The World Without Ringling: Pushy Purveyors of Theater-Circus on the Rise ... Goodbye, Ageless Delight. Hello, Big Top Trauma Center

I believe the elements in each circus act are expressive in and of themselves, that the poetry of each act is where the value of the circus lies. To impose a plot and character on the circus is like trying to turn a piece of sculpture into a symphony."
--   Larry Pisoni, interviewed for my book, Fall of the Big Top

Ever since the artistic explosion of Cirque Du Soleil came to town, ever since the animal rights crowd gained law-enacting force, circus has been driven into near-oblivion.  Across deserted midways now, a new class of academic artists bent on bringing valid theatre to the big top are flexing their elitist views with ever greater voice --- if not force.

Can they help revive our withering big tops?   The free market place will decide.  So far, there is little evidence of widespread public elation over the sawdust-stage combo.

The meeting ground and launching pad for their hectoring notices seems to be  the on-line Circus Talk, in whose upscale pages you can behold their most audacious expectations.  This is a journal highly esteemed by such people as Don Covington, calling it “the new Billboard, the single most important trade paper for the circus world internationally ... Its staff of critics and reviewers provide some of the most insightful coverage of contemporary circus anywhere”

I have no doubt that Don is right about the sweep.  One may feel intimidated by the websites towering presence.

When I first took a ride on the glossy and glorious Circus Talk, perhaps too much in haste, I got the impression of an upscale, mutual back-slapping celebration designed to host a chic marketplace for artists, agents, and owners.  And so I could not quite imagine the editors going full tilt on objective circus reviewing that might offend anyone in the  choir. 

Paranoia or perception?

Don sent me Circus Talk’s review of the Big Apple Circus of 2018, a very long, very thoughtful  notice by Madeline Hoak, one of the highly credentialed theatre-circus advocates. In a critical mood, she makes no bones about her unease and irritation over lapses in human disclosure, character arc fulfillment, thematic cohesion, diversity and "strong dramaturgy."  No room here for those corny old words Pep and Pace. I suspect these eggheads are  mainly trying to impress and outdo each other.

More Human Condition, Please!

To wit, a few Hoak nuggets:

“A small cast of incredibly peppy and youthful actors” Actors?

Adam Kuchler’s “character has no substantial arc.  This type of disjointed artistic direction was an unfortunate constant in the show”

“Were it not for the emotionally laden music it would be a flat demonstration of highly impressive and technical aerial work”
                   
“Ringmaster Monseu’s script was disappointingly simple, and her delivery was molded into the hollow, affected tones I associate with previous ringmaster John Kennedy Kane.”  Actually, I rather liked the ringmasterly role played by Kane, although I can’t recall him shedding tears for the fall of Adam.

‘Of all the performers, I got to know Adam Kuchler the best.”

“I found myself asking, where was the tragic?  Where was the sadness?  Where was the commentary on the failures life hands us.”

On the failures life hands us?  Are        you       kidding?  Let me repeat:

“WHERE WAS THE TRAGIC? WHERE WAS THE SADNESS?  WHERE WAS THE COMMENTARY ON THE FAILURES LIFE HANDS US?

Yes, at a circus!  In other words, where was Shakespeare?

 Take them seriously. They may one day visit your little adjunct make-a-backyard-circus, and post a grade for theater-compliance.  Best to have a dramaturg on the lot to defend your thematic cohesion.  That’s the cool new word to drop in New Circus circles. In fact, for a time on the Big Apple Circus website, photos of this year’s players included the mug of Hovey Burgess, next to DRAMATURG.

But What About the Acts?

Now, okay, so it sounds like a real review. But is it?  Aside from Ms. Hoak’s misgivings over flimsy, ill-wrought narrative, what did she have to say for the acts themselves?  Nary a bad word.  “Two cheery hours of circus success.”  And there you have about the same thing you will get from Circus Report or White Tops.

I recall looking through reviews of the same Big Apple Circus opus from other sources, one from The New York Times, whose critic down on street level, Alexis Soloski, found the show quite a pleasure, albeit it “high flying, but also more low key ..... The marquee acts are fewer ... The horizontal juggling: visually ravishing  --- but un-astounding. ... Upright ladders: astounding discipline, but isn’t much to look at until he adds a soccer ball.”

Most New York notices found the clowning weak.  Some welcomed the lack of a story angle mucking things up.

In fact, it was the same Times critic, Ms. Soloski. whose tepid review of the previous edition drew a firestorm of outrage from the learned ones, some arguing that any one of them would have been better qualified to pass judgement for the Times.  Mutual back-slapping?  I would love to see how they might have reviewed the show. 

For my money, I would any day place greater trust in a notice by Alexis Soloski.

There are maybe four reasons why Ms. Hoak gave all the acts a glowing pass:

1.  She has seen few circuses, or is new to circus history.

2.  She wants to avoid coming off as critical of old circus.  She does express genuine affection for Big Apple Circus.

3.  She was too focused on character and plot to give much attention to such trivial matters as number of clubs in motion, difficulty of tricks -- or aerialists slipping out of harnesses and heading south.

4.  She had been dating  the company dramaturg, and got dumped

5.  She wanted to be the company dramaturg.

Circus Talk and its disciples may actually be able to invent theatre-circus in a way that, may untimely bring about a whole new genre.  Don’t count them out.  What they are really doing, as I see it,  is using circus candy as a tease, a seduction, a way to lure in people who can’t stand circus, but desire its more appealing elements in a non-circus package. Are there enough of these people out there?

What next on their wish list: Primal scream on the fabrics? Suicide over sawdust?

************************************************************************

Give me a seat near the circus and let me hear stirring fanfare and let the great parade of wonders begin — and I am young again in heart and spirit. Give me a boy and girl close enough to share it with and to hear all the exclamations of wonder, bewilderment, surprise, and let the laughter ring out.

   Gabriel Heater, 1943

Where was the tragic?  Where was the sadness?  Where was the commentary on the failures life hands us.”

    Today

About the New Big Apple Circus About to Uncork ... Could it Be ...?

Hmmmm

Hmmmm.  A video tease from the show left me numbingly unmoved.

But But ...

Took a look at pictures and bios of the acts on the radiant website ... Kitty cats, yes, performing fluffers!  Two guys who do something on the back of a horse.  A high wire trio ... Juggling   ... the Russian barre re-conceived by a big troupe of aerial acrobats, and with Monte Carlo cache ... Big troupes always excite me. All sorts of other goodies ...  Chinese pole ... Wheel of death ... Do I feel the punch, pop and pound of a big top whopper?

So .... ah ... calm down, David.  It depends on the quality and depth of these acts.  Here is one word that I was left feeling over my first encounter with these inviting images, (not the inert video):

REFRESHING.

Circus at Crossroads: Say Goodby to One Dreary Decade, But Don’t Put Your Dreams Away -- Not Yet

Facing 2020 feels more like facing a  new century.  And may it be new -- and better.  Blame it on my having lived through too much disappearing circus history in the last ten years —  or did I inherit this feeling the moment Kenneth Feld announced that he was shutting down Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey for good?

So many closings give me pause, and you?, to wonder if there is to be a future for what is now more frequently being called  “traditional circus.” I merely call it, pardon me, circus.  Is South Pacific, a tradition musical?  Gone With The Wind, a traditional movie?

Those two words, I am feeling,  may mark a condescending dismissal by a class of people, feminist driven it would appear,  who inwardly despise what circus has meant to the masses.  And so they hold a patronizing stance, while waiting for the last dog to leave the tent, the last scary clown to renounce his greasepaint and join Old Clowns Anonymous.  Waiting and ready, honing their acro-centric skills in classrooms and warehouses, municipal centers and small stages, to make their case as the only option left, and therefore, theoretically, more marketable to the public at large. Indeed, their day may be upon us.  Read the reviews in Circus Talk, and behold.  

The traumatic fold, two years ago,  of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey opened wider the gates for “new circus”advocates to assume a greater,  more believable force.  In fact, I think it is far more honest to call themselves  “new circus”  and let “circus” alone stand.  Drop the“traditional.”

Some new circus enthusiasts proclaim to be witnessing a “renaissance” of what they call “circus arts.” This may be so, but it is not the same as a renaissance of circus, period.  Need I even try explaining why?

Such troupes as  ambitiously creative Five Fingers got in on the ground floor, and are finding some success, albeit with funding, before audiences who patronize theatre and ballet. To their credit they do not hang “circus” on their moniker, but, to be sure and safe, talk it up aplenty, obviously to draw in the kind of a ticket buyer who  might like some circus acts but not the circus.  You are unlikely to see TV promo videos from these troupes (including  Cirque du Soleil)  pushing narrative elements:  Gripping cathartic human drama!  Spectacular soliloquies!  Spine tingling character confrontations!  Virtually all new circus videos push Circus.  So there.

Currently for me, the most interesting thing to observe is how this will all play out. To wonder if, out there somewhere lurks a showman yet to surface who can make circus thrive again.  More likely, the ageless delight may yet rebound, come a day imagined long in the future,  when cultural shifts favor the public’s re-embracement of circus’s  defining staples.  Americans may then again accept circus based on a new, more trusting pact between themselves and the owner-producers — a pact more open and transparent where animals may once again be welcome in the tent.  One need only look to the ways of trainer Thomas Chipperfield in England for clues to how such a day may come about.

Impossible to imagine so magical, instructive and inspiring an enterprise as animal training being outlawed forever.

In recent times,  a segment of the young clamor to hear new pop recordings on vinyl, as in LP.   Down at Issues on Piedmont Avenue, near to where I live, a surprising show of younger people flock to the shelves, to consider a dazzling array of books and magazines from far and wide. Can you spell p a p e r?

So, took the circus? 

Circus may be down, but don’t count ten yet.  

To quote Douglas McPherson from London: “Let’s hope these twenties roar like the previous ones!”

Thomas Chipperfield

circa 10.19.19

Rust in Peace: A Walk Among the Ruins of Clyde Beatty Circus ...

Joy in a once-embracing land: 1996

So much bad news continues coming my way.  Not yours?  Are you in dedicated denial? Or lost and hiding  behind old scrapbooks and movies?  Posters and photos?  Pretending that the "circus" show you just saw on a stage, at a concert hall or cruise ship, under a summer tent of students putting on a circus, is proof sufficient that American big tops are as alive and thriving as ever?

Sorry I don’t share your fragile fantasy.  But I do understand, CFA.

To look at the newest old photos is eerily surreal.   We are smack dabble in the middle of what may one day be a bleak and settled history of circus for generations to come.  We were there.

Tim Tegge was there/is there, too, and he  knows what is going on.  Maybe we all do, but for many of us, it’s too painful to face.  And so, any economy — or volunteer —  ensemble of jugglers and acrobats, a dog or two, a pair fluttering through the fabrics — will give the suffering imagination wings to magnify spangles into spectacles, match sticks into tent poles.   Culleppper & Merriweather, the new Ringling?  Ask noted author Janet Davis to explain.  Even the learned can’t cope. 

Tim and wife Barbara, on their way to a wedding in Orlando, stopped off to walk the aging, desolate grounds of now-defunct Cole Bros. Circus.  He clowned on the show from the end of 1994 through all of ‘95 and ‘96.  Bunked in room #85 on the joey sleeper.  “It will always remain ‘the Beatty show in my heart ... not ‘Cole Bros.”

Same for me, Tim.  I saw the Clyde Beatty Circus in my PC-deprived boyhood.

On his Facebook, reprinted in the soon-to-be-gone Circus Report, Tim remembers how ”invigorating and exciting” it was to be joining the show in the spring, when equipment had been freshly painted, and there was “more activity than you could possibly imagine!”

Going back now, Tim is  struck by the decaying condition of trucks pealing away, by the old trapeze rigging still standing, “rotting away in weeds and high grass.” In one of the lonely photos, a small green tree nudged up against a Cole Bros. semi looks as if to be coddling it out of sympathy and respect.

Tim cuts to the core emotion that all of these images produce in me  “Almost like watching a friend slowly dying from a terminal disease. It is painful and you're totally helpless.”

That once fine and proud and oh-so well run circus, the nation’s largest tent show in the indoor age of Ringling, rues Tim, “will never again take to the road.”

Never again. Did you really have to say “never,” Tim?

Kelly Miller Circus, Sunday, September 1, 2019 ...

The Kelly Miller Circus Is Official Closed. Thanks For The Memories.

Other than this message, typo included,  the website is now totally blank, all other pages having been apparently removed.

 

Remember the once-happy days of John Ringling North II?  His stetson hat, an audience landmark?  There he is, but no, as originally reported here, that is not him, as I guessed, at the head of the table with staff and fans, but Casey Cainan .  Johnny II could not and would not continue without the animals, and who are we to blame him?  Do I see Harry Kingston at the feast?  Surely I see clown and tell-it-like-it-is blogger (then) Steve Copeland, third up on the right.  Steve was so honest in sharing life on the show --  such as crowd sizes to cell-phonies mucking up the audience -- that we had to have our daily fix.  Truly a new kind of on-the-spot circus reporting -- Nothing like it before or since.  We were lucky!  Now, it all feels like a wonderful little golden age.  In my heart still, Ringling forever.

BIG APPLE CIRCUS IN CHAOS: Debit-Ridden Sarasota Backers Back Out – New Regime Fires West Hyler & Team, Dumps Entire Show ... Circus Flora Lands Artistic Control ... Five Weeks to Opening Night, Website is a Shell

In the beginning ...

Not since the Ringling family wars of the 1940s has there be anything quite like this under a big top.  Fasten your seat belts, kids!

Breathtaking – the brazen stupidity of it all, junking a complete show-in-the-making only six weeks before it is slated to open?   Doubly amazing:  If last year’s Lincoln Center date actually sold almost twice as many tickets as the previous one, as claimed by current CEO Greg Walker, then why in the world would you ‘86 a new show by the same creative team, ready to go on?

For the riveting rush of details informing most of  my observations here, we can thank Spectacle Magazine’s editor Ernest Albrecht.  He has skillfully –- and doggedly, I would assume  --- gathered and assembled the pieces into something far more coherent and complete than has heretofore been made known.  

Founders Paul Binder, right, and Michael Christensen.  All photos from various shows over the years.    

Sold or rented to?

There is a tangle of players here to sort through, so I may confuse us all.  One thing seems clear: Big Top Works, an arm (now in a sling) of Sarasota-based Compass Partners, LLC, which bought the circus out of bankruptcy, ran out of money.  Compass called a halt to the ride.  At the outset, Compass  had given  operational control of the circus  to one of its  own,  retired spinal surgeon Neil Kahanovitz .   The doctor’s  five-year stint in pre-med days working for Clyde  Beatty Circus in a trapeze act, made for good press copy. 

The first opus Kahanovitz produced, from reviews I have read, appeared to have been good enough, if not great enough.   It only took Big Apple’s being back in business for the press to hail Kahanovitz as “the man who saved the circus.”   Apparently, he did not.  Anthony Mason may have to retract some of his chirping on CBS as veiled spin-master for the show.  The Wall Street Journal may wish to reconsider how to cover circus more probingly.  

The doctor came.  The doctor went.
.

Circus King for a season:  Neil Kahanovitz, crowned by the media for saving the circus,  was dethroned without notice. 

Faced with deepening debts, after pulling the money plug on Kahanovitz, though evidently not letting him go, Compass proceeded to engage the services of Remarkable Entertainment, described by  Albrecht,  as  “a managing operator of the Big Apple Circus”   Albrecht writes that they “replaced Kahanovitz  and his investors who had fallen into serious debt.” Presumably, Compass still owns BAC.  RE's CEO is Greg Walker, who continues as CEO of Big Apple.   In fact, he has claimed to have been at the helm since last summer.   But back then, Kahanovitz was still granting interviews, ostensibly in charge, when he talked up plans for a national indoor tour. The tour was aborted before it began.  Whomever pushed the idea onto investors, Kahanovitz and/or Walker, displayed epic child-like naivete. 

    

 Who are the new operators?

One of Remarkable’s investors is  Randy Weinter, dubbed by The New York Times “the leading impresario of nontraditional theater.”  Wall Street Journal described him “the mad genius of night life."  Big Apple Circus needs a mad genius of any life.

Wrote Albrecht, "Kahanovitz financiers walked away and left him personally exposed financially." Into the breech jumped Remarkable, “making it a powerful force in the scheme of things financial and potentially creative.”

Only at Lincoln Center

By the time Hyler was notified  by telephone of his having been removed along with his entire creative staff,  they had been at work on the new show for almost a year.  Sets were built, costumes designed.  (Have you a feeling that we are in the Twilight Zone of the big tops?).  Most of the acts were also given the boot. Three of them,  reported the New York Post, as I previously covered here,  have filed lawsuits, each claiming to be owned $200,000 for five weeks of work they had signed onto.  

The Post’s glancing notice may strike New Yorkers as a first alert:  This big top was not saved, and is still in serious trouble.   Not the kind of news you want when you are about to premiere whatever it is you can throw together in the next five weeks.   They have announced that they will not tour beyond Lincoln Center. Something about people in other cities not having the money to pay the high ticket prices necessary to keep the kitty in black ink.

Is this understudy ready for prime time?

In to fill the performance void left by Hyler and company, come long-time Circus Flora movers and shakers.  Flora’s Jack Marsh will produce, while his mother,  Cecil McKinnon,  will provide artistic guidance.  She has scripted and directed Flora shows for many years.

On it's website, the group describes itself,  "A theatre company specializing in one-ring circus production." 

I have never seen Flora, which does annual summer shows in St. Louis.  I have heard and read good things about the company, such that, in my mind, it holds an honorable position as a very good mid-level circus with a more hometown feel, offering some very good acts, albeit heavily entwined in story lines.  McKinon favors more theater than ever did Paul and Mike. (Albrecht reviews the current show in the same issue, linked below.) I doubt Flora ever came close to putting out the kind of world class circus action that Paul and Mike did in their best seasons.  And I suspect that New Yorkers, given reason to question yet another regime change so fast, may not be so willing to give the show an easy pass — especially if it comes to town with too much dialogue and not enough get-to-the-point muscle.  New Yorkers have all the theater they need, all around them.

The Big Apple Circus website is a virtual shell.  Not a single photo or story appears.  Not a single act is named   A haunting symbol of yet another big top teetering on the edge.   

Dare I ask, will the show even go on? 

Paul Binder, around the time he announced his retirement, circa 2008.

Link to Spectacle:   http://spectaclemagazine.com/?page_id=12720
.
Once there, look to the right and click onto FYI.

Beleaguered Buffoons Win Affection, Respect in Touching McDonald's Ad ... Remember When Kids Loved Clowns?

Here comes, from London Town, a sunny break from all the snickering negativity about circus clowns. And what a relief from our long, dreary sludge through a dark tunnel of media indifference and veiled hostility.   

Thanks to UK blogger-writer Douglas McPherson for the link.  "I wondered if they're showing this circusy McDonald's ad in your area." No, Sir Douglas, not so far.  And I can't avoid the never-ending barrage of advertising and drug pushing.

The McDonald's ad, first posted on YouTube in 2015, stars the great Russian clown, Popov.  His aging image inspires in me memories of my trip to the Soviet Union in 1979,  when I saw some of the most gifted jesters on earth. I beheld the silently riveting Karandash at Moscow's New Circus. Elsewhere, inventive joeys who filled the rings memorably.

The special thing about this ad, which is credited to Leo's Think Tank Ad Agency, is that if feels more like a warm and loving tribute.  It is remarkably composed:  Sensitive, affectionate, musically moving -- you'll even see a costumed horse in the background.Good grief, a performing horse?  How daring!

Why have I not seen this?  Let me have some fun going paranoid:  Might McDonald's fear retribution from any number of viciously antagonistic big top haters?   Might PETA hold vetting rights, stateside?  In fact, had the burger giant decided the ad would backfire here?

Okay, just take a look for yourself, and tell me if this does not come close to something very special. .

https://circusmania.blogspot.com/2019/08/mcdonalds-serve-up-beautiful-clown-ad.html

I wish McDonald's would do a one-hour tribute to what we've lost under our vanishing big tops, using the same talent to script, score and produce it: I doubt you'll see the likes of this on Pledge Break Society. 

It's okay to shed some tears.

Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: Chasing Big Tops Together

“I always have mixed feelings about the Ringling show and am sometimes not too interested in seeing it.  Mainly I guess because it seems there isn’t anyone there I know and I much prefer to visit than just sit in the seats and watch the full show,”  
                      --  in his letter to me from October 22, 1989

He often offered to drive or to meet me at circuses playing in the area, though never once did I actually watch a circus performance with Don.  Usually — and this was fun, I will admit — we would nonchalantly wander into the backyard, as if being “with” the show, merge with the actual staff and continue right  on in through the back door.   Victory!  Free seats!  Oh, the thrill of the illicit walk in!

Sidewall Champs

We all did it. Another circus friend and fellow Santa Rosan, Hugo Marquardt, was with me at the fairgrounds, where Carson & Barnes was playing.  We were sauntering along the edge of the tent, heading  towards the back yard.  Hugo raised his hands in applause mode, and giddily sighed -- lampooning a CFA mantra about paying your way in  --  “We clap as we go!”

The Carson and Barnes show I saw in 1966-67 holds a special place in my memory bank of great circus performances.  The vibrant program bubbled and bounced as if on air, the rings rich in talent,  the band a rollicking treat to the ears.  

Perhaps Don had taught me well.  In my youth, I relished being able to slip through anonymously.  I practically walked into the Oakland arena when the Russians were playing there.  Talk about class crash.  Well,  my bank account held a near zero balance. That was my excuse then. What was yours?

My most disillusioning experience with Don was the time he offered  me a ride to Carson & Barnes, which was playing in an East Bay location that would have required my taking  two or three bus rides to get there.  Relief!   As it turned out, he went the day before — he often planned to spend several days around a circus lot — but evidently was not  nearly as well received as he might have expected.  So he called up to tell me that he would not be going. That felt cold.

Or maybe he had encountered insulting indifference to a Circus Report pitch.  He was forever struggling to sell new subscriptions, in order to replace a continuous stream of non-renewals.

 One to Hob Nob, One to Nit Pick

When we did go together, he escaped our company the moment we entered, and vanished – somewhere  into that special space where show people lived and worked.  I would sit out and watch the show, and meet up with  him afterwards.  He lived for the validation of circus peple.

May 18, 1983: "Was in Wally Naughtin's trailer  when there was a knock on the door and in walked Vargas. He acted like he was happy to see me.  Another time he was going through the backyard and came over to tell me that he had been selling tickets and said, do you know the people who buy those tickets are crazy."

There I am at Graham Bros. Circus, 1966.  Maybe Don was somewhere in the backyard.

I recall his once actually finding me in the mezzanine seats — we both happened to be at  Ringling in the old Oakland Auditorium.  Plenty of spare chairs that day. He sat down next to me and grumbled a little, something about the show.  He must have been not very welcome that day.

Getting the Bauman Bounce 

The Felds were none to thrilled by invading circus fans.  In a particularly revealing letter, dated August 24, 1984, Don  wrote of how unwelcome he was suddenly made to feel when, while walking up a ramp at the Cow Palace between the backyard and the arena, he was confronted by a former center ring star, now the performance director:
   
    “Guess what.  Charlie Bauman told me to get out and I didn’t belong there.”

    “I’ve often heard from others that Bauman is a very difficult man to get along with and he has been rough on others who come to visit.  Even to the point of going up in the seats and telling them they have to leave and can’t have a free seat at the circus.”

    “He never does look anything other than grouchy.  He must have a miserable life”.

    Or maybe the Felds had been hounding Mr. Bauman to do the job?

 Sometimes, when having gone to a circus on my own, from my seat in the audience I would spot him down by the performers entrance, standing there with his arms folded, lost, I supposed, in a dream of being One of Them — maybe the big boss himself.  Of being with it and for it.

****************************************************************************

Next: Don at his day job, and on the road with his California Varieties show.

first posted 11.18.19

second in a series 

BIG APPLE CIRCUS SLAMMED IN LAWSUIT: Three Performers Each Claim $200,000 for Botched Tour ... Details Point to Reckless Mismanagement

From Showbiz David –  Biz Buzz Division

 

Adam Kuchler, Mark Gindick and ringmaster Stephanie Monseu, photo from the New York Post. 

How Much Do Circus Performers Really Make?

OKAY, FIRST OF ALL, to prepare you for my headline issue, what do you suppose the average circus performer makes in this country?  I would have guessed  between $20,000 and $40,000- $50,000 a year — maybe the rare ones up to 80, 90 grand.  Ringling may have once gone that high for the likes of a Bello Nock, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Barry Lubin was getting over a hundred grand from Paul Binder for his delightful Grandma cameos.  

I did a little goggling, and settled on the figures supplied by Salary.Com, looking at Cirque du Soleil, which I imagine pays more than any other still-in-biz big top, anywhere in the world. To quote:

"Cirque Du Soleil Inc in the United States  is $56,769 {average] as of July 30, 2019, but the range typically falls between $46,782 and $69,313."
                         
Okay, onto the Big Question: Why did the new Big Apple Circus owners offer three performers $200,000 each for five months of work in the so-called indoor unit, the one that never made it off the ground? And we are not talking Monte Carlo Showstoppers.   We are talking two clowns – Adam Kuchler and Mark Gindick --- and last season’s ringmaster, Stephanie Monseu.

Tour was aborted five days before it was slated to go on, "low ticket sales" the cause.

How do I know this?  Because the New York Post reported last Saturday on a lawsuit filed by the three plaintiffs  in the  Manhattan Supreme Court. Plaintiffs allege they have signed contracts, that they were let go without compensation, thus having to find alternative bookings for 20 weeks of work lost.  I doubt they could have landed such loot elsewhere.   (You may recall another lawsuit against Big Apple Circus, reported here, by two parties claiming they were promised upper-management positions, and then pushed aside and out the tent, without compensation).  Do I spot a trend here?  I have nibbled around the edges of what feels like cloudy ethics in play, to post it politely

 Who is Really in Charge?

The two-hundred-grand figure alone tells me that this show is being run by amateurs. But then, if this Sarasota-funded outfit really doubled its tickets sales at Lincoln Center last season, as heretofore claimed by current CEO,  Gregg Walker (over those of the first season out), that points to a brilliant mind at work.  Whose mind?  The same mind  at work now?  Which brings me back to the subject of Neil Kravnazh --  the retired spinal surgeon to the Supremes (of the court),  accoladed for having “saved” the circus.  Whatever happened to Kravnazh, who was generally profiled as the man very much in charge of every aspect of BAC.    According to Walker, he, Walker, has been at the helm since last summer.  But the doctor was still being quoted in news reports about the circus as late as this past March. Did somebody fail to inform him that he was no longer CEO?   And why?  If another person was behind the soaring ticket sales, Walker seems the likely one, I can see that marketing genius grabbing the power away from the doctor. My best guess.   You realize, of course, the soaring sales were talked up by Walker, but, to my knowledge, not independently confirmed.

Enough.

END RINGERS:   Barnum is back in fresh print, credit two books, one just out, the other ten years ago..  Barnum: An American Life, is drawing respectable though not glowing notices, while, The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum drew raves when it was released in 2009.  I'd like to read it ...  Public respect for circus plunges: Just look and listen around, rather shocking.  Ringling’s exit was received with a collective shrug, the public and media sighing, sad, but, yes, it was about time.  Those poor animals.  Circus is a thing of the past. ... Comments at the end of circus articles, one after another, echoing the same anti-circus animals, even clowns, tone: It’s about time! ... The same ill-wishers may not be so happy if race tracks are shut down, and if owning pets becomes the next big PETA-pronounced evil.  As they say, be careful what you wish for.

This is 1956, not 2017

IN THE CLASSROOM, ALL IS WELL: Argues noted academic author Janet Davis, having penned an op-ed piece for the Wash Post, chirping that we are actually living in a very good time for the circus.  Arguing we lived through the same emotional frame back in 1956.  Really?  Back then, the public wept over the demise of the Ringling big top. Newspapers wept.  Editorial cartoons wept.  All of them to my knowledge.  Back then, the public en masse flocked to big tops, GUILT-FREE, to enjoy performing animals and slightly, lovable, eccentric (okay, devious) clown characters, along with the thrillers.  And back then, shows like Ringling-Barnum and Beatty-Cole did not fade into history books, but rebounded for another fifty seasons.  And what have we to support the Davis doctrine:  She cites two shows as examples of a still-thriving big top scene:  Circus Flora and Cullpepper Merriweahter ("still going strong").  Lame.  I’m canceling your course, prof.  Think I’ll enroll in Gender Detection Studies.  I hear the actively dating young are lining up to grab that one.


Many thanks to Barry Lipton for the New York Post link.   

He Doest It Again: USA's Wesley Williams Spins More Gold At Spainish Circus Festival ...

Once again, that powerhouse American kid on the tallest rideable unicycle, Wesley Williams, wowed 'em Over There, riding away with a Gold Elephant. He was one of only two acts to land the Gold, the other, a fabric duo from Russia.

Among the Gold, Silver and Bronze Elephants handed out, Russia claimed a total of five, The U.S, China, and the Ukraine, one each.

Williams rides, they say, the tallest unicycle in the world.