Drawing Circus Photo-set: The Grand Drawing Circus Pt. 2 (Patreon)

DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS

It was written on a sign above the unicorn pen, and should have been a warning to cast and audience alike - perhaps the bright colours took the edge off of the message. In our second instalment of photos from the The Grand Drawing Circus we delve into both the dark side of The Drawing Circus. The 2014 'Circus story unfolded simultaneously across six stages, making it impossible to read the love story and subsequent murder as a linear narrative, but the clues were there for anybody with a keen eye and a sharp pencil to see - feel free to use the images to inspire your own images and narratives, or read on to take a walk through the 'Circus...

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The Grand Drawing Circus 

At the entrance to the beloved Old Market Theatre you join a queue of keen artist, young and old, your sketchbook tucked under your arm, a pencil case in your back pocket. Ahead of you, double doors open beneath a gaudily painted sign ("THE DRAWING CIRCUS!") flanked by two huge, rotund clowns with painted cardboard faces - you can't quite work out if there are people inside the costumes or not. As you enter the expansive interior of the main hall the muffled chatter of the foyer gives way to the jaunty instrumental melody of the Drawchestra playing you in - all cello and accordion and keyboards. A black-clothed clown bounces up to you, thrusts a map into your hand and gestures towards the seats around a raised Big Top ring, bathed in golden light. You take your place to await the Narrator. 

[The narrator steps on stage and the Drawchestra abruptly stops playing. Welcome to the Drawing Circus! he says - we are here for your drawing-delight. You can come and go as you please; stay for the main show or draw yourself through the backstage basement. There will be no intermission]

Flash forward one hour. You are sat in a ring of a hundred people - some set up at easels surrounded by their paints and others sat cross-legged on the floor looking up at the raised circle where every fifteen minutes a new performer strikes a succession of short poses to a unique theme from the band. Coloured uplighting illuminates the arches around the theatre, which has been stripped of its raked seating; spotlights shine down from a ceiling so high, or so dark, that you can't make it out, illuminating the stage and circus ring. 

You have been wondering about the big blinking arrow at the side of the stage which points towards a black door - you get up, stretch your legs and cross the room. 

As you leave the hall your eyes take a moment to adjust to the florescent glow illuminating the broad, ordinary stairwell. You are struck by the disappointment that the theatrical spell has been broken and the simultaneous thrill of an audience member who has found their way backstage. As you clatter down the stairs, the sound of music already distant, you pass a door cracked-open onto an ordinary residential street. An Amazonian woman is leant against the doorframe smoking - she is naked but for a velvet bears head that adds another seven inches to her six-foot-four and gives you a nonchalant wink as you hurry by. 

At the foot of the stairs the music returns as a tinny hum, fed through speakers on the wall competing with the susurrus of charcoal-on-paper. Dozens of people crowd the doorways of a long corridor, hung with fairground lights and gold swag - they ignore you completely, each focused intently on the contents of each unseen room. Treading softly behind them you pass each room in turn. In the first ('Dressing Room' says gold star on the door) a showgirl is frozen part way through dressing, illuminated by a light-bulb framed mirror. In the next, a heavily muscled strongman lifts weights amongst crates and packing cases. In the third a naked clown in comical red nipple-pasties stands up-lit on a tiny stage, held in a fractional moment in front of 20 sparsely populated seats. In the final room you settle to draw.  In here, everything is candy floss pink and silver; hundreds of helium balloons fill cover the arched ceiling, their strings dangling on your sketchbook page as you dash down a quick sketch of a bare-chested unicorn-woman before a distant bell goes off and...

Flash forward to an hour later. The unicorn has been replaced by a rearing fairground horse and you duck out from beneath the balloons to make it to the end of the corridor, winding up a steep spiral staircase to a small stage where a Pierrot sits alone sobbing. You duck past a tableau of painters at their easels and find yourself back in the main hall where, before your eyes adjust, the spotlights turn a bloody red. On stage, a long-haired man strikes the guts of a piano as the band turn towards the audience,  faces obscured by white masks, they begin a new and ominous tune. To the sound of musical saws and percussion the narrator shoulders through the basement door cradling a limb body and walks slowly through the crowd, who turn to record his solitary procession in urgent marks.

Flash forward four hours...you have been drawing for so long that you've lost track of the time of day. You know the rhythm of things now - the small bell denotes the short poses and the big bell the long ones and every two hours everything repeats - the crashing of the piano's interior, the red lights and the body being carried away. The last time around you pre-empted the Narrator's journey and you have followed him through the basement as he carries his limp charge - the clown Columbina - up the stairs. This final time everything is different. As you reach the top of the stairs you notice that the circus ring is empty and as the Narrator reaches the middle and lays down body, clowns and acrobats and strong men and moneys and lions appear from all corners of the hall to their place around the funery ring. A black-clad  fortune teller leaves their cart to takes their place at the head of the group. 

On stage, the ringmisstress adopts a final pose, mopping at her tears with Columbina's bloodied ruff, while her other hands rests on the head of a white lion, her teeth hung with glistening red jewels. The scribbling reaches a crescendo, there is a final long moment of looking, then - blackout. 

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