Ruth Juliet Wikler, Deputy Director of Programming for Circus/Director, MICC at TOHU/Montréal Complètement Cirque (MCC) probably has a to-do list as long as her title as she and her staff at Tohu prepare for the 12th season of Montréal Completement Cirque this July. The Festival and its counterpart event for the professional circus sector, the International Market of Contemporary Circus (MICC), have really had to adapt these past two years and Wikler has been instrumental in making those adaptations successful for all players–she weighed in often on those pivots in 2020, as a guest on several of CircusTalks’s panel discussions, such as  Circus and Changing Realities 2020–What’s Up with (Circus)Festivals 2020? and moderating Circus World Report at MICC’s First Virtual Conference. I checked in with Wikler recently to discuss some of these adaptations and how MICC/MCC has grown as an organization during this time.  They have succeeded at their goal to continue to present circus to the community in Canada while rebounding from the pandemic, and to shepherd their artists and companies into a hopeful recovery transition while still nurturing connections to the broader industry. 

Kim Campbell: Tell us about MCC this year. Looks like it will be a hybrid style festival. Will there be more on the ground/live/in person shows than last summer? Ruth Wikler, Deputy Director of Programming, Circus Arts, TOHU, CANADA Ruth Wikler: Absolutely. In 2020, the Montréal Compl­ètement Cirque Festival was officially cancelled, and in its place, we offered a serie...