Lloyd Evans
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Thankfully, there are other methods, other hues on the circus spectrum. A Welsh company, NoFit State (whose new show tabú runs at London’s Roundhouse from 28 March to 19 April) specialises in an interactive approach. There are no seats in the big top. Spectators wander freely through the space, either following the show’s developing storyline or focusing on a particular performer’s character-journey. Costumed riggers blend in with the crowd and discreetly trundle equipment in and out of position. Stewards protect the audience from flailing feet or hurtling trapezes. The bar serves strong liquor throughout.
I travelled to the marshlands of south Wales to spend an afternoon watching NoFit State rehearse in their silver and purple big top. A fleet of juggernauts and caravans were parked in a disused warehouse near the site. I edged into the shadows of the vast enclosure. Half a dozen track-suited athletes, of approximately back-packing age, were practising ‘the German wheel’, a pair of large steel rings riveted together so as to accommodate performers who brace themselves in the star position inside its frame. To begin with, the wheel was in a grumpy mood and ejected two athletes as they tried to complete a single revolution. But after an hour’s patient rehearsal, I watched it roll smoothly across the floor with four performers precariously entwined within and two more pivoting on the outside. I’m still not quite sure how this goal was realised because the rehearsal was unlike any I’ve ever seen. No one seemed to be in charge. I heard no instructions given, still less discussed or interpreted. No one flounced out to have a cigarette-cum-hissy-fit in the car park. The mood was relaxed and studiously co-operative. They were like a team of surgeons, each confidently respectful of his colleagues’ skills, as they familiarised themselves with a new piece of kit.
And I was surprised at how unathletic the athletes looked. No steroidal muscles popping out of T-shirts, no superskinny cheek-suckers either. The house style was scruffily normal, bordering on the crusty. ‘Dirty,’ said the director Firenza Guidi, who shook my hand and briefly favoured me with an interview during which she attempted to define the ethos of the troupe and their work. ‘Dirty, with the dirtiness of humanity. You won’t see boob tubes or sparkly costumes here,’ she went on, her choppy Milanese accent strangely modified by the undulating vowels of Cardiff, where she’s lived for many years. ‘You’re not watching adolescent Chinese athletes. These performers are ordinary people, some are over 40, like you might meet in the pub. Our show aims to be Fellini-esque but our method is direct, undescriptive, undemonstrative. You will never catch a performer doing that after a trick.’ On ‘that’ she flourished a hand in the air like Marlene Dietrich taking a bow.
The creative director Ali Williams gave me a cheese sandwich and a banana and a history of the circus from its beginnings on the streets of Cardiff to its eventual emergence as one of Wales’s largest artistic enterprises. She peppered her comments with slogans that summarise their instantaneous, stripped-down approach. ‘Live it!’ ‘Feel the sweat!’ ‘Keep the spark!’
The company was formed in exactly this improvisatory spirit — by accident. Williams and her co-founder Tom Rack became friends at Cardiff in the mid-1980s. One evening, at a loose end, they went to a circus skills class given by Tim Philpott, one of the puppeteers from the Star Wars series. This wasn’t much more than a juggling demonstration but it infected them both with the circus bug. They developed an act and began performing on the streets. A year later they were still making a living, so instead of quitting they teamed up with fellow artistes from the Welsh capital’s talented sidewalks (Cerys Matthews of Catatonia was discovered busking outside Debenhams there a few years later) and they began touring the country as the ‘Balls Up Jugglers’.
Scroll forward a few years. Still not broke or bored, they moved up a gear and started offering workshops from which they recruited fresh talent. The circus was born. In 2004 they invested £250,000 in the big top which has become their trademark. Far taller than the traditional circus marquee and less convex, less bulgy, it has the silhouette of an inverted parabola and looks like a space-ship or some momentous supernatural event, a vast silver walnut whip surging up through the earth’s crust. It takes eight men to erect it and it always draws crowds.
Their name NoFit State is a pun which I suspect they now rather regret. In the 1980s the major big-top performers were from Russia and China. State circuses. NoFit State Circus. Genius! But the label has a deadbeat, druggy flavour which cuts against their professional ethos and their ambitions to attract investment and expand. A corporate sponsor is the obvious solution. There must be plenty of multinationals ready to welcome a family-friendly brand with strong links to youth, sport and health. Even their buzzy slogans, ‘Live it’, ‘Feel the sweat’, ‘Keep the spark’, might have been lifted from an ad-man’s mood board. ‘Wouldn’t mind a sponsor,’ says Williams, wistfully. ‘Suppose Mr Nike walked in here right now what would you say to him?’ She looks at me. ‘Just do it.’
www.roundhouse.org.uk; 0844 482 8008
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