Sideshow

Anyone who’s worked or has much more than a passing interest in physical theatre knows there are shows and companies, pretty much all from the last century, who have attained mythic status by being enormously influential while leaving behind only the thinnest documentation of their work. The one that exerts the most powerful grip on my imagination is The Carrier Frequency, a collaboration between Imapct Theatre Cooperative and the writer Russell Hoban (who also produced the seminal novel of disappearance and liminality — Fremder), but Archaos for me have a little of the same status and effect.

Recently I had cause to trawl the Internet for fresh Archaos references and it seems like the mists have cleared a little since I last checked: they’ve got a new website (which shall taunt you horribly with an inoperative English language button) and some videos have appeared online. Here’s a little excerpt from their show Bouinax:

It was recorded in 1991, the year in which, according to Wikipedia, things started to fall apart for them. I don’t know about that, but even without a particularly clear idea of circus history and the genealogy of the new/contemporary branch, it’s easy to see traces of the Archaos style in the work of a company like NoFit State.

At the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings site you can hear a recording of an old ICA discussion involving Archaos’ classically Gallic artistic director Pierrot Pillot-Bidon, plus their executive producer Adrian Evans. It’s from 1990, a year when they were perhaps at a peak, and certainly the scale of their growth and success is a shock if, like me, you weren’t around to see them — 1990 was the year they were the second ‘most successful’ (I guess in terms of ticket sales / audience numbers) show at the Edinburgh Festival/Fringe, beaten only by the military tattoo, which is notorious for bussing in audiences.

What’s most striking about the recording is hearing people talk about circus in more or less the same terms as today — describing it as an emergent artform on the cusp of mainstream acceptance. I suppose the difference is that the catalyst back then was an overseas company whereas now a lot of the momentum is coming from UK-based artists, but still you have to wonder if these things come and go in waves.

I wish there was more of this around — more Archaos documentation, sure (I’d love to see evidence of the freeroaming pig and the tightwire and crows act), but just more material available generally. I’ve been thinking about setting up a sort of online archive for awhile now, so perhaps that needs to be a resolution for 2010.