Circus Oz Balances Its Collective Books
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday December 23, 1986
FOR ALMOST nine years the acclaimed but loosely knit tribe of Circus Oz performers have struggled without a home, without an administrator and with only seasonal employment. But the collective has a new optimism as it raises its tent again outside the Seymour Centre ready for another opening on New Year's Day.
Until last year the company only requested public subsidy to take advantage of the demand for them in Europe and America. Now ambitious to build a stronger professional base at home, Circus Oz has convinced funding bodies it is worthy of broader support, that its raw and energetic combination of acrobatics, music and comedy is a popular and uniquely Australian version of traditional circus.
The Theatre Board of the Australia Council has substantially increased its second grant to the company and, in recognition of Circus Oz's permanence, reclassified it as a general rather than project grant.
The Victorian Ministry of the Arts has for the first time stepped in with a capital grant enabling the dozen performers to renovate a new home in Abbotsford, Melbourne. This laundry building attached to an old convent will also house Circus Oz's first full-time administrator, a position jointly financed by both funding bodies.
Sue Beal, the Assistant Federal Secretary of Actors' Equity, will take up the new job. After six years as the union official responsible for Equity's controversial import policy, Beal is eager to get back into the industry.
"But I wasn't interested in going into a classic administrator's job in an hierarchical company, being the hirer and firer and having to deal again with industrial problems," she says. "Circus Oz operates as a collective where the performers are involved in the decision-making process. That's quite unusual in most performing companies and was just what I was looking for."
One collective decision which would normally strain the loyalty of any artist was that Circus Oz performers not pay themselves when the company couldn't afford it. This dedication has not only impressed the funding bodies but avoided the deficits common to other theatre companies. But it's been a demeaning battle - especially for those older, highly skilled performers who have continually paid themselves only Equity minimum for the average six months in which Circus Oz performs in any one year.
They now look forward with relative affluence to a greater continuity in administration and the opportunity to develop new work through longer rehearsal periods. Their public support this year totals $126,000, but Beal, who is also on the Theatre Board, says it's still not enough.
"So one of my first jobs is to try to get corporate sponsorship and to find entrepreneurs around Australia and overseas who would give a paying fee to the company, freeing it from itself having to subsidise new works."
Kelvin Gedye, one of the four remaining members from the original circus, says the collectivism is as much an artistic collaboration as an organisational one. Circus Oz, he says, blurs the distinction between theatre and circus.
"It comes from that direct performance style to the audience, something the old vaudevillians in America loved about us.
"It's that irreverent slapstick and, of course, because the performers create and direct their own material. They do their act."
But Circus Oz most obviously varies from older entertainment forms in the strong and daring acts done by women, unadorned by the usual sexy underwear. It is, says Gedye, a reason why the circus attracts audiences of single mothers seeking suitable role models for their children. And, between the clowning and balancing act, a traditional skill learnt from the Nan Jing Acrobats in China, there is usually room for topical wit and opinion.
"But we don't have a line about what we believe or what the show is saying," Gedye says.
"Anyway, that element is less nowadays because the younger people in the show seem less interested in expressing political opinions."
Now seeking to be a national, even international, company, Circus Oz appear to have found that enviable marriage between professionalism and group involvement.
© 1986 Sydney Morning Herald
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