An Irish woman's life in the circus: ‘It's six months of living, eating, working, crying and laughing together'

Irish Times

3 days ago

'Pie and mash today,' calls the cook behind the ad-hoc kitchen that has been set up in a car park in Hereford. It's 4pm, dinner time for the performers of
NoFit State
, who will be going on stage in the small English cathedral city at 7.30pm.
Gracie Marshall, the only Irish member of the circus company, has been given a bag of Tayto crisps – useful extra carbohydrates – by Adam Fitzsimons, who has come over from
Galway International Arts Festival
to see what technical aspects of tonight's performance might need to be tweaked for NoFit State's headline run in the city next month: it's bringing the show, Sabotage, plus the company's distinctive mushroom-shaped tent, to Nimmo's Pier, in the centre of the city.
I'm sitting at a picnic table with Tom Rack, who is artistic director of NoFit State, and has a long, full beard. He was one of the five people who started the company in 1986.
'We were juggling and roaming around in the summers, and then in the winter we came together to make shows for schools, so we could avoid getting proper jobs,' he says. 'We fell in with a chap with a big top, back in the day of local-authority festivals and events, and he realised if he hired the five of us we'd drive the lorry, and do the workshops, and do the shows, and work the bar, and that was our introduction to the big top.'
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Where did the name of the company come from?
Rack laughs. 'It was the 1980s, and there was a Moscow State Circus, and the Chinese State Circus, and we were just a bunch of long-haired reprobates. NoFit State was a joke, but it stuck.'
Rack is the sole remaining member of the quintet still working in circus, and roaming the land. Their circus, like most these days, is animal-free. They have an office base in Cardiff, rehearse in March and April, and then tour during the summer.
How would he describe their type of performance?
'It's so far removed from traditional circus,' he says. 'It has traditional skills and tricks and excitement, but instead of being a traditional succession of acts it's a completely theatrical experience: a rollercoaster of a show. It's called Sabotage, but who are saboteurs, really? The misfits, the outcasts, the asylum seekers, the drag queens, the gender fluid. In Sabotage they are telling their stories. And we don't have a big top, because we're not a traditional circus.'
The NoFit State big top
It may not look like a traditional big top from the outside, with its muted ecru canvas, but it looks a lot like one inside. It's perfectly round, with circular seating all in jolly pink, as is the interior of the tent, where someone is tuning a violin.
'There are no bad seats here. It's a democratic space,' says Rack. It's true. Every tier of the 700 seats has essentially the same view of the ring.
Marshall, the Tayto recipient, comes to join me on one of the tiers. It's still a couple of hours to showtime, and the company have a little downtime before getting rehearsal notes and warming up.
The 30-year-old grew up in west Co Cork, near Rosscarbery. She's in her fourth year with NoFit State, specialising in hoop work and handstands.
'I did a lot of dance classes when I was younger,' she says. 'Then, when I was 16 and in transition year, I wrote to a circus dance company in LA' –
Lucent Dossier Experience
– 'and asked if I could do an internship with them.'
They said yes, and Marshall went out for a month, which must rank among the more unusual transition-year placements. By the time she came home she was convinced this was the career for her. 'I told my mother that I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with ordinary school; I wanted to go to circus school.'
So she moved to London, did some training there and then came back to Cork for more training, at the city's
Circus Factory
. After that, as for any freelance artist, there was a jigsaw of grants and courses, including money from the Arts Council and training in China, Ukraine and Austria.
'It was really uncommon to leave school at 16,' she says. 'But I was so sure that I was going to do it, that there are other pathways in life.'
Gripping: Sabotage. Photograph: Mary Wycherley
Has Marshall ever been asked to talk to transition-year students about creating a career in such a singular field? No, she says, but she'd love to.
'I started off as an aerialist, with hoops,' she says. 'I got really injured in a fall; I injured my hip. It wasn't fully dislocated but enough to ground me. So I made up tricks with hoops. I fly a lot.'
The circus trucks include two bunk wagons, where the company members and technical staff sleep. 'I feel like it's really community based,' she says. 'It's a supportive environment and everyone takes care of each other and supports each other – six months of really living, eating, working, crying and laughing together.'
At 5pm the tour manager, Rebecca Davies, gathers everyone in the centre of the tent for notes and warm-up. Some people are flopped out on a black mattress; one is doing his make-up; a few others are rummaging in a suitcase and reassembling white plastic flowers that get pulled apart during each performance.
We're used to the wildlife. Foxes come in at night and steal our costumes
Davies runs through the assembled nationalities for me. 'Irish, Welsh, Argentinian, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, English, Scottish.'
Everyone gets their notes, most of which are technical. Someone is blocking someone else while up one of the four tent poles. Catch this a different way. Remember to exit at that point.
The company also has a live band, and performers in the ring slip in and out of musical roles too. There's no such thing as having only one talent. This is a ensemble company through and through.
What are the challenges of running a two-hour show such as Sabotage?
'Weather,' says Davies, who came to work for the company for 10 weeks 10 years ago and is still with them. 'Weather can dictate what we can do on a day-to-day basis.' In Hereford, for instance, 'we know the ground will flood, and we know where those areas are.'
Sabotage. Photograph: Mary Wycherley
I recall the lattice of planks and walkways laid over puddles as I made my way earlier to the tent entrance.
'It's weatherproof in terms of wind, but a tent is still a temporary structure, and enough wind will still move the tent.'
They'd better have stout tent pegs for Nimmo's Pier, in a city where the Atlantic wind can shear in relentlessly at any time of the year.
Whatever temperature it is on the ground, it's 10 degrees hotter at the top of the tent, where riggers and performers alike are frequently working, says Davies. She stops talking to attend to an intruder: a seagull has come in, probably looking for any dropped food. Eventually it's escorted outside.
'We're used to the wildlife,' says Davies. 'Foxes come in at night and steal our costumes ... They use them in their dens, for nests. We know it's foxes because we have motion-sensor cameras, and they go off at night. We have to get up and investigate. In Brighton a fox came into the dressingrooms at 3am. We went out and found it running away with one of the girl's bras. Another night a fox ran off with a pair of shoes.'
Working for a travelling circus is 'not really a job. It's a lifestyle. You have to live and breathe the whole community. Part of it is that you want to get up at 3am to go and see what's happening in the tent, because the tent is our livelihood and part of our home.'
At 7.30pm I take a seat. I wonder about the stress levels of the technicians who rig the four central towers, called king poles, and assorted gantries overhead. For the next two hours performers will climb up and down the poles, swing from them, and be suspended from unseen rigging, most of it without safety nets (although they do have harnesses). To rig the show safely, and in so many new locations, is a huge responsibility.
The show starts with a remarkable appearance by Besmir Sula, a performer who uses crutches in his daily life. What he does while on them in Sabotage is worth the admission price alone. His performance is a marvel of speed, skill and grace.
I feel agonised watching an aerial performer suspended by a metal ring through her hair. She does beautiful work, and is all smiles, but I can't help wondering if it hurts. I have no idea how she must train for her routine.
The costumes are very
Wes Anderson
, shuttling between some fantasy, cartoonish world and the 1950s, with a lot of uniforms and hats. Marshall says she wears 15 costumes in the show, so an unseen element of everyone's performance is clearly the ability to change at speed.
There are threads of themes through the show: political protests, riot police, huge papier-mache heads of international politicians, arrests, ambulances, casualties. At one point the four king poles take on the appearance of sinister camp checkpoints, guards staring down at inmates. As NoFit State advises, this is a show that children can watch, but it is definitely not a show made for, or aimed at, children.
Despite the framing of some scenes with social protest and its effect on society, Sabotage is at its core a brilliantly creative and technical show, featuring hugely talented aerialists. In a world of AI and CGI, it's astonishing to be reminded of what the human body can achieve.
Watching Sabotage in Galway, in a tent raised above the rushing waters of the Corrib, and under the mercurial west of Ireland sky, will be a very special experience.
Sabotage is at Nimmo's Pier from Friday, July 11th, to Sunday, July 27th, as part of
Galway International Arts Festival