Circus (1987)
Production
"The colorful setting looks like a circus hybrid of Matisse and Calder. On the backdrop is painted a picture of an audience of broadly smiling faces and in the foreground, in the pin spotlight, is a swiftly changing array of acts that call upon an exercise of our imagination. The show and the scenery move so quickly that there is scarcely time to worry about the moments of whimsy.
Freely mixing film and live action, masks and puppetry, taped and live music, 'Circus' surrounds the audience like a dream and occasionally verges on a nightmare - as a tattooed snake charmer sinuously slithers (the snake is real, the tattoos, like so much else in the kaleidoscopic show, are figments from a designer's drawing board).
Here come four horsemen of the non-apocalypse. Merrily prancing on mock horses, they are joined by a masked, long-maned ballerina and, at a canter, they become an illusory equestrian team. A tightrope walker walks a flat path across the stage, momentarily teetering as if she has collided with a speck of dust. As a harlequin bumblingly juggles, he is cloned by two cinematic images of himself, juggling without a miss. A clown puts on his makeup, facing an elasticized reflection of himself on film. Repeatedly, Mr. Snyder distorts our view, looking at the circus in an imaginary fun-house mirror.
An actor in a lobster suit casually paints himself with butter and settles down to broil in an artificial sun. The moon, wearing a sand pail as a hat, dances around a large star. In one of the evening's cleverest gambits, the Fat Lady's grotesquely elephantine costume is used as a wide screen for projections of a dizzying stream of food sailing through the alimentary canal."
"The Stage: 'Circus'," Mel Gussow, February 11, 1987
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/11/arts/the-stage-circus.html
Freely mixing film and live action, masks and puppetry, taped and live music, 'Circus' surrounds the audience like a dream and occasionally verges on a nightmare - as a tattooed snake charmer sinuously slithers (the snake is real, the tattoos, like so much else in the kaleidoscopic show, are figments from a designer's drawing board).
Here come four horsemen of the non-apocalypse. Merrily prancing on mock horses, they are joined by a masked, long-maned ballerina and, at a canter, they become an illusory equestrian team. A tightrope walker walks a flat path across the stage, momentarily teetering as if she has collided with a speck of dust. As a harlequin bumblingly juggles, he is cloned by two cinematic images of himself, juggling without a miss. A clown puts on his makeup, facing an elasticized reflection of himself on film. Repeatedly, Mr. Snyder distorts our view, looking at the circus in an imaginary fun-house mirror.
An actor in a lobster suit casually paints himself with butter and settles down to broil in an artificial sun. The moon, wearing a sand pail as a hat, dances around a large star. In one of the evening's cleverest gambits, the Fat Lady's grotesquely elephantine costume is used as a wide screen for projections of a dizzying stream of food sailing through the alimentary canal."
"The Stage: 'Circus'," Mel Gussow, February 11, 1987
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/11/arts/the-stage-circus.html
1987
PROD.1987.0013
Huck Snyder (director), Huck Snyder (set design), Huck Snyder (costumes), John Kelly (contributor), Beatricia Sagar (contributor), Wendy Copp (contributor), Anthony Chase (contributor), Souef (contributor), Diane Martel (music), Billy Swindler (music), Pierre Lamarche (lighting designer), Hebe Joy (costumes), Creative Time Inc. (producer), Kyle de Camp (performer), Michael "Baby" Gregor (performer), Marleen Menard (performer), Hapi Phace (performer), Joseph Pupello (performer), Kennon B. Raines (performer), Tabboo! (performer), Bill Gerstel (performer), George M. (performer), Liz Prince (performer)
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