Bianco is a circus production currently performing at the Ozone Reserve as part of the Perth Festival. The show brings together, clowning, physical theatre and live music together with various gravity-defying aerial acts to create an immersive, exciting theatrical experience. OUTinPerth had a chat to Lyndall Merry, the show’s head rigger and trapeze artist.
Merry has been a circus performer since the age of eighteen, fulfilling his childhood dream career. He’s also worked on ‘A Winter’s Tale’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ for the Royal Shakespeare Company, using his expertise as a performer, rigging technician and aerial choreographer. He’s been working with Cardiff-originated company NoFit State Circus for the past three years, and has been touring ‘Bianco’ with the company since 2012. It’s the company’s first visit to Australia with the highly acclaimed production that toured all over the UK last year.
“It’s about journeys, and human journeys through life, the transformations of different places, different people, different experiences.” Merry says.
NoFit State aim to create performances that bring innovation to the circus form. Merry explains what makes ‘Bianco’ stand out from other circus productions.
“Well the band is incredible, they drive the energy behind the show and really, without them it would be a very different kind of show. They are exceptional, really talented musicians and they have a range of different sounds and genres within the show mix… I hear quite often from the audience they’d be quite happy to come and listen to the band, let alone see all the crazy circus [Laughs]”
The audience is given free reign of the big top as they walk to different spaces of the tent and stand for each performance. While this certainly makes the performance more immersive for the audience, Merry explains that it’s not without its challenges.
“There’s an issue of safety, making sure that people aren’t in the way of dangerous scene or rigging transitions. We have a team of stewards that overcome that problem. The directing style doesn’t worry about say blocking in the theatre because the very notion of a stand up audience is that if they feel they can’t see they can move to somewhere where they can see. But then a lot of people aren’t used to that. In fact for quite a lot of audiences the stand up experience …sometimes things are lost because people don’t move, even though they can. And fundamentally that’s why we have such an aerial-heavy show, with lots of flying effects and/or our ground acts have to be staged at shoulder height/head height so that everybody can see all over the tent, even if you’re not quite at the front.”
You can catch ‘Bianco’ at the Ozone Reserve until March 1st.
Book tickets at the Perth Festival website.
Sophie Joske
