FACTORALY - E32 CIRCUS

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

This time, we're running away to join the circus. From the Circus Maximus to the painting of clown faces on eggshells, this episode contains all the fun of the circus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Simon! Hello Bruce! And welcome everybody else! Yes, welcome dear listeners to another exciting episode of Factorily. What's Factorily? I've forgotten. It's a senior moment. I don't know. I've never heard of it. Factorily is a weekly podcast with me, Simon Wells. And me, Bruce Fielding. Very good. Yes. We are both voiceover artists and we happen to love trivia and facts and the acquisition of knowledge yes generally speaking anyway there are there are some subjects which i'd like more than others yes and there are some there are some which are a bit scary and and there are some which are entertaining indeed yes certain today's is technically meant to be all three of those.

Wow, what a combination. What could we possibly be speaking about? I think we're talking about circuses. Oh, what a coincidence. That's what I'm talking about as well. Good, good, good, good. It's so good when we've actually researched the same topic. I know, I know.

So tell me a bit about the origin of the circus, Simon. The origin of the circus. This is another one of those topics where you sort of poke at it and you think, oh, that'll be easy. I know. It turns out it's quite big. It's huge. So at its very, very basis, circus is originally a Roman thing. Yeah. Not in the sense that we think of it but if we go back far enough the circus

was a roman creation it was um an arena for horse racing um chariot races that sort of thing stuff um and it was an arena that was sort of an oblong shape with curved edges and a partition down the middle so that you could race your chariot up one side, round the bend, and back down the other side, round the bend, continue. Okay. In a circuit. I hadn't heard that. Had you not? I'd heard that it was called a circus because an amphitheater is basically

like a semicircle with a stage on it. Yes. And a circus was a complete circle. Yes. Right. So there are mixed things that are all going on at the same time so the word itself circus comes from it's pre-roman it comes from an ancient greek word kirkos meaning ring or circle um and obviously from circus we get we get circle we get circuit we get piccadilly circus not because there's a circus, but because it's a circular roundabout. Yes. So, yes, amphitheaters were circular. They were not called circuses.

The Roman circus was very specifically this oblong thing with rounded edges where you did chariot races. Understood. But then the two kind of morph into each other. You end up using one as the other and the other as the one. And the word circus sort of becomes jumbled up and means a generic performing space that's roughly circular-ish. So because it's an oblong, that kind of explains because I read that the Circus Maximus,

which is a Roman thing, could hold a quarter of a million people. It was flipping big. I mean, you know, Wembley Stadium, 100,000. Circus Maximus, quarter of a million. it was flipping big i mean you know wembley stadium hundred thousand yeah circus maximus quarter of a million yes that's absolutely enormous humongous so this this is a this is an arena in rome uh you can still go and visit the site and and the ruins thereof uh we'll put a link in the blog section of the website, factoroli.com. Yeah, fascinating, fascinating place.

We actually had one here in England after the Romans came and conquered us. There was a circus in Colchester. Okay. Nowhere near as big as the Circus Maximus. Yeah. But the circus in Colchester could hold around 80,000 people. So still pretty big. That's still a lot of people. And again, you can go and visit this

place and look at the ruins. There's a wonderful recreated model of the intact structure. It's fascinating. I mean, the Circus Maximus was about a quarter of a mile long. Gosh, was it really? And about 100 metres wide. Blimey. It was

massive. That's quite big, isn't it? Hence the Maximus. Yes, if you're going to call something big isn't it hence the maximus yes if you're going to call something maximus it better be maximus yes absolutely so that is the original circus it's it's roman yeah um it wasn't until a long time later, around the 1700s, that we get this idea of a travelling show with acrobats, animals, performers, all performing in a circular tent. That's what I think of when I think of a circus. That didn't come along until the late 1700s, so quite a long time after the whole Roman bit. Right. Yeah.

Okay. But you talked about horses. There's a lot mostly to do with horses uh in as much that the the origin of it i i hadn't realized that we could actually attribute the modern day circus to one individual oh wow um but apparently we can there was a fella called philip astley yes who was from newcastle under lime inLyme in England around the mid-1700s. He was a cavalry officer, and so he was very familiar with horses. And then he sort of started riding horses and doing trick horse shows for entertainment.

And he was the first person to bring all of these different acts together. You'd always had horse shows. You'd always had entertainers and singers and musicians and jugglers and clowns. He was the first person to bring all of these things together. And what made him stand out was that whilst other horse showmen were riding back and forth in straight lines, this fella, Philip Astley, decided to ride around in a circle. In a circus. And therefore he built a stadium, an that was circular shaped yeah in order for him to do that and then he was reminded of the old roman circus borrowed the word and went

because before that they were hippodromes weren't they hippodromes what can you tell me about hippodromes um i can only tell you that hippo is, I think it's horse, because I know that hippopotamus is a water horse. Oh, sorry, river horse. Is it? I'd always assumed hippo just meant big. Yeah, no. So hippo is horse and Potamus is river.

So it's a river horse. River horse. That's great. So a hippodrome is a horse arena yes exactly well i never did and astley's amphitheater which was effectively a hippodrome um i think he started that in 1773 so quite a while ago it's a while back isn't it? And it's gone now. But I imagine there's a blue plaque somewhere, which would be on 225 Westminster Bridge Road. Ah, okay. Which is where his circus was.

Ah, great. And speaking of hippodromes, the London Hippodrome, which is still there, sort of a multidisciplinary multi-purpose venue, was originally built as a sort of circus slash theatre slash all sorts of other things. It was built in a roughly circular shape in order to, or at least the arena inside it is built in a circular shape with tiered seating around it for horse shows. There are still horses on the outside of it. I think there are statues of horses on the outside of the Hippodrome.

Have to go and have a visit. Yes, absolutely. So Philip Astley's first creation, this place that he built in Lambeth, he just happened to build the performing space at a diameter of 42 feet. And that is now the standard size of a circus ring. Oh, wow. So from the 1700s, it hasn't changed? Hasn't changed. That is the standard size of a circus ring. Oh, wow. So from the 1700s, it hasn't changed? Hasn't changed. That is the standard size of a circus ring.

Circuses really sort of took off around the early 1800s in America. And there was this gentleman called J. Purdy Brown, and he was a circus master. He started off, again, in one fixed location, but he was the first guy to have a big tent, and we all sort of picture this idea of a circular tent with a summit in the middle. That is exactly what you think of when you think of a big top. He was the first person to create that, essentially. Lots and lots of circus workers pulling at guide ropes and things like that.

Yes, heaving and hoeing and picture the opening scenes of Dumbo. Yes, exactly. And he created this tent in 1825. And because it was easily takedown and put upable, he was able to roam around the country and um take his show on the road take money off people in all sorts of different places indeed yeah but his show was that kind of still horses or was that more kind of like what we would know is more of a modern circus with clowns and acrobats and it was more of a mixture so he he did horses, he had animals, he had jugglers, acrobats, clowns.

We don't see elephants in circus anymore, do we really? I mean, I remember when I was a child, you used to see, I mean, apart from horses, you'd see elephants and lions and interesting animals that you wouldn't normally see in the street. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Some of the circuses were menageries. You know, they were just a collection of animals, as you say, sort of taking them to the public who wouldn't ordinarily get to see these things. You know, imagine sitting in a circular tent and all of a sudden a lion appears in the middle. You know, you've never seen a lion before. Amazing. I love the word menagerie. I remember somebody at school was asked what the equator was, and they said it was a menagerie lion circling the earth.

I love that. I will forever think of that when I think of the equator, a menagerie lion circling the earth. Brilliant. When I was young, there were kind of like big names. I mean, American, obviously, have got the big names like P.T. Barnum and that kind of level of circus. Yeah. But in the UK, we also had big families, actually, generally.

It was like the Billy Smart Circus and all those kinds of people were running circuses. It was a very family-orientated thing. Carter's is a current one that I keep seeing the name of around my neck of the woods. You sort of have entire families who are entrenched in this circus life. And they travel from place to place and they bring an air of whimsy and mysticism and excitement. And you sort of have that old sort of legendary idea of running away from home and joining the circus. Like John Major.

Yes, just like him. Running away from the circus and joining a firm of accountants. The exact opposite of that. Yes. Can you tell me what connects the X-Men with Some Mothers Do Have Them? Oh, that's a good question. What connects the X-Men with some... Oh, is it Frank Spencer?

Is it the chap Michael Crawford? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, both Michael Crawford from the 80s sitcom Some Mothers Do Have Them and Hugh Jackman, who played Wolverine in the X-Men. They have both played P.T. Barnum. Oh, in the musical? Yeah. So Michael Crawford was in the musical Barnum

and Hugh Jackman was in the movie The Greatest Showman. Ah. Both of which are about this fella, Phineas Taylor Barnum. Not a very nice person, I imagine. It depends who you were and who you were in relation to him. His closest friends thought he was amazing. His fiercest critics thought he was an absolute shyster. Yes.

He was probably somewhere between the two. What do you know of Barnum? There's a sucker born every minute. Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public. Yeah. Taking somebody who's very short and making a fortune out of them yep taking uh native americans and making them uh perform for crowds yep uh i mean to me that's not a nice person yeah absolutely so by today's standards that is all horrific

yeah you're you're making money out of people's appearances and abilities or disabilities or whatever. Horrific stuff. You know, the term freak show is disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. I guess we have to take it with the historical context of the fact that they weren't living in our times. Yes. And this was a thing that did go on he wasn't by any means the only person to do this amongst all the people who were running freak

shows amongst all the people who were putting people on display he was actually reasonably good to the people involved in his act okay he he actually paid them a reasonable wage you know they they weren't slaves. They were sort of free to come and go as they chose. And they actually formed quite a community together. He was a businessman. He was a politician. He was a flim-flam man, someone once described him as.

But yeah, he had a museum. He bought Scudder's American Museum in 1841, which was sort of a museum of curiosities and oddities. And he just made stuff up and put it in this museum. He bought something known as the Fiji Mermaid. And he bought this item from a very dubious character. And it was essentially half a monkey sewn together with half a fish. And he put it on display claiming it was a mermaid and charged people to come and see it.

But his museum was quite a place to be. This building was on Broadway in New York. He brought in a lighthouse lantern and fixed it to the roof. All right. So it had the brightest light in the whole town wow i'm presuming you couldn't see it from the hudson i don't imagine that could cause all sorts of that could be quite tricky couldn't it yeah he he had a hot air balloon tethered to the place and it was you know one of the first publicly accessible hot air balloon rides um he had

various sort of exhibits and displays and entertainment and things. And then he eventually took that on the road. He traveled around with a menagerie. He traveled around with singers and dancers and all sorts of things. Barnum teamed up with a fellow called James Anthony Bailey. And together they formed the Barnum and Bailey Circus. And that was just one of the biggest circuses and the biggest names in that industry at the time in the 1800s in America. Wow. Hot air balloons were very popular all over the place, actually. I mean, it's interesting. Just down the road from me, there's a plaque on a wall in Camden Town that says, from here, people were given hot air balloon rides in 1870 or something like that. Oh, wow. In Camden.

Yeah. Great place, Camden. One of the acts that travelled around with Barnum in the later years of his circus was a rather large elephant. Called? Called Jumbo. Yay! Jumbo was an African elephant who lived in london zoo uh barnum purchased it and took it around with him in his circus jumbo stood at roughly three and a half meters he was

a blooming large elephant yes and um that was the first time that the word jumbo came to mean big big again it had never occurred to me Some of these things just shouldn't have origin stories. Yes. They've always been there. But this elephant called Jumbo was really large, and therefore you suddenly started having Jumbo-sized this, Jumbo-sized that. That's a corruption of Jambo, isn't it? Which is an African word. Is it? Oh, I hadn't read that.

Yes, so it's an African word. It means hello in Swahili. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh, wow. And then, of course, Jumbo the elephantphant gives rise to the name of Dumbo the Elephant. With the ears. With the ears and the circus train and all of that stuff.

Yeah. It all ties in. But modern circuses don't have any of these. They don't have a jumbo. Yes. But there's all sorts of other things that circuses, modern circuses do now. They're much more human-based, I think. They're much more sort of about how clever people are. Like trapeze artists are sort of big news.

And you don't really see trapeze artists anywhere else apart from at the circus or occasionally on TV talent shows. So what this meant was that because there were fewer elephants and people putting their heads in lions' mouths, standing there in a red dinner jacket with a chair and a whip, which is my image of a lion tamer. Absolutely. That is exactly what you think of, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So there were much more, as that was banned, there were more human acts that came along. And especially in the sort of 70s and 80s,

there started to be a whole thing called New Circus or Contemporary Circus, which is very interesting these more modern circuses i think one of the first ones was in the 1970 early 70s um was the royal lichtenstein quarter ring sidewalk circus in san jose california catchy name and and the big one uh it was an australian one in 1977 called circus o Oz, which was soapbox circus and new circus. And there was the Pickle Family Circus from San Francisco and Ra Ra Zoo in London. And then, of course, in Quebec, there was a company called Cirque du Soleil. Yes, of course there was. Yes.

And Cirque du Soleil was part of this new circus, nouveau cirque. And that was much more about how you felt rather than what you were seeing. Oh, okay. So, you know, for example, I went in, oh gosh, would have been 1986, 1987, something like that, and saw a company called Archaos. And Archaos did a thing called Metal Clown. And this was at a time when the Battersea Power Station was a complete wreck. Right. And they actually went into Battersea Power Station

and performed with motorcycles doing tricks, juggling chainsaws. And the music changed from that sort of to much more moody kind of tense stuff and the costumes changed from being those sort of like you know glitter glittery costumes to being much more dark and kind of grungy looking almost kind of very theatrical and the audience became part of the performance of these things sometimes they even have a narrative they have like a story that goes with okay the i mean so just a very good example of this where they have a story that goes with um what they do right i don't

know if you ever have you ever seen do you know i have never i've seen them on tv yeah i have never actually been to a circus, either traditional or modern. Oh, wow. I've never been to one. Why? Is there a reason for that? My parents didn't like the idea. Fair enough.

I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if that was a hangover from the fact that they used to use animals and that was not nice or what it was. But I never got to go to a circus when I was a kid. And now I'm a grown up. I don't feel the need. But if they're as interesting as you are suggesting here, then maybe I should. Contemporary circuses is very, very different.

And one of the things you can do is learn how to do it. Ah, circus schools. There are circus schools. In fact, there's one in central London, in Shoreditch. I was asked to be on the board of the london circus school it was it was absolutely fascinating right and they they you can take a course like you can actually do a ba in circus arts okay and you have to have done um like a foundation course first so that you have to prove that you're actually up to doing all

the aerial stuff and all the other things that aerial stuff and juggling and wire walking and all the other things they teach you. I've actually been there. They do like experience days where you can learn how to throw knives. Oh, goody. But they teach you how to throw a knife. They teach you how to crack a whip. And they teach you wire work and all sorts of different things you can learn when you go for an experience. They have a course in juggling, including hats, cigar boxes, ball spinning and gentleman juggling, whatever gentleman juggling is.

I'm not sure. I may have to look it up. Gentlemen who juggle or people actually juggling with gentlemen? Yes. They do single point trapeze, static trapeze, doubles trapeze, hoop, rope, silks. You know that thing where people go up and down a thing of silk? Multichord, net and loop, rope, aerial pole. All the things you need to be a performer in a circus.

One of the performing humans that was most popular, and has always been popular, and I have no idea why, because I don't think they're funny. I don't think they're clever. I just think they're weird. And I'm talking about clowns. Okay.

Do you know what the... There's a word, isn't there, for the fear of clowns, and I can't remember what it is. That's called coulrophobia. Okay. All right. It's a phobia that involves a fear of, well, quite a few things. It's quite generic, but it includes clowns and jesters and things like that. It's essentially, it's a phobia of being made to feel uncomfortable around something that's meant to be enjoyable.

Is that like watching The Office? Sure. The only thing I do like about clowns is that there is the Clown Egg Register. I beg your pardon? Do you know about the Clown Egg Register? Never heard of it. Okay. If you're a clown, you can register your makeup at the Clown Egg Register in the Clowns Gallery Museum, which is run by Clowns International.

Okay. What they did originally was they took a real egg and they would blow out, they put a couple of pinholes in it and blow out the egg and just use this very delicate eggshell and paint on the eggshell your makeup. So you patented your makeup and nobody else could use your face as a clown that is brilliant it's not legal or anything but it's kind of understood copyright that each clown has a distinct look and no two clowns are too similar and it was it was started in 1946 by a guy called stan bolt who was the guy who painted these clown faces. And he painted about 200. Wow.

And most of them have been lost and broken over the years. There are about 26 of the originals left. But there are another 46 ceramic eggs on permanent display. So when you go past this very unprepossessing church in Cumberland Close in London, in Dalston, you go inside and have a look at all these faces of clowns. That's brilliant. I'll put a picture in the show notes of what it looks like. It is weird.

In the circus, they tend to use their own language. There's a language of the circus. So this language of the circus has been around from Victorian times. And it's like a slang so that people who aren't involved in the circus don't know what you're talking about. Okay, yes, okay. The only downside of it, though, is if you're gay, you might know what they're talking about. Oh. Because originally it was called paliari.

Yes. Or polari polari yes and palari i'm a great fan of round the horn yeah and julian and sandy yes and um the the idea of palari was was a language used by homosexuals when homosexuality was illegal yeah to communicate things yeah and it was it was used by gypsies, it was used by Romanes, fairground showmen, all sorts of different people used this language. Interesting. So people who at the time were sort of seen as slightly subversive, slightly underworldish,

not sort of conforming to the mainstream, they used this language in order to identify with each other and to have conversations that couldn't be overheard and interpreted by outsiders to that community. Exactly, exactly right. I had a quick look at the use of music in the circus. Oh, great. Music has always been part of the circus all the way back to the Roman times. You had musicians performing in the background, all the way through to the circuses of the 17 and 1800s. The fellow we mentioned earlier on, Philip Astley, he teamed up with a composer called Charles Dibdin, also from England. And this fella is the first person who's known to have composed music specifically for the circus in the 1700s. Often they were marches and stuff, weren't they?

Yeah, lots of marches, lots of sort of drum roll, roll up, roll up type music. Sort of quite exciting, look at the people who are doing the stuff type music. You mentioned earlier on the piece of music I always think of when talking about circus is the entry of the gladiators

by one fellow called Julius Fusik from Czechoslovakia. All right. And he just wrote this as a military march. It was just a standard military march to be played by military bands in military events. Yes. But it has become so associated with circuses now i i can't take it seriously it is whimsical

so circuses always had big bands big drum rolls you had these big fanfares of brass instruments as acts come into the circus so you always had a band sort of sitting at the side playing in time with the acts and each each act would have their own piece of music that went with it and then around the second half of the 1800s you suddenly started having these pipe organs these sort of mobile movable pipe organs yes i've seen those and you can picture this shrill organy music welcoming people as they come into the circus playing different standard tunes. And there were so many different varieties of these things. They were elaborately painted. Some of them were so

big. There was one particular one used in America that was 17 feet wide wow and it had its own wagon that hauled it alongside along with the circus and um some of them were manually operated you know they were pipe organs they were played by organists yes i've seen a steam powered one i think right yes okay so some of them were mechanical um so some of them were sort of hooked up to a steam engine that went along with the circus and they were pre-programmed somehow don't know how using cards using like jacquard cards they were basically computer programs yeah you're right i recognize that now yes you'd have a card punched with lots of little holes and the holes would trigger different one pipe or the other yes yeah and these became quite ubiquitous with travelling circuses. Wurlitzer, who made organs for silent cinema back in the day,

they created an awful lot of these pipe organs for circuses. Oh, wow. Barnum & Bailey had their own pipe organ created specifically for them called the Barnum & Bailey Circus Air Calliope. And these things became a feature. And now I can't think of a circus without picturing this sort of steam-powered, high-pitched, twinkly pipe organ music. Yep.

That's all I have to say about circuses. What about you? Same here. That's the end of my information. But there are obviously loads of things that either did or didn to say about circuses. What about you? Same here. That's the end of my information. But there are obviously loads of things that either did or didn't happen in circuses. And there will be people out there who know whether it's real or not. Oh, there will. We like to call these people factorialites. The factorialites will know.

Tell us your experiences. Have you been to a circus? Yes. Have you ever performed in a circus oh wow yes i bet you that well we know a voiceover who's who's a very very accomplished clown from brazil that's right yeah that's one person at least yes he might even be listening he might who knows hello hello hello the other thing you can do with this podcast which is very interesting and it's unique to this podcast is that you can like us, subscribe to us, tell your friends about us and give us a five-star review. This is the only podcast you can do that with.

Isn't that amazing? Wow. It's the gift that keeps on giving, really, isn't it? So thank you, everyone, for listening. Please join us again for the next episode of Factorily. Bye for now. Bye-bye now.