduce in that situation very easily that folk circus feeling, because all the sitting in a road, and you have to have kids and family sitting on a floor in front to try to get it back to that thing. But folk circus is not always the best thing everywhere.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I have a couple of ideas about that. Okay. Uh like specifically, um, very technically. And uh but before before I break that down, I there's one thing that came to mind what we were just talking about, is I went to Scoop Fest one year when I was working in Absinthe in Vegas, Matt Donnelly, uh, Paul Mattingley, and Jacob's, you know, this scoop podcast of a Scoop Fest. And it was in some warehouse uh downtown or something in Vegas, and it was like midnight, and Brett Louder Milk got up to do his sword swallowing act, and he had a little self-effacing kind of throwaway one-liner that he had been you I mean, I don't I didn't talk to him about this, but I'm sure he's like waiting to go on stage. And it was like, you know, palette, like shipping pallets for a stage, like wooden shipping pallets that were broken and ramshackle kind of backdrop that was like six feet high and drooping. I mean, really, this aesthetic of like a downtown dirty warehouse show, Midnight Energy. It was cool. And he comes on stage and kind of does this throwaway line. But I was like, oh, actually that line is everything. Um, and the line was, well, hey, what's up? I'm gonna do my act right now. Just keep in mind, normally it looks better on a$150 million stage. And that's an acknowledgement that we're all in the industry, we're all in Cirque du Soleil and different shows on the strip or whatever, right? And it's like it's a funny joke in that context of like, hey, normally I'm doing this down the street at uh, you know.
SPEAKER_01:You saw something deeper in that thing of gone, you're taking a stage act needing kind.
SPEAKER_04:So it's like the Well, it was kind of like a throwaway line of like, oh, you know, normally this looks better on a$150 million age. It's like, oh, actually it does. You know what I mean? Like actually it's like a throwaway line, but there's a truth there that isn't maybe necessarily so funny because it is actually real, and then his act maybe wasn't as awesome in that di that dirty, broken down situation as it is on the big shiny stage. That helps elevate the elements. No, it's not bad, but it's the reality.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. It's like me being booked, and they say, Oh, everyone is gonna sit on the floor and it's gonna be this kind of event, and I bring those kinds of props and th that kind of stuff, and I get then they go, Oh, so many people wanted to come. We've put it in the conference hall, uh, and they're all sitting around round tables with their children. In in as an hour, there's 700 people in sitting around round tables and they don't even get food, and some of them are 35 meters away, and my folk circus vibe is totally dead, and the kids are not sitting next to each other. So then I and and he got and maybe I don't know what he did, but he came to do his act, and then you go, okay. And most people just laughed and thought it was nothing, but you were also going, like, oh, there's maybe that's that's a folk circus thing. You're going, oh yeah, you brought your folk circus act to the$150 million stage, which happened with Sarah sometimes, where it's street performers to come in. Totally. Some of them just nailed it. Totally. Some people came in and did, all right, I'm gonna juggle the thing. And it's like, who wanna see it? And I'll go, yeah, do you want to really want to see it? Yeah, do you want to see it? And he goes, like, we just paid$120 to get in here. Please, let's just you assume that I want to see it. That's why I'm here.
SPEAKER_04:We said yes with our money like two hours ago.
SPEAKER_01:And attention, and now you come out and you can't realize.
SPEAKER_04:Talking about that, talking about not being able to capture the folk circus feeling, maybe in an elevated environment or something, or whatever. Here here's a here's a thing. So normally, Eric and I would perform in a sports hall or a gymnasium or a library or something. And I found that um sometimes you know, a booker or a producer or presenter will say, Oh, we've done a really great treat for you guys. We we actually normally we'd be in the sports hall, but today we booked you this really nice theater in the center of town, and we're gonna bring all the kids in a bus there. Okay. And I get it, like it is a luxury to be in a nice theater, right? But here's the problem. When you walk into a theater and you see our set design, which first of all, it's a it's a it's about scale, right? So our set design is small compared to the big stage. Um but when you come into a theater, you just have these expectations. You just go, oh yeah, it's a set design. I've seen that before when I went to a play last week. It's not special anymore, it's expected. And what's more effective, at least in our work, because again, our work in our show is about the the techniques are the expressive thing. And so we'll do an will do an effect with with these clubs in a certain way that gives a certain optical illusion or something. When it's on a stage, there is that we were talking about magic the other day, and it's just like anything you do with an iPhone with in terms of magic, your mind just instantly goes, Oh, technology, that's how it was done. Even it wasn't maybe a technical method, but it doesn't matter, it's implied. And so when you're on a stage, you do it you do a little joggling trick that gives a cool way to wiggle the clubs and it kind of turns into a tornado or something, right? You go, you go, Oh, yeah, that's cool. Oh, you know, stage lighting, stage design, it's a theater. Things happen on a theater stage that are fantastical. Like it's not so special. But when me and Eric perform in the sports hall, first of all, the sports hall is a place where those kids are every single day playing soccer, having gym class, running races, playing for fun when it's raining outside or whatever, right? Then when they walk into that space and they see our set design there, they go, What is that? That's not supposed to be there. It becomes elevated and special immediately as opposed to the theater where it's just an expected, like, oh yeah, there's some stuff on stage, it's a blah blah blah. Where, you know, yeah. And so then when we do the juggling trick in the sports hall, it's way more magical. Like it's a weird, it's like for me, at least with the style of performing we do, it's it's a little bit counterintuitive. You would think that if it was on a stage in a big, nice, beautiful theater with gold-gilded lights on the walls, and there's a red velvet curtain and there's a spotlight on you, and you're doing this little juggling trick, it would look even cooler. But somehow, at least the magic of this folk circus stuff, it's way better to be in a sports hall with the normal lights on, you know, close to the kids. They're not sitting, they're not sitting in chairs 35 meters away, and I'm elevated on a stage. We're on the same level on the same floor. I'm a meter away from them. We're in the same room, we can see each other, they can see me, and I can see them. So we're not in this lighting situation where the audience is in the dark and I'm lit, but we're in the same place, and then we do the juggling trick. And then it's somehow, I don't know, it's more impactful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And and so one of the elements of this uh like going back to the practicality of how it's like just sticking with the the the situation, like it's they're going into a room that they know very well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's been transformed. And I used to love that about me doing my magic circles and having no curtains, no nothing. And I make this claim that here I am, here you are, but now we're gonna start the show, and this show is the magic circus. And this here, and it's not even a ring, but I'm just pointing and showing me. Just like here, yeah. This is gonna be the circus ring. And in here, magic will happen. Magic, Captain Floros, magic circus. And I throw confetti for the first time, and they sort of go, ooh, what is this? This is a handful of colored paper, but it's like all of a sudden it's like changed. And then you you start to transform the space that they're already in. So it's a space they know that's becoming something else. But the episode that you guys did, you and Eric, where you talked about, oh, you're in a fish factory where you can walk through this weird hole in the wall into a uh storeroom, and there you did that show. And you did it in the blacksmith's uh uh, what are they called again? It's called uh the forgery. The forge. Yeah. Yeah. So they're in there and the fire is burning and it's all that. So that gives also that thing going. It's not that everybody knows it so well, but it knows it as something else than the judgment. So that's like it's these spaces that are not expecting or 70 chairs facing in the same direction where you are there and everything is organized, and so it's a real place, quote unquote. Like real place, yeah, and you are not pretending to be somewhere else. Like you're thinking about the library. We are in the library, and I'm doing this show for you now. And if you are to put up a black uh curtain there now, then that somehow needs to be hey, a lot of these awesome things that I do in my white balls, they look so cool. That's why look over here. But I'm also doing some stuff in between the shelves over here, but I'm doing it. So we're not putting up the black uh curtain to pretend we are in a theater. Right. We're putting it up for a very specific reason, whether it is the focus of attention or it's to be able to see the equipment or whatever. And and if not, if that is not why you have put it up, if it's to pretend that we are somewhere else, then you're taking the first steps out of the folk circus thing.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:So that was just a wrap-up sound.
SPEAKER_04:No, no, but uh but what you're saying then about that i it fli if follows into what I yeah, what I was gonna say next, which is because we are in these places that aren't normally traditional uh performing venues, then you just don't have those normal uh venue like um qualities like footlights or theater lights or wings or curtains or backdrops or backstage or dressing room or stage lift or whatever you might need, right? Like maybe you don't even have electricity. And so that has kind of contributed again to this aesthetic and format that kind of crystallized in Eric's mind as this folk circus uh genre that he kind of he, you know, took a step back and looked at what we were doing after a decade and said, Oh, it's kind of a thing. And then he started to name it and talk about it. Yeah. But part of the qualities of that thing that he observed was because you're not in a traditional venue, normally our performances are in one way you could start to say things like minimalistic. Like it's not an elaborate set design that takes eight hours to build up with big, huge pipes and huge towers, and it's very, very small. Uh but it's minimalistic in in a very uh pragmatic way. And also to the point, then uh we we kind of our demeanor of our performances at least follow that minimalism. Uh to the point to the point where many times uh the the presenters not many times, it's happened a couple times that presenters who book us, they come up after the show and they go, It was great, but you didn't do anything. And this has happened a few different times where they but you didn't do anything. And what they mean is you didn't pretend anything. We didn't get in a fight. Or like like I didn't juggle and then Eric juggled and he juggled faster than me, and I juggled faster than him, and he juggled faster than me. And I was like, Eric, let's juggle the same speed. Like there was no pretense. And what they mean is you didn't do anything. What they meant is you just did you just in air quotes, you just did the juggling.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And I mean, to me, of course, I don't feel like I'm just doing the juggling. I think we try to elevate our presentation to connect to the kids to the level that we need it to be, but maybe not more than that. And um because we're trying to share the actual like visuals and skill of what we're doing, then yeah, it I would say I absolutely would agree that our performing style is also minimalistic. But again, for me, it follows, it's not incongruous with the situation that we're in, because we're we have to bring our show to this sports hall that doesn't normally have a show in it. So we can't bring so many things, we don't have so much time to set up. Instead of seeing those things as negatives, though, we try to artistically confront them and say, oh, what can be the best set design we can have with this parameters? And for me personally, kind of one of my whole entire philosophies of my artistic life is I love to start with the practical logistics and see how I can innovate within that structure. And if I don't even have that practical logistics, I'm so lost because I don't even know how to begin. For example, I did this show, How to Welcome the Aliens with Eric von Jacquel, and he kind of I think approaches things from a different direction. And he's really good at dreaming. I I don't have a specific example, but like, yeah, we could have like 20 golden elephants and like he'll and but he does like to do this as a process. Like you dream big and you kind of find that utopian ultimate you know concept, and then he likes to drill it down to what would actually be possible. And he finds those elements of the 20 golden elephants, and then he'll manifest it in maybe a who knows, a little plastic toy elephant or whatever it is, right? Yeah, yeah. Whereas, but I'm totally the opposite. I'm just like, okay. Start with concrete and then how much equipment can we carry? Yeah, yeah. Like how long is the show? How big is the performance space? How many kids, like who's the audience we're gonna meet? What are they thinking? Yeah. And I don't take those as limitations in terms of like, well, there goes the can't have the elephants. I'm just like, oh, this is great. We can only have two suitcases. Okay, cool. Let me start to research like how can we have a set design that fits in there and how can we carry all the problems?
SPEAKER_01:Design limitation, constriction helps the creation in a certain sense. Yeah. It guides you or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:So but this so this idea of folk circus that Eric kind of observed was again, I think part of it was this practical reality, everything is what it is. What you see is what you get, is another thing. Yeah. And uh, but it's minimalistic for us, and that minimalism is also reflected for us in our performing style in terms of of yeah, I don't know, the presentation. And I I think it's always so funny, but you didn't do anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what and what they mean is you didn't uh do anything extra more because that's so that's the thing. Like obviously, over the past like 15 years or 20 years of doing work like this, if the comment from the presenter is, but you didn't do anything, that could be a problem. But it's always prefaced with it was really great. The show was great, but you didn't do anything. There's and in their mind there's a disconnect there because what they're used to seeing are people in the more perhaps uh traditional way of trying to do a show and connect with an audience where you have full uh full bunny suit with uh bunny nose. Uh literally, like not as a joke. Um you come out on stage and you're pretending for the kids and uh you're you're in some sort of fantasy world and there's a different theatrical layers.
SPEAKER_01:And not only that, but that there's also a kind of fourth wall where the rabbit comes out and it's doing its thing, and the rabbit is oogling the teachers to make the kids be quiet. Yes. So the teachers or the adults or the parents or whatever in this show I deal with their kid that's screaming in the front and calm them down, nullifies the situation and amplifies everything. They go, Oh, it's everything is okay. What you're talking about there is some sort of like prototype of like a show as Yeah, where we come in, I put up the black curtain because here it's something else, and I am gonna come in and just Or even just that the idea of a show is a show.
SPEAKER_04:There's like it's like uh it's like an abstract idea. Now we're doing quote unquote a show, and that's this that's this thing that exists that's more powerful than all of us. So then the rabbits there being like, eh, make the kids be quiet, because we're doing a show. And the show has to be what I mean is there's like an ideal, yeah. There's an ideal that's already out there that exists independent of what's happening right now between me and you. And so then you go, but you're not playing that game when you're confronting the crying child. You're just like, hey, the show is what we're doing here. That's why I don't want to have the black curtain. The show is this mess of cables, man. You take away my mess of cables, I got nothing. Like that's all we're doing here is the mess of cables kind of kind of thing. And it's that it's just a mentality of like, okay, uh there's a certain there's a certain way a show has to go, and there's a certain way a show has to look. And if it doesn't meet that standard, if you don't have the black cloth, and if you, you know, if if the kids are that's another thing in our shows, because like I say, in Sweden, it's performing for children mostly in schools. And lots of times in our shows, the kids do uh they do talk. They are not rowdy, but they're excited, they're alive, they're engaged. But 99.99% of the time, they're engaged with the show, not with this distraction of each other. But the teachers don't understand that because in traditional theater, and again, I get it, because in traditional theater, it's an interesting situation. In a traditional theater, you're trying to create that suspension of disbelief. And I get it that it can be very distracting than if the audience is kind of having their own conversation. But normally in our shows, the kids are like, oh, he's got an egg, he's got an egg. We had this one phenomenon where for one show we toured for a bunch of years, we used an egg, and we don't know why. We never figured it out. It's maybe a cultural thing to sweeten or the age group or how we performed ourselves. But whenever we brought out, we're always non-verbal in our shows here. So whenever we brought out the egg, we would kind of do, we called it the egg parade. Like we would just show the egg to the kids, like slowly across them. And every time we did, they would always go, egg, egg, egg, egg, egg, egg, you know, like this. It was so fun. But the teachers, of course, are like, shh, be quiet, be quiet, you can't make noise. And we're like, they're making noise about our show, they're engaged in the show, they're excited about the show. This is the appropriate response. This isn't the best noise. Yeah, you want to have the egg chant, you know. And so many times the yeah, and and that's good. That's that's actually good, right? Because the show is for children, and then that means we're connecting with them. And so, and then of course, there is the the the adults that are like, oh, this is not how a show should go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is a problem right now. And we're like, And then, but then it's also because people are not always expecting folk circus. But that's they don't expect that everything is allowed, everything is possible, or you will help to use that. Every now and then, of course, the kids could just go bananas and it can be an absolute disaster, just like any uh any shelter in any way. Totally. But for most part, you'll be able to take whatever is in there and then turn it into something, and people are not used to that that can also be part of the show or or whatever. That's right. So they are surprised by by the directness of the show. And it is almost like with me, where they go, is this what you do for a living? Which is one of my pet peeve, even though I uh to be honest, I don't think it's maybe happened for 10 years or so. When I'm performing on a big stage, they don't think it. But also when I come and I did that show in the gym, they can tell now, and I'm an old man, that this is what I do. And I can tell from even though but they still have this thing. They don't say you didn't do anything. Right. But they f they have the feeling when they saw me that I was just playing and joking around, and then they they so easily pay attention, which I think is the latent uh definition of what uh what uh entertainment is, is that you easily pay attention to the next thing and you driven through the show, and that before you know it, the show is over, and I do the finale, and they all clap and I say, Thank you very much, you guys are great, thank you very much. And they sort of go, but they don't say it, but when you say you didn't do anything, I think they have that feeling with me, and they don't express it in exactly those words, but they go, but it just it just flowed, and and all the kids do.
SPEAKER_04:No, you're right. You're right. It's the same thing it's the same thing. The comment of like you didn't do anything is is also kind of like there's no concrete overarching narrative that I can grab onto that was obvious, right? Because like it's like I mean, describe describe the show I do with Eric. The only way you can describe it is by literally listing the actions that we do. Yeah, there's no description of like, well, okay, Jay, in this show with Eric, you come out and then you discover him, and then you guys get confused, and then you go on an adventure, and then you there's none of that. It's only, oh, I pick up the balls, I give him a ball, he throws the ball, I catch the ball. That's the narrative, and that's not comprehensible in a condensed form. You have to see the whole show.
SPEAKER_01:But lest we forget, you spent three days learning how to give somebody a ball, so you are very good at giving him the ball, and that's the secret skill that they can't even see that you've done a big thing. You didn't do anything, I gave him the ball. And it looked so easy. It looked like you just stretch your hand out and then you just took it. Well, it's because we did a three-day workshop on that.
SPEAKER_04:No, but the this this thing of like you didn't do anything, it's it is that normally you can encapsulate with words in a summary then of like what happened in an easy way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Like I I see other kids' shows that perform in schools here, and you can absolutely do that. What's the theme of the show? Oh, well, it was about friendship, and then the rabbit went and found the the turtle, and then they finally got built a car and they drove away. Like that's very and maybe the same thing with you. Uh not like that's what you do for a living, but more the same feeling of like you're having fun, it's effortless, it's alive, and that's so hard to just get a sound bite of like, man, Frodo, you like to to wrap your head around in a short way and go like, oh yeah, this guy came and he there's no words for what you did. You you you and the only way they can see it then is they go, yeah. But he was having, they can describe it. He had a lot of fun, he was joking around, it was crazy. Uh and then those that but that still doesn't really, you know, coalesce into like a real succinct yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But they still also like to go, he did some sort of juggling with the stick, and then and then there was magic, and he had this that so that there there are the concrete things, but the overall thing that people often say to me, then it's like, oh, I didn't especially when I used to just do the freak show stuff. Yeah. Which I do try to do less of now, because it overpowers everything. When I'm in one show and I do three acts and I'm the crazy guy that comes out, then that's totally fine. But if I'm doing a half-hour show for a corporate audience, I need to be the calm dude as well. So don't do all that, but people come up and they go, Oh, I didn't really like what you did, but I loved you and the way you did it, and I've had such a great time. Oh, I didn't want to see somebody hang a beer keg on their nipples. I didn't want to, whatever it was that I used to do. So, and now like I give them the experience, and I know I have spent countless thousands of hours to make it seem like that, that I can just pick up a saw and do something with it, and all of a sudden that's a thing. For those next three and a half, four minutes, that thing, it just seemed like I can pick it up, and then what I do and how I explain it and everything, it just seems like something effortless, like nothing actually has to happen. But I did play it and I did have six gambling always laughs at this point. And I when I start making the ghost sound and I start to look around and as they hear it, the kids have go, Oh, I see it's the ghost, and I go, and like I have these points, but it feels like and then I pick up the magic and I just do the magic, and then I pick up the juggling with the devil stick, and they they just accept all these, like I can grab onto anything, and it feels effortless and random. But yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04:I was gonna say, maybe it's it's something about like when you perform, I don't know if this is gonna be true, but when me and Eric perform, the things we're doing are not bigger than what they are, but that's not a bad thing. Like we let them be what they are, because they are enough. They're they're amazing. But there's no there's no pretense then of like a bigger message or a bigger I I even when I say that now, it sounds like always it's like a negative connotation, like, oh, there is no bigger message. But no, I mean when you that that's the that's the thing.
SPEAKER_01:It's not that there isn't a bigger message, because it's just that you aren't stating the sound.
SPEAKER_04:So then it's hard for those people afterwards to talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:You are totally different, and you are in a way going like I've broken through the system, the rat race. I'm I'm being a dog in that. I'm just doing I'm licking my balls and doing whatever, whatever it is, like I'm playing a different game. And you are there by just being that, not by saying, Hey, isn't it amazing that I can uh I can juggle like this and I come in and I go like you you're not making a point of that, but you're being an example on the outside without saying it's not about that. This is about a this is the theme of not um fitting in, or about this is about being an independent artist or whatever. Like you you make those things so that you are going ahead with an example without explaining it. And I'm gonna wrap this up, yeah. But uh as I start to I don't maybe I'll have to talk about folk circus, uh folk tales even on my own, or whatever, in another episode. Okay, it should also be. Um that that's also part of what a folk tale is. Because when he called it folk circus, it took a while, and then at some point I started to see that folk tales as in the fairy tales, the way that they are told and the way that they are shared, there's something in that experience also which there's no pretense. I'm not it's not that the the three brothers who went out into the world to look for an occupation, that it's about something else. It is just about that.
SPEAKER_04:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:But at the same time as it is only about that, and it makes no pretense to be about anything else, it is about the most important human uh interests. The most important things in life are pictured in this thing, but it's told through kings and queens and dragons and nature uh animals and whatever.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, this was this was I was gonna do a segue into that now that you brought it up now. But basically, we've been talking about folk circus through the viewpoint of the artist or the performer. There's also the folk circus aspect of the audience, and what you were saying there is like the show, it's very direct, and there's no, I said, fake hype. Like we don't have to hype up what we're doing, we just do what we do. There's a level of respect for the audience there. We don't assume the audience is bored or disinterested or comes from a another place with a different motive. We kind of at least the shows I've seen from you, the shows I try to do myself, I feel like you give the audience respect and you you give them the you know the it's not a cynical view of like sometimes, you know, maybe you go to opera and then there's like you see some people all dressed up, and there's it can be an air about pretension of like they just go there to show off themselves or because it's a high society, high culture, it's a social event, or it's uh there's an ulterior there for the love of there's an all there's an ulterior motive to their participation in that in that event, right?
SPEAKER_01:And there we are in the play, criteria of play. We're doing play for itself, not because we're gonna learn about something else. And then it's not real play anymore.
SPEAKER_04:And so there's something about, for me, for this folk circus thing, especially again, going back to this type of venue we're in, which is a deconstructed venue, it's not a normal performance venue. There's something about this too, right? That that kind of also destroys you don't really dress up in your fur coat with your pearls and your gold chains and then go to the sports hall to watch the circus show. Yeah. Because that doesn't afford that same sort of social, you know, uh currency that going to the the center of town and the limousine affords, and you step out and you go into the theater and then you're you're someone. So there's something about those people in the audience in those venues, too, that become they become real people. They they also drop their pretense of any sort of political or uh social or whatever construct that's extra to the show. And that's kind of that was a segue definitely into the the folk uh tales, too. Of like you're giving these people respect as who they are, as human beings, as you are on stage. There's some sort of equality there and some sort of like basic respect there that I do find lacking in other venues, I have to say, in other sorts of uh performing situations. And yeah, we could say that uh you know, a gala dinner or something, or or again we were talking about maybe a corporate event where it's a company dinner, they're not there to see you. My only point is there's a different relationship then between you and the audience. Whereas Folk Circus, everybody generally seems to be on the same page. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. In terms of that incredible. And that makes in what um what Eva said about that he goes, that it's uh there it's uncomplicated. The relationship between the teller and the told, between the listener and the audience, and when you're telling a folk tale or when you're showing an act in folk circus, it's that we know what's going to happen now. It's that you're going to step up and do something. And that's why I like the connection to folk music, not because of all of the other things with folk music, but that thing that it was that music was when music was played as a participatory thing. People weren't listening to it necessarily as a concert. They were all standing up and dancing. But then, like you see in an Irish pub or in in Irish movies where they have an archetypal kind of situation like that, where everyone is singing and they're playing the music and people are dancing and and partying or having a great time. But then maybe the person plays a beautiful, slow song, and everybody, the whole pub goes quiet, and we take in a beautiful moving piece of art, and then that goes and it's it's amazing, and you and you move, and there's a little bit of tears and everything, because this is also part of life, and it's those songs, the Irish songs about death and some heartbreak, and then it goes back into the party again. It's like we have the room, and then there's the moment also where the where the guy gets up and he stands and he and he declaims a poem. And it's and people have room for that as well in their life, and they are aware that there is elements and dimensions to to life that you only experience when the poet points out the like um what's his name, Seamus, uh about digging, where he talks about his father who digs to Pete, and and then in the end he talks about himself as a writer, and that he digs with his pen, while where his father digs with his so and and all of and then that comes, and the room goes quiet, and then everyone's like, Oh, this is also life. And I take that in and I'm glad that I had that, and now give me another pint of the Guinness, and let's get and then they play like that sort of stuff. Of folk music where there's where there's that room for the full human experience which we don't normally have. When was the last time somebody stood up and actually recited a poem and it wasn't pretentious or weird? But that you're actually there and going like, these are real emotions here. This is real music, and this is real, it's real fun. But it does that to have that be open to all of those things. That's what to me, and then the stories too, it's not the an abstract, very difficult to grasp, and it's just a person standing there talking, but it's a story that you grab immediately and has really simple sort of structures and patterns that you somehow recognize even if you don't understand the meaning. You go, there is a meaning here that relates to me on the ways that really matters. Yeah. Somehow. Right. It's not the stuff that's just like highfalutin or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I was just gonna say is that it's there's something about this full circus or whatever, uh, that it's the experience, it's not exclusive. The it's not exclusive in its shared experience with the audience. So I don't know, sometimes you go see a show, maybe this is just a uh kind of a trope or something, but like you go see a performance again of the opera and they're singing in Italian or Latin or something, and you're just like, well, I don't speak Italian, and this is like I feel maybe less than in terms of being a person that this performance maybe isn't for me, or the maybe you go to an experimental music concert and it's just like really obtuse music, and you're just like, hmm, wow, I'm really not drawn into this, but also my palate is not refined enough that I haven't listened to enough noise melt banana demo tapes from the 90s from Japan or something to you know what I mean? It's it's it's exclusive. It excludes people in some way. Uh, some of these performances can be, another word would be alienating. And I find that there's something about folk circus is that it's it's always very accessible. It's not exclusive in that at least uh intellectual snobbery kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like anyone can participate in it, they can live themselves into the experience and not feel like I all of a sudden will be left high and dry when I was in getting really excited, and all of a sudden you go, I don't know what's going on now, or I am uncomfortable or embarrassed or whatever. So is this sort of trust of you to go? Because I know I sometimes speak about more philosophical or esoteric things in my 45-minute shows or whatever, that I know that the kids don't necessarily uh particularly get the depth out of, but they don't mind hearing it. And it gives to the the the adults because I'm doing family shows, not just kids alone, but that mix the adults now know that there's something deeper going on or whatever. Yeah. And I think that's that's part of it too. I'm pointing in other directions, and I'm not just I am only making this invisible egg float in the air. But when I do that little speech together with the child, and that child makes it into a chocolate egg, then this is also something more. It's just there, it's even just like 25 seconds where I go, those who can see things that other can't see others can't see, that people laugh at them or whatever. But then what we can do when we become creators or explorers or inventors or whatever, is that we can make that thing real so the others can actually see it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Let's do that. Here's a chocolate egg. The chocolate egg is for you. Like, and then they the kid walks down with a real egg, and then it's like finally, in the end, after all those jokes and all that stuff, and there is an invisible egg under the silk that flies, but then in the end, there's this concrete thing, and all of a sudden it's also that thing where I'm going, like, it's not the moral of the story or whatever, because it seems like I'm just explaining what was going on. Because I'm asked specifically for a child that has a strong enough imagination that they can see this egg that I'm holding up. Because first they all they get into this thing of going, I can't see it, there's nothing there. And I'm going, Yeah, that's right. A lot of kids can't see it. But I need somebody who can actually see this, and then that same kid goes, I can see it. Because now they get the game. They thought the game was I was going to convince them that it was an invisible egg. Yeah. And if I'm really mean, then I go, It's an invisible egg. Yeah, that's right, because you can't see it, and you also you guys can't see it. But there is someone out here who can, and I'm looking for someone like that who can come up and then some sweet kid's that, and I take them up and I go, and if I'm really mean, because someone's been a dick all the way through the show, I can go, and in the end now, you will see, you will regret how much you told that you couldn't see it. When she walks down after this thing, you're gonna think back at this, and you go, maybe I should not be so quick to say that there is nothing there. That's funny. I I don't know if I like I think I've said something like that, but never that long. Yeah, like in the point. But it's like that thing of going when someone is always screaming and always trying to fight you, and that is not invited. And I don't like it. Those kids exist. And um, and then I go in the end, and I'm going, and then like the the child goes out that sweet girl or boy, whatever that I have up. That's just like eyes wide when I open up an egg is there and I open it up and say, is it starting to work? And they see that there's a chocolate egg in there, but the audience don't know. And all they can see, the way that I have the child, is the the eyes of the child and the face of the child going. There is a chocolate thing in there that I it's and and you can see it. And they like in the best examples, they're literally jumping up and down. Yes, yes, is it starting to work? Yeah, let's show them. And then you do it, and in the end, you hold it up and they're going, the invisible has become visible, the impossible has become possible here in Captain Furter's magic circle, and this is for you. And it could have been you. It could have been yours. If you only could see the invisible thing. Next time, look a little closer. Oh, you go out there. Like, then it's so highfalutin. It's about ideas and I'm making concept real. And there's been all this stuff where there is nothing there, and I'm just saying there's an egg and I'm holding it, and the kid falls on the ground, and I get the kid to pick it back up and throw it to me and stuff. So we're just playing. But in the end, we're crossing that line and I'm making that it's real. So now I'm talking deeply philosophical. I'm talking about what's important and about believing in ideas, and that it's not a real egg like that. We know that somehow, but somehow along the way here now, it became a chocolate kind. And I'm giving that to you because you're you're a creative kid. I'm not saying this, but this is what the image says. And I'm giving you this, and it's a chocolate egg, and inside it is some kind of imaginative thing that you have to puzzle together. It's a toy, but it's it's got some sort of ingenuity going on to it. So that aspect of that thing also seems to me to make sense. And I'm going, so so and I and I feel like that's the way that folk circus can point to art, can point to poetry, it can say, all I did was to dick around with nothing and say it was an invisible egg that I'd gotten from a chicken that I'd had in Santon pregnancy. And then they're laughing and it's all just joking. But then in the end it ends up as something concrete that you can't deny. Because now it is the child that was disappointed and that said, Oh, I need to change my behavior. And maybe it's the child that came up and then and they have believed they are an imaginative child, or I don't know. So that is, I think, is a the way to get into the higher dimensions in when you're doing folk circus without it being pretentious. But just still be real somehow.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, but just the just there, I mean, talking about folk circus not being exclusive. Um what you just said there, you're you're doing this with kids, but you're bringing up all these bigger ideas. You're not pandering, you're not condescending. And that's the same thing with me and Eric. I mean, now me and you have been talking a lot about performing for children because that's that's the reality of a lot of our professional work at various points, right?
SPEAKER_01:I moved away from Vegas and now I am also doing family shows, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And so when Eric and I make a show, we never sit down, never once sit down and say, Oh, well, we're doing it, doing a show for schools, so it's gonna be a bunch of kids. So how do you how are we gonna make a show for kids? Well, you gotta wear bad pants with red. We never make a show for kids. Yeah, yeah. We make a show. Yeah. We make a good show, and absolutely we have to give some concession that the audience members are kids. But that's not the starting point. That's how you tweak the material. Oh, here we need to slow down. Oh, we're going too fast. The kids are kind of missing that moment, or we should do that image twice so they really get it. Or what or we need to cut this part, it's too long, or it's too slow. Whatever, right? You give a concession to to meet your audience in the best way possible, but you don't have a starting point of kind of condescending down to to could be because they're kids. And that means that the show generally, like like I say, we we just try to make a good show, and hopefully adults like it as much as the kids. It's the same thing in your work. What you were just saying with this chocolate egg bit, there's all these different levels contained in it. It's not exclusive to a certain age group or certain expectation or certain social class or certain uh intelligent uh intelligence quota or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_01:But each one of those will see something in it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And that's the uh and we uh Eric and I often find ourselves very uh fish out of water. Um lots of times the way shows are s uh bought and and sold are these uh like a booker's fair, like a fair where you have a day morning to night, and it's all the presenters who come from all over the country and you do your 10 minutes of your show. Yeah, and it's just like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and every company. So you have all these, you know, a hundred performers backstage all warming up because they're gonna go do their 10 minutes to sell all their shows for the season, and it's a big day, it's very important. And this is such a true story. For many years, it's it's me and Eric backstage. Our costumes are pretty much stylized street clothes, um, and our performances are very like and again, you could say dry or minimalistic, but we just have our juggling props and we're just kind of there and we're hanging out and we're not wearing makeup and we're not, I don't know, doing vocal warm-ups or or whatever. And we'll be next to a person literally dressed as a chicken and somebody else dressed as a frog, like a full-body costume as a frog, you know. And we're like, what are we doing here? We are so not in this typical genre of or this market of how people approach this situation. And we have this folk circus thing on our back. And I there's not I'm sure the frog show is great. I'm sure if my son saw the frog show at the right age, we would love it, right? But they're coming from a different tradition. They come from the tradition of theater, maybe the tradition of physical theater, tradition of of dance theater or whatever, right? And we're coming from this tradition of circus, but then we have all these uh logistical frameworks and our own artistical, you know, personal connections to the work, and it kind of made this folk circus thing, but we do feel at times out of place in the other in the in the other community.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I think I I share that too every now and then when you're you're getting ready and it seems ridiculous what it is that I'm doing. I'm wearing ridiculous costumes and all that. Sometimes I'm amongst speakers and whatever of like lecturers or whatever, and I come out and I got a black cat with literally with a feather in it and a flower. Like I'm but somehow I still look authentic, so they deal with me. Yeah, my crazy mustache and my crown hairdo.
SPEAKER_04:Like but I think it comes back to you always knowing what you're doing. It's not random, it's not just that, oh, I decided to wear this hat. No, I don't I don't know. Like you have a real intention behind it, and that intention comes out as the same thing. I hope for me.
SPEAKER_01:My inner conviction and my inner faith and my inner beliefs which matches my outer expression. Exactly. Yeah. So when I say I am a showman and I am the one who faces the other way, I look like a weirdo with crazy three-piece suit, like someone said the other day. I look a little bit like I'm some sort of southern general or something, like in in the army in America, you know. Because I have a hat that's folded up on one side, a little bit almost like a cowboy kind of thing. I never made that, but I made it to look like it's got some captain stripes on my my things, and I was leaning into that captain that I'd never done before. It's got epaulets on the shoulders, and I go, Oh yeah, that is true. It's got some sort of vaguely uniform y kind of thing in there. But when I say my things and I do the acts and I do it, then they go, there is full resonance with how I look, what I say and what I do. And when the emotions they feel, here we are back at that thing, and you my the thoughts that I express, the feelings that I make you feel, and the things that I do all come as one thing. Connected to the senses, my eyes, what you hear, and all this, all those four domains of human existence, the bottom uh foundation of human experience, that is what's that show in that folk circus. And if you can do that kind of authenticity, then you have the what what folk circus is. Hell yeah, rock and roll. Amen.
SPEAKER_03:Amen. Actually, yeah, amen. Great, man.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Listening to this, uh, it did strike me that there are many things from the the previous two episodes uh where we talk about stage presence that is um sort of directly related or in resonance with what we talked about um here about um when we talk about folk circus. Something about the immediacy of the performance or something along those lines uh makes those two topics kind of feel like stage presence is maybe even more important because folk circus has to do with that meeting of people and being by the people, for the people, and all that sort of stuff. So uh yeah. It was also great um when uh a while ago I uh posted a link to me doing a show with my family, and uh that Tony Rook, the godfather of Australian news circus, that he commented and going, Oh, it's great to see that these uh real family shows are still happening, made me very happy because I think he nurtured that specific uh atmosphere at his festival, and and that it's been an inspiration for me to, you know, and of course uh Gareth Bjolland too with uh his family show. But uh these shows, it feels like a sort of um yeah, rare thing to experience these days where so much of the shows are, you know, come from a concept or uh or um or so this would be a good thing for the market to have these shows that are really just uh traditional kind of uh what I would think of as folk circus. It's great to be recognized in a comment, even if it was just on uh quick comment on social media. It was uh it was good. Good to be recognized, and I do believe that I am working within the folk circus genre. Alright. Enough said.
SPEAKER_00:Until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.