The Next Big Thing 🎪 (Patreon)

Hello, dear Patrons!

I'm surfacing from the first stretch of my social media break a little less overwhelmed, and with a few shiny, special little art-possibilities clenched in my grubby fists that I'm looking forward to sharing the process of with you!

As I alluded to in my last update, I've set things in motion for my next big project – one of the retellings of my big circus adventures. Some of my oldest, faithful Patrons know the rough shape of this – you joined because I was long-form blogging my time at the International China Circus Festival in Zhuhai, or what it was like to work a winter contract at the Moulin Rouge. Or – even before that – my first little baby blog of my training adventure in Mongolia (before this Patreon existed!). 

But I have another story that I haven't started telling anywhere yet online, even if you've been with my Patreon from the beginning! I've started to write about my experience preparing for and competing at the 40eme Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain.

If Cirque de Demain is not a festival/competition whose name you are familiar with, allow me to set the stage:

Cirque de Demain - 'Circus of Tomorrow' - is one of the world's biggest circus festivals. It was started in 1977 by Alain Pacherie to help bring attention to the ranks of new, international talent emerging onto the world stage that were emerging from various high-level circus schools around the world (or self-taught!), rather than coming from 7th-generation circus families. Every year, a couple dozen young, bright-eyed circus artists out of around 1000 submissions are invited to Paris to compete for a variety of prestigious medals, cash prizes, and – most importantly – contracts.

Cirque de Demain embodies the pinnacle of the next biggest stars in contemporary circus to many. It's one of the 3 'crown jewels' of the international festival circuit (the other 2 being the Nikulin Festival in Moscow, and the Monte Carlo Festival in ... well. You get it.)

When circus humans attempt to describe CdD to non-circus humans, I have often hear phrases like 'imagine the Olympics and the Superbowl rolled into one' tossed about. They're not wrong. The fervour around this festival is intense. The audience goes wild for each and every artist that graces the stage like it's the best half-time show they've ever seen (and it is)(here's the trailer for my year – it's footage from the previous years' contestants, obviously, but it gives a good feel for what the whole idea is!). 

... which is why it was a massive surprise to find myself rocketing towards performing on that stage in early 2019 with my then-duo-partner, Troy James. A couple of unschooled nobodies from Toronto, Canada (in the eyes of those who generally perform at such festivals, that is) performing and competing on one of the most important circus stages in the world.

It's difficult to find stories about Cirque de Demain. What you can find online in English is often limited to sparse descriptions of what it's like to sit in audience, the broad excitement of performing there, and the magnitude of it all. There's elements to my Cirque de Demain experience that touch on a lot of the questions that are being asked of contemporary circus in general these days – questions around the ratio and importance of artistic talent vs. technique, storytelling, diversity, and more. It's a good time to tell this story.

Despite it being so well-known in the circus world, it's also difficult to find press articles about it (though that might be more an issue of my English-language Google settings, rather than a true paucity of writing on the subject).

This is a really good story.
It's an underdog story.
There's villains, there's insurmountable odds, there's mental breakdowns.
There's injuries, there's crying, there's international travel.
There's lights and glitter and magic.
There's art and circus and wonder.

I'm also throwing my hat in the ring for the first time with the Toronto Arts Council, to see if I can secure a small grant that would subsidize my cost of living while I really drill down on hammering out the first draft of this project. (My backup plan, of course, is to continue taking any ridiculous film/tv stunt or acting job that comes my way – so, it's getting written no matter what, but the arts-council-grant route would afford me far less risk of injury and far more ability to focus/not divide my attention). It's not a short story; my preliminary outline has this set at a short novel-length work (but hey, we'll see how it goes).

First up for that is writing out a literary CV (that's a first, for me!), and a 15-page writing sample to be submitted along with the grant application. It's due on June 15th, so I have a clear deadline that I'm shooting for.

Scribblings to come,

XO 

Ess