The Circus in Winter
The Circus in Winter

Author: Cathy Day

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2005-07-06

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0547864566

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Over a half century, a small Indiana town hosts a circus troupe during the off-seasons in linked stories “as graceful as any acrobat’s high-wire act” (San Francisco Chronicle). A Story Prize Finalist From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima, an elephant can change the course of a man's life—or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show’s manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In this collection of linked stories spanning decades, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. “[An] exquisite story collection.” —The Washington Post “Often funny, always graceful, and rich with a mix of historical and imaginative detail.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Sublimely imaginative and affecting.” —The Boston Globe

Collaborating Backstage
Collaborating Backstage

Author: Timo Niermann

Publisher: Methuen Drama

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1350072834

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Collaboration is the most important facet of any theatrical company. From the performers on stage to the choreographers, designers and technicians working behind the scenes, this book considers all departments working on a production and instructs them on how to unify their individual skills towards a shared goal. From Vaudeville to classical opera, this book establishes the skills that each specialist brings to the production process before demonstrating how each individual contribution can be utilized in tandem with all other creative teams. With particular focus on enhancing interdepartmental communication, Collaborating Backstage examines all the challenges that may befall artistic companies and projects made up of many different parts. This book explains how to understand technical jargon within teams that speak a variety of languages and come from different cultural backgrounds; how to recognise and follow the 'unwritten rules' of theatre; and how best to achieve the ultimate creative potential of a team working completely in sync. Underpinned by incisive theories on performance, communication and creativity, Collaborating Backstage is full of helpful illustrations and innovative methods to achieve effective working relationships in the theatre.

Love Death Circus
Love Death Circus

Author: Jeffrey Raz

Publisher:

Published: 2022-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780997904840

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Love Death Circus is a love letter to the Bay Area circus community that has been the author's artistic home for over four decades. The novel follows Frank Singer, a veteran clown, through a year of death and dying, first a colleague, then his mother, his best friend and a mentor. As exotic as the characters are on-stage, they face the same scary world as everyone else when illness hits their community. Framed by a series of benefit performances, Love Death Circus takes you deep into an idiosyncratic community of artists with an outrageous sense of adventure reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen or Walter Mosley.

The Night Circus
The Night Circus

Author: Erin Morgenstern

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0385534647

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#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two starcrossed magicians engage in a deadly game of cunning in the spellbinding novel that captured the world's imagination. • "Part love story, part fable ... defies both genres and expectations." —The Boston Globe The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.

The Greatest Shows on Earth
The Greatest Shows on Earth

Author: Linda Simon

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2014-11-12

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1780233981

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Beautifully illustrated and filled with rich historical detail and colorful anecdotes, this is a vibrant history for all those who have ever dreamed of running away to the circus, now in paperback. “Step right up!” and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth—the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible—a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking why we long to soar on flying trapezes, ride bareback on spangled horses, and parade through the streets in costumes of glitter and gold, this captivating book illuminates the history of the circus and the claim it has on the imaginations of artists, writers, and people around the world. Traveling back to the circus’s early days, Linda Simon takes us to eighteenth-century hippodromes in Great Britain and intimate one-ring circuses in nineteenth-century Paris, where Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso became enchanted with aerialists and clowns. She introduces us to P. T. Barnum, James Bailey, and the enterprising Ringling Brothers and reveals how they created the golden age of American circuses. Moving forward to the whimsical Circus Oz in Australia and to New York City’s Big Apple Circus and the grand spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, she shows how the circus has transformed in recent years. At the center of the story are the people—trick riders and tightrope walkers, sword swallowers and animal trainers, contortionists and clowns—that created the sensational, raucous, and sometimes titillating world of the circus.

Tracing Your Theatrical Ancestors
Tracing Your Theatrical Ancestors

Author: Katharine M Cockin

Publisher: Pen and Sword Family History

Published: 2023-07-31

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1526732084

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How can you find out about the lives of ancestors who were involved in the world of theater: on stage and on film, in the music halls and traveling shows, in the circus and in all sorts of other forms of public performance? Katharine Cockin’s handbook provides a fascinating introduction for readers searching for information about ancestors who had clearly defined roles in the world of the theater and performance as well as those who left only a few tantalizing clues behind. The wider history of public performance is outlined, from its earliest origins in church rituals and mystery plays through periods of censorship driven by campaigns on moral and religious grounds up to the modern world of stage and screen. Case studies, which are a special feature of the book, demonstrate how the relevant records and be identified and interpreted, and they prove how much revealing information they contain. Information on relevant archives, books, museums and websites make this an essential guide for anyone who is keen to explore the subject.