How One New England Circus Pulled Through the Pandemic

Circus News

How One New England Circus Pulled Through the Pandemic

With the upcoming fourth tour of its show RagTag: A Circus in Stitches, the New England-based circus collective Cirque Us enters its seventh year on the road. RagTag follows a group of threadbare, yarn-spinning characters as they explore a new patchwork world. But after two years of pandemic, getting to tour the show again was not a surety. As part of a world- and industry-wide conversation about the return to live shows, Cirque Us Founder and Operations Director Doug Stewart gives us a look between the seams at how his company kept itself stitched together during the pandemic. 

We are very excited to be returning to the stage! It’s no surprise the last few years were extremely challenging for all small companies, and performing arts companies were no exception. Cirque Us had toured every summer since 2016 across New England and the East Coast. In 2020, we decided to switch things up and do our first-ever spring tour. We were in the middle of a three-week rehearsal period when the world shut down that March.

Doug Stewart, circus performer and Cirque Us founder, does a backbend while entwined in rope
Doug Stewart in RagTag

At first, we were cancelling show by show, hoping we could salvage the end of our tour. Of course, we all know how that ended, and our entire tour was cancelled. Luckily, we were able to finish out our rehearsal period and host a livestream of the show, which somehow managed to raise enough money to make back everything we had invested into the rehearsal period. (Let the record show: we did a livestream in March 2020 before they were cool.)

During the pandemic, we wanted to stay connected with our community and continue to share circus with them. Luckily, we found ourselves in a unique position. We are still such a small company that we don’t have a tent or a circus studio or a full-time staff, so we didn’t have the need to generate revenue to stay afloat. (While Cirque Us was on hiatus, I had a lovely time driving for DoorDash.) Unfortunately, a lot of our partner organizations who did have rent and staff to pay were not in the same position, so we decided to use our livestreams as fundraisers for other organizations. Over three streams, we were able to raise money for a BIPOC scholarship fund, a circus school, and a youth circus. Because creating circus was so challenging during the pandemic, we decided to take a trip down memory lane and share our previous shows. This was a great way for our artists to reconnect and relive our touring experiences. Not only did the livestream include watching the show, but we told stories from the road and even had question-and-answer sessions on the creative process of stitching these shows together. It was fun for us to reflect on the shows, and also see how we had grown as artists and as an organization.

RagTag at Rochester Fringe Poster

After a year of livestreaming, the world started to open up again and we sprung into action and booked what we called our “Fall Festival Tour,” with hopes of performing at three different American festivals. One of these events fell to Covid, but we still managed to book an entire tour in under three months and stitch together a show that was good enough to win an award at the 2021 Philadelphia Fringe Festival for “Best Circus Show.” This process was unlike anything we had done before, simply because of the short notice. Casting was determined by who was already with us— at the time, the entire cast was working at Circus Smirkus in Greensboro, VT.  After full days of work, the team would get together to start building the show. Our official rehearsal period was only about ten days, and lots of the show material was generated in that short time.

With that tour, the main challenge we faced was mask requirements. Some venues wanted performers to be masked the entire show, while others only required it while the performers were interacting with the audience. Not only did we need to block and stage the show, but we also had to incorporate how and when we would get our masks and how to still engage with the audience with half of our faces covered. Luckily, circus people love a good challenge, and we were more than happy to wear masks when needed to help keep our audiences safe. 

Cirque Us Acrobats Justin Durham and Maeve Beck balance on each other
Justin Durham and Maeve Beck

Now we are back at it again, still navigating the ever-changing Covid world. This year, booking our tour was a slightly more challenging process than in the past. We started booking our spring tour in the fall, and venues were very hesitant to commit to anything. Most of them were worried about Covid cases and mandates. It was unclear if people would want to attend shows again, so our mid-sized venues just didn’t know how to proceed. But after a few months, we were able to lock down our venues and set our tour schedule. However, because planning a circus is never easy, the newest challenges we’re facing are the masking and vaccination requirements. We are traveling to multiple states and towns, and each city has its own mandates. It’s been a juggling act to keep track of what restrictions there are where and how that affects our tour. To make matters even more complicated, more and more venues are now lifting their mandates. 

Overall, Covid-19 has been and continues to be a curveball for all of us. We at Cirque Us are constantly following local guidelines and doing everything we can to keep ourselves and our audiences safe. Although it has been more work, we are thrilled that it is now safe enough to retake the stage and once again enjoy live entertainment.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for sticking it out! If you’re curious to learn more about our patchwork circus— or better yet, come see it for yourself— you can learn more about us and find all of our upcoming shows at www.TheCirqueUs.com. 

-Doug Stewart

Cirque Us
Contemporary Circus Company -United States
Cirque Us is a Boston based circus entertainment and education company. We produce and tour full length, original work, as well as curate customized circus experiences. Additionally, we provide educational resources, such as workshops and camps, for people of all ages and abilities.


Based in New England, the Cirque Us team draws performers, directors, educators, technicians, and choreographers from all over the United States. Our circus collective seeks to bring the most passionate, committed, and talented circus artists to the hearts of local communities, whether it’s through a performative or educational lense.


We choose to tell our stories through circus because this multidisciplinary approach to performance not only inspires our audiences, but also inspires our company members. Training and performing circus requires immense discipline, commitment, and passion. Every member of the Cirque Us team embodies these characteristics, which helps fuel a collectively strong work ethic to create content of the highest caliber. Circus enables us to express ourselves both physically and artistically. Through this unique medium, we are able to emphasize the necessity of human connections and relationships in order to uphold community. Moreover, through circus we demonstrate that the impossible is possible, that through trust and communication we can hold one another up literally and figuratively, and that with an open mind and heart, we can be the best versions of ourselves, both on and off stage. Circus has profoundly impacted our lives, and we want to spread the “circus magic” wherever we go.
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Cirque Us

Cirque Us is a Boston based circus entertainment and education company. We produce and tour full length, original work, as well as curate customized circus experiences. Additionally, we provide educational resources, such as workshops and camps, for people of all ages and abilities. Based in New England, the Cirque Us team draws performers, directors, educators, technicians, and choreographers from all over the United States. Our circus collective seeks to bring the most passionate, committed, and talented circus artists to the hearts of local communities, whether it’s through a performative or educational lense. We choose to tell our stories through circus because this multidisciplinary approach to performance not only inspires our audiences, but also inspires our company members. Training and performing circus requires immense discipline, commitment, and passion. Every member of the Cirque Us team embodies these characteristics, which helps fuel a collectively strong work ethic to create content of the highest caliber. Circus enables us to express ourselves both physically and artistically. Through this unique medium, we are able to emphasize the necessity of human connections and relationships in order to uphold community. Moreover, through circus we demonstrate that the impossible is possible, that through trust and communication we can hold one another up literally and figuratively, and that with an open mind and heart, we can be the best versions of ourselves, both on and off stage. Circus has profoundly impacted our lives, and we want to spread the “circus magic” wherever we go.