What does a circus performer do?
Over the past eight years, Paul has travelled the world with an Australian street-performance theatre company that uses 4m-high flexible sway poles (in industry-speak: “apparatus”). He’s also part of a physical theatre duo that uses acrobalance and characterisation; and has taken his solo clown show to Ibiza, Tokyo, Melbourne and Mexico City. Paul calls himself a performer of “new circus”. “It’s performance with apparatus. It’s physical theatre. And it’s spectacle theatre, which is theatre that doesn’t rely solely on narrative. It draws from disciplines like dance, mime and the work of an actor because you take on different characters.” New circus strays slightly from the traditional circus-tent, but the performers in Paul’s show still use heavy face paint, exaggerated gestures and “mime attitudes” with their bodies.
