Edinburgh Fringe Spotlight—How Australian Circus Dominates at Underbelly--A Case Study - CircusTalk

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Edinburgh Fringe Spotlight—How Australian Circus Dominates at Underbelly–A Case Study

Sitting with Lauren Eisinger before a day of triple Australian shows at Underbelly’s Circus Hub, I had a chance to discuss their programming choices for the year. Although this venue on the meadows in Edinburgh is not the only venue in town to program circus, it is a cocoon of circus in a wilderness of entertainment, with one Spiegeltent and one big top vying for attention and housing 12 different shows (seven from Australia) with very different vibes. All three Australian shows I review here were in the Spiegeltent, an intimate and elegant setting that amplifies the Aussie penchant for bombastic humor, which is only a small facet of what we got at the three shows programmed there, Yuck Circus, Le Coup, and Rouge.
About the influence of Australian circus, Eisinger says “Its growing and growing. Australian circus has a reputation for being raw and stripped back and edgy and very charismatic and endearing. Its tends to be acrobatic based.” She was spot on about the three shows, all of which toy with edginess in different ways and all have a good supply of charisma to spare, with the acrobatics being de rigeur. To this edge, each company adds their own mission and aesthetic, giving meaning to the circus they bring, and attempting to express with their bodies what words alone cannot convey. Yuck Circus Beyond Mansplaining Starting off the day with Yuck Circus was a good choice. This group of seven women, some recent graduates from NICA, have won multiple awards already at Adelaide (emerging artists) and are bound to score a few more laurels t...
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Kim Campbell

Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.