TV PREVIEW
PBS documentary 'Circus' is more juggling act than one-ring show
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Though the dream may be very much intact as a metaphor for escaping life's monotony, people don't run away and join the circus much anymore.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Though the dream may be very much intact as a metaphor for escaping life's monotony, people don't run away and join the circus much anymore.
They run away and make documentary films.
Both are crazy-brained impulses, and both are on display in "Circus," Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre's immersive and occasionally engrossing story for PBS about a season in the touring life of the small-time, not-for-profit Big Apple Circus.
This intimate, old-fashioned, one-ring circus is based in Manhattan and was started by two American jugglers in the mid-1970s. The wide-eyed members of the audience, we are frequently reminded, are never more than 50 feet away from the horse and dog acts, the tumblers and stuntfolk, the clowns and trapeze artists.
The documentary begins in early May, when the Big Apple circus players and crew members (150 in all -- some veterans, some newcomers) reconvene at a camp in Upstate New York and begin the process of building and rehearsing a new show, which will tour up and down the East Coast, including a stint in Virginia. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110205941.html?wprss=rss_print/style
Both are crazy-brained impulses, and both are on display in "Circus," Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre's immersive and occasionally engrossing story for PBS about a season in the touring life of the small-time, not-for-profit Big Apple Circus.
This intimate, old-fashioned, one-ring circus is based in Manhattan and was started by two American jugglers in the mid-1970s. The wide-eyed members of the audience, we are frequently reminded, are never more than 50 feet away from the horse and dog acts, the tumblers and stuntfolk, the clowns and trapeze artists.
The documentary begins in early May, when the Big Apple circus players and crew members (150 in all -- some veterans, some newcomers) reconvene at a camp in Upstate New York and begin the process of building and rehearsing a new show, which will tour up and down the East Coast, including a stint in Virginia. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110205941.html?wprss=rss_print/style
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