Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: The First Issue Out

In his own words, from a voice message to me, 1982:  “In case you forgot, now you know: Tonight's the Ringling circus on channel something or other at eight o’clock.  You  can check that out now.  Also, I wanted to tell you, I got a copy of your book [Behind the Big Top]  in the mail today.”


The phone rang.  I picked up.  Hello?
"Hey, got a moment?"
Yes.
"Listen to this." He was discretely amused by juicy gossip
"Big flare up at Ringling. Concello is out."
You’re kidding?  I said that a lot.  Best way to extract more.
"North blew a fit over in Paris."
Tell me what happened!

And we talked. And talked.  Was there ever a more interesting subject than circus during the creatively and organizationally turbulent years of John Ringling North?

In some ways, thank you Ma Bell, it was more fun talking to Don by phone  than face to face.   Maybe the one-on-one secrecy of a Ma Bell connection made everything feel more confidential. We lived close enough to avoid long distance bills. And so we talked.

And I got to respect the way his mind worked.   Remarkably, when it came to politics and current affairs, Don was placidly calm, as if he had been born naturally objective, as if  nothing out there could ruffle him. Well, maybe except me, once.  And how refreshing were his calm observations during those volatile years in American politics,  I never knew what poetical party he might belong to. This bent of nature would serve him well when he turned the love of his life into a little weekly paper.

In covering this chapter in his life, incredibly, virtually all of his letters to me from the 1970s are missing.  The fact that I have not a single one tells me they are all together somewhere in a folder, if still in my midst.  So, some of the following details may be inaccurately recalled.

Sometime in 1971, the White Tops offered Don the job of editor, and he was mulling it over, frequently with me on the phone.  I was surprised that he did not not jump.  At the time, however, as I now hazily recall, Don had been batting around the idea of putting out a weekly paper.  The White Tops offer knocked him off course for a bit, and we hashed it over at length.  He wondered how he could handle editorships of two publications.  Possibly the CFA got wind of his other idea, for, to Don’s acute consternation, they withdrew their offer — or worse, simply dropped communications and he found out from a third  party. Whatever had happened, the about face did not go down well with Don, and that’s putting it mildly. He felt betrayed.  At the same time, it stiffened his resolve to move ahead with some kind of a weekly.

The first issue of The Circus Report came out on January 10, 1972.  Its humble graphics barely passable, it consisted of three 8-1/2 x 11 inch sheets of paper, stapled on the top left hand corner.  Top of page one, .Vol. 1, No. 1:

On page 3, NEW LAW: “One frequently hears the question ‘how come all the shows are going out to the Cow Palace?’” The story was about a new San Francisco city law to keep hippies and hippie caravans off the streets.  Circus caravans that  parked outside the civic auditorium got lumped in with long hair squatters.  The Cow Palace, in Daily City, did not have a hippie problem.

Reported Don, “Polack Bros. Circus was was the first show to feel the wrath of the city fathers.  They were forced to commute from out of town trailer courts for each performance during their brief run here in May.”

On page 5, WE START This is the first issue of “The Circus Report” which will be published on a weekly basis.  We hope that you will enjoy the paper and find each issue of value.  Send $1.00 for a month’s subscription and don’t miss a single copy. 

There was but one lone  advertiser in that first issue:

 WANTED

Tape music from the Ringling Barnum Circus while under canvas.

Send details to

Guess who? Clue. The advertiser lived in Oakland.

Just getting the weekly printed, stapled and addressed gave Don choice satisfaction. A weekly roll to ride.  A weekly challenge. To his advantage, he would quickly manifest a trait that  many other would-be publishers did not  possess: He delivered on time.  He never went to third class mail, mainly to avoid having to annually disclose circulation figures.

Subscribers gradually trickled in. Within weeks, Don was listing circus routes, perhaps the paper’s most valuable feature for both show owners and fans  But the ads did not roll in that year nor the next.  In fact, they were a long time in coming.  Circus Report endured a long slow crawl to prosperity.

 

                 
During the second year, on July 2,  Don made a format change that would, for me, define my favorite Circus Report size.  He printed off legal sized paper, and made a fold, producing a  7" wide by, 8-1/2 “ high size.. 

In time, Don had ample advertisers, and he would note a  disparity between pro and amateur.  The fans wrote all articles and reviews.  The circus owners took out all the ads..   And those advertisers would come with pushy expectations, believing  that their shows would not be knocked or even slighted by reporting or reviews.  These owners and their loyal acolytes  lived in a world insulated by fan worship. A world that even The Billboard shied away from objective reviewing.  Don’s advertisers were accustomed to being loved and rarely if ever questioned.  They were, kids, a spoiled lot. 

On occasion, when Don dared to depart  script, the phones rang and all hell broke lose. Never as loud as when an earthquake of vitriol slammed something I had written for Don, throwing us both for a loop.  Blame it on White Tops Editor Walter H Hohenadel, who first published me at age 14, and let my nit picky cracks stand. 

NEXT: To review or not to review?  Never-ending circulation struggles ... Covering animal rights and Cirque du Soleil.  Half staffing  the office, and Billy Barton.

first posted 12.19.19

Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: Into the 1980s, Thriving and Diving Through the Last Great Circus Decade

Fifth in a series on my friend  Don Marcks and his The Circus Report

October 25, 1984:  “I wish I could offer you a job with CR should you return to the Bay Area.  Am not sure I could pay what you might need and deserve."

In the paper’s peak years, Don now and then employed a part timer, usually a student “just out of school,” but he found them to be undependable. His dependable mom was always there to help out with folding, stapling and stamping fresh sheets  off the press for assembly and a trip to the local post office.  One of the postal clerks showed Don support and compassion, and he would eventually marry her.

His greatest challenge were the never ending struggles to sustain circulation.  He sent out free copies to new members of the various circus clubs, hit the lots with samples.  His circulation high, this number sticks in my brain, may have been around 2,400.  I doubt that any of the circus magazines ever matched that.

Fickle Subscribers 

October, 5 1984: “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve lost almost 300 subscribers,  so I guess I have to figure out something to improve and make CR a bit more appealing.  That’s a pretty big loss over the last few month.  Wouldn't think it was due to my having been laid up, but never can tell."
                      
As a news source, how good a job did Circus Report do?  On the plus side, the routes  were outstanding, the reporting equally so when he picked up from AP stories about mishaps under the big top (such as the Toby Tyler seating collapse), and the animal rights movement. He did not shield readers from any of these controversies or misfortunes. From corrupt phone room operations in the 1970s. He did not hide from the world.  I admired that about him.

But How Many People Were in the Tent?

On the debit side, what  Don’s weekly most sorely lacked were attendance figures under our big tops. Of course, this was not primarily Don’s fault, for the American circus has never had its own Nielsen's — and I am dead sure never wanted  them.  Not then.  And certainly not now.  The old Billboard, edited by Tom Parkinson,  did a far better job of a least estimating crowd size on the lots.  Nothing was more compelling to my young eyes than the headlines on the first page of its Circuses section.  Example, those in the August 6, 1955 number:

Chicago Attendance Poor For Ringling; Plan to Cut Prices ... Beatty Score Well at Vancouver Stand ... Truck Delays Hit King; Crowds Fair ... Polack's Strong Spots Make Up for Decreases ... Kelly-Miller Going Strong on Extensive Wisconsin Tour .. 

July 31, 1954: Cincinnati Gives R-B Strong Two-Day Biz.  As reported,  "Show registered one-third filled houses for the two matinees but racked up capacity business for both night shows."

To Review or Not to Review?

Sorry to say,  rosy Circus Report reviews could be numbingly predictable. And predictability does not make for must-read news.  Don fell in line with other fan publications, afraid to alienate his core subscriber base.  He once complained to me about all of the glowing write-ups he was getting of Circus Vargas.  He did not want to print them all, but he probably did.  Another time, he told me of having received a review of Vargas.  “It wasn’t very good, so I didn’t print it.”

Feb. 27, 1966: “I know that you feel things should be iron clad in review with positive like or dislike.  I’m inclined to present the facts and let the reader decide what he thinks.  Guess that I might not make a reviewer for I just like the shows too much.”

He wanted “better reports on shows and such.”   He addressed a subject that would regularly dog him,  that he could never fully resolve, writing to me that it was “also too bad, like the one review when the fellow says the bad was bad that so much uproar results.  It would seem that if it were true you ought to be able to say so.”

He did share with me his unease over rah-rah notices, and stories that went on and on, but he was beholden to a loyal base of contributors, who supplied the necessary content.  He was skittish about asking  writers to cut back on excess.  

Another force that kept him playing it safe were the circus owners themselves,  who took out the ads and were not accustomed to what we might call objective reporting.

Next: The Invisible Red Pen of Circus Oowners ... The Heartbeat of Billy Barton  ...  The  Invasion of Cirque du Soleil  ....

first posted 12.19.19

Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: Journalist to Variety Show M.C.

Hey there!

Hi, there!

Time to sing

time to raise the roof!

Show time

Go time

This is no time to be aloof!

       California Varieties           

That’s our show, and we’re on

So, welcome and cheers ...

Here’s Don!

The above was composed in one take by yours truly, on the backside of an Econo-Car Rental System Inspection slip – my day job at the time.  It might have been the opener for the amateur revue that Don produced and booked into various community venues throughout  Northern California.  He had local singers and dancers, maybe a comedian, a good little local home grown dog act.  And did a little plate-spinning.

“I was thinking about your recent show at the college and wondering why you don’t write something for me to use in the shows we do?     2/27/66

Well Don, how about that?

No, not about that, David. Without hardly a comment, he stayed aloof to the shameless rouse I had offered his stage entrance. 

In tone an temper, Donald Marcks, born in Pittsfield, Mass, was closer to a bookkeeper — or pastor —  than ringmaster.  Think somber.  Is there a soul dead who ever left behind as few photos of themselves as did Don?  I know of only one.  But then, while digging up info for this post, I found a second photo, right down there!  Looking back, I wonder if he lived on a low-laugh diet.

The old Key System terminal in San Francisco.

By day when I met him,  he worked as managing editor of the one-man office of The Guide, a daily shipping newspaper based in San Francisco, its history dating back a hundred years. To get to The Guide from the Key System bus and train terminal in the city, Don took long strides at the breakneck speed of a race track trotter. I should know, for I once met him at the terminal, and trailed him, panting all the way to his workplace.  He answered phones, took down news items and wrote them up, and set them in type on a Linotype machine. Then to a small press, and into the mail and to distribution points around the city.  .   

In many ways, he supported my writing ambitions. He later encouraged me to consider penning a column for the paper. We called it Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.  In tone, perhaps deferring to my no-pay employer, I turned out my most restful prose ever.  This venture  lasted through about three months.  I don’t know why it ended.

Don Marcks now and then dabbled in writing himself.  I can only guess that he never took any ideas very far because he was too bottled up inside.  Too afraid to disclose.  He did disclose quite  a lot to me in his numerous letters, impeccably typed out, some going on for three pages, many without a single typo! .I have a note from him in which he announced how his marriage (the first one) did not work out and was thus annulled.  He seemed accepting of fate, without any show of emotion one way or the other.
 

I always felt a certain holding back, a puritan restraint? Or maybe it was something about me.  Once, he blew up at me on the Kelly-Miller lot in Petaluma, over something I was being critical over.  And I did go on, and so I rather understood his explosive ire that day. I had to respect him for putting up with me.  We remained friends.

On the social side,  Don’s California Varieties, a showcase for eager young amateurs,  gave him a break from circus obsessions. He did a little plate spinning and was the show’s straight-faced MC.   He also would change coats several times through the program, a rare show of flair for Don.   

Sometimes I rode with him to one of the dates.   Many were at rest homes, some on military bases or at  small county fair fairs.  Nice good people.  One of his best friends was the woman who trained the dogs.  She also lived in El Cerrito, and spoke freely and openly.  A city adult.  After the shows, my favorite part, the company would adjourn to a nearby restaurant. Since I had grown up in a church where the performing arts where encouraged, I could appreciate spending time with these kind of people 

 Don wanted his variety show to become  bigger and more professional.  While I was on the road, in 1969, ahead of James Bros. Circus as press agent, in a letter to me, he excitedly raised the subject of my helping him promote California Varieties as a fund-raising venture for local groups.    “I think [there ] could be a field here for us which would give everyone some money ... (but no phone crews).”

I made a big effort out of it, talking to many local churches, following up, calling back, reminding.  Gradually, I had to let go of our not-very-strategic game plan. 

Don should have hired a phone man.

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

Next: Rise of The Circus Report

first posted 12.2.19

SUNDAY MORNING OUT OF THE PAST: Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: How We Met

As the Circus Report neared its final issue in 2019,  I began a series about the Don I knew for many years. They will appear one after the other, in the order in which they were first posted.
 

No single image anytime in my life that I can recall, captivated me so instantly and fully as did what I saw in the window of the Western Auto store down Fourth Street in Santa Rosa.  I might have been ten-years-old at the moment of conversion into the world of sawdust and spangles. 

There, behind the glass, my spirit was captured by the spectacle of model circus wagons standing atop flatcars.  The shapes.  The bright gaudy colors.  The look  of a wondrous world coming into town! I’d never seen anything like this in my life.

I went back to Western Auto, everyday, to stand and stare at the magic. To study the  wagons. To marvel at the festive decorations . And then, Marcks Circus was gone.

Not long after, I learned what balsa wood was at the Toy and Model Shop of Fifth Street. I learned how to use exacto blades and tester’s glue.  I taught myself how to  cut pieces of wood and fit them together to form my own crude circus wagons.  Both Playland-at-the-Beach, across the street from where I was raised in San Francisco,  and the Marcks Circus would compete for role-model attention and space when a  4x8 slice  of plywood was installed by the family in our garage.  My own private workshop!

In a year or so, I was riding a bus from San Francisco, across the bay, to a town called El Cerrito.  Once it reached San Pablo Avenue, I had been told to look for Mechanics bank. Ask the bus driver!   He let me off on the corner, and I walked up to Oak Street,  turned right, and looked for 525.

Don Marcks, maybe 15-20 years my senior,  was a rather solemn soul, yet ready to share samples from his collection, if at a slight remove.  He walked me out to a large shed across the backyard grass, invited me in, and proceeded to open drawers, and remove sample wagons.  I got to hold a few in my hands.  I could have gone through the whole lot, but he made this first visit more of a sampler.  Maybe he wanted not to soil the mystique.

We became friends, thanks to his friendly letters and sharing spirit..  In some, his unfiltered opinions about circus shows leaked through, which assures us that circus fans did hold sharp views, however privately held.

October 19, 1955: “Yes I saw the Ringling show this year several times for I was in Seattle, Richmond, San Francisco and Los Angeles on the show .... As for the specs, they could drop them without anybody noticing it. [I did not agree!] ... I felt they had some very good acts and thought the show was good except that it was too slow and too long.  Without a doubt it could have been speeded up and cut at least an hour off the time. Boy to sit and watch a circus for three hours for the public is a long time and I don’t care what anyone says, those seats of theirs are the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever sat on” ***

I think it was closer to  2-1/2 hours, but without an intermission, the complaint was valid.  For myself, I could have watched it many more times.  It gave off a certain subtle enchantment. 

As for the frugal seats of one Arthur M.  Concello, for sure they were not designed to pamper. Even I, at age 14, felt a bit cramped.  Which makes me wonder, for the first time,  if some patrons remembered the confined seating and were thus less inclined to return in following seasons? I actually have fond memories of the Clyde Beatty Cole Bros. chairs. Grand!

“Will probably see you when my show is displayed in Antioch next month”

 On another of his display dates, I went with him to help set the whole thing up.

A couple of my early wagons, on display at the Toy and Model Shop, in Santa Rosa

Don often offered me excess or superseded parts of his own model.  Jan 28, 1956: “Just got to thinking and I do have a few ½ inch scale ring horses that you could have if you wanted.  They are in various positions and are brown. ... There will be a small indoor circus at the high school in Petaluma.  I plan to attend and if you should perhaps be there I’d bring along the horses along the horses for your then — Let me know for sure about this?"

My scale was closer to 1/4", and so I found his figures rather heavy, and somehow they didn’t fit my layout.  He did give me some (very heavy) wheels that did fit my wagons. He was then switching over to plastic.

Oct. 13, 1958:  “Show [Ringling] definitely lacks something ... Perhaps it is the poor band .... and the fact they don’t announce much stuff... However, one must admit that they still have more and bigger than any show on the road.” ***

We grumbled for many years over the demise of Ringling-Barnum under canvas, and were thus, I believe, prone to be more critical of the indoor shows that followed.

Wagons I made in my mid to late teens. What a difference Don's donated wheels made.

 .

His letters were typed out, single spaced, and most of them needed another two or more pages . And in some, I can’t spot a single typo! I have dozens of them, and they all will eventually reside in my archives at Illinois State University. Don Marcks will never be forgotten there.

*"" 8.11.24: So we can see, circus fans can actually have sharp opinionated reactions to a circus, even though rarely if ever do they vent them publicly or in print.  Those are DON'S words, not mine. I know the show was long, but I could have sat there forever, it was so enchanting.  My one and only time under the Ringling big top.  The seats?  Yes, I was left feeling a bit uncomfortable, they were frugal. But then again, this was Big Bertha, so every thing about it seemed super good. Right?

Next: Going to the Circus with Don

first posted 11.8.19  1 of 7

 

Popcorn, Peanuts, & Porn: On the Crotch Watch at Big Apple Circus. Night Club Swagger Rattles the Critics

 photos by Matthew Murphy

.

Don’t blame the latest “new” Big Apple Circus for not daring to shake things up.  Judging from the two reviews I have so far found,  this latest effort offers up its treats in a dubious context, darkened by heavy metal on the side, sexy vocalizing, and erotic airborne action.   All of which evidently makes reviewing it a new kind of challenge.  But the best New York critics never shy away from facing whatever may come their way, and letting their pens flow accordingly.
   
Early in her upbeat notice, The New York Times beat critic,  Alexis Soloski, noted:

“I wondered if I had come to the right place.” She was taken aback by an aerial strap act that opens the show, performed by a pair of look-alike platinum blonds, set to heavy metal music.  “They spun, swirled and hair-tossed, pressing one crotch atop the other as each did the splits, a visual palindrome that skewed lewd.” 

Straps and fabrics are becoming a kind of erogenous zone for new circus revolutionaries.

Another jarring image for Solsoky came in the form of clown Amy Gordon, while roller skating in a corset and top hat and singing “Uptown Funk” –  “If you sexy then flaunt it/if you freaky then own it.”   Added Soloski, “Perhaps the merch stand could sell me some light-up pearls to clutch.”

But this Times scribe stayed the affirmative, arguing that such sleazy goings-on  “couldn’t spoil the annual thrill of seeing a troupe so effortlessly diverse, international and adept.” She loved, among the show’s best turns,  the  “magnificent fluff balls” of the Savitsy cats; the high wire exploits of the Lopez family, and the thrilling Wheel of Death – ‘many of us screamed.”  And the Times, a long time friend of Big Apple,  handed out another Critics Pick.

Question is: Will the attractive talent pool be ill-served by such raucous overtones?  Production is apparently weak on thematic overlay.  Long-time band leader Rob Slowik is out.  Another trumpeter, Wages Argot, is in, his band blasting out brassy originals by Jamine Delwarte and Ada Westfall.  From Circus Flora, co-directors Cecil MacKinnon and Jack Marsh staged the program. Evidently, they left their dramaturg in St. Louis.

All of which or none of which,  left Michael Sommers, reviewing for The Stage, filing what feels like a soft pan.  “Let’s note that the current attraction is not among its finest editions."

Calling it a strictly “no frills endeavor,"  Sommers gives due credit to a few “admirable” acts, but has little patience for the “Las Vegas” antics and imagery, for “acts on the duller side,” such as juggler Kyle Driggs, and for the lack of a visual showcase of the kind that Paul Binder gave the circus. “There is a strange perfunctory quality to the show.”  He cites ringmaster Storm Marrero for frequently working the crowd to clap along, a pandering for applause that “gets tiresome.”  Nor did the random-looking wardrobe of up-and-coming designer Emilio Sosa win over Sommers vision, coming off as if  “most artists brought their own outfits with them.”  Ouch.

It sounds like a challenging mixed bag to me.  I’d love to see it for myself.  I can see touches of Circus Oz there.  UniverSoul, for sure. Obviously, they are trying to make it a more hip show.  Will the racier edge pull in a younger, more responsive crowd? Might it turn parents away from bringing their kids?    I am waiting to see how CircusTallk reviews this one.
                                       
 Here on earth, in summation, Sommers  gives it 3 out of 5 stars -- “pleasantly entertaining but scarcely memorable.’

Alexis Soloski  wraps, “The aim of Big Apple felt shakier this year, and its sense of audience more wobbly, but it’s still a pleasure and a thrill, and the sexy stuff flies over most children’s heads.”

Can the risque atmosphere fill the seats? Make nut?  Or ...  is this tent closer to last call?

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

Many thanks to Don Covington for including the complete New York Times review in his e-mail send outs. If you try finding it on the Times website, you may be blocked, as was I,  at their members-only border.

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.