This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 15, 2013 - The author was Duncan Wall’s 11th grade English teacher at Clayton High School. Wall's book, "The Ordinary Acrobat" has recently been released and he will be in town March 19 for an event and book signing. The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Otten: You’re very detailed about how you came to admire the circus after studying circus life and circus history in Paris, but what made you decide to write a book about the experience?
Wall: It happened naturally. As part of the Fulbright Scholar application I actually proposed concluding the experience with a magazine article for “The New Yorker” — as if that was just something you could do — and so I was gathering material and notes while I was in France. That material became the idea for a book. There were so many interesting stories and so much I was experiencing that just wasn’t being talked about in America. I almost felt obligated to fill the hole, for the people back home who might be inspired.
Otten: About your title, “The Ordinary Acrobat”: Not until page 278 of 305 do you mention the episode that provided that title, when a neighborhood boy, who came to watch the circus school working under a tent, approached you.
Wall: He peppered me with questions: Could I do a back handspring? Could I do a back flip? Could I juggle? Had I flown on a trapeze? As I continued to answer yes, his eyes grew wider, until he finally, simply said, “Cool.”
I still saw a huge difference between myself and the other students, the “real” acrobats.
But to that boy I was part of the circus: an ordinary acrobat.
I liked the obvious juxtaposition of the words, and the way it captured my own experience. Ultimately I came to feel like it captured the state of the circus as well. As the art has moved into the mainstream and opened to the outside world, it’s become more familiar. In my life I literally know dozens if not hundreds of “ordinary acrobats” right now, people who work a desk job as an architect or a school teacher and fly on the trapeze at night.
Otten: Your book talks about the great divide between traditional and modern circuses. How much of such modern circus is likely to translate well into U.S. culture?
Wall: In one sense, the modern circus could and already has translated well. Cirque du Soleil is the biggest circus in history, and the company makes the vast majority of its money in America. Also the circus is, almost a priori, a popular art form that connects to a plurality of people, which makes it commercially viable. America, being the land of popular entertainment, could respond to it very strongly, if the art is ever given the chance to punctuate the standard venues (theaters, festivals, etc.). I say “could,” but we’re already beginning to see it happen.
Otten: Would you explain or elaborate on this comment, “Jugglers developed a specific kind of rapport with the audience: ‘There’s a power thing that happens. It becomes: Watch me.’”
Wall: That was a notion from Jay Gilligan, a contemporary American juggler based in Europe now. He’s saying, essentially, that a performer who demonstrates nothing but skill assumes a different relationship with the audience. Such a performer naturally takes a position of superiority: “Look what I can do.” You’re not saying it explicitly, but the implicit notion is “...and you can’t do.” There’s a separation that happens. It can create positive effects, such as awe or inspiration, but it can also alienate the audience. Gilligan, in any case, was looking for different effects, and a different relationship.
Otten: In describing Jérôme Thomas, “the godfather of modern juggling in France,” you talk about him learning to juggle five clubs at a time when that was a rarity. But then you note that kids would post “seemingly impossible tricks, which they never could have pulled off in person. Nonetheless, the videos had an effect: the skill level went up.”
Could you elaborate?
Wall: The Internet has tangibly raised the skill level of juggling in the world. Largely it’s a matter of inspiration and modeling. Every kid now, everywhere in the world, can, on a daily basis, see high-quality juggling. This really didn’t used to be the case. Jugglers were rarely on television. Videos were rare. The only way that you would get to see a good juggler was if you happened to have a juggling club nearby with a few good jugglers. Imagine, by comparison, if you played basketball everyday but never saw a basketball game. You wouldn’t be as good as if you watched the Bulls on television every night. The bar is just so much higher, especially when you see people your age completing moves that you never would have dreamed possible before.
Otten: You say clowns are different from all other circus performers, partly because they “fail,” and you add that circus schools even tend to keep separate from clown schools? Why keep clown training separate from circus school?
Wall: I go back and forth on this. It does seem to me that there’s something inherently different about clowning, for reasons I describe in the book: it’s less physical, more emotional; it requires more pure acting. We associate the clown with the circus, but that’s largely historical. If you consider a circus a demonstration of human virtuosity, which many people do, there’s no inherent reason clowns need to participate in that.
Otten: In the whole book, you never talk about having become a professional clown. Why not?
Wall: I didn’t really consider myself a clown. We [The Candidatos] were a theater company that worked with clownish tropes and techniques. But we didn’t engage very fully with the techniques I describe in the book, and several of our shows had nothing to do with them at all, including an adaptation of “Endgame” and an original play about a man’s family tragedy.
Otten: Now that you live and work in bilingual Montreal, at a national circus school with a French name, do you feel any new sense of the meaning of “American”?
Wall: This is a big and complex question. I lived abroad for much of my 20s, so I think my sense of being American comes more from that experience than from being in Montreal. The school in Montreal is becoming more “American” itself. The National Circus School of Montreal is the best circus school in North America and arguably the best in the world. And because the U.S. lacks a real international-calibre, professional circus school, we’re seeing more and more U.S. applicants.
Otten: Do you think you really did you run away to the circus, after all?
Wall: It’s possible that I ran away, but I’m not sure I ran away to the circus, at least not permanently. It’s affected me fundamentally and will always be in my life, but I’m a writer as well, and might end up having run away to that.
Otten: I was engaged in your book because I enjoy thinking about how big systems crisscross, the way sport and art and politics keep influencing each other in your story of the circus. But you actually start with the confession that circuses had bored you — until they didn’t. What would you say to people who think, ‘Who cares about circuses? My kids are happy with their computers and Facebook, and I have more important matters to consider’?
Wall: I would ask those parents what values they are interested in teaching their children. Are they interested in health, physicality, community, collaboration, self-esteem, creativity, and self-expression? If so, I’m not sure Facebook or the Internet provides those qualities. And I’m quite sure the circus does.
Update: Duncan Wall talks about the circus in a New York Times Sunday Review article.
Nick Otten is a freelance writer.