YUCK Circus Pairs Subliminal Normalization with Bold, Frank Fun! – Interview with Georgia Deguara
“There’s some shows where we’ve had people come up and do a shoey–randomly–because they were so excited. Do you know what a shoey is? It’s where you pour a beer in a shoe, sculling [drinking] out of the shoe. We love that stuff. We do a bit in the show where we say confessions and someone’s like,” Deguara raised her hand expectantly, “I’ve got a story!And you’re like, all right!” She waved the imaginary audience member on stage. “I think when we made the show we were very much expecting mums to be like,I can finally talk to my daughters about periods.But we often get teenagers being like,I can finally tell my mom I get sent dick pics from school.It’s like, yeah, you can tell your mum! We don’t realize who is gonna take away what, and it’s empowering people in ways that you wouldn’t really think of.”
Georgia Deguara, Director of Australia’s YUCK circus, shared one more gem with me. “We performed in a town of thirty people. We sold 145% of tickets because people from the cattle station down the road came. Think rough, country blokes—proper cattle station follows. One of them came up to us after he was like,You know what? I don’t really know what you’re talking about most of the time but, I realize it changed something in me. I looked over at my missus, and she was doing the dishes in the kitchen, and I joined her. I helped out. It’s like, nice, man. Good one!” We shared a smile and a nod. “Small changes, but big changes for people at the same time.”
Why YUCK?
I work with a lot of kids. And when you work with kids you often learn cute phrases for what can be emotionally big situations. One of my favorites is,Don’t yuck my yum. Adult translation:Please don’t belittle, bully, or otherwise speak negatively of something that I value and enjoy. It’s a simple way of reclaiming and reframing ownership in spite of someone else’s distaste. I was reminded of this phrase as Deguara described the origins of the company. “People tend to say,Why ‘yuck’? Our original show was called YUCK, in the sense that we talk about taboo conversations. Gender norms, binge drinking, periods, cat calling—all theyuck stuff—the idea is that we bring up a subject all in good humor or taking the piss. Over here it’s called ‘larkin’ humor, a cheeky kind of humor.” Reframing is a powerful tool. Rather than changing thewhat, it changes thehow: how something is perceived, how it is embraced. Reframing yucky topics or women in circus isn’t about changing the topic or the women. It’s about changing how they are perceived, how they are embraced. In this interview, Deguara and I spoke about how the company uplifts female-identifying circus performers, their stories, and supports communities through social engagement.
To start, I asked Deguara to give me a synopsis of the company. “YUCK is an all female, Australian circus company that empowers women across the live performance industry. Whether that’s on stage, or behind the tech desk, in a creative, or management role. It’s about creating opportunities within our industry. Whenever we’re touring we try to hire women—I’m talking about anyone who identifies as female or feels like they belong in this space.”
While there was always a core mission to celebrate women on stage and women’s stories, the composition of the company was happenstance. “The start of YUCK was about five years ago. I wrote a show, and I asked all my closest friends, men and women, do you wanna join? And the people who put their hand up were all women. So I was like, cool, let’s ride that. Let’s talk about things that are relevant to us, things that we think are funny. I wrote the show. I got the girls to contribute, and then we went on tour. We got really popular really quickly. Now we’ve got four touring productions, and we tour internationally.”
Boxed Out
The initial drive to create what is now YUCK came from Deguara feeling like there was not a place for her in the professional circus industry. She felt boxed out. “I’m not a flyer. I’m not a big base. I’m a big girl who is funny, but not super highly skilled.” She found herself asking, “Where do I fit? None of the companies I was looking at–maybe apart from [Circus] OZ at the time. There was no space for me, so I made something for myself.” Deguara noted that many of the founding company members also felt they didn’t fit into a predetermined box of professional circus performers. “The pathway to the industry over here is through circus universities—institutions that already have expectations:You need to do 10 back saltos. You need to be able to do the over-splits. You can’t base because you’re not big enough. You need to be 30 kilos lighter. Those are really common threads. I hope that’s changing.”
Georgia gave an example from the corporate circus scene. “I’ve had roles turned down because I don’t fit and,” she told a familiar story with an almost undetectable sliver of sarcasm, “that’s fair enough: you don’t have enough time to make a costume that fits my body, so I can’t do the job, and there’s not exceptions.” She clarified, “It’s not us complaining or blaming, we just didn’t see ourselves as part of the larger touring companies at the time.” Performers were turned away “if we weren’t tiny, and we weren’t huge, or if we weren’t insanely specialized.” So they thought, “Let’s make a show where we all feel good about ourselves and have a fun time. And that’s what we did.” And, crediting her colleagues, “We’re not the only company pushing expectations–we [Australians] have a history of it. There are some great companies out there that have people of all different bodies and abilities.”
Vegemite and Mohawks
I asked Deguara to walk me through YUCK’s repertoire. “The first show we spoke about gender: what’s it like to be a woman growing up in the arts industry? What’s it like to be a woman growing up in Australia?” The shows are a catalyst. “We pick up a topic, drop it, and then we hope that in the car ride home or after the show husbands will turn to wives or kids will turn to moms and be like,Did that happen to you? Or do you know what that was about? And they can have those conversations. There’s only so much we can change the world in 50 min. We want those conversations to happen later. And all easy going, and breaking the ice. and just having fun with it.” The first show “was really relevant, and what we wanted to talk about. It’s still really relevant. We’re still touring it, and it’s still impactful but I feel, creatively, that’s all I wanted to say on that subject.”
Deguara summarized the themes of other YUCK productions: Australian identity (a love for Vegemite), nightclub scenes (with foundations in friendship and camaraderie), a punk apocalypse (cigarette mohawks, and sparkles up the bum). “With those shows I wanted to step away from presenting gender and just normalize that there’s women on stage, being funny, taking up space, talking about something else. We don’t wanna have the expectation that it’s an all female circus talking about all female things.”
Period Products & Beer
I asked Deguara to tell me more about the community work YUCK is known for. “I’m from Broome at the top of West Australia. We’re a remote community. Our closest town the same size as us is a six hour drive away. Between that though, we’ve got thirty plus remote, indigenous communities, Aboriginal Australians living in their country. Some of them up to four hundred people, some up to fifty or sixty. When I’m home, I work with all the local arts organizations and community organizations teaching circus as a tool to express yourself. It’s great to partner with the work I’ve been doing since I was a kid with my current company, and that’s definitely a thread that we can see ourselves following.” Deguara noted, “Teaching kids how to juggle, making them feel good about themselves, and that they’ve achieved something, and they can celebrate with the community.” And as for the company, “It’s just as viable an outlet to perform internationally as it is to go into your own backyard and make some change.”
When YUCK is on the road, “We link up with charities, or if we are touring the original show for a long period of time we’ll collect period products and donate them to women’s organizations. We’ve–just today–launched a beer!* Very exciting! Proceeds go to SHE Scotland, which is empowering young women in Edinburgh. So we try to do stuff like that quite often when we’re touring. It’s hard when you’re on the road, but if we’re somewhere for a month or so, then we’ll make an effort to create awareness or give back. But our main, sort of social impact is with community engagement and outreach. When we’re touring, especially for regionally touring, we’ll be doing workshops and community engagements, teaming up with local women’s groups or youth groups.”
YUCK also aims to normalize women in circus in backstage roles. “We do a lot of work empowering youth and empowering young women and empowering regional indigenous communities. If we can have the opportunity to employ more women we will. It’s actually really hard to find people with the skill sets you need that are also women. We found that the ones that have the skills are usually booked up, which is great.” Deguara distinctly mentioned the lack of female riggers and technicians. “I think women who are good riggers and technicians get snapped up pretty quick. There’s a general lack of people in those roles.” She noted some positive changes, “T&A, a theater network in Australia, has just put a chunk of money toward [educating] people from diverse backgrounds including women.” Deguara was quick to note, But that’s East Australia,” (YUCK is based in Broome on the west coast) and that, “resources are small, the country is big.”
Subliminal Normalization
Due to the taboo nature of the topics that YUCK Circus presents in their shows, I asked Deguara if they had received any negative energy toward their productions. She noted two moments that exemplify the extremes of audience reactions. First, a man left a review stating his distaste for the fact that the performers spoke openly about periods. He left an inflamed review and said he and his fourteen year old son would never return. The other instance, more subtle, was at a 500 seat theater that was packed every day during the Woodford Folk Festival. “Girls were sharpie-ing mustaches on themselves,” and they knew every line to the show. Despite this appreciation and admiration for YUCK’s work, Deguara noted that some audience members questioned, “Surely everyone’s fine with periods now? Do you feel like you even really have to say this stuff anymore?” Yes, is the answer. “That’s a pushback in a sense,this is old news. But it’s not for a lot of people.” Deguara noted, “It’s a very progressive festival, but most places we talk to it’s like,Oh! Women on stage?! We’re still fighting that.”
And YUCK is taking a different approach to the same goal. “In our marketing for the last three shows, I’ve taken out of the main subject that it’s an all female cast, because I don’t want that to be the selling point. I also don’t want it to be the inhibitor. It’s hopefully going to coax more people to come and see the work, and also happen to see a bunch of strong women on stage. It’ll be normal, and they still have a good time. They don’t have to think too hard about it. That’s what I want: normalization. No more tokenism.”
For example, we spoke about the typical audience reaction to a woman basing a three-high. “It always gets the biggest clap, and you’re like,why? There’s no question: that’s great, she is doing that, and it’s incredible considering the history. But also there’s two other three-highs happening. That’s where I get stuck on: what are we celebrating when we’re watching this work?” Deguara admitted that she hoped the shows would “increase the scope of what a woman can do subliminally without being told,Women can do it.They should just know and believe it. Women can be funny, and women can be strong, and that should just be part of the show without it being explicitly told to them.”
Too Bold for Germany?
Success has come in many forms, but there’s still work to be done. “I think one part we still need to celebrate are stories from women for what they are. Stories by women without the tokenism. And yet,” Deguara said, “I don’t want to give up on our original work because that level of specific empowerment and talking about those topics is still a huge game changer for some people. We have tears in our show, we have people celebrating in our show, we have really powerful conversations from audience members telling us how they wish it was different when they were younger. That’s all still really relevant and important, but there’s also other ways that we can address the same topic.”
Now, with international success, I asked Deguara if she felt like there was a space for her in the circus industry. “The challenge that we have at the moment is fitting into the global market and finding places that accept our work. We’re not veryarty people. We’re very frank, fun, comedy based. So trying to find festivals that accept that and know that it’s a good time. That’s probably more what we’re fighting than fighting women being the show: the content we’re making fitting within the art space and festival space. There’s still some festival presenters who think that we’re too bold for their audience, or their audience isn’t ready for our work, which I think is interesting. And that’s international presenters, which is always very funny to hear when you’ve performed your show eight hours into the bush to thirty people (which is the whole town), and they had a great time, you know? You are out on some cattle station, and they’re stoked, but you can’t go to Germany.”
We shared a laugh over that, but it was lined with the grim reality that YUCK, a fun, polished, professional, and meaningful company may not be welcomed in all spaces even if it’s needed in those very spaces. I asked Deguara what she would like to say to the CircusTalk community. “Work with us. We wanna work, and spread this message more, and we’re looking for opportunities to do that. If this resonates with you, talk to us about it so we can have more of this work and reach more people. Look us up, talk to us, we want to make connections.”
Please visit yuckcircus.com for more information about the company, their outreach, collaborations, and upcoming performances.
* This interview was held on July 6, 2023.
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