Circus Life

Posted by Kristin Hawkinson on Sunday, September 18, 2016 Under: Cirque Italia

Last weekend was a crazy one for me. I reevaluated my morals, immersed myself in the culture of a circus tribe, worked 28 very sweaty hours in four days, fell in love with a circus performer, changed (slightly) the way I look at myself and humanity, and have (slightly) changed my travel directions.

Joining the Cirque Italia was a last minute opportunity. I completely ran out of money by the time I hit North Carolina (not to mention going negative from a $180 seatbelt fine…). After hours on Craigslist looking for work I saw the ad for a circus usher needed, applied, and within minutes was told that an interview training session would start that afternoon before the first show. I rushed to the thrift store, bought an outfit, and arrived barely on time. I expected a bunch of people competing for the same limited positions, but I was the only one there so I got the job by default (and because I look so damn good in a tie). The minimum wage job consisted of showing people to their seats, making sure no one was being obnoxious, and cleaning up a little in between shows. Consequently, it also consisted of hanging out with the crew, watching the performances from the best spots, and studying humans in a highly cultured setting.

I noticed and learned some things about myself and others during this weekend, though I barely experienced the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the circus culture. Here are a few I want to share with you all.

What I thought I knew about how the circus works turned out to be mostly true, but experiencing it is something entirely different.

Whether it is a circus or concerts or plays, I am aware that virtually the entire performance is planned and executed the same way every time. What’s novel to the audience is monotonous to the entertainer. The whole show is clockwork. Cued applause here, expected laughter there, sound effects here, more cued awe there. People feed off of each other's energy. It’s funny, when I attend these events, I know that it’s planned, but of course it causes a novel reaction in my brain. When I’ve seen it 9 times however, the reaction is much more apathetic. My interest in the show quickly turned into interest in the audience. Before too long, even the audience seemed mundane. This all reaffirmed what I learned in college about novelty, apathy, density-intensity, social cues, schemas, and conditioning. I’ve also had a pretty solid idea what’s behind the curtain in these situations, but the mechanisms are super complex and require a LOT of work to keep everything running smoothly. Everyone has their job and has to make sure to implement them at the right time, which sounds simple until you’ve had to do them a hundred times. For example, a clown was cued to run on stage during the last show of the night but since he got bored waiting, he was conversing with someone and missed his cue by about 10 seconds, which is a loooong time when the music and audience depend on it.

Novel: The novelty effect is the tendency for an individual to have the strongest stress response the first time that individual is faced with an experience. Over time, as the novelty wears off, the stress response decreases.

Social cue: Situational cues are contextual cues in the environment that signal an action or event may occur. It can also be a signal that the person needs to respond in particular ways. If someone smiles, walks up to you, holds out their hand and says "hello," you know from the social cues that you should shake their hand. You wouldn't take your chewing gum out of your mouth and hand it to them, now would you?

Density-Intensity: As density increases, the intensity of our moods and behavior increases. Thus, if we expect to have a good time at a party and the party is crowded, we'll really enjoy ourselves. But if we expect to have a bad time, crowding makes us feel miserable.

Schema: A mental concept that informs a person about what to expect from a variety of experiences and situations, such as from social cues. Schemas are developed based on information provided by life experiences and are then stored in memory. Our brains create and use schemas as a short cut to make future encounters with similar situations easier to navigate (i.e. what events you expect to occur in a restaurant, a retail store, or, a circus!)

Conditioning: A behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement, with reinforcement typically being a stimulus or reward for a desired response.

The circus tribe is a little traveling society, with little subcultures, just like any institution in which you work.

I didn’t really know what to expect about the nature of the relationships between everyone that worked there. Was everyone one big happy family? Are there cliques? Just as you’d expect from an institution with about 50 people, there are definitely cliques. And if you know anything about me, I despise the in-group/out-group mentality. I want to connect with the popcorn lady and the clown and the ticket booth guy and the tightrope walker…. I hate that they don’t hang out with each other. I hope I don’t get labeled something negative when I associate myself with the different groups. I’m here to break the tension! Perhaps when I spend a few weeks with them they won’t think, “Who does this chick think she is?” but rather, “Hey, she’s alright. Let’s get together and have a party!” Hah, I can dream.

A lot of people are more concerned with capturing memories than they are with experiencing them.

I’m a big hypocrite here. But when someone shows me a mirror (i.e. I see someone else doing what I do), I tend to mindfully reflect on it. Once people were settled in their seats and weren’t moving around, I would stand off to the side and watch people as they observed the show through the device in which they were recording the performers. Some had near front row seats—an incredible view of the stage where you could see every sparkle of makeup on the acrobat’s face—and yet at least half the time they were staring at a 3x5inch screen trying to record what was happening. Does anyone else see the idiocy in that? Are you guilty of it? Because it’s pathetic. We were blessed with these AMAZING things called eyeballs, why pay $30 to look at a screen?? If you wanted to look at a screen, then you could have just stayed home and watch the other 500 people’s recordings of the act and saved yourself the time, money, and gas. Also, anytime something wasn’t blowing these people’s minds, they were on Facebook. Here’s how I imagine their page:

Jane Doe: “Look where I’m at, everyone!! What a great show!”
Commenter: “Oh my gosh, wish I could be there!”
Jane Doe: “Oh, you practically can! Here, I’ll take a video and show you!”
Commenter: “What’s that he's twirling around??”
Jane Doe: “I have no idea, I’m seeing exactly what you see! I can’t believe I paid this much money for this crappy lighting!”

Pathetic. Pardon my language, but put your goddamn phones down, people. Seriously. It distracts other people who aren’t as obsessed with putting everything on social media and it totally takes away from the experience of the performance. What a terrible example you’re setting for your kids. I don’t know about you guys, but I would much rather have the memory of a wonderful full-body experience than a mediocre keepsake of it. You only get one life, don’t spend the whole time trying to preserve it—it kinda defeats the purpose. Don’t get me wrong, snapping a picture here and there is cool, but it makes me feel so sad for people who complain about the ticket prices and don’t understand that they’re missing the worth.

· Morals are hazy. Philosophy is the light to the darkness.

Alright, now that I’ve ranted about what I think is the dumbest epidemic in our society, I can throw it all out the window because who am I to judge? I’ll reiterate Wookiefoot again here: “Don’t get me wrong, I’m the king of it. Just a little bit hippie hypocrite winging it. Sometimes thinking that I’m knowing everything of it and putting my should inside a song and singing it.” I often think about “saving people” but as I remember from an Alan Watts lecture, who am I to know what’s best for people? Trying to make everyone drop technology and go back to living in food forests is simply economically impossible. I can do my best to tip the scale so that my carbon footprint is minimal and humans/animals enjoy their lives harmoniously, but I cannot and should not stop people from inventing new technology. I just watched a documentary about a woman who had a 2-POUND cancerous tumor removed from her face…. now, I could assume that the cancer was caused by our crappy food, but that’s another convoluted matter. But the fact that surgeons and doctors were able to correct that is incredible and couldn’t be done without technology. We wouldn’t be exploring space today if it weren’t for the horrific and destructive industrial revolution. Everything comes with pros and cons. This water circus pollutes like crazy, but it doesn't use live animals and it brings talented people from around the world to provide a great cultural time for people. If I only spend my life trying to preserve it, what’s the point, right? Just when I thought my morals were solid and unwavering, I was hit upside the head with philosophical introspection—my flashlight for this foggy darkness.

To conclude, this trip has invoked a lot of soul searching for me. I have learned SO much in the last 3 months, and I’m barely half way done. I’m leaving North Carolina this week and taking a break from WWOOFing to continue following and working with the Cirque Italia through Tennessee and Texas on my way to Colorado just in time for big sister’s wedding. It was the only opportunity I could take that allowed me to keep up the pace moving west and earning money to support it. I truly hope I can implement some recycling and eco-friendly habits for them, if only for the duration of my employment. Plus, the people have such interesting stories and roots all over the world; I think it may be a neat way to learn a new language. Oh yeah, and about that sweet-hearted tightrope walker whose dimples I fell in love with. It’s definitely not a long term thing, but I feel like an infatuated teenager again. And in Sia’s words, “I’ve got thick skin and an elastic heart,” so I know I’ll be okay chasing this romantic little dream for a while. It’s amazing how life throws all these curves and obstacles in our paths; it wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable if it were a direct, flat road to the grave.

What a crazy turn of events this thing has caused.
(Also, this sucker takes a LOT to set up and take down. Most of the employees here work 7 days a week, despite only 4 days of shows.)