The engineer who ran away to the circus.

Have you ever dreamed of running away to the circus?

rachaelwest — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:00:49 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for visiting.

Did you dream of running away to the circus when you were wee? Maybe you still do dream of it but you’re too scared to tell anyone.

Perhaps you’ve already run away to the circus. I’ll bet you have. I’ll bet you’ve done something unexpected that the world told you wouldn’t work.

The Engineer Who Ran Away to the Circus really was an engineer and really did run away to the circus.

The Cast

rachaelwest — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:06:57 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen: the cast and crew of Emergency. I present: Ceri, Tam, Nikki, Sophie, Nina, Xian, Hulya, Gonzalo, Orde and Tonia in the days leading up to our you-beaut performance of on April 9 and 10, closing off three months of full-time circus training at Greentop Circus.

Click to view slideshow.

Photo memories

rachaelwest — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:26:32 +0000

Some photos from the course, from January – April 2010.

Click to view slideshow.

Oh, Henry – performance!

rachaelwest — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:36:54 +0000

Hurrah!

CiP: The Video is ready for launch! Enjoy this excerpt of our acro-balance performance (the one we put together in two weeks that you can read about in previous posts). Thanks to Ms Malofy for the fabulous editing.

This is how the show looked the first night. Some of the errors weren’t, er, intentional but since people laughed we made them part of the show the second night.

How to put on a show

rachaelwest — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:51:29 +0000

Backstage. Stretching, checking costumes, waiting.

The trio trapeze act I did with Ceri and Tam (me on a corde lisse rope, Tam on the static trapeze and Ceri on the silks) was performed for the first time on the day of the show. Just 24 hours before we went up I was anxiously trawling through lastfm, spotify and youtube looking for a track to accompany my piece. My diva character didn’t really appear until about six hours before the performance. (This is part of the reason my ambitious dream of live blogging from the circus was foiled.)

When I explained this to a friend, she was surprised: ‘But didn’t you have two weeks of rehearsals to work these things out?’ We did. Sort of. Two weeks, 14 days straight of preparing for the show, but there wasn’t anywhere near as much time to work on our individual acts as we might have expected.

Rigging: tying the trapeze close to the ceiling when it's not in use

Over the two weeks we learnt everything about putting a show together: how to arrange the rigging (hanging the trapezes, silks and ropes from the ceiling in the right place); what a technical rehearsal feels like; and everything to do with making the show go smoothly, such as interlude pieces between acts and allocating roles for rigging (i.e. letting down trapezes before an act and tying them back up again afterwards.)

Director, Gerry Flanagan, watches an aerial rehearsal

We also learnt that we all handle stress differently. There were tears. There were raised words. Frequent use of words your mother wouldn’t approve of. Migraines and stomach aches. I was reminded of an avoidance strategy I developed a long time ago: getting tired. I also may have sworn.

Studiously taking notes: which props to take on stage, which trapeze to rig up or down.

Oh, Henry! – rehearsal

rachaelwest — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:43:02 +0000

Soph, Tam and moi rehearsing our trio acro-balance act. This is how it looked about ten days before the show. (Please be duly impressed: we’d only been working together on this piece for a week or two and prior to that I had never had anyone stand on my shoulders. Ever.)

Engineer* at the circus more common than you’d think

rachaelwest — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:36:27 +0000

I thought I was a contender for the ‘change of career’ prize at a self-development workshop a little while back (did I just admit I went to a self-development workshop?!). It seemed everyone in the session had been through a few jobs in their 30 or so years, but most had moved from, say, civil engineering to mechanical engineering or technical writing to creative writing. At my turn I proudly announced, ‘I studied engineering** but I’m about to take off to the circus’. I got applause.

Turns out there are quite a few engineers in the circus, so I’m not actually that special; though to date I’ve mostly found them absorbed in juggling, which lends itself to mathematical thinking with its rhythms and counts and general leaning towards obsession.

My lack of special-ness was reiterated in a Playtime blog post, where Briony, chief finder of fun in the Funfed, has identified Engineer as one of the categories of players (there are also musicians, storytellers and several others). Turns out this Engineer type is particularly prone to running away to the circus, particularly if you are also a kinaesthete (love being in your body) and a performer (quite like to be in front of an audience).

* If you’re so inclined as to want to read pages and pages about how engineers think, you may wish to peruse How Engineers think about the World on said subject. It’s written by an engineer.

** I did study engineering and probably have a load of the characteristics in afore-mentioned document but I actually was only a real engineer for a few years. Just thought I’d clear that up in case of issues relating to falsifying identity. Not that I’m at all worried about getting information exactly right and correct and clear, even if it means writing longwinded extraneous paragraphs and technical jargon. And I’m not at all excited at the use of footnotes.

Sneak preview: man on rope

rachaelwest — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:27:31 +0000

A little taster of Friday’s show.

4 days and 2 hours ’til showtime. I’m buggered.

rachaelwest — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:10:27 +0000

Just thought you might like to know.

8 days til showtime and a lotta lotta work to do…

rachaelwest — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:09:36 +0000

This last week has been spent showing our director, Gerry Flanagan, the performances we’ve been working on in each discipline. Gerry’s job is to combine seven acrobatic routines, six aerial pieces, five clown skits, a dance, one hat manipulation, one extreme rolla bolla and a tightrope act together into one big show, preferably in a way that has class, makes us look fab and that the audience can sit through without falling asleep. We started the week with some pretty rough work but a few pointers from Gerry about engaging with the audience and complicite with the other performers can completely transform an act.

It’s been kind of cool to see just how much we can improve in a very short space of times so we thought we’d show you a snapshot of our dance piece just eight days before it will be launched to the public. Please use sound to fully experience just how terrible we were! And if WE can do a dance show, on a stage, in front of an audience, ANYONE can dance! I’ll keep you posted on the progress (hopefully with some more advanced movie editing though I’m very excited at my iMovie debut).