Peripatetic performance troupe The Invisible Circus are about to play their top trump: ‘Carny Ville’. It might be their last. Helena Edwards visits Bristol’s covert extroverts at their city centre base and looks back on five years of spectacle.

The circus is all about illusion; the allure stems from the mystique and there is a danger that if you divulge too many secrets the magic will disappear. Hence writing about The Invisible Circus, Bristol’s vaudevillian gang of benevolently minded performers, is somewhat paradoxical, a bit like having to show someone a dandelion in your hands, knowing that when you open them the wind will blow it away.

Although many Bristolians know that The Invisible Circus is there, not everyone knows how. Or why. To clarify, then: they are a creative collective that perform in previously disused/abandoned buildings which they have regenerated before developers proper sweep in to use them for other (often) commercial means. They have been based in the UK since 2002 but prior to that spent a decade as a travelling street performance group around Europe, forming friendships and collaborative partnerships along the way. They are like a magnet, attracting iron filings of energy and ideas everywhere they go.

In a move to ‘go official’ they established a sister company, Artspace Lifespace, in 2005, to help them sustain the buildings they use, fund their performances and offer creative facilities for the community by providing a more stable financial structure. They are currently based at The Island (the former Bridewell police station on Silver Street) and, as Venue discovers on visiting this city centre HQ, the political and social set-up within The Invisible Circus is somewhat anomalous. Imagine a world where The Man doesn’t exist. Where an order is formed because it actually makes sense. Where there are no set rules because nobody really tries to break them. Or everyone does. Where people are proactive because they believe in what they are doing. Where no-one has a permanent job title but everyone works hard. This is the world of The Invisible Circus and this is their anarchy….

Such an arrangement can be counter-productive, of course, but while there is no true central figure of authority, the group are realistic about there needing to be a degree of organisation: creating events such as ‘Carny Ville’ (comfortably their biggest annual performance) requires meticulous attention to detail and planning. As such there is a loose hierarchy: they have representatives for each (for want of a better word) ‘department’ and at the top is their main spokesperson, the man who started the Invisible ball rolling and invited everyone along to kick it with him – Doug Francis. He’s not an ultimate figure of authority, though the rest of the Circus recognise that at times it is necessary to have one voice to speak through. Doug’s omnipresent and obviously respected – a bit like Aslan but with smaller paws.

When Venue arrives, a team meeting concerning plans for this year’s ‘Carny Ville’ is in full swing, and all seems impossibly harmonious: everyone is fair, everyone constructive. When someone wants to speak they raise their hand. If they all concur, a gesture gives the necessary approval. It is easy to romanticise: to imagine the group wandering around with bluebirds above their heads, patting each other on the back and walking off into the sunset every evening. Make no mistake, however: this is no utopia. There have been, Venue’s informed, personal differences. People shout – and as the company has changed dramatically over recent years, issues about the political and financial structure have led to clashes.

Walking around The Island (we’re kindly given a guided tour), it’s clear there are core members who live, breathe and work for the Circus and are paid (more as a gesture than a pocket-filler) for the work they do throughout the year, plus countless other part-time/casual volunteers (there’s a very long waiting list). People from all walks of life have ended up here and the group comprises or has comprised (although not exclusively) doctors, nurses, shop workers, artists, green activists, film-makers and, of course, performers. Some people are there for life, some people come and go, but, according to Doug, you can’t get fired because you aren’t really hired. You are there only because you choose to be.

The Circus have been at The Island for the past two years. The premises consist of the old fire station, magistrates’courts and police station (including CID offices). It’s a massive complex slap bang in the middle of the city centre, and it’s called The Island for a very good reason – despite being in such close proximity to the world of shiny consumerism, ideologically The Island is oceans away.

Upstairs in the old CID offices there are still labels for the guns they kept there (Uzis and AK47s among ’em), the corridors are full of echoes, and the big lift shaft that bisects the building is now in a state of dubious disrepair. The cells below the magistrates’ court are perturbing: small and dark, the external rooms be-decked with barbed wire like tinsel from a Christmas with Black Peter. Allegedly, Venue’s told, the conditions in this building were so dire at one time there was a complete overhaul of Britain’s jails following an inspection here.

But The Island, although full of potential, eats money. Ticket prices for this year’s ‘Carny Ville’ are higher than ever (at £20 almost three times the £7 door entry in 2008). “This show is well worth £20,” counters Doug. “It’s actually worth a lot more: we offer a massive spectacular that’s like having a weekend at a festival crammed into one night, the performers and crew involved are amazingly skilled and dedicated to their art. They donate their services to ‘Carny Ville’ for free to raise funds and support The Invisible Circus cause. People see tickets selling and drinks flowing and imagine we are sitting on a gold mine, whereas it’s more like a black hole where time and money are poured in and beauty and laughter occasionally pop out.”

The finances do add up. Just. The costs of keeping the Island buildings safe enough to work in were over £30,000 for the electrics alone. “We are basically running on empty after three years’ graft, so this ‘Carny Ville’ is our last chance to attempt to raise some funds for the next mission, whatever that is.”

This latest version of the show is also a parody of corporate entertainment culture. But, with developers starting to bang on the gates of The Island, is it really also their last hurrah? “We have said that before and been proved wrong so we would rather not say,” says Doug. “It’s hard to tell what will happen. If the youth project that is meant to be buying the place has its funding cut, then who knows? As it is we were meant to lose the venue in May and it was extended to October. Now we wait to see what the new government announces before we can answer this question for sure. I hope not!”

What they are sure of, however, is having a much-needed break. “We really need a break to evaluate and absorb the mad journey of the past five years, and figure out how to go forwards from here. We are a big family now, with a lot of stuff, so we potentially need a new production base. We more or less had to keep doing shows here at The Island just to cover ongoing costs, but we need to stop productions and work on all the background chaos. We have come a long way... from some crazies throwing on cabarets in squatted buildings to a full-scale production company with over 200 cast and crew putting on extravaganzas like ‘Carny Ville’. We need time to reflect and digest.”

 
Come one, come all…

What to expect from this year’s ‘Carny Ville’

 ‘Carny Ville’ is a “circus theatre show” and site-specific performance which utilises (almost) every single bit of The Invisible Circus’s HQ. Under 2010’s umbrella theme – a lurid lampooning of corporate American entertainment culture – its main circus acts will include fire-dancing, trapeze, hula-hooping (really, not as tame as it sounds – just wait to see what hoops are being hula’d), acrobatics, aerial silks and oodles more, alongside countless other side shows, booths and live music, including tunes from the effortlessly tight house band The Carnyvillains and “apelike men becoming human jukeboxes singing various tunes for 20p”.

The dress code – “chorus line production line” – is somewhat vague but, as usual, anything goes. The show itself is based specifically on a parody of theme parks, filtered through The Invisible Circus’s ever twisted, cynical, and wonderfully bastardised interpretation, and complete with an American-style diner in the Old Fire Station (formerly known as the Boneyard bar) as the theme park’s restaurant.

CARNY VILLE RAN AT THE ISLAND, BRISTOL FROM FRI 1-SUN 3 & THUR 7-SUN 10 OCT. FFI: WWW.INVISIBLECIRCUS.CO.UK
 

Copyright Venue Publishing 2010

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